10. Kai
Kai
Hey
Hey
How are you guys doing?
We’re good. How are you?
How was your game tonight?
It fucking blew. I mean we played our asses off but they were just better, faster.
I know, I watched most of it.
You guys put up a good fight though
Wait, you watched the game?
I sit up staring at my phone waiting for her response. My stomach doing flip flops while I watch the text bubble that tells me she’s typing.
Of course
A moment later I decide to call her. I need to hear her voice.
Even if it’s just for a second. I went too long getting nothing but silence from her that now I would take whatever I could get.
I would settle for scraps of her as long as she is in my life.
And it drives me crazy, makes me spiral in more ways than one.
It makes me wonder how she did it. How she survived in the absence of us.
Because I nearly died in the absence of her.
It was like cutting off a limb and then trying to reprogram my body and mind to live without it.
And I had almost succeeded, convinced myself that being alive without said limb was doable.
That I could be happy like that, incomplete, but happy.
That was until I saw her four days ago.
And I knew instantly, like a shock to my system. I could never again settle for the “happy” I was without her.
Thankfully, she picks up on the second ring.
“Hey, is everything alright?” she asks, worried.
“Yeah, I just wanted to hear your voice. Is that okay?” I wonder, laying my head back against the pillow.
“Of course,” there’s a short pause then… “Can I tell you something without you getting angry?”
“It depends,” I qualify, wondering what the hell she was about to say.
“Kai,” she demands more forcefully.
“Fine, I’ll do my best not to get angry,” I relent. As if everything when it came to her these days didn’t make me irrationally pissed off.
“It hurts to hear your voice and know you’re so far away. I missed that…hearing your voice,” she admits. The way she ends her sentence tells me there's more she wants to say. More she's holding back. And I want to ask her to say it. All of it. But I don't.
“I know what you mean,” I agree after a long pause.
"When I left, I was so broken. I hated myself for what I did to us and I grieved for our relationship for so long…" She pauses. "I never stopped, actually. Losing you broke me entirely.”
I built my entire life around Kendall, knew her before I even knew myself. And then I lost her. Just like that. And here she is, talking about her grief. I drowned in my fucking grief with no answers and no lifeline. Nothing. I find myself getting angrier.
“I spent a lot of my time infuriated with you. Pretending I hated you even though all I wanted was to make things work. I held out hope for a long time thinking you’d come back, that we’d figure it out. I thought if I could just talk to you, we could work it out. I even…” I begin.
“You even what?” she probes.
“Never mind. It’s not important. Anyways... Here we are.” I decide it best if I don’t share all my feelings in one night. In one call.
“Here we are,” she repeats. “What do we do now?”
God, what a loaded fucking question.
“Honestly. I have no idea,” I admit. “Can I ask you something though?”
“Sure, fire away.”
“Why the name Akio?”
“I knew you wanted your first son to be named after your uncle. I thought it would be nice. I’m sor—"
“No, it is,” I interrupt. “I just don’t understand. If you thought we were never going to see each other again, why would you do that?”
“Maybe part of me hoped we would,” she answers.
“I love the name, Ken. I just wish I had been there for it. For all of it.” The wounds start aching again.
I hear Akio crying in the background and I’m made acutely aware that our time on the phone is up.
“I have to go, Kai. Akio is stirring,” Kendall explains.
“Okay. No problem. It was good to talk to you.”
“You too. Goodnight, Kai.”
"Night, Kendall.” But for some reason, I hesitate to hang up the phone and so does she.
“Kai?” she asks.
“Yeah?”
"You can call me again if you want. If you want to talk while you’re on the road. I mean, you don’t have to…”
“Okay. I will,” I promise. I want to. She must know that by now.
“Okay, bye,” she says and ends the call.