Chapter 35
35
Kit
“What happens if there’s a storm?” I ask, staring straight up into the quiet, dark night.
“Hm?” He flops over onto his back.
“While you’re, you know, underwater.” I gulp. “Welding?”
“We’d avoid that.”
“Okay. Good. Okay.” The stuff I’ve been reading online these past few days keeps swirling, and the more it swirls, the bigger it seems and, to be perfectly honest, it’s really not okay at all. “Do they need you to go underwater?”
“It’s what I’m hired for.”
“Every time?”
“This platform’s got a few issues. It’s an older one.”
Oh, god. I can’t get these images out of my head. A rusty, creaking metal eyesore in the middle of a wild, stormy sea. Cold, cold rain battering down. “Why Norway?”
“Hm? Well, the company I work for sends me out to different locations, based on need and?—”
“Why you?”
He takes a while to answer. When he finally does, his words take the panic I’ve been shoving back and turn it into something rabid, too huge to hide. “I’m good at it. I’m a good diver, a good welder, steady under pressure. I don’t mind danger and I get the technical aspects.”
“I mind danger.” I work hard to keep the fear from my voice. “I mean, for you. I mind that you put yourself out there, that you could get hurt. I read it’s the most dangerous job in the world.”
He doesn’t immediately answer, which is answer enough. He turns onto his side and, in the dark, with the sound of rain pounding on the metal roof above us, he puts his rough, callused hand to my cheek. It smells oh-so-slightly of the balm I gave him.
“You worried about me, baby?”
I clench my jaw, emotion filling my throat and sinuses, and nod.
“I’ll be fine.”
I nod again, hating that a single tear’s managed to escape my eye. “How…how will I know?”
“What?”
“How will I know you’re okay? How will… What if…”
Another tear slips out. This one he swipes gently with his thumb.
“I… Fuck.”
I almost eke out a laugh at that, but can’t quite force it that last inch from my mouth.
“I’ll keep in touch.”
A shaky breath escapes me as I imagine the check-ins. “I’m alive!” they’ll say. Texts or emails or whatever he can manage from out in the middle of the ocean.
“I, um, I… I haven’t sold this place yet.”
I sniffle. “Okay.”
“So, I might have to come back. I know you said you didn’t want me to?—”
“It’s fine.” I say, relief pouring through me, warm as whiskey. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah?”
I nod and lean toward him, wanting a kiss more than my next breath, but so scared of the pain. Instead of pressing my lips to his, I veer to the side and kiss his cheek, then his shoulder, and give him my back, the way I’ve done these many nights. He’ll wrap me up in his body and hold me tight and we can both pretend this isn’t ending in a few days.
We can pretend it’s something it’s not.
Except, as I fall asleep, with his face tucked into the crook of my neck, I’m not sure what exactly it is anymore and what part of it is pretend.
I wake up in the dark, hours later, crying, which hasn’t happened in ages. And it’s not a few tears, it’s the deep, wracking, internal pain kind of crying that will absolutely turn to ugly sobs.
The dream wasn’t about Clark. Or the baby I miscarried in my twenties. It’s not about a car wreck, which is what I dreamed about on bad nights for most of my life after my parents died. It was Jake. Just Jake. And me. And our baby .
And we were happy.
Just stay , I’ve wanted to tell him a million times over the past few days. At the restaurant, when he brought me my third-to-last piece of Jake cake and I almost lost it right there in front of Cora’s knowing gaze. That night I knocked on his door and he opened it and I fell into his hug like I belonged there. Last night, when he spooned me and whispered how beautiful I was, right against my ear, and all I wanted—the only thing in the world—was to turn and kiss him, but I know, I know , the pain isn’t something I’ll get over.
I’m here now, crying from that dream and I realize my error.
It’s too late.
I’ll never get over this. Him. Never.
I love him not just with my body and my head, but with the deepest, realest part of me. A part I’ve tried hard to protect since losing my parents as a confused kid.
What happened with Clark—the way I thought I loved him? That was surface only. It was an easy love. Forgettable.
But those packed bags by Jake’s front door last night, ready and waiting? The second I saw them, something shifted.
Oh, god. I’ve got to get out of this bed. I’ve got to go.
Now.
Quietly, quickly, I pry his heavy arm off me, roll out of bed and root around for my shirt. The bra’s a lost cause. In the hallway, I find my skirt, struggle to get my underwear up, and snag my shoes and keys, walking barefoot to the door.
