Chapter 21
Mari
“Fruit. Three, two, one . . .”
“Gooseberry,” Kas mumbles monotonously.
“Apple,” I say at the same time. Neither of us say anything for a beat. “I’m seriously not playing anymore.”
Kas doesn’t respond for a moment.
“Why?” he asks, his mouth full of the Polish donuts he bought from an Eastern European bakery we found after dinner. P?czki, he calls them.
I roll to the right side of my bed so I can see him through the opened door between our rooms. He’s smiling as he chews.
I release a frustrated groan and roll back into the center of the bed. “The whole point of the game is to try and guess the same as the other person. How are we ever going to play if you choose things I’ve never heard of?” I ask, biting into my sugary treat and ensuring that I haven’t gotten any granules on the comforter.
“Everyone’s heard of gooseberries,” he argues.
“Okay, and what is the likelihood of me saying the same as you when you choose almost unknown answers?”
“You should know I’d say something like that.”
For the past two nights since our “team building” session, Kas and I have been chatting before bed until we fall asleep. We’ve deviated from gossiping about work to mindless ramblings and games like I Spy and Would You Rather.
I sigh loudly. “You’re being kind of boring.”
“Boring? You’re the one constantly asking to play word games.”
“Well, excuse me for trying to create something fun to do.”
I munch away on the donut as we sit in silence.
“Sorry about the peaking in high school thing. I swear I was joking.”
I stop chewing and swallow my mouthful. I’d almost forgotten about that little failed joke from Kas.
“You don’t have to confess to me like we’re in a confessional booth just because we can’t see each other right now,” I say.
Kas’s laugh is matched with the rustle of the paper bag the p?czki came in. “Your games are so boring they’ve made me share my feelings of regret.” I ball up my own paper bag, lean to my right so I can just see the left side of Kas’s body, and hurl it through the door. The wad hits him with a crinkled thud. “Ow,” Kas whispers.
I settle back into the middle of my bed and sit up with my legs crossed. “I’m over the peaking thing. I think the reason it offended me was because I did peak in high school.”
There’s a pregnant pause, and then Kas’s low, thoughtful hum envelops the rooms.
“Did you?” he asks.
“I was well-known, a track star, got with the popular guy. I had everything high school me could ever want. Then I fell off.”
“You didn’t fall off. You just grew up.” I guess that’s one way to put it. “I hated high school,” Kas continues.
“Why?” I ask mid-chew.
“Just a bad time for me. Some family stuff happened.”
“Like what?” Reel it in, Mari.
“Just stuff with my mom.”
There’s a strange comfort that breezes over me, a familiar comfort. “Same, I have mom stuff too.”
“What’s your mom stuff?” he asks.
“I—if I tell you, will you tell me about yours?” I’m happy to tell Kas all about me because I’m an oversharer. But Kas isn’t an oversharer; it’s exactly why I want to hear his story too. “We can tell each other our mom stuff and listen. No need to respond with advice, pity, reassurance, or anything, really,” I offer.
He considers my question for a few beats before answering. “Sure, fuck it. You already overheard mine.”
His words prompt the memory of the conversation he had with Bill in the gym after the Michael thing. Bill said Kas was grieving and got into anabolic steroids. Kas looked so vulnerable after that; I’d never seen him so fragile, and when he turned away to hide his reddening face, I just wanted to hug him.
For a brief moment, Kas wasn’t this tough, unyielding person. He’s someone with his own troubling memories that he snuffs out until they’re rekindled again—just like me.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he prompts quietly.
I take a deep breath and will my voice not to wobble. “My birth parents dropped me off at Auntie’s doorstep and cut contact with my entire family. I was six at the time, but I remember it well.” I don’t know when I last recounted this story out loud. It’s been so long that I don’t anticipate the shot to the heart. My large intake of breath morphs into a dry sob.
I distract myself by pulling childishly at the stitching of a sock I’ve accidentally worn inside out. “I cried so much that my dad gave me his blue baseball cap just to soothe me before they drove off.” I take a pillow from behind me and hug it close to my chest, hoping the softness will replace the invisible weight pressing there. “So, yeah, that’s my mom stuff.” I laugh uncomfortably, despite the lone tear carving a warm path down my face.
The silence is so thick, I have to clear my throat before it begins to choke me. I scooch across the bed until I’m facing Kas through the door.
This is awkward.
We should’ve stuck with word games.
Kas nods his head without lifting it; he’s just kind of rubbing it against the bed as he toys with a loose thread on his comforter.He raises his head to look at me with tousled hair and then drops it back down to his bed. I stuff the last piece of p?czki into my mouth to prevent myself from rambling out of discomfort.
A rowdy cheer sounds from somewhere outside of the hotel, and then silence. The only other sounds are the AC and the humming fan in my bathroom that I left on to clear the steam from my too-hot shower.
Kas sniffs. “My mom died.”
The p?czki lodges itself in my throat and I take the bottle of water from my bedside table to wash it down. My heart burns for him, a grieving ache that ricochets against my ribcage and is incapable of being soothed by the free hand I press to my chest.
I watch him from my bed. His chest moves up and down a little faster than before, and he nervously strums his fingers against each other.
“Her funeral was rough, I guess,” Kas continues, his voice cracking. “I can’t remember being able to stand on my own. Devon had to hold me up anytime we weren’t sitting down, or I’d just fall to my knees and sob for someone to get her out of her coffin.”
