Chapter 40
Kas
I made Bill take Dash to the emergency room. There was no way in hell I was going to drive him there after he stooped that low. The hours have ticked by since and staying in my hotel room listening to Mari cry all day is killing me.
I need to get out.
I aggressively slide on some shorts and fold the small face towel I used to dry the top of my damp hair this morning. I had to wash off what I discovered to be an energy drink pelted at me courtesy of Mari; she doused me in it like water at a fucking dog.
I sigh and bang on her door for the final time.
“I don’t want to talk right now!” she calls.
It’s the same dismissive response I’ve been getting all day. Her voice quietens and I can tell she’s still on the phone with her cousin based on how she’s ranting. She was on the phone with Quinn for most of the day and her initial sobs have ebbed into light sniffles. I press my ear against the door.
“I feel like I work really hard and things always end up just not working out. I know it’s a part of life, but I just want good things to happen to me,” she says. “How do I convince him to do the fight? I know everything was falling apart, but I was still enjoying it. Is that crazy?”
I stop eavesdropping after that. Hearing her so down is wrecking me, and I’m not prepared to be emotionally destroyed or coerced into doing the fight for the sake of Mari’s sadness.
I throw on a T-shirt and quietly slip out of my room to escape her melancholy. I walk through Vegas and watch the different types of people who have chosen to wander the streets tonight. It’s strange. Online, within the MMA world, it feels like all eyes are on me. And now, when I step into the steady stream of tourists outside of the hotel, most of them pay me no mind.
It’s not until the Bellagio comes into view that I get a small feeling I’m being watched. It’s not from the eyes of the public either. I come to a stop at the fountains after a mile of walking and Mari sidles up next to me. We watch the end of the display. Spouts of water soar to music, reaching high and earning appreciative hums from other viewers dotted along the sidewalk.
“As your social media manager and unconventional PR advisor, you’re making the wrong decision,” she says.
Her arm brushes me and it takes a lot of strength to ignore the warmth of her.
“We’re calling off the fight,” I say.
She steps closer to me so that her arm presses solidly against mine. “You can’t,” she replies.
“I can.”
“Yeah, but, you’re wrong. This is the wrong decision.”
“You can’t just tell me that I’m wrong about my own decision. I heard you ask Quinn how to convince me to do the fight, why?”
Mari distances herself by a step. When I finally look at her, her hands are fisting at her sides. “You tell me,” she urges in a tone that suggests she’s completely unaware of what I’ve learned about her over the time we’ve been here.
I let her question hang between us for a moment. “I thought it was subtle at first, but as time went on, you got desperate.” Her chest heaves with every word I speak. “The longer you’re here, the less you want to go back home. You were desperate for me to do this fight, and now you’re panicking because it’s not gonna happen and you’re scared you have to go home to a life you’re unhappy with.”
Mari pulls her thin cardigan around her body, cocooning herself like it will protect her from my honesty. “What are you talking about?” she whispers. Her eyes turn glossy and dart across my face like she’s searching for something.
“Tell me why you don’t want to go home, Mari. And don’t give me some bullshit about how much fun you’re having here and the Isaac stuff, because it’s not just that.”
Mari twists her bottom lip with her thumb and finger. A bitter laugh escapes her, and she gazes down at her Vans, dragging them back and forth along some stray gravel. She leans on the wall separating us from the fountains and her body quivers.
“Listen, I don’t want to go home because I just have this fear of ... this fear of going back to square one.” Mari can barely find her words, and they tumble earnestly out of her mouth. “I’m worried that living with you will be a repeat of all the mistakes I’ve made in my previous relationship, and I don’t want to go back to spending my days applying for hundreds of jobs only to be constantly rejected because I’m not experienced enough, or I don’t have further education, or probably because of the way I look.”
“Mar—”
“Canceling your fight doesn’t just mean that I go back to that, it means that I have to bring back my failures too, failures that my entire family has seen. I am incapable of growing, and I am exactly like my birth mom. I have nothing to show from this job apart from a video of myself fighting Olive Ward in the bathroom of a shitty sports bar.” She presses her hand against her chest and her eyes refocus on me as if coming back from her words. “I feel like everyone can see that I don’t know what I’m doing. All I want to do is stick by you and watch you win. It’s why I bust my ass trying to be a good social media manager and an even better friend, lover, supporter ... all of it. I feel like I’ve failed you too.”