Out, down the cold metal steps, breathing hard and fast through my nose, but somehow keeping the tears in check. They hurt, trying to force their way out, but I know better than to let them.
It’s okay. It’s good, even. The hurt’s focusing me, keeping my steps quiet, careful.
I get to the big metal outer door and unlock it, then swing it open and jump with a startled scream when something separates from the shadows.
“Shit. Shit, lady. Stop. Stop. Sorry.” I’m about to slam the door shut, but I pause. “Sorry, is Ricky here?”
“Ricky?”
“Or Jake. He here?”
“What?” I peer at the kid in front of me. He’s tall, but can’t be more than twelve or thirteen years old. He’s got the nasal voice of a boy in full-blown puberty and the hunched shoulders of a young man not yet used to his long, lanky body.
“Jake lets me crash here sometimes. On the mats over there, see? In the corner.”
I turn and blink through the dark at a pile of those thick, soft-looking mats. There’s what might be a towel or a blanket folded up beside it.
“Jake does that? He lets you stay here?”
The kid shrugs. “Just on days I’m not allowed home.”
“Not allowed?” I lower my volume at the last minute. The last thing I need is Jake coming down and dragging me back up to his room. I could handle sleeping together every night as long as I woke up on my own. But waking up groggy beside sweet, sleepy, bed-Jake? I don’t think my shields would stay up. I don’t have that kind of stamina.
“Dad’s an asshole,” the kid says, his voice thick.
“Oh, I’m…I’m sorry.” I squint back at him in the dark. “Look, I don’t know what to do here. It’s not my gym and I don’t feel like it’s my place to?—”
From upstairs, a door slams. Crap. Jake.
He’s coming down here, fast, no doubt, trying to catch me. I can’t face him right now, not with the way I’m feeling. Like I’ve just ripped myself open and now I’m bare and if he takes one more piece of what’s inside me, I’ll break again.
“Listen, that’s him, okay? Ask him…”
The door at the top of the stairs flies open and I don’t want to see him. I can’t. How can I when I’ve made the biggest, worst mistake of all?
Like an absolute fool, I’ve gone and fallen in love with the man. And nothing, nothing I’ve lived through could have prepared me for how much I know this is going to hurt.
I take off.
Jake
By the time I make it down the stairs, I expect her crappy old Rav 4 engine to turn over. I figure she’ll be gone, pulled out of the lot with a squeal of tires and one last goodbye that tells me I pushed things way too far last night. I get to the door and tense up when Travis waves at me like some black and white scarecrow from a Tim Burton movie.
“D’you see her?” I’m out of breath and out of control. Like I had her one minute, in my arms, warm and soft and everything and now she’s gone and that was it. My one fucking chance to?—
What? Fuck, I don’t know.
He nods, sniffing back what sounds like a cold’s worth of snot. “Yeah. She’s out there.”
“Where’d she go?” I’m all business. “She tell you?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, man. Just…took off.”
“How’d she seem?”
“I don’t know.”
“Like, upset, or…”
“Yeah. Yeah, like that.”
“Fuck.” I’m about to walk out when my eyes land on the kid and I look at him, like really look at the way he’s standing, and everything inside me goes still. “What’s going on?”
“Nothin’ bruh. Just needed a place to crash.”
“Why’re you holding your arm like that, Travis? What’s wrong?” Half of me’s dying to run after Kit, but the other half can’t move.
“I’m good. Just tired. Just?—”
I hit a switch, the overheads come on with a metallic thump, and everything inside me goes tense. “What happened?” I hear how deadly I sound. Quiet, low. So far past pissed, I can’t feel a thing.
“Nothing, man, I?—”
“Who did this?”
Outside, a car door slams. A moment later, Kit’s jogging back toward the rectangle of light that’s spilled out into the lot. She stops in the doorway, eyes massive, wild. After the briefest of connections between us, our gazes both land at Travis.
“What happened?”
His head’s down, but that doesn’t hide the soaking wet hair, the blood-smeared cheek, the black eye, the fucking split lip or the weird angle of his arm. The kid’s skin and bones. I can see where his shoulder’s dislocated.
I’ll kill whoever’s responsible. He’s a kid. “Who did this?”
He shakes his head, sniffling again.
“Who did this to you, Travis? Who beat the crap out of a?—”
“My dad. My fuckin’ asshole dad, okay? ” he screams. The words echo through the empty space, interrupted by another sniffle.
