43. Katy
Chapter forty-three
Katy
H ow much time does give her time mean? It’s been three days since I fought with Ruth, and I’m at Amie’s house again. There are fewer tears this time, and no Paloma, but there is Cam. He flew in from Boston late last night, and is now sat on the floor, legs outstretched with Maisy knelt between them, colouring a picture on the tiny plastic table pushed up against a wall.
“She’ll come around, Katy-cat.” Cam smooths a hand over his daughter’s curls as she pokes out her tongue in concentration, focusing hard on keeping the colour from her crayons inside the lines. The dinosaur picture is ‘for Gramma,’ she tells us, ‘for her new fridge.’
“You clearly don’t know Ruth,” I sigh, kicking my feet up and tucking them beneath me. Cam looks at me sympathetically as Amie slips through the door, three steaming mugs of coffee in her hands. She hip-checks the door to push it closed.
“Did you guys start moping without me?”
“I’ve already been moping,” I say glumly. “I started ages ago.”
Amie sets the mugs on her coffee table and then plops down on the sofa beside me, wrapping me in a side-hug with her fingertips pressing into my shoulder.
“She needs time, K.” Amie presses a kiss to my head. “And maybe a few shots of tequila. But give her time. You know what she’s like. She’s volatile. She’ll be mad, probably a bit icked out at the thought of her brother fu”—she glances at Maisy—“uh, with one of her best friends, and then she’ll get over it.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so. Roo loves you. She can’t go more than a day or two without her Katy fix.”
“I just feel like I’ve messed everything up. We’ve never been this quiet. There’s always messages in our group chat. I haven’t even heard from Lo for days.”
“Lo is in the editing cave, honey,” Amie reminds me. “She shot that wedding last weekend. She probably won’t surface for another few days.”
“Oh, yeah…” I vaguely recall hearing about the wedding Paloma agreed to photograph. She turns every image to gold, so I know the photos will turn out beautiful. But weddings aren’t her favourite, and they’re something she usually tries to avoid. This one was a favour for a friend of a friend of a friend whose photographer cancelled at the eleventh hour, and she agreed to it whilst grumbling good-naturedly in the entire week leading up to it.
“She’s fine, K,” Amie repeats. “Lo is okay. Roo is okay. She’s mad, but she’s okay.”
“You’ve spoken to her?” My eyes widen and I look at Amie pleadingly. A little pathetically, probably. I’m desperate to hear from Ruth. Since the day Amie and I met her, she’s been my best friend. She moved herself into my heart that day. The day Amie-and-Katy became Amie-Katy-and-Roo . Not talking to her is breaking my heart beyond anything I ever imagined. I’m plagued by a constant emptiness, a heavy dread in the pit of my stomach that grows with each day she doesn’t text or call me.
“I texted her. We’ve been talking,” Amie says carefully. Her hazel eyes scan my face, searching for a reaction. “She… is hurt.”
A whispered fuck escapes from behind the fist I press to my mouth. Cam glances between Amie and Maisy, and Amie shakes her head as their conversation takes place wordlessly. Maisy doesn’t even seem to have heard it, still concentrating hard on the pink and orange dinosaur on the page in front of her.
“Don’t do that, Katy,” Amie slides closer. “Ruth is hurt, but she’s a big girl and she’ll build herself a cutesy little bridge and get the eff over it.” She glances at her daughter. One corner of Cam’s mouth twitches.
“I just—”
“No,” Amie insists. “You just nothing . You just keep loving your big hunk of man-meat, and Ruth will deal with it. You told her everything, right? That it’s not just a quick and dirty hook-up?”
Amie uses a hooked finger to tilt my chin up, meeting my eyes with her hazel gaze. I blink quickly, like I’m afraid of what she’ll see if I let her look for too long.
“I told her I’m in love with him.”
“Then Ruth will get over it.”
I lean into Amie, tipping my head to rest against hers as her arms lift to envelope me.
“I love you, A,” I whisper against the side of her head. “I’m sorry I’m such a fuck-up.”
“Katy,” she all but growls. “You are not. And I love you too, Katy-cat. I love that you’re in love. I can’t wait to celebrate you and Jay soon.”
“I’m just glad it’s finally a thing ,” Cam speaks up from the floor. “I don’t like keeping secrets.”
