Chapter 8. Kit
Soren picks the bowling alley, which is not what I expected from a man like him.
"You strike me as a nicer restaurant guy," I tell him, sliding into the passenger seat of his truck, because he offered to drive and for once I didn't argue, even though I really like riding to places. I feel naked without my bike. "Not a rented-shoes guy."
"I contain multitudes." He pulls out of my apartment lot, one hand loose on the wheel, completely unhurried the way he does everything. "Also, it's Wednesday. Nobody's there. I like empty places."
"Should I be worried you're taking me somewhere no one will hear me scream?"
"Only if you're a genuinely terrible bowler." A ghost of a smile.
He's right about it being empty—the alley's got maybe two other lanes going, a group of teenagers three lanes down shrieking over something on someone's phone, the low mechanical rumble of the ball return machines under everything.
The carpet is the specific ugly of every bowling alley carpet in America, all melted geometric shapes in colors that don't exist anywhere else.
It smells like shoe spray and old popcorn.
I love it instantly.
The kid behind the counter barely looks up from his phone when Soren asks for two pairs, sliding our shoes across without much interest. I lace mine up wrong the first time, too fast, have to redo it, and Soren's already finished with his by the time I get it right, sitting there patiently with nothing left to lace, just watching me lose a fight with my own shoelaces.
"Don't say anything," I warn him.
"I wasn't going to."
"You were thinking it very loudly."
"I was thinking you tie a good knot once you commit to it," he says, perfectly even, and I can't tell what he means.
We pick out balls from the rack—I go through four of them, testing the finger holes, before I land on a scuffed green one that's probably been dropped a thousand times. Soren picks the first black one he touches and doesn't second-guess it.
"That's it? No testing? No holding it up to the light?"
"It's a bowling ball, Kit. Not a diamond."
I set my ball down on the little rack by our lane and drop into the plastic seat. Soren settles into the one beside me, close but not crowding, one arm resting along the back of the bench behind me without actually touching me, which I notice.
"I bowled in a league in my twenties," he says. "Thursday nights. Terrible beer, worse nachos. I miss it, honestly."
"League Guy? And what happened to League Guy? Besides the shop."
"Divorce," he says, easy, like the word doesn't have any weight left in it. "Not mine. My league partner's. He moved out of state, the whole team kind of fell apart without him, and by the time I thought about finding a new one, the shop had eaten most of my Thursday nights anyway."
"Were you sad about it?"
"A little." He considers it honestly, like the question deserves a real answer instead of a reflex one.
"I think I missed the ritual more than the bowling.
Same night every week, same terrible nachos, same four guys getting slightly better or slightly worse depending on how their year was going.
There's something to be said for a thing that just happens, reliably, whether or not you're having a good week. "
"Structure."
"Structure," he agrees. "I like structure. Machines like structure. People pretend they don't, but I think most people are just starving for it and won't admit it."
I go still for half a second at that, because it lands closer to home than he probably means it to, and I cover it by leaning down to retie my already-tied shoe.
"Is that a Daddy thing," I ask, not looking up, testing the water, "or a you thing?"
"Probably both. I don't think they're that separate for me.
" He says it plainly, no hesitation, like it's just a fact about himself he settled a long time ago.
"I like when things have a shape. I like knowing what's expected and delivering exactly that, and I like giving other people that same certainty back.
It's why I like restoring bikes instead of just fixing them.
You're not guessing what a broken-down frame needs.
You're giving it back its actual shape, the one it was supposed to have all along. "
"That's a very poetic way to talk about carburetors."
"I contain multitudes," he says again, and I laugh again, and it's easy. It keeps being easy, which is starting to unsettle me a little, in a good way, in a way I don't have a name for yet.
"Can I ask you something," I say, "and you don't have to actually answer it..."
"You can ask."
"Have you had a Little before?"
Something moves behind his eyes, brief, careful. "Once. A long time ago. It didn't last, but not because of anything dramatic. We just wanted different things eventually. I've been looking, on and off, for a while now. Nothing's really landed."
He turns the black ball over once in his hands, unhurried.
"I'm patient about it, though. I'd rather wait for the right shape than force something into one that doesn't fit."
