Chapter 28 – Kat
TWENTY-EIGHT
KAT
“What are you doing here?” I ask Elijah coldly. “In my room, I mean. Why are you in my room?”
“I want to talk.”
“Well, I don’t. So please leave.”
He stands, and at first I am hopeful that he’s heeding my request, but then he steps toward me instead. “We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. You forfeited your right to talk to me when you decided to break up with me by not showing up to Flash Fest and leaving town.” Even thinking about that day makes me feel nauseous.
“Technically, we weren’t.”
“Technically weren’t what? Finish that sentence, Elijah.”
He appears to realize the error of his words, but still forges onward. I don’t miss the way he guards his groin as he speaks. “We weren’t…well, I mean, yeah, we were together , but we never labeled it.” My glare must prompt him to backtrack because he instantly continues, “I just mean, at the time I didn’t think it needed to be a conversation. I know now that I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Apologize.”
“Ouch, Kat. A bit harsh.”
I shrug as I walk past him, ignoring the pang in my chest at his pained words. I don’t care, or at least I shouldn’t care, but when I accidentally make eye contact with him, I know instantly that it’s a horrible idea.
“You really hurt me,” I say, my voice cracking.
Elijah nods. “I’m sorry.”
“Wow, twice in one day.” I notice the bite in my words, but I do my best to own them fully. He doesn’t deserve my kindness, even if it’s my natural instinct to give it to him.
It’s a weird feeling, the cognitive dissonance that is necessary to love someone who you also hate deeply. How does that even work—is it really that there is still love there, or is it just the memory of who I thought he was?
God, I need to get a new therapist.
“Can we be adults about this?” he asks.
Yeah, fuck no. This man doesn’t deserve my kindness.
“Get out of my room.” I try with the little might I have in my body to be stern, unmoving, as I point to the door behind me, but he doesn’t move. “I said get out.”
“We need to talk.”
“We talked.”
“You’re not listening to me!” He raises his voice.
“What? Can’t handle me not doing as I’m told?” Crossing my arms over my chest, I hold my ground .
“That’s not what I fucking meant and you know it. You’re twisting my words.”
“No, I’m really not. Get out.”
“You’re acting like a child.”
“Don’t care.”
“Please.” Elijah’s voice breaks through the tense air, pleading and desperate. He reaches out and takes my hand in his, his grip gentle but firm.
My mind tells me to pull away, to not give him a chance, but I’m frozen in place. It’s as if his touch is a spell over me, rendering me unable to move or speak.
“Fine,” I snap, “talk.”
He doesn’t let go of my hand, nor does he say anything. I just stand there, my hand in his, as he looks down at me.
Then he says, “I’m sorry. I don’t say that as a means to manipulate the situation or get you to talk to me; I’m just sorry. I was horrible last semester.” As if he expects me to provide him with some sort of comfort, he pauses. However, when I don’t say anything to reassure him, he keeps going. “I should have talked to you. I’ve never been good at that—talking. When everything happened on spring break with my parents, I freaked out. It wasn’t right, but it’s true. I didn’t know how to handle it, so I didn’t. I should have. I’m sorry.”
“Did they know about me?”
“Huh?”
“Did your parents know about me when that happened? Because it didn’t seem like it.” Understatement of the fucking year. His dad’s words are still seared into my brain when all I’d like to do is scrub that day from my memory.
Elijah sighs. “Kat, don’t do that.”
“Do what? ”
“Make it into a bigger issue than it was. It wasn’t about that.” As if those are the exact words I need to grow a goddamned back bone, I yank my hand away. “Kat, c’mon.”
“No. You don’t get to talk to me like that. Like you get some kind of ownership of what happened.”
He glares at me, the loving and pleading man from before nowhere in sight. “You changed.”
I know he sees it as a bad thing—like the summer from hell that he so graciously gifted me by leaving campus without a word ruined me but somehow wasn’t his fault.
“People do that.”
“When did you become this person, Kat? You’ve never just refused to listen to me.”
I contemplate throwing one of my brand-new textbooks at his head. “Stop demanding I listen to you. You’re not my father. I don’t have to listen to you. My time is a privilege—one you no longer get.”
He scoffs, then…laughs. A boisterous, all-consuming, bellowing laugh. What about this scenario would drive any sane person to laughter?
“What?” I ask, but he continues. “What?!”
Elijah manages to rein in his laughter before he looks at me again. “Awfully cocky, aren’t we? A ‘privilege’…time with you is a privilege, huh?” He steps toward the door, his hand on the knob. “If your time was such a privilege, maybe your dad would fucking want it, eh?”
And then he’s gone. Walking out my bedroom door without having offered the apology he came in here to dish out, the kind and empathetic man nowhere in sight. Only the cruelty—the hate in his heart—lingering in the air.