“You knew ?” Amie’s face snaps to him, her eyes pinning him with a mixture of surprise and annoyance.
“I might have had a little talk with Jay,” he confirms. “He swore me to secrecy. Bro code.” He holds his hands out, defending himself against Amie’s indignance, and she opens and closes her mouth a few times before exhaling in defeat with an eyeroll and another shake of her head.
“Don’t worry,” he continues. “I told him I’d help you hide his body if he ever breaks Katy’s heart.”
Now it’s my turn to be indignant, and I stumble over my words as Amie laughs.
“It’s all gonna work out, Katy,” Cam promises. “The man is crazy about you. Ruth loves you. We love you. It’s all gonna be just fine.”
By the time I get home, the sun is setting. There are lights on in my house—ones I don’t remember switching on before I left—and some 70s rock plays through the speaker in the kitchen as I let myself in and kick off my shoes. My home smells like tomato sauce and Jay .
“Breaking and entering is a crime, you know,” I announce as I hang my jacket on its hook by the door.
“Not when you told me where you keep your spare key.” Jay emerges from the kitchen with my pink apron folded and tied around his waist and a red-stained wooden spoon in his hand. He leans down to press a chaste kiss to my lips.
“Smells good,” I say. “Food smells pretty nice too, what are you feeding me?”
Jay laughs loudly, a belly laugh with a low rumble, and I follow him into the kitchen like an obedient puppy. I hop up and sit on the counter beside the stove where something rich and spicy is bubbling away on a low heat.
“Penne a la Bevan,” he announces. “Sundried tomato and chilli sauce with chicken and peppers.”
My mouth waters. “Sounds good. Smells better. Come here.” I reach for him and he steps between my legs. From my seat on the counter, I can almost look him in the eye without stretching. He leaves the spoon on a plate beside the saucepan and wraps his arms around me, resting his hands at the top of my bum as he leans in for another kiss.
“Mmm,” I hum. “That’s better.” He grins and kisses me again.
We move around the kitchen together in tandem, like a perfectly choreographed dance. Like we’ve been doing it for years. It’s natural. It’s what I want to come home to every night, the words caught on the tip of my tongue but not quite ready to leap.
“Guess what I learned today,” he starts, returning to his sauce-stirring.
“Uhh—the grass is actually purple?” He guffaws, flinging the tea towel from his shoulder and smacking me lightly in the chest with it. “Tell me.”
“Pup’s litter—I mean, the litter he came from. Their names.”
“Go on.”
“One girl in the litter—Mari. Short for Marinara.”
I snort.
“His brothers are Meatball and Anchovy.”
I can’t even try to hold back the giggle that bubbles from my throat.
“That’s so perfect. I can’t wait to meet him.”
“I have to be approved first. And we have to be matched. It’s a done deal, in theory, but… we’ll see. I can’t wait for you to meet him, though, Princess.” Jay leans in and kisses me chastely. It’s full of so much tenderness, tears prick at my eyes and I have to blink them back. “You’re gonna love him. And he’s gonna love you.”
After we’ve eaten and I’ve washed the dishes, we compromise on the music playing softly through the speakers and settle down on the sofa, surrounded by twinkling lights. I sit at one end, facing him with my back to the armrest and my feet in his lap.
“What’s your middle name?” I wriggle my toes inside my socks, digging them into that warm space between his thigh and hip, dangerously close to his dick. He’s in his grey sweatpants era, and I can’t deny that I’m enjoying it immensely. He shifts, resting my heel on his thigh and lifting my foot into his hand. He digs a thumb into the arch and my head falls back on a moan.
“Fuck, that feels good,” I gasp. “Holy fuck.”
“Jay is actually my middle name,” he says in response. “My first name is Christopher. Like my dad and my grandad and every other male in the family line. They all have Christopher somewhere in their name. Mum wanted to keep tradition, Dad didn’t want a junior, so they used my middle name instead. And it stuck.”
“How did I not know that?” I twist my lips. “Christopher Jay Bevan. I like it.”
“What about you?”
“Well, I’m a Katherine,” I sigh with an eyeroll. I’ve always hated it. I used to cringe in school when teachers addressed me before I had chance to request that they call me Katy. Only my grandmother ever called me Katherine. “Katherine Lee Keller. I hate it.”
“Where does Lee come from?”
“Mum’s maiden name.”
