Chapter 30
Kimiko readily agrees to watch the cats, but because she already has a vacation planned—a weeklong trip to Mexico City—and is leaving in just a few days, I’ll have to continue hiding the cats in my dorm for two weeks.
When I drop the bomb about my breakup with Alex, she tries her damnedest to get me to join her on her trip—“It should literally be illegal to go through a breakup and not recklessly book a last-minute vacation in a futile attempt at taking your mind off it,” she declares—but I remind her that I have school and also two cats to feed.
When I finally get to the reason for our breakup, I feel like it breaks Kimiko’s brain. Which is fair—I feel like my own brain is only just starting to recover.
I try to value the two weeks I have with Penguin and Ruthie before she gets back. Hiding cats in a dorm room is surprisingly easy. I was worried at first, because adult Ruthie liked to meow at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night, but kitten Ruthie is silent and stealthy.
Too stealthy.
She refuses to come out from under my bed, and after a couple of days I start to wonder if I’ll be able to get her to Kimiko’s house when the time comes.
I assume she sneaks out to eat and drink water and use the litter box when Madison and I are out of the room, but I’m worried she might not be eating enough.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I find myself crawling under the bed and pushing a bowl of wet food to where she’s hunched backed into the corner. She hisses at me, a tiny sound that’s too cute to have the intimidating effect she’s going for.
I’m squeezed under my bed, my arms reaching out to get the food closer to her even though she hisses again with each move. The look on her face is pure judgmental contempt.
You’re embarrassing yourself, she seems to be telling me.
Penguin, interested in what’s going on down here, abandons his own bowl and crawls in next to me.
The three of us are getting real cozy beneath this old dorm bed that I’ve just realized I never sweep underneath when three loud knocks on the door break through my quiet desperation and startle me. I jerk up and hit my head.
Ouch.
I pull myself out from under the bed and freeze.
Someone is at my door.
Someone is at my door, and I have two cats in here that I’m not allowed to have. I bend down to grab Penguin but find that he’s crawled back into the corner with Ruthie. Now both are completely out of reach.
Three more unashamedly impatient knocks.
I stand up, and with one last glance back at my bed, I make a decision. I’ll open the door and slide out, say something about the room being a mess, and close the door behind me; they’ll leave none the wiser. It’s practically foolproof.
I open the door and immediately forget the plan.
It’s my first time seeing Alex since last semester. The first time since he flipped everything around and led me to question every single moment we shared together.
He claimed he loves me.
I’m not sure I believe him.
I’m not sure I want to believe him.
Several moments pass. Too long. I want to be cool, calm, and collected, to make a snappy comment about his sudden presence in the doorway of my room, to act like nothing he’s done has affected me. I want to be unshakable.
But I am shaken, and so is he, if our extended mutual silence is anything to go by.
“Joey—” he starts.
“What are you doing here?”
I cross my arms. I mean for the motion to be angry and full of attitude, but I worry it looks defensive and self-conscious.
I uncross them.
“I wanted to see you. I wanted to—”
Meow.
Oh no. Oh shit. That tiny, raspy meow, which sounds absolutely nothing like Ruthie’s chirpy ones, snaps me out of my daze. It seems to have the same effect on Alex, because he stops talking and looks down to where Penguin pushes against my legs.
I quickly scoop him into my arms before he can make a grand escape.
“Come in, or he’ll get out,” I say, and grudgingly step aside for Alex to enter. I don’t say anything once the door closes behind him, just wait for him to continue. I don’t comment on the kitten in my arms; instead, I allow myself to bask in the bizarreness of the moment.
“You got a kitten.”
“I got a kitten.”
I don’t believe it’s necessary for me to inform him that, actually, I got two kittens.
“You have a kitten in your dorm room.”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have a kitten in your dorm room?”
“Is there a reason you’re here?”
Penguin starts squirming, so I place him on the floor. He immediately walks up to Alex and rubs against his legs.
Traitor.
“There was, but I seem to have forgotten it,” he says, blinking down at Penguin, who stands on his hind legs, reaches up with his front paws, and stretches himself on Alex, as if Alex is his personal scratching post. I can even see his tiny claws piercing the fabric of Alex’s jeans.