I drag the pad of one of my fingers along my waterline. My tongue rubs against the back of my teeth, eager to go against my words about not responding to each other.
The movement of Kas’s chest stutters for a moment and his next words are weighted with so much emotion, it sounds like he can barely breathe.
“It was just me and her ever since I was born. She did her best to raise me, and I was such a bad kid that I felt so much guilt and regret when she passed. I couldn’t get a hold of my emotions, still can’t regulate them.” He pauses for a second to exhale. “I didn’t know what grieving was, or what it was meant to look like. I wanted to get bigger physically to compensate for how weak I felt emotionally.” Kas’s voice wavers and I’m sure he’s crying. He muffles a sniffle with a larger intake of breath than before. “I think I would’ve killed myself without Bill and Dav’s gym ... fuck .” Kas’s voice is just above a whisper.
I listen to his ragged breathing and the contrasting whooping of guests; it’s a reminder that it’s not just us in this hotel, even though it feels like we’re the only two here.
Scrap that.
It feels like we’re the only two people on Earth .
Kas releases a sad sigh. “I just wish she was around to see me debut,” he whispers. “Sometimes, this whole thing feels pointless because she’s not here.”
The tears glassing my eyes drop one by one onto the bed. Kas’s hand moves to his face and pinches the bridge of his nose.
I do the listening and you do the talking. It’s how we work.
I remember Kas saying that to me back when I ate my stew at his. That same sentence ghosts my mind because tonight, that isn’t how we worked because Kas also did the talking.
It felt so right and so natural, I didn’t even stop to figure out why. All I can think about is how much I wish he’d share more.
And how much I want to be the person he feels he can come to for that.
I must’ve dozed off at some point after mine and Kas’s sharing of trauma because I’ve woken up with swollen eyes to a pitch-black room, and my bonnet has vanished from my head.
I whack the sheets next to me until I feel the hard rectangular shape of my phone. It lights up when I poke the screen. Two a.m.
I sigh and snuggle deeper into the bed. It’s difficult to sleep with a building ache in my bladder and a layer of sugary residue on my teeth. Gross.
I brave the chill of the hotel AC and hop out of bed, hurrying to my bathroom before the sleepiness wears off. After going over my teeth twice, I stop at the door leading to Kas’s room on my way back to bed; it’s cracked open, making way for a small sliver of light.
Kas has training in four hours. Has he fallen asleep with the light on? Or is he awake?
Compelled by my nosiness, I edge toward his room instead of my bed. The coarse carpet prickles the soles of my feet until my eye aligns with the gap in the door. All I can make out is a Kas-shaped imprint on the bed and a lone gaming controller on his bedside table.
There’s enough light spilling in from his bathroom door to cast a shadow into the bedroom. He’s standing up and hunched over the counter, probably brushing his teeth just as I was. At least he hasn’t randomly disappeared in the middle of the night.
I back away to my bed and falter when I hear a sob. And then another sob.
He’s crying.
Guilt coils in my stomach and gnaws at my insides as another low sob escapes him. Have I just ruined Kas’s night by discussing his mom’s death? I’ve probably triggered buried emotions, grief, trauma. Even shutting the door might reveal my presence, and then I’d be intruding on a vulnerable moment.
I jolt when another sudden sob emanates from inside the room, louder this time, and more guttural.
“Fuck,” Kas groans almost breathlessly.
My initial empathy trickles out of my body like air escaping from a balloon and my face of concern deflates into one of disgust. God, no.
“Fuck,” he repeats, more strained this time.
Definitely not a sob.
That is a moan ... he’s moaning.
White hot heat zips through my body and the door handle begins to slip from my dampening hands. What I thought was disgust is turning into something else that has my pulse racing and my thighs squeezing together.
Kas’s words escape him faster now. A mixture of his mother tongue and English is used in ways that feel sinful.
I can’t look away. I suck in a sharp breath when his forearm crosses the gap in the bathroom door and slaps the mirror in front of him for stability.
He releases a heaving breath. I’m heaving too. Not out of pleasure, but in what feels like the beginning of a panic attack.
“Holy fuck,” he grunts, his arm speeding up.
I take that as my cue to run.
I launch myself onto my bed, my foot catching on the corner of the frame. As my eyes begin to water, my face lands on a pillow and I release a muffled screech of agony into the feathered mass.
There’s movement from Kas’s room and I throw the comforter over myself when I hear his footsteps near. I inhale deeply to level out my breathing, something that proves hard to do when my face burns, my toe burns, and my entire body burns.
“Mari?” Kas’s voice still maintains its smoothness despite being accented by a husky tone.
It’s the tone of someone who’s just been moaning in pleasure.
After a few seconds, the door separating our rooms closes softly. I lift my head from the pillow and slam it down once, twice, thrice. The image of him over the sink is ingrained into my brain, un-erased by smashing my face into the pillow.
I just saw my kinda boss-coworker-friend jerking off, and now I am unable to sleep because as much as I’m disgusted to admit it, I can’t stop thinking about it. The way he sounded, the way his hips rocked, or the way that the tendons in his arm rippled when he placed his hand against the mirror.
It’s terrible timing because tomorrow is the first team breakfast we’re having since our first morning in Vegas, and I absolutely do not want to come face to face with Kas knowing that I was probably about two seconds away from seeing his ejaculating cock.