Chapter 37
Kai
“I’m done with this.”
I almost threw up. The tears that were already leaking down my face were nothing compared to the hope that withered inside of me when those words reached my ears. He couldn’t be done with this. We at least had to keep playing the game. I couldn’t go back to how we were before. I refused.
My legs dangled off the washing machine where I sat. Oli stood in front of me with his arms crossed. He heard it too, and if I hadn’t keeled over, he probably would have stormed down the hall and given Jonah a piece of his mind. Instead, he let my head crash into his chest.
Anyone. I could date anyone in the world, lose them, and know that I’d have that glimmer of hope, that foundation I’d so carefully crafted to stand on, and rise from the ashes. But Jonah? The person who held me upright when I could no longer do so myself? No. This was different. I could never recover from this. I couldn’t lose this piece of my support system. It just wasn’t an option.
If Jonah ever gave me that chance, I’d take everything he’d give me until my very last breath. And if I were so unlucky that his would come first, I’d remember him, love him just the same until sweet release allowed me to follow him.
But I was his friend. A friend he didn’t want to cross any lines with, apparently. And I was fucked. Fucked enough to paint myself with black tattoos and spend the rest of my life searching for something that could never be found. Perhaps Aaron and I could officially team up and speed toward death together.
Through the static, Oli spoke. “He’s in love with you.”
I peeled my hot forehead from his T-shirt and leaned back, looking up at my burly friend. The large swallow that tore through his throat and the way his eyes looked anywhere but my face let me know that he wasn’t entirely sure he should divulge such information, and that it might’ve been true. “He’s what?”
“In love with you.”
I laughed, almost hysterically, almost like a woman whose brain had turned to juice and leaked out of her left ear. “Jonah doesn’t love anyone. Not like that. Romance isn’t exactly his forte.”
“Oli…” June approached us slowly, clicking the door shut. “That’s not your secret to tell.” Her tone of voice snapped me back to reality. Oli was…serious.
“He told you about me,” Oli said to her, “so I’m telling her about him. I can’t stand around and watch this stupidity any longer. It’s maddening.”
“You told me at coffee,” I said—realized—immediately turning to June.
She smiled faintly. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me enough. Not in that context. I thought it might be a subtle push, not a grand reveal.”
She was right. The way June had told me was nothing like the way Oli was telling me now. The way he was ratting out his best friend with a secret he’d been holding for fuck knows how long. How long had it been? I asked my question aloud.
“From the second you sat down at that desk on the first day of Spanish class,” Oli answered. “Do you remember what he and I were doing when you took your seat?”
“Passing notes.” An odd, melancholic nostalgia washed over me as I thought of those two awkward boys communicating with each other silently. I missed them sometimes. I missed her too.
“The moment I introduced myself to you,” Oli said, “I was already keeping secrets.” A vague smile brushed his lips as if he hardly felt bad about it. “Jonah smacked that ripped piece of paper on my desk, writing quickly before Profe Santos came in, telling me to look, without making it obvious, at the absolute angel that had just sat down next to us…”
Angel? More like an awkward, uncomfortable girl, wearing my nerves across my skin for all to see. I snorted. Jonah was such a nerd. He would fall in love with a girl like that.
“I refused, writing back that I’d only look if he talked to you. He shrugged, as if to ask me what to say. I only nudged my head toward him, urging him. And I will never stop being thankful to him for turning to you and speaking, because my life, Kai, our lives, would be so vastly different without you. He cannot stand the thought of losing you. Not even to himself. He’d never take another chance in his lifetime if it meant you’d be around forever. It might not be the healthiest attachment, but he’s improved in other ways to make up for it.”
Oli’s mouth twitched into a smirk at that last statement. There were some parts of Jonah that just couldn’t be changed. Some parts of all of us.
“He’s an asshole.” I had no other words. Oli’s story made me tear up. It had me reliving the last twelve years of my life, watching the replay of some of our best moments in my mind as the puzzle pieces fell into place.
Oli nodded. “He is. He’s many things. Misunderstood, pensive, talented, nervous…and yours, entirely yours, whether you’ll have him or not.”
“He’s the one who won’t have me.”
“He won’t fuck you in a bathroom, Kai…” Oli cringed slightly at his own words. “Or anywhere for that matter, if only for you to use him and move on without him.”
For some reason, perhaps the pent-up energy or the flood of overwhelming information, my tone was sharp, as cold as Jonah’s attitude on a bad day. “Where the hell would I go without him, Oli? Have you ever known me to be okay without him?”
“You’re the only person who knows the answer to that, Kai.” He placed a hand on either of my shoulders. “You’re very, very good at letting us know when something is wrong, or when you’re happy, or when you’re feeling anything for that matter. But there are some walls you’ve yet to drop.”
“Him too, apparently.”
“Him too. And the more he blocks you out, the more he needs your reassurance. You know that.”
“Yes, but has he ever thought that I need his as well?” An anger I couldn’t describe was hiding somewhere in my gut, below all the other emotions I was feeling.
“Probably not,” Oli said honestly. “And not for lack of love. He thinks you’re the strongest person on the planet. He thinks—knows—that you’d be just as wonderful and successful, with or without him.”
“As would he.” But Jonah thought wrong. I couldn’t do anything without my strongest support. As hard as I tried throughout the years to make my money, craft my career, build my self, I’d learned that not everything can be done entirely alone. It just can’t.
“I’m not sure he would be.”
“Neither would I,” I admitted quietly.
“That’s okay.” Oli craned his neck to meet my gaze as June leaned on his shoulder to look at me as well. “That’s okay. There are some people we can’t let go of. As long as we’re holding on to the right ones, I think that’s okay. But you need to tell him that, and you need to mean it. Your world is much bigger than his, Kai. If you two got together and something happened… If you got bored or ran off to live somewhere else again… Kai, he just wouldn’t make it.”
Neither would I.
“I’m very mad” was all I managed to say as my face twisted with more pathetic tears. I couldn’t produce much else. I simply sat there, digesting all that Oli had revealed.
He chuckled. “I can see that. Let’s clean up and head back to the party. When you’re ready, we’ll go home, all four of us, and we’ll beat his ass in private. Sound like a plan?”
I pouted. He knew me perfectly. “The best plan I’ve heard in a long time.”
Truthfully, my heart threatened to burst with golden happiness at what Oli told me, but there were so many mucky feelings clouding it out that I couldn’t quite feel it yet. Not until I saw it for myself.