5. Katie
KATIE
I wake up in a man’s bedroom. At least, I suspect it’s a man’s bedroom because the interior decor is minimal and utilitarian.
The bedsheets are plaid flannel and match the curtains on the wall.
There’s a nightstand and matching dresser that appear to be handmade.
On top of the nightstand there’s a glass of ice water and two ibuprofen beside it.
When I sit up, I realize why. I’m hungover.
A first for me, because I’ve never had more than one or two drinks at a time. Bits and pieces of last night come into focus. I remember Heather being a jerk. Dot’s concerned face. The music, the neon lights…
There are pieces of last night that aren’t making sense, though. For instance, for some reason, my brain seems to think that I met Reba McEntire last night. And…Darren was there, too? Why would Darren be at a bachelorette party?
And then the rest of the night begins to come back to me. And I realize that not only am I waking up in a man’s bed – the man is Darren Baker himself.
I gasp, looking around the room once again. I recognize the jacket slung over the back of a chair, the wristwatch that’s sitting on top of the dresser. And now I know why the smell of the sheets is so familiar. It’s the smell of him.
What the hell happened last night? I swear, if I lost my virginity to Darren Baker and I was too drunk to preserve that memory, I might cry.
Darren opens the door, bringing in a paper bag from Dolly’s Diner. I sit up.
“Did we have sex?”
He looks at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“Absolutely not. Why do you keep asking me about sex? You must have asked me ten times last night alone.”
“Oh no. I was begging you for sex?”
“Not begging, exactly,” he says, putting the food bag on the nightstand and rubbing his chin. “More like you kept forgetting what was going on, and were curious if we had some sort of plan to sleep together. You were very drunk last night.”
“I can tell. My head is killing me.”
“Take that medicine,” he instructs me, opening the food bag. “And eat. Eating always helps.”
“It does?”
“You’ve never had a hangover before?”
I start to shake my head but the movement makes my head pound harder.
“I don’t drink much,” I say. “A few drinks a year, just at social events. Heather knew that. Do you think she knew she was overserving me?”
“If Heather is that pointy chick from the bar, yeah,” he replies flatly, handing me a breakfast burrito wrapped in foil. “I think you need to stay away from Heather. She’s not a real friend.”
I open the burrito and take a bite. Wow. The cheesy, salty, crunchy mix of scrambled egg and bacon hit my tongue and my headache seems to disappear.
After a few more bites, I look at Darren. He seems content just to watch me eat, having nothing of his own.
“How long have you been awake?” I ask him.
“Since five.”
“God, why?”
He shrugs a broad shoulder.
“Couldn’t sleep last night. I was thinking about all the things you said.”
I bite my lip, wondering what kind of humiliating things I probably said last night when I wasn’t in my right mind.
“You said you used to be in love with me. And that you’re a virgin and you’re going to meet your husband someday and have a million babies.”
I groan.
“Is that true?” he asks.
“Darren, I don’t think it’s physically possible for a woman to give birth to a million babies. Maybe a dozen or so, but not a million.”
“I meant about how you used to be in love with me. Was that the truth?”
I don’t know how to tell the man that not only did I used to be in love with him, but sometimes I think I still am.
I don’t know if I can identify the moment where I stopped loving him, if there ever was any stopping point.
I loved him, we kissed, and then he ignored my existence until he went to college.
I never stopped thinking about him. But with him out of town and out of sight, it was easier to ignore that old ache in my chest that I’d come to associate with my best friend’s older brother.
And then he came back and ruined everything by taking over my building, forcing me to acknowledge his existence once again.
Darren walks to the bed, sitting on it and leaning over me. I nibble on my burrito, wide eyes on him as he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear.
“Firecracker, I need to know. I need to know if what you said last night is the truth. Because if it is, it changes everything.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that we have unfinished business,” he says.
“You hate me.”
“I’ve never hated you.”
I lift my chin.
“We kissed on my birthday. Afterwards, we made plans to go on a date the next day. You said you’d pick me up at six.
But you never showed. So I went to your house and Dot wanted to know why I was there, and told me you went out of town with some friends for the weekend.