Shit, the kid doesn’t have a cold, he’s been crying.
He’s hurt, more than physically. So hurt he’s crying tears of betrayal, of pain rooted deep in his genes and I’m yelling at him and… “Here.” I pull off the sweatshirt I threw on and Kit moves in and helps me set it gently over Travis’s wide, bony shoulders.
“Hang on a sec.” I look at Kit, quietly asking you got this? At her small nod, I say, “Stay here with Kit, okay. I’ll be right back.”
The fact that he just nods and stands there tells me he’s in a lot of pain. I’ve seen this kid spar in the ring. He’s one hell of a tough guy.
I hate that this, right here, is probably why.
I’m weirdly calm as I get shoes on and grab a shirt and jacket, wallet and keys, then take three bottles of water from the fridge and a handful of the dried beef jerky I snack on when I’m working out a lot.
Like recently. Every time I couldn’t sleep, from thinking about Kit.
My feet clang as I come back downstairs, relieved at the calm I see in her eyes. I hand Travis a water.
“I’ll drive,” Kit says, leading us to her car. When I try to sit in back, Travis insists on taking the back, leaving the two of us up front. It’s quiet as the car heads out of the lot, tires swooshing over wet pavement.
Hadn’t even noticed it was raining. I look down, run a hand over my jacket, collect the water droplets there.
In the backseat, Travis refuses the jerky.
I’m betting he’s starving, but he says his jaw hurts too much to eat.
Kit glances at me. Even in the dark, I feel the weight of that look. I want another. I crave the connection.
“How old are you?” she asks in a voice that’s calm and reasonable. Just a regular day in the neighborhood.
“Thirteen,” he mumbles.
“Your mom, is she…”
He shrugs. “She’s at home.”
“She know this happened?” I ask.
He stops sniffling long enough to let out a long, shuddery exhale and I know, without hearing the answer, what he’s going to say.
“I tried, you know? I tried. He’s always hitting her and I tried to make him stop, but I’m just too…fucking…weak.” Every word’s punctuated by a sob and that piece of me, deep inside, that’s been hiding for all these years wakes up and feels .
It’s unbearable, I remember, to let yourself feel. To know that you aren’t loved the way you’re meant to be and you’re not good enough, not nearly strong enough to save the people who matter.
It takes a few seconds of silence for me to realize that Kit’s attention’s on me again, intense, despite her eyes’ focus on the road.
Fabric rustles and something touches me. Her hand. On mine.
I stare at it for a few seconds before returning her squeeze.
Then she holds me. Just like that. Not too tight or loose. I hold her back. The same way. No pressure. No expectations.
Just accepting comfort when I hardly remember what that feels like.
It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
Kit
“My dad died when I was a little older than Travis,” Jake tells me like he’s reciting the day’s specials.
The too-bright fluorescents of the ER waiting room bathe us both in a sickly light that would be unflattering at the best of times. After an almost sleepless night, Jake’s face looks gaunt, his ink stark. I’m pretty sure I look like refried ghoul.
I watch him, still, silent.
“Couple years later, my mom got remarried to an upstanding citizen . Rich guy. Family money. Political connections.” He’s facing forward, staring straight ahead, at nothing but an empty row of molded plastic chairs. “Still lives around here. Last I heard he had a mansion in Remington with his…third wife? Fourth? Mom loved Dad. But, you know, the diner, always working…it was tough. Real tough. When he got sick and passed, she sold it. For a while, we were good. Mom had these friends and used to go out and do things she never got to do when the diner owned her life. But then she met him .” A slow, measured inhalation lifts his chest. He doesn’t otherwise move from that straight-backed position. “Thomas A. Bentley. Tommy to his friends.” He smirks. “The third.”
I give him a low scoffing sound, just so he knows I’m listening. To our right, the ER doors swoosh open and a young couple comes in with a crying baby. My belly clenches.
When my attention returns to Jake, he continues. “I never liked Tommy. Didn’t trust him. He took us out to eat this one time, before they were married. Steak house up on the highway.”
I know the one he means. It’s still there. Still full of stodgy old, red-nosed white men leering at waitresses in short skirts. There’s a piano and a guy who sings jazz standards every weekend. Their steaks are huge and expensive and come alone on the plate. Sides of potatoes and mushrooms and green beans are extra. Clark’s parents took us there when he got his PhD. In a way, I guess I wanted Parlor to be a kind of antidote to restaurants like that. A place that feels rich and lush, but where the food’s simple, and full of flavor, the service friendly and above all, human. Everyone is welcome. Not just straight, rich white men.
