Chapter 12
I wished I were stronger, but I wasn’t. I must have looked out the window at work close to fifty times throughout my entire shift on Sunday, and Kian never showed. His number on my phone was burning a hole in my pocket, but I refused to text him. I did not need him or anyone for that matter. He was probably playing music in another location in my little town, and that was okay.
It was okay and normal not to see him every day. Having sex one time did not mean anything. Not at all. My brain was in one hundred percent agreement with me. I was a strong, independent woman. I would be perfectly fine if he never showed up ever again. But my heart was a little sad. I had begun to enjoy our ten-minute interactions. I liked leaving him little notes on the cups of coffee that I made him. I looked forward to hearing what song he had chosen for me. I got a kick out of asking him two questions a day and learning tiny bits of information about him. Meeting him had broken up the monotony of my life. It gave me a little something extra to look forward to in the mornings. It had stretched me creatively by coming up with unique drinks for him. It had given me something more to think about besides what I needed to do for daily survival.
I took a deep breath in as it dawned on me that since I had met him, I had been given the gift of feeling something akin to normalcy, even if was just for a moment. Even if he never came back. I was so grateful for that gift. A new perspective. The knowledge that I was desirable as a human being and not just for a quick fuck behind a tent because we both wanted to come. It was nice to feel like he had enjoyed our little interactions as well. It made me feel whole in a way I didn’t even know I needed. I was thankful to the universe for giving me that.
“Are you off tomorrow?” Eric broke me out of my intense train of thought as he moved behind me to grab the tea essence I had just made. I nodded.
“Yes.” We were allowed to work six days straight, and then we were required to take a day break. I used to hate my day off because, in the past, it just meant more time in my cold tent, but now I had to figure out how to actually exist as a human again. Did I sleep in? Did I do my laundry? Did I watch TV? Did I go to the library? There were so many options that didn't involve me spending money but also required me to learn to do something out of the pure joy of doing it.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Eric asked, peering out the very same shop window I had been looking through all day.
“He’s not my boyfriend.” I scoffed. Eric laughed.
“Okay.”
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” Eric wiped down the counters as I took off my apron.
“And how does he look at me?” I pretended to be chill about it, but my heart rate had picked up slightly as I waited for my boss to respond.
“He looks at you like everyone pisses him off but you.”
That made me falter as I discarded the drink I had made Kian earlier today. Eric’s words made me feel a little warm inside. I knew my self-worth. I didn’t have daddy issues, even though I probably should. I had received so much love from my mother. I had my brother, who adored me. I even fully loved myself. I was confident in who I was, and I never felt like I needed more than that to edify my worth, yet somehow, what Eric said filled a little hole inside my heart that I wasn’t even aware needed filling. I put on my coat and smiled back at him.
“Thank you,” I said, uncharacteristically gentle in my tone.
“You’re welcome.” He nodded at me as I left. Today may have been disappointing with Kian never showing up but it had still been a good day after all.
The walk home was freezing. The wind had picked up, and I huddled inside my coat as I walked as fast as I could back to the hotel. I was waiting to cross the busy intersection when I heard my name. I looked up, my eyes tearing up from the cold and there was Kian in his van, waving at me.
“Get in,” he called. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I would jump at any opportunity to get out of these cold gusts and into my room faster.
“Hi,” he said as I climbed into the passenger seat and buckled myself.
“It’s fucking freezing,” I responded, and he laughed.
“What?” I asked as he pulled back onto the road.
He shrugged. “You’re just funny.”
“’Cause I didn’t say hi back?” I grinned, and he nodded.
“Hi,” I said with a sassy tone. His lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything. I watched his profile as he drove, and I wondered how someone could possibly be this hot and also be real.
“I hit the gym early, so I’m free for the night and I’m kind of in the mood to watch a movie,” he told me as he pulled into the parking lot of the hotel. I raised an eyebrow at him.
“I even got snacks.”
“You want to have a movie night with me?” I asked.
“You don’t?” he retorted.
“I mean, I have the day off tomorrow, so I can stay up late, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a movie night.” I unbuckled as he turned off the van.
“That’s basically illegal. How are you twenty-five and never had a movie night?”
I didn’t know who this casual, joking-around Kian was, but I didn’t mind it at all.
