Chapter 7 #2
Ronan stayed a little quiet while we cooked and also as we ate, but it didn’t have the same stony, angry feel as before.
He seemed to be thinking this time. Channing noticed it, too, when we got to the bar.
It was crowded and loud but that still didn’t cover the fact that no one on our side of the booth was chatty.
The odd thing was that Kiya wasn’t saying much, either.
We were sitting four at a table with seventy-five percent of us generally silent.
“This is fun,” Channing said. “Me and the three…what are three mute things? Blocks of stone? What? Ronan, come up with something. You’re the funny one.”
“No, I’m the smart one. Also, the handsome one, and the best at starting campfires.”
“Remember when we got lost on that hike last summer?” Channing asked, and the ice broke a little as they reminisced.
Kiya finally broke her silence, too. “I’m going to ladies’ room,” she told us, and looked at me.
I got it right away this time. “Me too,” I said, hopping up. We went through the crowd and found that the bathroom was also filled. Women jockeyed to see themselves in the mirrors but she went around them and took my hand to pull me into a stall.
“First of all,” she said, “I have to fix something.” She messed with my hair for a moment and then nodded. “You’re coming over to Taylor’s and my condo next week and we’re going style this together, ok?”
“Ok,” I agreed. Had my hair really been so bad that we’d needed a private conference?
No. There was something else. “I’m so upset!” she told me. “I don’t know what to do.”
We were in that stall for a while as she poured out the story. Channing—her ‘Cado’—had been acting weird all week, really weird. She’d kept asking and asking what was wrong but he’d blown her off and then had gotten mad and told her to leave him alone, it was nothing.
“And you left him alone,” I said.
She stared at me as if I’d grown horns. “No, because I wanted to find out what it was,” she said.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know because he wouldn’t tell me! I need you to find out,” she explained. “Not you, but Ronan. You said that they don’t have personal talks, but I bet my Cado will open right up if someone else asks him.”
“Um, I don’t know,” I said slowly. “Ronan wouldn’t be subtle at all. He would probably yell questions right across the table.”
“No! I don’t want that,” she responded immediately. “What if I text you what he should say? Like a script.”
“I don’t think he would be good at that,” I told her. “Let me talk to him about it.”
“Take him to the dance floor,” she suggested. “No one will suspect anything.”
“I mean, who would bother to suspect? No one cares…yes, the dance floor is a good idea,” I quickly added, because she already looked upset and that comment had made her frown even more. “I’ll talk to him there.”
There wasn’t exactly a “dance floor” but towards the center of the bar, there were a few people kind of bopping along to the music.
I also wasn’t exactly a “dancer” or even “a person with rhythm” but I owed it to Kiya to try to figure this out.
I really liked her and I had never done my hair with other women before.
It was fine the way I styled it, of course, but that sounded fun.
When we made it out of the stall and back to the table, I suggested to Ronan that he and I should dance. “Let’s go. There.” I pointed to indicate what I meant.
He stared at me then glanced at the people swaying in a clump. “Really? Are you serious?”
“Very. Let’s go.”
He was almost laughing and he was definitely confused but he did follow me as I walked into the throng. “Here we are,” he called. “What are we doing?”
“I don’t really want to dance,” I said, then waved my hand so that he’d come closer. His ear was too far away. “Kiya wanted me to talk to you,” I explained when he could hear me. “She says that her Cado is acting weird.”
He pulled back. “Don’t call him that,” he begged. “It genuinely makes me feel sick to my stomach.”
I gestured again and he bent down. “She keeps asking him what’s wrong but he won’t tell her.”
“Then she should stop asking,” he stated.
“She wants you to figure out—hey!” A body had crashed into my back, propelling me forward. Ronan pushed the guy away.
“Careful,” he warned him.
This was really not the best place to have a conversation, but I tried again. “She wants you to talk to Channing and figure out what’s wrong. She thinks he’ll tell you because you’re friends, but you have to be subtle.”
“I’m not subtle.”
He was talking more normally since now, we were standing very close. He’d put his big hand on my shoulder and it felt a little like a hug. Not a hug, because we weren’t hugging—but we were close and his arm was sort of around me, so it did have that general sense.
I inched a little nearer. “I feel bad for her,” I said.