A fissure tears through my chest, splintering through me with a painful ache.
It hurts so much that I have to rub my sternum to soothe away the pain of Mari’s words. Words that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“So to be honest with you, Kas, you’re right. I don’t want to go home, and the thought of it makes me really, really fucking sad.” The final two words of her sentence dissipate into a soft sob.
The two-meter distance we were bickering between seems too far, the tourists passing by too close and her emotions too big. Mari turns to the Bellagio fountains, the now-still water reflecting in eyes sheened with tears. I can feel my own eyes burn with ones that might fall on her behalf.
I step to her, and she turns just in time to bury her face into my torso.
“I don’t want to go home,” she mumbles into my chest, her voice trembling. “I don’t even know if I need you to do the fight, I think I just need you.”
Her hot tears seep into the front of my cotton tee, press against my skin, and streamline straight to my heart.
“You’ve got me, S?oneczko.”
I think she’s always had me.
I weave my fingers into her curls, massaging her scalp and hoping it provides a reassuring pressure.
“I’m completely overwhelmed by the nothingness that my life is, and I’m so scared of things not working out,” she whispers between sniffles. “I know it’s just life, but it’s not fair,” she says, her tone quickly transitioning from sadness to measured understanding.
It’s funny, all we know is to be human and for some reason, living as one feels like the most difficult thing to do.
I unlatch myself from her and bend slightly so that my hands cup her face and our eyes are level. I don’t know what to say because I don’t want her to go home either. The thought of her sleeping any farther than a room away from me is painful to think about, and even now, that distance is too far apart.
Her eyes are watery and pleading as I try to formulate some sort of vocal reassurance.
“You aren’t a failure,” I say, wiping my thumb beneath her waterline and accidentally removing some makeup that was there. “You say all of that and none of it is true.” I have to swallow and look away from her to stop my voice from wavering. “To speak so bad about yourself is a disservice to who you are. And the worst part is that you expect everyone else to think the same, don’t you?”
She nods. I don’t mention how hearing how she truly sees herself quite literally makes my heart seize in my chest.
“I’ve gone from thinking ‘I can’t believe I’m working with her’ to ‘I can’t believe I’m working with her,’ ” I say, adding a lighter tone to the second repetition of the phrase.
Sure, the statements are the same, but the sentiment behind the latter is vastly different than the former. Whatever I’ve planned to say is gone and in its place are honest words that flow from my mouth with no thought and all meaning.
“You wake up every day and you think that you’re fucking up your life. You think, ‘what if this happens?’ or ‘what if people think this?’ If I’m being honest, nobody you care about is thinking that because they’re too busy loving you. Me, Quinn, your auntie, Violet, Davina ... everyone. When you love yourself the same way we love you, that little negative voice at the back of your head will be nothing more than a whisper you’ll be able to ignore.”
Mari stares at me with her mouth slightly agape, and I swipe away a tear from my eye before it falls. I can’t believe I have to convince Mari about how amazing she is. It’s never been a doubt in my mind, and it never occurred to me that it’d be a doubt in hers.
She mumbles thank you’s into my chest through her tears. My heart warms because her gratitude means one thing—I gave her the words she needed to hear.
“I have love for you too, Kas. So much love.”
Her admission arrests me. Love?
I recount the conversation we’ve just had and relax in her arms because I did say I loved her. I included myself in that list of people I said are too busy loving her and put myself right at the top of it.
When she finally pulls away, I gaze at her baby hairs slicked into sweeping curls against her hairline and fist my hands to stop myself from reaching for her. Our noses twitch at the scent of baked goods and we simultaneously turn to search for the source. We smile at each other and Mari turns in the direction of the smell again.
“That smells amazing,” I say.
“Smells like Auntie’s cake,” she replies distractedly.
“What type of cake?”
“Just a ginger cake. She makes big batches for the community club she runs.” Mari thinks for a moment. “You might know it, it’s near our old high school. You know, the corner of Stanley?”
I can feel my breaths begin to even out and the tightness in my chest slowly releases to allow for more oxygen.
“Your aunt ran the community club on Stanley?” I ask.