Maybe not so much a traitor after all. Alex looks up at me, blinks, and says, “You’re really not going to tell me why there’s a kitten in your dorm room? ”
“It’s none of your business why there’s a kitten in my dorm room,” I snap.
Properly chastised, Alex nods, glances down at Penguin one more time, and apparently decides to ignore the claws in his legs.
“Sorry to show up uninvited. I tried to call, but I assume you blocked my number.”
“Astute observation,” I remark dryly.
“You so love to do that.”
So he did know I’d blocked his number after that night in 2019. I always wondered.
“Why are you here?” I press impatiently.
He takes a deep breath. Gathers himself. Nods.
“I was an ass before the break… and all those years ago at Ellie’s wedding.
And at his dinner party. I want to apologize.
First, for what I said last month. I said things I didn’t mean.
I was caught off guard by my own slipup.
I found myself on the defensive, and I lashed out. I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry. I—”
“Okay,” I cut in.
“Okay?”
“Apology accepted.”
He squints, tilting his head in confusion. “Apology accepted, just like that?”
“Apology accepted, just like that.” But because I can see the faintest glimmer of hope creeping into his eyes, I shut it down.
“I believe that you’re sorry. And that you didn’t mean to lash out at me.
It does me no good to hold a grudge. So, apology accepted.
But that doesn’t mean we can go back to the way we were before.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust you again. ”
He opens his mouth to interrupt, but I hold my hand up to stop him. He can speak when I’m done.
“It’s not because you lied. I get that. Even if you wanted to tell me the truth”—which, looking back, I really don’t think that he did—“you thought it would result in the erasure of your existence. And it’s not like I had any intention of telling you.
So maybe you’re right. Maybe I was just as manipulative—”
This time, he does interrupt me.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Maybe I was, though. I liked the Alex I was getting to know. He seemed—you seemed—so different than you were before. I liked it. I wanted you to be different, so I encouraged you to be different. I thought I could change you by sheer force of will.”
“I was different. It wasn’t all your doing. I don’t want to be the same guy I was.”
“That’s well and good, but you can’t just change your personality on a whim.”
“Who says I can’t? Why not?”
“Because it’s been four months. What about in four years? Forty? How am I to know that you won’t revert back to the way you were? That you won’t treat me the way you treated Ingrid?”
“You aren’t Ingrid. What we have isn’t the same—”
“I don’t even know what we have, Alex.”
“You said it yourself—you liked the Alex you were getting to know. Well, here he is. I’ve changed, Joey. I am different.”
“You act different. That doesn’t mean you are different. It’s not the same thing.”
“How is it not? What is a person if not the sum of their actions?” Suddenly, he shakes his head, then backtracks.
“No, you’re right. There’s more to it. There’s intent.
And I’m telling you: My intentions with you are honest. I love you, Joey.
I know you don’t want to hear it, but I need to put it out there one more time now that we’re not in the heat of the moment.
I love you. And that love has changed me.
“You asked about forty years from now. I don’t know who I’ll be then.
Hopefully, I’ll be better than I am now.
It’s impossible to know. But I am never more honest than I am when I’m telling you, Joey Vasquez, that I am in love with you.
Now, four months from now, four years, forty years. I don’t see that changing.
“I was fifty-eight when I died. Over twenty years had passed since your death.
And when I got a second chance to go back and fix my life, you were the first thing I thought of.
The only thing. Finding you. Loving you.
I loved you then, and I love you now. And I have changed, just like you have.
But one thing is constant—I would love every single version of you.
“I know from experience, with zero doubt, that I will always be in love with you. Until the day I die, and even after that, I would change the fabric of time and space for even the chance that you could love me back. But I know it’s a big ask, because you’re right.
Every single bad thing you’ve ever said about me is one hundred percent true.
But if there’s even a tiny possibility that you could…
be happy with me, I am begging you. Give me a chance.
“It’s always been you for me, Joey. It took me an embarrassingly long time to see it—but once I saw it, it couldn’t be unseen.
I may not know who I’ll be in forty years, but I do know that I already lived over half that time without you—and it did nothing to diminish my love for you.
If you’ll let me, I will love you until the day I die. Please let me. Please—”
Meow.