Chapter 4 #3
One day, Kai shows up at my apartment in the middle of the workday. He is not in uniform but in a police--issue T--shirt and sweatpants. He’s drenched in sweat and there are dried flecks of blood on his arms. His eyes are dazed, wild. “Oh my God,” I say, “are you all right?”
He doesn’t speak. Just tugs me flush against him, holding me so tight I struggle to breathe.
“We got a call for a person shooting a gun inside a house,” Kai finally says.
“His mother ran out the door screaming as soon as we pulled up and said the kid was in his room. Me and Vernon, we go inside. I’m the point man.
We head upstairs and I open the bedroom door.
” He swallows. “Kid is maybe thirteen? Sitting on his bed with a Glock. I try to talk to him, keep him calm. After a minute or so he says, ‘Good try,’ and points the gun at me.”
I start to panic. “Are you hurt?”
“He turned the gun around, put the barrel in his mouth, and blew off his head.”
My breath gusts out of me. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ve faced down guns before,” Kai murmurs.
“But this is the first time I thought: I don’t want to leave her.
” He pulls back to look at me. “I changed out of my uniform and gave my statement and then did eighty miles an hour the whole way here. It brought it home to me that everything can change on a dime, k’aalógii. ”
His words unmoor me; he’s saying that I’ve woven myself into his life the same way he has woven himself into mine.
I press my lips to his. “You don’t have to leave me. Don’t leave me,” I say.
I pull him toward the bathroom. I undress him and then myself and lead him into the shower, where I lather my hands with soap and let the water and my touch cleanse him.
His dark hair hangs in thick ropes and his hands bracket my hips.
At first we are a feral collision of teeth and lips and nails.
We stumble out of the shower stall, not bothering with a towel, slick as we fall onto the quilt on my bed, leaving damp ghosts of ourselves on the fabric.
But then Kai’s touch gentles. His breath coasts down the landscape of my body, claiming spots to settle on before exploring somewhere else. His hands never leave my skin.
He feels like home, and that scares me to death.
After, Kai turns us so that I am tucked against his smooth chest. “You know that there’s a constellation the Diné call the Butterfly?
You can see it in the summer. It was carried into the sky and carefully placed there first, before Coyote got impatient and threw the rest of the stars into the sky at random. ”
“That’s why you call me k’aalógii?”
“Yes.” He kisses the top of my head. “Because it’s the first star I look for at night.”
When Kai’s breathing evens with sleep, I creep to the kitchen, trying not to panic. Once again, a man has fallen for an illusion of who I am. A man who has all the tools and training to figure out that I’ve lied.
I log in to Facebook on my laptop and pull up Evie’s profile. There is a picture of her with Adam somewhere in the Caribbean, celebrating their anniversary. They are sharing a tropical drink, with two straws.
Love, the caption reads.
I blow up the photo so that Evie’s face is out of the screen, and Adam’s fills it.
There is gray at his temples, blending with the blond.
Lines at the corners of his eyes. Like a beloved photograph you tuck into your jeans pocket and inadvertently put through the wash, he is familiar but faded, soft at the edges.
The bedroom door opens. Kai wears a silk robe of mine that barely covers his butt and looks ridiculous. I slam the laptop shut as he steps up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Mm,” he muses. “What don’t you want me to see?”
His voice is easy, sleepy, but my breath catches. “Nothing.”
“Just being mysterious, then,” Kai says, spinning me to face him. “I like solving mysteries.” His hand skates up my ribs, and then he draws back. “You okay?” he asks, all playfulness gone. “Your heart’s a jackhammer.”
I swallow hard. “I’m not mysterious. I’m afraid you’re going to find things out that make you not want to be with me.”
His lips twitch. “Do you leave the toilet seat up?”
“It’s not funny, Kai.”
“Okay then,” he says, “have you killed someone?”
My mind floods with the image of Evie holding a slick, screaming infant in her arms. Eloise, what are you doing?
But almost doesn’t count. I shake my head.
Kai’s hands smooth up and down my arms. “Then we’re good.”
“I’m bipolar, Kai. I didn’t tell you sooner because I didn’t want to scare you.”
He does not blink. “My father died of genetic heart disease when he was forty. I never thought I’d make it past that age, and every year I do, it feels like borrowed time. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to scare you.”
“It’s not the same,” I say.
“No,” he agrees, “but, Georgia, we’ve all got our demons.”
“For me, sometimes, those demons are real and literally whispering in my ear.”
I brave a glance at him, wondering if this is the moment he leaves me. Instead, his hand cups my cheek. “For as long as I’m around, then,” Kai says, “let me be here to send them away.”