Chapter Nineteen Trying Something New #2
in from the other night as his hands pull Owen up even further. He giggles into Jacob’s kiss, pressing their foreheads together.
“Really? In front of our son?”
Fitzwilliam chirps as if on cue.
“He’s seen worse; remember that time you left out your packer—”
“Ah!” Owen puts a finger to his lips. “You swore you’d never bring that up again.”
Jacob snorts, his nose scrunching. “—and then you noticed the teeth marks he left in it?” He barely gets the words out through his laughter. “And you couldn’t even look at it when you threw it away.”
“Please, stop,” Owen says, laughing just as hard.
“Make me.” Jacob wraps Owen even tighter, kissing the top of his wet head over and over again.
“You’re being gay!”
“Mm-hmm!” he hums proudly, dotting Owen with more kisses. “Proudly so.”
Owen finally breaks away long enough to look Jacob in the eye again, their lips meeting one last time before there’s a soft
knock at the door.
“Owen?” Kaitlyn’s voice doesn’t sound very brave at all. “You in there?”
“Yeah, naked, though.”
“Okay, well, um . . . would you be up to talk? About . . . you know? In a bit?”
“Yeah, let me just get dressed,” Owen tells her, dread settling in his stomach, libido quickly extinguished.
“Okay!” He can tell she wants to say something else, her shadow hovering in the crack underneath the door, but then she leaves.
“What are the chances I could just sneak out the back door?” Owen whispers to Jacob, resting his head against Jacob’s chest,
reaching up to trace the tattoo of the tentacles.
“It’ll be good to get it out in the open.”
“I just got you back,” Owen tells him. “I can’t lose one of my best friends again.”
“You don’t have to.” Fingers stroke Owen’s hair. “Just talk with her, be open to what she has to say. But let her know that
she fucked up, that you deserve an apology.”
“Ughhh . . .” He grunts, burying his face deeper into Jacob’s furry chest. “I hate being an adult.”
“It’ll be okay, you two love each other. You’ll get through it.”
“I also hate it when you make sense.”
“Sorry, baby.”
They both pause. Then Owen decides that he doesn’t want to care.
“Thank you, baby,” Owen says, pulling himself away, reaching into the closest suitcase to grab the first outfit he can find,
all the while ducking away from Jacob reaching to tickle him, or dig his fingers up Owen’s legs the way Jacob knows that Owen hates. Slipping into an oversized pair of sweatpants and a sweater that hangs off one of his shoulders, Owen pauses
at the door, half turning to Jacob. “Now go take a shower—I don’t want you stinking up my bed.”
“I will!” Jacob waves him off, not budging an inch as he hugs one of Owen’s pillows close to his chest.
Heading out into the living room to find Kaitlyn waiting for him by the front door, Owen stops to grab his pack of pre-rolls
and his lighter, and steps into his lime-green Crocs before he follows her out onto the stoop.
It’s hard to think that they were just here a little more than a week ago. In the exact same spot. Owen squatting on the steps,
Kaitlyn on the sidewalk in front of him.
“So . . .” Owen pulls a joint out with his teeth. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I owe you an apology,” Kaitlyn says, staring like she wants him to know that she means it. “The biggest fucking apology in
the world.”
Owen cups his hand around the end of the joint, flicking the lighter a few times before it finally catches, and he breathes in the smoke. “I’d say so, yeah.”
Kaitlyn stands there for a beat. Maybe she thought he’d have something more to say, or maybe she thought he’d be angrier.
But he doubts she expected this calm reaction. “I was telling the truth, when I told you and Jacob, and Abby, and Kevin . . .
the trip didn’t start out as some scheme to get the two of you back together. When we found out we’re pregnant, we wanted
to do something special. And I think that only made me realize that we’d all gotten so far away from one another, and that
really scared the shit out of me.” The words come out in one long breath, Kaitlyn struggling to fit everything in toward the
end.
“So your solution to that was to try and manipulate Jacob and me into getting back together?” Owen asks her directly.
“I . . . I guess I thought the two of you were fixable.”
Owen can’t help but laugh. “You know how fucked that sounds, right?”
Kaitlyn nods vigorously. “I do, and I knew it then too, when I first had the idea. But I just . . . I hated how the two of
you gave up on each other.”
“But it’s not your responsibility to make decisions about our relationship, Kaitlyn.” Owen takes a deep drag off the joint, flicking ash onto the steps, watching the wind blow it away.
“I know.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“I . . .” She hangs her head in shame. “I thought that I was helping.”
“Why do I need taking care of?” Owen asks her; the mask is starting to slip, the hurt in his voice more obvious. “Why can’t
you trust me to just live my life?”
Kaitlyn pauses, unsure of what to say. Because what excuse is there? She overstepped, and she knows that she did. Maybe it’s wrong, to prolong this torture when he does want to forgive her. But Owen also wants to understand why she thought his life needed fixing. Then again, who can really
blame her?
“I know that I’m a mess, Kaitlyn. And this week with Jacob, having conversations we should’ve had a year ago . . . It showed
me a lot.” Owen looks up at her, smiling gently. “And I appreciate that you cared enough to try.”
Confusion washes over Kaitlyn’s face. “You do?”
“I do.” Owen nods. “And I don’t. I don’t know, I think I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about all of this. About
you, about Jacob. I’m angry, but I . . .” He doesn’t even really know.
Kaitlyn steps closer, falling to sit next to Owen when the pre-roll is done. “Well, I’ve done a lot of talking,” she says.
“Why don’t you tell me how you’re feeling?”
“Hurt,” Owen says to her after considering his words. “Bolder, a little bit braver.”
“Really?” Kaitlyn asks, obviously confused.
“You asked how I’m feeling,” Owen says. “That’s how I’m feeling. No matter how disastrous this vacation started, and ended . . .
I’m glad that it happened.” There’s a sense of pride that settles in his chest, and for the first time in a long time, Owen’s
feeling hopeful. He thinks about telling her about the proposal, the promise, the ring tucked into the stained pages of the
paperback that now sits on Owen’s nightstand. “Jacob and I had a lot of conversations about what this is going to look like,
what we want from each other, what we want for ourselves.”
“Which is?”
“For the other person to be happy,” he tells her. “And right now . . . that means letting each other go.”
“But you could—”
“We could,” he interrupts. “But we don’t want to. I’m not leaving my home, my friends, my security. And Jacob doesn’t want to leave his
project, his team.”
“So . . . just like that, you’re done with each other?”
Owen replies like it’s just that easy. “We’re still going to talk; we’re going to keep in touch. We’re going to be a part
of each other’s lives again. We talked about going to see each other. I think we realized that we’re no good at being apart,
so we decided to be something different.”