Chapter 68 Kir
KIR
“You and me / Meant to be / Immutable / Impossible / It’s destiny”
— “Stand Inside Your Love” by The Smashing Pumpkins
Through the glass, the reception shines. Flowers everywhere. I suspect Jillian had a hand in that. I bet she chose bright, colorful arrangements and when the florist asked how many she wanted, she said, All of them.
But I see right through that. The flowers are a mask. Happy girls like flowers, and Jillian is pretending to be a happy girl.
Therefore, flowers.
I set that aside for now. I haven’t seen her yet in the ten minutes I’ve been standing here, at the shadowy edge of the garden. Various guests have flitted past the window of the brownstone I grew up in, but I didn’t care about any of them.
That is, until I saw my father dancing with Rae.
I almost didn’t recognize him at first. It’s the smile that makes him look so different than the man I spent my whole life terrified of. Is that a mask, too? Or is it what he looks like when he’s finally not wearing one?
His hands, as scarred and gnarled as they are, are cupping Rae’s hip so delicately. You can’t fake that. I wouldn’t say I’m healed, not in any real kind of way, but there is part of me that’s happy for him.
I wasn’t sure I’d come until I was already on the plane.
I bought the ticket in the dead of night, packed nothing, and sat in the terminal for hours arguing with myself.
The flight was seven hours of the same argument.
Throughout customs, the cab ride, all of it, I asked myself again and again, Is this a good idea?
Am I fixed enough for this? Will I ruin their lives if I show up again?
I don’t know the answers. Six months in Europe didn’t fix me. I’m not sure six years would, either. The anger isn’t gone. Neither is the guilt.
As for the love?
Fuck only knows what’s happened to that. I can’t be sure until I see her.
And then, without any warning at all, there she is.
The whole journey here, I imagined this moment.
I thought angels would play trumpets to announce her re-arrival in my life.
But nothing happens. She’s just not there until she is, and when she appears, all the broken, jagged edges of me settle into place.
Every thought in my head goes quiet. I can breathe again.
She’s in a deep green dress that hugs her frame.
Her hair is down, loose and red against her bare shoulders.
Her freckles are bright against tanned skin, spilled cinnamon, constellations on the bridge of her nose.
She’s holding a champagne glass in one hand, and her other hand is pressed flat against her thigh like that’s the only way to stop it from shaking.
To say she’s beautiful is to undersell it to a laughable extent. She’s a mirage, an enigma, a vision, a dream.
But she’s also fucking fake.
The whites of her knuckles tell me everything I need to know. She’s faking her way through it all, laughing loudly, smiling broadly. She’s wearing a mask on a mask on a mask on a mask. Too scared to take off a single damn one of them.
I hurt for her in a way that six months of introspection hasn’t even come close to making sense of. I ache and yearn. I need. I want to throw myself at her feet, kiss one of those pretty ankles, and tell her that I’ve dreamed of her every night I’ve been gone.
But that would be selfish. I didn’t come back to tell her about my problems. I came back for another reason entirely.
I came back because, three weeks ago, Matvei called me.
I was sitting on the balcony of a rented apartment overlooking the harbor in Monaco.
I’d decided to take up smoking cigarettes that week, but they didn’t make me feel any more alive or dead than any of the other vices I’d tried since I left New York.
I braced myself for the how are you, bro, but Mat skipped right over the pleasantries.
“She still hasn’t gone.”
He didn’t have to say who. He didn’t have to say where. I knew.
He meant that Jillian hadn’t gone to New Jersey.
It had been seven months since the initial contact, and she still hadn’t knocked on that door.
The adoptive family was still waiting. Her daughter was still waiting.
And Jillian was still standing on the wrong side of a chain-link fence, watching other people’s children and going home empty-handed.
I understood why.
She can’t do it alone.
Rae knows now, sure, but she doesn’t know all of it. Not the way I do. Even though Rae loves Jillian more than anyone on this planet, she can’t stand beside her in that doorway in Montclair and comprehend the full weight of what it costs Jillian to walk through it.
Only I can.
But should I? That was the question I didn’t know how to answer. I’ve spent seven months trying to outrun what I am. I crossed oceans and kept going until I found places where nobody knew my name. I thought I could outrun the man I was and the things that that man had done.
But none of it worked. The fire didn’t burn out like I thought it would.
So I came back. Not for me.
For her.
The glass door swings open and she steps out. She’s moving fast, stiletto heels punching holes into the soft grass. The green dress shimmers like a woodland nymph and her hair floats off her shoulders in the breeze.
I don’t move. I stay right where I am, back against the stone wall, hands in my pockets, and I let her come to me.
Because this time, it has to be her choice. Not mine. Not the mask’s. Not the dark’s.
Hers.
She stops ten feet away. Only when a cloud moves and the moon finally comes out to illuminate her face do I see just how pissed she is. Her chest is heaving, her hands are balled into fists at her sides, and her eyes are wet and furious as she searches me for something I hope to God she finds.
“Hello, little fox.”
She looks me up and down and left and right. “I don’t know what to do first,” she announces. “Should I hit you, kiss you, ask you where the fuck you’ve been, or just skip all of that and walk away instead?”
I smile, amused, heart throbbing like an open wound. “All reasonable options. You look beautiful.”