“Yeah, she still does. It’s why I live off her leftovers, because she makes so much.”
I know the community club on Stanley. I had many of my dinners there during middle school. I knew a Caribbean woman ran it, but as a seven-year-old who struggled to make his own hot meals while his mom was working, I was more concerned with eating food than the people running it. I never knew the kind black woman who introduced me to Caribbean cuisine was Mari’s aunt.
“I went a couple of times,” I lie.
I went more times than I can count.
“Makes sense, a lot of kids did.”
I can’t remember Mari, or many of the kids from my childhood, but I remember the food. I remember the brown stew chicken I fell in love with, the fried plantain, bully beef, and even the fried bake I’d look for every time the volunteers would open those big aluminum containers.
The stew I tried when Mari appeared at my doorstep was just as good as the best brown stew I had as a kid because it was the same meal little Kacper Paj?k would demolish as he’d wait for his mom to pick him up from the local community hall after she finished work. The same stew I try to replicate to this day.
“I think my auntie remembers you from either that or school. I called her a couple of days ago and she had some random memory lapse about you being that skinny quiet kid I went to school with. I mentioned your name before and she was clueless.” A soft laugh erupts from Mari’s throat, and from mine too. “Auntie told me to send her love to your mom.”
Mari’s voice goes quiet because we know why that seems impossible.
“I’ll tell her next time I visit her,” I say.
“When you visit her?”
“Her resting place.” Saying “grave” sounds morbid, especially when “resting place” is more apt because she’s never really disappeared from my life. I enjoy keeping my mom’s memory alive, and I do that by continuing to live and doing things that would make her proud; in her case, she’d be proud of me for just breathing.
Mari does that heavy sigh. The same sigh she does when she’s trying to desperately to rein in her emotions. I don’t know what I’ve said, but her bottom lip trembles, and she quickly swipes her palms under her eyes.
“We should head back,” she says. “I hate crying in public, I feel way too exposed.”
I nod and we walk together back to the hotel, slow and unrushed with our fingers linked loosely together.
The longer me and Mari spend time together, the more I realize how similar we are. It’s like we peel back a layer each time we interact, opening ourselves up bit by bit until our grief, lust, and vulnerabilities all intertwine into one big, convoluted mass of feelings.
When the elevator doors shut on the way up to our rooms, it feels as if it’s also closed off oxygen from the enclosed space. I want to embrace Mari so fucking badly. I want to kiss her, hug her, anything to be closer to her. I’m so acutely aware of her that I dare not meet her eyes.
The classical music that usually fills the space is absent, and the remaining silence is weighted by the vulnerability we shared at the fountain. All I can do is watch her fingers trail idly along the gold banister; the rich color makes her dark skin glow with a radiance so potent, that it leaves me at a complete loss for words. Mari could be an amorphous lump with googly eyes and I’d still find myself listing all of my favorite things about her.
She clears her throat and I clear mine when the elevator dings at our floor.
“Here,” she says, handing me her business phone.
Similar to the way I regretted accepting the fight all those weeks ago, part of me now regrets not doing the fight.
“You’re quitting?” I ask, panicked.
Mari gives me a resounding look of pity and shakes her head disappointedly. “You dropped out. There’s no need for me if there’s no fight.”
“But—”
There’s no reasonable excuse I have where I can ask her to stay without the job. She presses the device deeper into my fist and hesitantly steps away from me. Her eyes dart uncomfortably to the end of the corridor, like she doesn’t want to move.
“I wasn’t right, I’ll do the fight.” The lie explodes from my lips.
Mari shakes her head. “You’re lying. I know you don’t want to do the fight, you said it yourself several times before.”
I bite my tongue to stop myself from begging. It’s not ending like this. It can’t end like this.
She gives me one last sad smile before walking down the corridor to her room. I’m left at the elevator, with a repeating voice of “please stand clear of the doors.” They try to close and each time, my body obstructs them, prompting the voice again, and again, and again.
I watch Mari enter her room. The work phone is a dead weight in my hand and the main thing on my mind isn’t that she’s just quit but knowing that I need to fix up.
We can step away from the fight all we like, but I’m not stepping away from Mari. I’ve enjoyed my time with her more than I ever expected, and I’ll be damned if the home she goes back to isn’t the same one as mine.