Thirty-Four
Kat
Skinnyman – Static-X
The coarse threads of my sofa dig into my thighs, making them itch. Freddie sits on my lap where he’s purred himself to sleep. It’s been thirty-six hours since I walked out of Elias’ house.
Thirty-six hours of silence.
He hasn’t tried to call me, text me, or drop by. I swear I heard my phone pinging last night when I was asleep, but when I checked it this morning, the screen was blank.
He’s giving you the space you asked for.
So why does it feel like a fucking rejection?
Silence shouldn’t feel this loud. I expected something.
A knock, a message, or even anger. But there’s been nothing.
I have spent the last day and a half replaying our last conversation in my mind.
Everything that he is and does is exactly what I’m trying to run from.
Even though I don’t know exactly what he’s involved with, I know enough.
My stomach tightens as I try to hold onto that feeling, the one that’s kept me alive this long. My fingers tighten in Freddie’s fur as I try to summon the instinct and force it to take hold. But it doesn’t come.
When I think of Elias, all I feel is the exact opposite of what I should be feeling.
All I feel is warmth in my chest and… safety.
Am I that fucked up that some good sex completely scrambles any sense of self-preservation that I have?
The thought lands like acid in my stomach.
Maybe I am broken. Maybe somewhere along the way, my instincts stopped working the way they’re supposed to.
I got comfortable, and I let my guard down at the worst possible moment. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He’s different.
Over the last thirty-six hours, the possibility that I overreacted has definitely crossed my mind on more than one occasion.
The world is a better place without that blonde scumbag walking it.
But who am I to decide who gets to live and who dies?
My heart and my head are constantly at war.
My brain is screaming at me to run, to pick everything up and start again somewhere else—I’ve done it before, I can do it again.
I know how to disappear. New town, new name, new job.
I can do it. But my limbs grow tight at the thought, like I’m tired of something that hasn’t happened yet.
I know I can do it—I just don’t know how many more times I can survive it.
But my heart is more subtle.
My heart is a gentle caress in the shape of his palm.
It’s telling me to stay. It’s telling me that I can’t run forever, and I deserve happiness.
His voice creeps into my thoughts, and I remember the way he says my name.
The way he always asks for permission, how I’m always in control even when I’m not.
Elias is nothing like him. He’s never raised his voice.
He’s never hurt me. He’s shown me nothing but compassion and care, which somehow makes it worse.
If he were cruel and cold, this would be so much fucking easier.
I could leave this city without a second look.
But he isn’t, and that makes it so much fucking harder.
Freddie leaps down from my lap, beelining towards his bowl of food.
I take this as my cue to get up and start pacing.
The floorboards creak beneath my feet. Back and forth.
Back and forth. I’ve paced so hard over the last thirty-six hours that I’ve almost worn a path between the couch and the kitchen sink.
Thinking, then overthinking, then thinking again.
Maybe I don’t need to commit to staying or trusting him. Maybe I could just… hear him out? My fingernails bite into my palm at the thought. I don’t even know what I’d say. And I don’t even know if I’d believe what he says.
I’ve almost worn a hole in the floorboards when there’s a knock on the door.
In the doorway stands Harper, a look of concern on her face and a huge tub of expensive chocolate ice cream in her arms.
“You sounded like you needed the big guns. I also have a lighter in my pocket if we’re at the burning pictures stage… or his house. Whichever works.” She shrugs and walks inside.
The smell of chocolate drifts through the room as she drops her bag on the entryway table. I wrap my arms around her and hold on longer than normal. She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes me tighter.
We make our way to the kitchen and sit around the island.
For a few minutes, neither of us speaks.
The hum of the old refrigerator. Mrs. Jenkins stomping around upstairs.
Somewhere outside, a car beeps its horn.
Normal sounds for a normal evening. My chest tightens at it all.
Even when your world is cracked in two, the world keeps moving.
“Do we need bowls or is it a straight-from-the-tub moment?” Harper asks, holding up two spoons.
“Straight from the tub.”
I take a big spoonful of the frozen brown goodness.
The cold bites into the roof of my mouth, making my eyes water.
Harper just watches me. Waiting. She has two methods of getting people to talk—the first being to talk at them until they talk back, or this one.
Waiting people out until they’re ready to talk.
Awkward silences don’t exist around her.
I know she’s waiting for me to say something, to spill the events that lead up to this emergency ice cream meeting, but the words are stuck in my throat.
I feel a stupid sense of protectiveness towards Elias and his secret—not that I even know the full extent of the secret.
But for some reason, I cannot bring myself to share the details.
But Harper is looking at me like she’s ready to jump down my throat and pull the words out herself, so I have to say something.