"That's very you."
"It is very me," he agrees, and there's no self-pity in it, just a plain accounting of the facts.
I don't ask anything else.
I'm not ready for the version of this conversation where I have to explain my own shape, the one that used to fit somewhere and doesn't anymore, so I stand up instead, scooping my green ball off the rack.
"Okay, Zen bowling monk," I say. "Show me how it's done."
He does.
He steps up to the line without any ceremony, no practice swing, no little ritual, just a smooth release, four steps and a follow-through. The ball rolls dead center down the lane and takes out eight pins clean. The other two wobble but stay standing.
"Show-off," I say.
"That was restraint, actually." He collects his ball off the return without looking at the pins, already certain of the spare before he sets up for it. "You should see me when I'm trying."
"You're actually good at this," I say. "That's annoying."
He picks up the spare like it was never in doubt.
My own game is a disaster.
I bowl like I ride, too much commitment, not enough calculation, throwing my whole body into it like the pins personally wronged me.
I put two balls in the gutter in a row and throw my hands up, disgusted, and Soren just watches me with an expression I can't quite name, somewhere between fond and amused.
"You're trying to muscle it down the lane instead of letting the lane do the work."
"I have no clue what any of this means. Some of us don't have your Zen bowling monk energy."
"Come here."
He says it simply, no ceremony, and holds a hand out for the ball I'm still cradling against my hip like it personally betrayed me.
I lift the ball from the return and step onto the approach.
Soren follows.
He steps in behind me, close, and reaches around to guide my hand back onto the ball, his fingers settling loosely over mine, adjusting my grip a fraction and rotating my hand slightly to the left.
"There," he says, close enough that I shiver. "You're gripping it like it's trying to escape. Let your fingers do less work. Let your arm swing. Don't force it."
His other hand comes up and wraps loosely around my wrist, steadying, not gripping, just there.
Warm.
Solid.
"Kit. Baby. Look at me."
The alley goes soft and far away, the way a room does right before you faint, sound dropping out from under everything except the words replaying somewhere behind my sternum.
Look at me.
I know this hand.
I know this exact weight and shape of being held from behind, guided instead of grabbed, someone bigger patiently walking my body through the correct motion because they trust that I'll get there if they just show me once, gently, without making me feel stupid for not already knowing.
Charles's hands are on both my wrists, and I've been trying to get to the door for ten minutes, and he keeps putting his body between me and the exit like that will fix anything.
"Kit. Baby. Look at me."
I don't.
"Let go of me," I say. My voice doesn't sound like mine.
"I'm not doing this again tonight," Charles says.
He looks tired in a way I've never seen on him, gray around the eyes, his big frame smaller than it's ever looked, folded against the doorframe.
"You've been out until four in the morning three times this week.
You won't tell me where. You won't tell me why.
You come home smelling like gravel dust and exhaust, and I don't know if you're hurt until I check myself, because you won't say. "
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine, Kit. You haven't been fine in months and you keep telling me you're fine, and I keep believing you because I want to, and every single time it's a lie, and I am so tired."
His voice cracks on tired.
Charles's voice never cracks.
"I can't keep patching you up if you won't stop crashing into things. I can't be your Daddy if you won't let me actually take care of you. You just want somewhere soft to land after you've already decided to fall."
"That's not fair."
"It's the truest thing I've said in a year."
I'm crying by then.
He's crying too, which is worse, because Charles doesn't cry. Charles is the immovable thing, and the floor is cracking right in front of me.
"I love you," I say.
It's true.
It doesn't matter.
"I love you too. That's not going to be enough this time."
He packs slowly, over two days, which is somehow worse than if he'd left in one furious hour. I watch him fold his shirts. I watch him lift his toothbrush out of the cup by the sink, leaving an obscene little gap where it used to stand beside mine.
The last thing he takes off the shelf is a framed photo—the two of us at a rally, his arm slung heavy around my shoulders, both of us squinting into the sun, before any of it went wrong. He looks at it a long time before he wraps it in a towel.
"Take care of yourself," he says at the door.
Not I'll call you.
Not we'll figure this out.
Just that.
A door closing gently instead of slamming, which somehow hurts more.
"Charles—"