“Simple as that, huh?” One of Jay’s hands cradles my arch while the other moves up to my ankle, squeezing lightly and massaging the joint. It’s so good, it’s making me dizzy.
“Yup, pretty much,” I sigh, tipping my head back and rotating my ankle. “She has no siblings, no one to carry the family name. So, they gave it to me.” Jay drops one foot and moves onto the next, dragging another moan from me as his thumbs press into that spot just below the base of my big toe.
“You didn’t always want to be a therapist, right?” I nod before he continues. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”
I pull my head forward, forcing my eyes open. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
Jay smirks softly. “Ye—no.” He draws out the words. “But I won’t judge you.”
“I wanted to be a train driver.”
“Get out,” he says, a chuckle barely constrained in his voice. “ I wanted to be a train driver.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” A laugh bubbles out of him. “I wanted to drive steam trains. And then the tube, for a while. Do you know how rare job openings are for that?”
“I can’t say I ever looked into it,” I admit. Jay laughs, and I laugh with him. “I wasn’t great in school. By the time I was fifteen or sixteen, I had almost zero direction, got a job at Flaggs, and—well, I’m still there now. Sixteen years later.”
“But look at you, figuring out what you want from life. Realising dreams, chasing them. That’s not a woman with zero direction, Princess. That’s a force to be fucking reckoned with. I’m fucking proud of you, you know?”
I clench my jaw to stop it from dropping. Jay has said a lot of nice things to me, but nothing has felt quite so good as hearing that. That he’s proud of me. That he believes in what I’m doing. That it’s worthwhile. Tears sting at my eyes as my lips curl into a shaky smile.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “I’m proud of you, too, you know? How far you’ve come. How hard you’ve worked. I’m so proud to be yours.”
He dips his head to meet my lips once, twice, and then pulls back. As much as I could tear his clothes off right now, we both know this isn’t the moment.
“Do you want kids someday?” I flex my toes in his hand. He’s quiet for a beat, considering the question, before he nods slowly.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think I do.” His face lights up and something unfamiliar burns in his eyes. It’s dark yet bright, a million promises glowing in the blaze. I grin at him, and there’s a tug in my chest. It feels like a release—something that pushes me closer to him. I shuffle further along the sofa until it’s not my feet in his hands but my knees, and my bum is pressing close to his thighs. He pulls me further until I’m sat in his lap and he wraps his arms around my waist.
“I want a little girl who looks like you,” he murmurs into my shoulder. “I want a boy I can chase around and roughhouse with. And a girl with your eyes and smile.”
“That’s funny,” I whisper. “Because I want a boy with his daddy’s smile and a girl with her daddy’s eyes. Your eyes.”
He reaches up to cradle the back of my head in one hand, pulling me down to meet his lips in the softest, most gentle and languid kiss. The moment my lips part for him, he slips his tongue past my teeth, brushing it against mine tenderly. I shift until I’m straddling his thighs and he holds me in place, hips still, content to simply kiss me. And I return it with fervour.
There’s no urgency, no desperation. No clothes are being torn off, no body parts grabbed or squeezed. It’s just this: me and Jay and this , this kiss. This is the kind of kiss people write about. It’s the kind I read in books. The kind I used to wish upon stars for. And now, it’s the kind of kiss I get to experience for real, with a man who walked straight off the page and into my heart.
“I’m mad about you, Katy,” he whispers against my lips. I pull back to look into his eyes, the brown and green mixing like springtime. “I don’t know how you did it, but you broke in and stole my heart. It’s yours, Katy. My heart is yours. I’m yours.”
His confession breaks something within me. Every last remaining boundary shatters and I pitch forward, sealing my lips to his again.
“I love you, Jay,” I whisper against his mouth as I break for air. “I love you so fucking much.”
He brings a hand to my throat, palm resting between my collarbones and his thumb on my chin, angling it up to meet his lips once more. His other hand moves from my hip to tangle in my hair and he tugs lightly, the sting of tension in my scalp setting my skin on fire.
“I love you,” he whispers between kisses. “I’m so in love with you.”
Tears fall unbidden and mix with our kiss as I laugh against his mouth. Held tightly to Jay’s body and locked in his embrace, I’m freer than I’ve ever been. I feel like I’m flying, freefalling safe in the knowledge that I’ll land in his arms.