“I don’t know if I can trust him,” I finally confess. The words scrape on the way out, catching on something inside my throat.
Harper grabs a mouthful of ice cream and scoots her chair closer to mine, resting her icy hand on my bare knee.
“That’s a lie, I’m sorry,” I admit, tears brimming behind my lashes. “He’s involved in some stuff. Some stuff that should be… bad. But it doesn’t feel bad?”
“Oh, babe.” She pulls me in for a hug.
My head falls against her shoulder; she smooths my hair with one hand and gently rubs my back with the other. The repetitive motion soothes me, like she’s untangling all the knots in my chest, one slow stroke at a time.
“Does this have anything to do with what you’re running from?” she asks.
I release a breath as sobs wrack my body. Sobs for the life I’ve been trying to hide. Sobs for Katherine. The name feels like the ghost of a girl who existed before everything broke.
“I could see it in your eyes the moment I met you at the bar,” Harper says gently, smoothing my hair. “You were homeless, you were afraid of every person who moved behind you. You looked no one directly in the eye. You don’t need to tell me for me to know that you were running from someone.”
My stomach drops, and I bury my face into her shoulder. All this time, I thought I was hiding it well. All this time, I thought I was convincing people that Kat was just… Kat.
“I don’t know what Elias is involved in. I don’t need to know either. But I know that he is not him… whoever it is you’re running from.”
The sobs come harder now as my chest constricts. I feel the weight of everything—my entire life on my shoulders. The weight of the pain and hurt.
Harper tilts my head up and uses the back of her hand to wipe away my tears.
“You don’t need to tell me what happened, you don’t owe me that—you don’t owe anyone that.
But as your best friend, I owe you the truth,” she pauses, and her voice softens.
“I can sit here and agree with you that he’s bad if that’s what you want.
But I don’t believe that… and I don’t think you do either. ”
Her eyes search mine for confirmation, but I look away, the feeling of vulnerability too much to bear.
“He looks at you like you’re the reason for the air that he breathes.” She gives my knee a small squeeze. “When we’re on stage, I see the way he looks. Not at me, not at the band. At you.”
Images flash through my mind. The stage lights, the crowd screaming, and Elias standing in the back of the room watching me as if we’re the only two people there.
“But how do I know he’s not going to hurt me?” The question falls flat, devoid of any genuine sentiment, because we both know the answer.
Harper studies me carefully. “Kat, anyone can hurt you.”
The frankness in her tone makes me blink. Her eyes search mine before continuing.
“That’s the risk with loving someone. But there’s a difference between someone who might hurt you… and Elias. Do you truly believe he has the capability to hurt you?”
My mouth opens slightly, ready to say yes out of instinct.
Ready to agree to something I know in my heart isn’t true.
Ready to keep holding onto the version of the world that keeps me safe.
But the word gets caught in my throat. I try to force the answer I should give, but it sticks.
Because it wouldn’t be the truth. The truth is…
I don’t.
“I thought so.” She gives me a playful shove.
The truth is, I have never felt safer than I have when I’m with Elias.
The way he holds me makes me feel untouchable, like if the world were on fire, I would remain unburnt.
That if everything were to come crashing down around me, he would protect me.
But safety is a dangerous feeling when you survive what I have.
“I’m scared,” I confess quietly.
She pulls me in for another hug, this one tighter than the others.
“Oh, Kat, it’s okay. Love is scary. It’s even scarier when you have what you have on the line. But it’s so worth it.”
I ignore the four-letter word she just used as she gives me one last squeeze, my ribs tightening together with the force, and she sits back in her chair.
“Besides, if he breaks your heart, I’ll write a song about it and we can use his photo as the album cover.”
A laugh bubbles out of me before I can stop it. It feels strange, like my lungs forgot how to do it.
Harper pops another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.
“So… you and Ryland?” I ask, wiping away the last of my tears.
She gives a dramatic eye roll, licking her spoon clean. “Today is not the day to talk about me and my love triangle.”
“Triangle?” I ask, quirking a brow. “Everything went well with Nathan the other night, then?”
She chooses to ignore me. Instead, she gets up, tub of ice cream under her arm, and turns on the TV. “Horror, comedy, action, or drama?”
“I think we have enough drama. Let’s do comedy,” I reply, sitting next to my best friend.
As the opening credits roll, I sink deeper into the couch as Harper tosses a blanket over us, Freddie nuzzled in between us.
And for the first time since I walked out of Elias’s house, my mind finally goes quiet. Somewhere deep in my chest, a realization slowly begins to take shape. Maybe I’m not afraid of Elias. Maybe I’m afraid of what that actually means.