“I’m almost twenty-six,” I corrected him.
“When’s your birthday?” he asked.
“February twenty-fourth.”
“That’s pretty soon.” He sounded excited. “We’ll have a party!”
“I don’t need a party,” I protested.
“Nonsense. Everyone needs a party.” He came around to my side of the van to get the bag of snacks and open my door. I ignored the hand that he held out for me and climbed down myself, which earned me a snort.
“Okay, don’t touch me,” he joked.
“I won't,” I said with an insolent wink. I could have sworn he moaned under his breath.
“My?” I called as I opened the door. There was no answer. Immediately, my adrenaline began to thrum in my veins. Was this the moment I would find him? Was this it? I braced myself as I opened the door to his room and breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the shower going in his bathroom and the sounds of him singing over the water. The relief was obvious on my face as I turned around to find Kian watching me with a knowing look.
“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.
“I’m afraid every single day and every single night that one day I am going to find him…” I couldn’t finish my sentence as I suddenly felt like I was holding back tears. I wasn’t afraid of crying and didn’t see it as a weakness. I just didn’t want to cry about it right now because crying made the reality that his addiction may take him from me one day feel all that more real.
“That’s a heavy burden to carry alone.” Kian sounded sad for me, but he didn’t make a move to crowd my personal space. He just stood there in the entryway, holding his grocery bag, studying me.
“It is,” I admitted. “But right now, he’s okay.”
I shut down the conversation by taking off my coat and going into my room, calling to him, “I’ll be right out.” I changed into sweatpants and a sweatshirt and came back out to find Kian putting a bag of popcorn into the microwave. He had also brought licorice, M&M’s, potato chips, cookies, beef jerky, and a bottle of vodka.
“Cookies and vodka?” I laughed as I sat down on the couch.
“Why not?” he protested. “It’s an adult movie night, so we have adult beverages.”
When the microwave beeped, he took the popcorn out and took two of the glasses provided by the hotel and brought them over to the coffee table. He poured each of us a generous serving of vodka mixed with some lime-flavored seltzer and opened the popcorn bag as the smell of melted butter wafted over to me.
“Oh hi,” Myles said as he walked out of his room, hair wet from his shower.
“Hi.” I grinned at him. “Want to watch a movie with us?”
“I would, but I have a meeting at seven a.m., so I’m gonna hit the sack, but I’ll take some licorice.” He came over and stuck a piece in his mouth.
“A meeting?” Kian sounded hopeful.
“I am about thirty-six hours sober.” Myles sounded so proud of himself. He looked a little worse for wear, as his withdrawals had probably started this afternoon. He was looking a little pale, and the circles under his eyes were more pronounced.
“Bro!” Kian patted my brother on the back, which for him was basically a full-on hug. “I am so proud of you.”
Myles grinned at him.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
“If you need a ride to a meeting, let me know,” Kian offered. “Take some more licorice. The sugar will help. I think.”
Myles took another piece and then blew me a kiss.
“Love ya.”
“I love you more.”
My eyes were wet from Kian’s enthusiastic support of my brother's journey.
“Are you crying?” Kian peered at me as I wiped my eyes.
“No.” I denied it.
“Mmm hmm.”
He turned the TV on and scrolled to look at our movie choices. I bit the ends off of a piece of licorice and used it as a straw to take a swig of my vodka.
“Ooh, make me one,” Kian exclaimed when he saw my straw.
I bit the ends off of another vine of candy and stuck it in his cup. He placed his lips on it and took a drink. I had to look away because it was such a simple act, but it was turning me on. Then he poured the M&M’s into the bag of popcorn and shook it.
“What are you doing? You’re messing up the popcorn.” I wrinkled my nose in disgust.
“It’s the best way to eat popcorn. Here.” Kian held out a handful. I ate it from his hand, noting the way his breath hitched as my mouth got close to his thumb.
“Mmm, I get it.” I licked my lips, liking how the salt of the popcorn and the sweet crunch of the M&M’s tasted together.
“Don’t question the popcorn master,” Kian said playfully. I raised my hands in defeat.
“Never again.”
He laughed and then scrolled on the TV.
“Okay, let’s see what our choices are. We’ve got Harry Potter , The Breakfast Club , Mean Girls , or Good Will Hunting .”