You were never going to take me out on that date, were you?
You just said you would, just to mess with my head.
Just like you pranked me with that kiss. ”
“It wasn’t a prank,” he growls. “I would never do that to you, Katie. I was just scared, okay? I kissed you and then the weight of that choice hit me after the fact.”
“The weight of that choice?” I ask him. “What weight? I’m your sister’s friend, but -”
“It’s not just about Dot,” he replies. “It’s the fact that it was your first kiss. It was your first, but it wasn’t mine.”
“I know. I heard that you were popular with the girls in high school.”
“That was just gossip. I had a couple of girlfriends. Some casual dates.”
“And lots of kissing.”
“Sure.”
“So the fact that I was inexperienced was a problem? I wasn’t any good?”
“No!”
“Then what?” I ask him in exasperation.
I can’t figure out what the hell Darren means.
Or what he wants. Which is fitting, because it’s always been this way.
I’ve never quite understood what we were.
Were we even friends? Did he like that kiss, or hate it?
If he hated it, why did he even do it? Why was it such a long, breath-stealing, spine-tingling kiss?
“You were so innocent, Katie. So sweet. And I didn’t want to ruin you with my shit.”
“What do you mean?”
“My damage or whatever.”
“Darren, I don’t know what you mean. What damage?”
He gives me an odd look and I wonder if I’m missing something obvious. Maybe hangovers are kind of like being drunk, making you misunderstand what’s going on.
“Has Dot never told you about our parents?”
“I…no?” I have no idea what Darren could be talking about. I think of Mr. and Mrs. Baker. I knew Mrs. Baker more than Mr. Baker, since she was a stay at home mom for most of Dot’s childhood.
She was the one to give us a ride to the mall or help us paint our fingernails. She made the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had and now Dot does too, something I’m incredibly jealous of.
Even though Dot shared the secret family recipe with me – saying I’m as good as family to her, so I deserve to have the recipe, too – I’ve tried to recreate the delicious cookies so many times to no success.
Mr. Baker was always busy. Sometimes he seemed stressed out and withdrawn, but I assumed it was because of his job as a cardiovascular surgeon, which always seemed to have him working long, unpredictable hours at the hospital.
“If Dot hasn’t told you about this, I don’t know if I should,” Darren says slowly. “But…fuck it. I want you to know. Because I want you, Katie. So I need to tell you the truth. My dad is a piece of shit. Okay? He sucks.”
“What?”
I’m shocked by the bitterness and anger in Darren’s voice. Even in the worst of our exchanges since he bought my business’s building, when I was sure he hated my guts, he’s never spoken like this before.
“He would put on the act of the hard-working father and husband,” Darren continues. “But he was cheating on our mom the whole time. And those times he said he was at medical conferences or doing emergency surgery? He was meeting one of his mistresses.”
“You’re not like him, Darren,” I tell him.
He looks at me.
“I know that now,” he says quietly. “But when it all came to light, it was hard. It wasn’t just that he betrayed my mom.
He betrayed all of us. All of those lies.
This guy he pretended to be, but wasn’t.
I was seventeen when I found out and I told them to keep it from Dot until she was older.
She was already struggling enough in school with her ADHD and stuff. This would have derailed everything.”
I nod. I remember my good friend’s challenges in school very well.
“I was still processing it all when we kissed on your birthday,” Darren continues.
“And when we did that, I felt so fucking free. While it was happening. Then it was over, and I went home that night and listened to my parents fighting upstairs. They were in marriage counseling. Trying to get past the infidelity. I listened from the stairs and thought about how these people were once my picture of an ideal life. How my father, just months ago, was my model of what a man should be. How could I have been so wrong? And what else could I be wrong about, if I was wrong about him?”
“You weren’t wrong. He was your dad. You had no reason to distrust him. And even with all of that, I think you became a good man. You didn’t become like him.”
He looks at me, a tortured expression in his eyes.
“I’d never do that to you,” he says. As though he’s trying to convince me.
Convince me that he’d never cheat on me. We’re not even together – are we? – but here he is, vowing to be loyal to me.
“I know,” I say. “Of course I know that.”