“Yeah, if Chan wants to break up with her, there are better ways to do it.” His hand on my shoulder left briefly to ward off someone else but then returned to rest on my lower back. Now it felt exactly like a hug.
“Do you think that’s what’s happening? He’s breaking up with her?”
“I don’t know. If I get an opportunity, I’ll ask him, but I’m not going to participate in spy shenanigans,” he told me.
“My advice to her is to leave him alone. If he wants to talk, then he will. If he doesn’t want to and keeps acting like a dick, then she should tell him to screw off.
She’s a nice girl and she doesn’t need to waste her time if he isn’t treating her well.
Like I said to you before, I’ve never seen him stay with one person for very long.
If that’s what she wants, then she may need to move on. ”
Correct. There was no reason to pine after someone who wouldn’t give you what you wanted. I nodded and stepped back, away from Ronan. “Let’s go to the table,” I called.
Kiya and Channing were still there. She was looking upset and he was looking at his phone, but he glanced up when we sat down. “We’re out of here,” he told us. He sounded bored. “Kiya’s not feeling great.”
“I feel fine,” she shot right back. “I feel amazing!”
“Ok, then you stay. I’m leaving.” He stood and pulled out his wallet to put some bills on the table. “That should be enough.”
“Add another,” Ronan told him. “And then one more.”
Channing gave him a dirty look but he did put down more money, which seemed to be enough to cover the drinks he’d consumed. “See you,” he told all of us.
“You can’t drive like this,” Ronan said. He glanced at Kiya, who was assiduously studying the ceiling. “Cate, can you give your friend a ride and I’ll deal with his drunk ass?”
“Fuck you,” Channing said angrily, and Kiya’s eyes widened but Ronan didn’t appear to care.
“Sure,” I said. They left together, but “Cado” didn’t bother to say goodbye.
“Why is he acting like this?” she asked me as they disappeared from view. She sounded desperate.
“Maybe Ronan will find out,” I said. “He told me that he’d ask.” Then I repeated the other things he’d said. “I think you should stop talking to Channing. Let him come to you, and if he doesn’t, then forget him. You’re great and you shouldn’t waste your time if he doesn’t treat you well.”
She used a cocktail napkin to edge away the tears in her eyes. “I thought that I was going to marry my boyfriend from college. I loved him so much but I realized that I had to break up with him. Channing is the first guy I’ve been with since, in a serious way. In a way that I thought could last.”
“What do you know about his previous relationships?”
Now her eyes narrowed. “Why are you asking that?”
“I’m just thinking of other men I’ve known and how their past was a good indicator of their future behavior.
Like my dad,” I offered. “He dated the same kind of woman all the time. No matter where we were, what she looked like, or what her name was, she was exactly like all the others. She took his money and either cheated or got him in trouble somehow.” There were so many stories.
“He had bad taste,” Kiya said, and that was such an understatement. “Do you think that’s how Ronan is?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I didn’t want to tell you this, but Channing said that he never commits to anyone,” she told me. “I was thinking that maybe he never met the right person. Until now,” she added.
“I don’t believe in that ‘right person’ stuff and neither does he. He hasn’t been serious about anyone because he likes his life the way it is,” I said. “He probably dated plenty of great women but he doesn’t want to do a relationship progression thing.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She looked pained.
“No, don’t be. We’re not together,” I reminded her. “And I didn’t want to tell you something either, but I should have. Ronan mentioned before that he never knew Channing to stay with someone for very long.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t a secret from me. I asked him about his history and that was what he said, too, but I thought that I was different.”
“Maybe you are,” I suggested, but she had moved to another emotion: anger.
“He can’t treat me like this,” she announced. “He wants to screw around? Fine!”
“I don’t know that he’s screwing—”
“Let’s dance,” she said. “We’ll both find people who are better.”
A few hours later, I drove her home, and it was late enough that I didn’t want to drive any further and go back to my apartment where I’d be alone.
I crashed on her couch instead and scared Taylor to death when she got home even later.
It was a bad night for sleep and it hadn’t been fun at the bar, where Kiya had been aggressively on the hunt for new guys for both of us.
She’d done the same thing at our second location, and the third, and then I had said that I was done when we’d left there.
“I’m not looking for someone,” I had explained to her for at least the tenth time.
“Why not?” she had demanded, but then rolled her eyes and agreed that yes, she was done, too. She’d cried a little more and then had fallen asleep in my passenger seat.