Her scowl deepens. “Spare me. I know you didn’t crawl out of whatever hole you’ve been hiding in just to come pay me half-assed compliments. Besides, I know I look good.”
That makes me laugh. Feisty and confident to the end, my little fox. I’ve missed her so fucking much it kills me. I’ll never get that lost time back. “Fair enough.”
“Why did you, then?”
“Why did I tell you you look good?”
“No, wiseass. Why did you come back?”
I take my hands out of my pockets. The night air is warm and thick with the scent of cut grass and summer flowers, and she’s standing right there, a few feet away, close enough to touch if I crossed the distance between us.
But I don’t.
“I came back because you need someone to drive you to New Jersey,” I say.
Her whole body stiffens. The scowl drops off her face—that’s one mask down—and there’s nothing underneath it except trembling, naked fear.
“Mat told me,” I explain before she can ask. “He called and said you still hadn’t gone.”
“That’s none of his business. Or yours.”
I shrug and push a hand through my messy hair. “But I’m here anyway.”
She shakes her head hard. “Nobody wants you here. I don’t.”
“I know.”
“Did they not have calendars where you went?” she demands. “Or mail? Because you were gone for seven months, Kir. Seven fucking months without so much as a fucking postcard. And now, you waltz in here looking all tan and scruffy and expect me to just swoon into your arms?”
“No,” I tell her honestly. “I expect you to hit me first. You mentioned that was an option. It seemed appropriate.”
Her hand twitches like she’s considering doing exactly that. But in the end, it stays pressed against her thigh. The moonlight illuminates the wet shine in her eyes. She really does look beautiful. I hope she knows it.
Her voice gets softer when she asks, “Why are you really here, Kir?”
I open my mouth to give her the speech. Fuck knows how many times I rehearsed it on the way over here. It’s a good speech. Thorough. Covers all the bases. Acknowledges my failures, makes the case for my return, addresses counterarguments preemptively.
But this is Jillian. And I know beyond any reasonable doubt that she’s ready for it.
Like me, she’ll have spent months imagining this moment and planning all the ways to keep it at arm’s distance.
If she’s ready for it, she can prevent it from making her be vulnerable.
She’ll have a mask prepared to fend it off.
Just like me. Therefore, going through the whole exercise would be pointless and change nothing.
By the time we’re done, we’d both be exhausted and nothing will have changed.
So I scrap the speech.
Instead, I say, “I came back because you’re a coward.”
Jillian recoils like I’m the one who hit her. “Ex-fucking-scuse me?!” she hisses. “How dare you?”
“You heard me,” I press. “You’re a coward, Jillian Pierce.
You’ve had seven months to drive to New Jersey.
It’s an hour away. Less, if you take the turnpike.
And you haven’t done it.” She opens her mouth, but I lunge forward to grab her and spin her around, so she’s trapped between me and the garden wall.
“Your daughter is waiting for you. She’s been waiting.
And you’re standing at playgrounds watching other people’s kids because you’re too scared to go meet your own. ”
Her face crumples. She tries to recover, but the mask is gone and it’s not coming back. Her chin trembles. She presses her lips together hard.
“You survived something that would’ve destroyed most people,” I tell her.
“You carried a child you didn’t ask for, and you loved her enough to give her a shot at a good life.
That’s the strongest thing I’ve ever heard of.
But not going to see her? Not showing up when she wants you there? That’s bullshit. And you know it.”
She’s breathing fast through her nose, fists still clenched, tears running freely now. She doesn’t wipe them away.
“But here’s the thing: I’m an even bigger coward than you are,” I confess. “Because I had everything I ever wanted, and I ran away from it.”
Jillian blinks. Her fury wavers. Just for a second.
But that’s my chance. That’s my open window.
“I told myself it was noble, what I was doing. I was doing it for you, so how could it be selfish? ‘I’m a bad man and you’re better off without me.
’ That’s cowardly. It’s a cover-up for the fact that I was fucking scared.
” I swallow hard. “I was terrified that you’d wake up one day and see me clearly and realize I’m not worth any of it.
I thought, if I left first, at least I’d get to control how it ended. ”
My throat feels thick. I push through the barrier.
“I spent seven months in Europe trying to become somebody else. Or, better yet, to become nobody at all. And you know what I figured out? I’m never going to be that guy.
I’m always going to be the man who climbed through your window with a gun and fell in love with you on your kitchen floor.
That’s who I am. I’m not clean and I’m not fixed.
I’m probably never going to be either of those things. ”
I grab her hands in mine. They’re ice-cold, but that’s okay—I have enough fire in me for the both of us.
“But loving you was the one good thing I ever did, Jillian. And I won’t fuck that up a second time.
” Her tears are falling unchecked, twin rivers down her face.
She’s going to be so pissed when she realizes her makeup is ruined.
But I like her this way. She’s never more beautiful than when she cries black tears for me.
She looks down at our joined hands, then back up at me. Her mascara is a disaster. Her nose is red. She’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.
“So what happens next?” she whispers.
I pull her hands up and press my lips to her knuckles, one by one, tasting salt and champagne and Jillian. “You’re going to meet your daughter.”
Her breath hitches as she shakes her head. “No, no. I can’t do that. I can’t go there alone.”
I clutch her frozen fingers. “Good thing you won’t have to. I’ll drive.”