Chapter 9 #2
I roll my lips together, feeling my Adam’s apple slide down my throat, feeling like a trillion pounds as my eyes search my sister’s. She nods slightly, encouraging, but I stay quiet. Kat scoots to the edge of the couch with a squeak, and lowers her glass to the table. “Did this never occur to you?”
I shake my head. “I just thought I was broken, kind of. Or, I don’t know,” I skate a hand up the back of my head and take off my glasses, pinching the stress lingering at the bridge of my nose. Kat is suddenly next to me, her arm looping my lower back, head tipped to rest on my shoulder.
“Cade, you are not broken.” Her voice is so low that heat nudges the backs of my eyes. “I hate hearing you say that. I hate knowing you think that, or thought that.”
“I love my work. I thought, I’m like Dad, you know?
The type of person who sets aside the rest of it and is meant to dedicate myself to my work.
” I shake my head, realizing how wrong I was as an image of Noah dances behind my eyes.
“Now I feel like I have no experience and have no clue how to… be a guy in a relationship, because I’ve never been that guy. ”
Kat rolls and unrolls the hem of her top, busying her hands. “You’re just like Dad, you know that?”
I cut her a dead-eyed glare. “A wealthy old man covered in ink?” I shake my head. “I am the polar opposite of Ford Mercer.”
Kat glances back right as Zennie pokes her head around the corner.
They exchange glances, holding wordless conversation the way couples always do, the way I’ve witnessed between people for years.
Avery and Sutton, Geo and Avery, Kat and Zennie, every single college couple sitting in my classes, my elderly neighbor and her husband—everyone.
Only now, I long for that. I watch them have a full exchange with head nods and tips of their lips and my chest feels like it’s going to explode into a thousand tiny pieces of broken glass if I don’t have that very thing for myself.
I went an entire life without wanting any of this and suddenly I feel like I can’t breathe if I don’t have it, have every minute, every moment of it.
With Noah.
She sighs, sitting back after Zennie disappears into the kitchen, her hair fuzzy around her face from the heat of the oven and stove. “You are like Dad.”
I scratch the middle of my chest but the needy feeling doesn’t budge. I cut my sister an annoyed glance.
Kat scoots nearer to me. “You know Dad hasn’t slept with anyone since Mom. The women he always goes out with, that’s for his image. For Velvet Whisper, for the tabloids.”
I pull back and blink down at my sister. “What?”
She nods. “I overhead Elle once.” I can’t imagine a situation where Elle would be talking about my father’s lack of sex life in earshot of Kat, but she reads my doubt and waves me off.
“Long story, not important. But yeah, he hasn’t connected to anyone since Mom, so he’s been celibate.
” She shudders, and I share in it, because thinking about our father having sex is probably one of the worst things an adult child can do.
I like to think my father created us, then immediately reverted his genitals to a slick plastic lump, like a Ken doll.
I reframe my father with this new information. He didn’t sleep around while waiting for love. He simply shelved that part of himself until it came to him again. Or maybe it won’t come to him again. I don’t know. But Kat’s not wrong.
I’ve done that too, only until Noah, I had no idea.
“So you haven’t dated anyone since Rhiannon?” she asks gently.
I shake my head. “No.”
She walks her fingers up her leg, tracing the stitched rose there in her leather pants. “And… Did you and Rhiannon sleep together?”
I nod. “Three times.”
She nods now. “How was it?”
Somehow, I know Kat isn’t asking for tawdry details but more-so, she’s asking something she hasn’t even said, and when I cut my eyes to her, I know. I know exactly what she’s asking.
I shake my head. “Not good.”
Another nod, this one knowing, which makes the hair on the back of my neck rise. “So the last time you were physical was years ago, and it wasn’t good, but now you are attracted to someone, more than you’ve ever been?”
I nod, dragging my hand down my face. My vision is fuzzy as I swipe my sweater over my glasses, then slide them back on. Kat reappears, sharp. “Yes.”
She rolls her dark-lined lips together. “Is it Noah?”
I hate that I immediately say no, shake my head, and then get to my feet. Could I be more obvious? But still, even as Kat gets to her feet next to me, and nods her head as if to tell me it’s okay and she’s okay not getting an answer, I cannot bring myself to admit the truth.
I came over here confused, and I’m leaving with the label of pansexual.
That’s enough for now. And why tell my sister that I have feelings for Noah when I’m not even certain he feels even a fraction of the same way?
I picture Tara Shae asking him out, and my stomach tightens, the whiskey souring in my gut.
“No,” I say one last time, lying to myself, and lying to Kat, too. “It’s not Noah.”
“Okay,” she says, but I don’t look into her eyes as I finish my drink and carry the glass to the kitchen. I don’t look her in the eyes as I rinse it out and make small talk with Zennie. And I only glance at her once before I hug them each and tell them I’m heading out.
She texts me as I’m walking back to my place, which is next door to hers, half a football field apart.
Kat
Love you dude
I text her back, feeling more seen than I ever have.
Love you too
At home, I lock the deadbolt and don’t bother with any of the lights.
I kick off my shoes and fall face first into my bed.
My entire life I always felt so different than my father.
Where he’s inked, I’m not. Where he likes piercings and dark suits with sharp lines and bright colors, I liked muted things and pressed khakis.
Where he picks up a thriller, I lift a classic.
I’ve felt like the odd man out my whole life, with Kat and my dad being more alike than not. But not having empty connections and dead-end relationships, holding off for the real thing, the big deal—he’s doing that. And so am I.
And as I doze off, the realization about who I am and what I want no longer feels as terrifying as it did just a few hours ago.