32. Kendall
Kendall
Kai returns from the bathroom looking like he wants to punch someone. And based on Julian’s busted lip and the way he scurried out of the café without so much as making eye contact with the three of us, I’m not entirely sure he didn’t.
He’s quiet on the drive back to my apartment.
I know we are on a freight train that is fast approaching a fight, I can feel it.
And yet I have no inclination to throw myself in front of the train to stop its inevitable demise.
Which is okay. We need to clear the air.
Let things hurt and breathe a little bit.
This is a fight I know we need to have. There are some things that are more painful not to share with him and my history with Julian is one of them.
After I put Akio down for the night and make sure his sound machine is on, I lightly pad out to the living room. Kai is sitting on the couch head back and eyes closed. He has a bag of frozen peas resting on his right hand. I sit down next to him gently.
“What happened?” His eyes flutter open and he props himself up with his arms on his knees, his hands clasped together tightly.
“You aren’t going to like it,” he declares, laying the bag of peas on the table.
“Well I need to hear it anyways,” I say, folding my arms across my chest.
“He was running his idiotic mouth about you and I ensured he wouldn’t do that again.”
"How?” I implore.
“I think you know how,” he answers, his tone neutral as if all he did was flick an annoying fly off of his shoulder. I assumed him and Julian had gotten in some sort of altercation. I had put two and two together, but part of me was hoping I was wrong.
“Kai Matsumoto, you can’t just go around threatening and punching my ex-boyfriends because they piss you off.”
He shrugs. “I’ve done a lot more for a lot less. And I don’t know what to tell you. You know how I get with you.”
I do know how he gets. In fourth grade, when girls made fun of me for having two moms, he helped me put fire ants in their lunchbox.
In seventh grade, when Becca Hightower started bullying me about my hair, he conveniently spit gum in hers and made it look like an accident.
And senior year, when Aiden Kenney called me a slut at homecoming, Kai beat the shit out of him.
He has little tolerance for people who don’t treat me well.
He is also overprotective to a fault. That’s the way it’s always been and I kind of love that about him. I’m pissed…but also a little turned on.
I let out a huff of frustration.
“You mean like a territorial caveman?” I ask and Kai snorts in response. “Even if he deserved it, you could have been the bigger person and walked away.”
“I was. I allowed him to keep his precious surgeon fingers after he talked about fucking you with his tongue. He’s lucky all he got was a warning,” he explains sharply, his eyes focused intensely on mine.
That leaves me speechless.
“This isn’t about me being jealous or you having sex with him, good sex apparently. This is about whatever happened between you two that you conveniently lied about. So, what really happened?” Fuck. There’s no way out of this now.
“He was arrogant and cocky and all those things you’d expect of a surgeon.
At least at first. But the more I got to know him, the more I saw a different side of him.
I’ll spare you the nitty gritty details but the longer we dated, the harder it was to deny he was actually a really good person who deserved better than me, someone who wasn’t all the way in. ”
“What do you mean?”
“He fell in love with me. He wanted a long-term relationship. He wanted us to move forward in the same direction. He wanted more than I was willing to give him,” I clarify.
“Okay, those all seem like good things, Ken,” he observes. I don’t miss the way he grinds his teeth together in irritation.
“I wanted all of those things too, Kai. Just not with him.”
His eyes soften, heavy with understanding and recognition.
“So, it was messy and complicated with Julian. I think the hardest part was that he fell in love with me knowing I was in love with someone else. Knowing that would likely never change,” I confess.
Things had gone poorly with Julian at the end.
I’m mature enough to admit that now and accept it was mostly my fault.
My relationship with him had lasted longer than I ever thought it would and I didn’t know how to love Julian, to be emotionally available to him without letting go of Kai.
More importantly, I didn’t want to let go of him.
“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” he asks, frustration and pain gripping his face.
“The first and only time we talked about him I was too embarrassed to admit we broke up because of all of my complicated feelings for you. It just didn’t feel like the time to discuss it.”
“Did you love him?” he whispers quietly.
“Kai—“
“Did any part of you love him?” he presses harder and I hear his silent plea. Did you ever love him the way you loved me?
“No. Kai. Absolutely not. But a part of me wanted to try. I felt like I could have maybe if things had been different. And that scared me.”
“When did you break up?”
“Eight months ago.”
“If you’ve known how you felt about me since then, why did it take you this long to find me, to confront me?”
“I was scared you’d reject me, that you’d never forgive me. Fight me for custody—“
“Ken, I would never do that.”
I take his hand in mine and squeeze it tightly. “I know that now Kai, I do.”
“So, what changed? You came to my game.”
“I realized I was more scared of losing you forever than I was of you hating me.”