“I vote Good Will Hunting !” I vaguely recalled watching it as a kid, and I remembered loving it.
“Matt Damon it is.” Kian selected the movie and leaned back on the couch, popping some of his popcorn mix in his mouth. I found myself entranced with the movie. It was about this guy named Will, who is a janitor at MIT. He lives in a small apartment and likes to read or hang out with his friend, Chuckie. Due to getting in trouble with the police, Will agrees to go to therapy but starts mentally harassing the five therapists that he sees until he finally ends up with the therapist played by Robin Williams. Will tries to poke at his therapist's pain points. That is when things started to get emotional for me because the famous scene came on where the therapist, Sean, tells Will that he’s too chicken to actually love somebody. The quote, “You don’t know about real loss because it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much.” That moment had me sniffling. Then we watched the therapist see the photos of the abuse Will went through as a child. Sean went up to Will and kept saying over and over again it is not your fault, it is not your fault, it is not your fault. When Will finally started to cry, I had tears dripping off my nose. I felt Kian move his arm across the space between us and fold my hand within his bigger one. The movie was so different from my life, yet it hit an ache inside of me till it throbbed like a fresh bruise. When the movie ended Kian flipped the TV off. We continued to sit there in the dark, holding hands and letting the power of what we had just watched really soak in.
The room was so dark that I couldn’t really see anything, but I could hear Kian breathing near me, and I could feel the calluses on his fingers from playing guitar. His hand was warm around mine, and it brought me to dangerous places in my mind where I pretended maybe I could somehow manage something real. It was clear that the alcohol I drank was muddling my thoughts.
Suddenly, I blurted, “In twenty twenty-one, ninety-six thousand seven hundred and seventy-nine people died of an overdose.”
I felt Kian squeeze my hand, but he said nothing. I didn’t need him to. I just kept spewing facts.
“That’s 36.1 percent higher than the report in two thousand nineteen. Drug overdoses exceeded homicides by 306.7 percent. Opioids are responsible for 67.8 percent of the overdoses in America, which is three times as many people as cocaine.”
I fell silent and just listened for Kian’s rhythmic breathing, which seemed to calm the frenzy that had built inside of me. Then I shared so quietly I was almost whispering, “I love him more than I love myself. And I am petrified that one day, he’ll just be a statistic… I’m scared that I’m not strong enough to handle losing someone again.” My voice was hoarse with the effort not to cry as I spoke into the dark air around me, saying what I had never been able to say to another human before.
“Again?”
I could feel him close to me, but I couldn’t see more of him than his silhouette.
“My mom passed away when I was nineteen.”
“Oh.” He sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” I felt wrung out from my confession.
“I lost someone,” he said suddenly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you love them?” Give me your pain , I thought. I’d rather hold yours than mine. He didn’t say anything for a minute.
“I did.” His voice cracked. “I wrote a song about it, but it’s not done yet.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
My eyes were assaulted by the light of his phone turning on, and suddenly, a pixelated video of him in his van showed up. It looked like he had recorded it in the dark. Kian propped his phone up against the half-full vodka bottle on the coffee table in front of us and pressed play. His voice was so effortlessly smooth and warm. The words bled with heartbreak and love. I felt his song stuck somewhere behind my ribs, where it stung with a beautiful hurt. When it was done, Kian still had my hand in his.
We sat there again, side by side, not saying anything until he spoke. “I’d like to hold you tonight, if that’s okay?”
I stilled. We were in dangerous territory over here. He was obviously dealing with grief, and I was dealing with the anticipation of grief. That didn’t seem like the healthiest of foundations to build a friendship on, but maybe it was the perfect thing for now.
“That would be okay,” I whispered. I had no sarcastic one-liners left in me tonight. Between the movie, Kian’s song, and him holding my hand, I was emotionally wrung out.
We took turns in the bathroom. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. He showered and came out in his boxers. I averted my eyes from his gorgeous body although I itched to examine the rest of his tattoos that covered his other arm and his entire back. Instead, I climbed into bed and lay on my side, my back to him. I felt the mattress shift as Kian got into bed, and as he pulled the covers up, he hooked his arm over me and pulled me till I was flush against him with my back to his chest.
“Go to sleep, Jessamine. I’m here,” I heard him rumble in my ear as I fell asleep in his arms.