“Mom went to the bathroom and I watched him watch the waitresses like they were as available for consumption as the steak on his plate. A woman walked by and he called her over and held out a folded bill. Maybe ten bucks. When she reached for it, he pulled it back, teased her a couple times like that. She was…not happy. After she took off, having well earned that cash, he turned to me with a wink and said ‘Tips for tits.’”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah.” He looks at me and then faces forward again. Behind us, the baby’s still crying, the family talking in hushed tones while they wait for the check-in person to call them. “Dad always said you could see right into a person’s soul by the way they treat waitstaff, cashiers, cleaners, folks in the service industry.”
I nod. It’s true. It’s absolutely true. You know what kind of person you’re dealing with from that very first interaction.
He sighs. “They got married.” He pauses. “I…I think she needed or wanted the security. I think she felt like she…deserved the money, the privilege, after doing the diner thing for so long? Supporting my dad, not having something of her own? I don’t know. She was still young. Maybe she had stars in her eyes. I, on the other hand, did not. So…when he started…hitting her…” I hold in a gasp. “Can’t say I was all that surprised.”
“I’m so sorry, Jake.”
He shakes his head. Doesn’t want my apologies or commiseration. Doesn’t want a damn thing. This is why he’s like he is. Self-sufficient, contained, and alone. “After the fact, I figured out that he’d probably been doing it for a while. We were living in this fucked-up house, just huge, with a woman who came in to cook and a cleaner and these guys who mowed constantly . I avoided that asshole, kind of did my own thing. Barely saw Mom at that point.”
The way he’s telling this story, in something close to a monotone, his back ramrod straight, his face utterly expressionless, tells me it’s coming. The thing, the big, big thing that made this man into who he is today. He was a kid, I keep thinking. He was just like Travis, who’s back there, getting checked out by doctors and interviewed by social workers.
He was a kid.
“Thing is, I was already big at that point. And I was…pissed. I’d started going to Ricky’s gym, every day after school. Learned boxing and kick-boxing and jiu jitsu and I was kicking ass in the ring. Real quick. Tommy, now he’d played college football. He was big, too. And the bastard had a gun.”
A chill slides up my spine. “The night it happened, I’d just turned seventeen. I was fuckin’ feral at that point. Barely at their house, spending nights in the gym, like Travis. Went home for clothes or to get Mom to sign things for school, and she was in bed. Bleeding. Face just…” His exhalation is controlled, quiet. “He’d beaten her to a pulp. I should have gotten her out of there—I wanted to—but she wouldn’t come. And he wouldn’t let me. Pulled that fucking pistol out. I was so beyond everything, so enraged that I went after him anyway. We fought. I got a few hits in. Got him on the floor. Broke his nose, his teeth. Messed him up. Went to get Mom and she…she wouldn’t come. Wouldn’t leave him. She was mad. At me . I had no right, she told me. No…no right .”
I look down at where his hands are gripping his jeans-clad knees. I want to hold one. I want to hold him .
“Tommy Bentley wasn’t just a big, privileged fish in our little pond. He was a lawyer. Lots of lawyer friends. Judges, too. I was sent off real quick. Tried as an adult. Treated like absolute shit.”
“What about your mom?” I ask, though I’m pretty certain I don’t want to hear the answer to this question.
“Mom? Oh, Mom sided with him. With the cops. With…the judge. Every step of the way, she upheld that asshole’s testimony. Only person who showed up for me was Ricky.” He gives a quick, spare nod. “Ricky.”
I reach out and put my hand over his. He looks down and stares, then after a second or two, turns his hand over and returns my squeeze.
“I was sentenced to five years for what should have been a misdemeanor. He, uh, claimed self-defense. Said I had the gun. Mom…” He turns and looks right at me and there’s something so shellshocked in his eyes, so vulnerable, that all I want in this moment is to comfort him.
“Come here.” I lean toward him, put my hands on his cheeks, pull him down to my level. Not for any reason but to be here. To show him that I’m here.
His forehead thunks lightly against mine and we’re close, close, sharing air and warmth and this tiny space between us.
“She died, Kit. Mom died while I was inside. She got cancer. She was… riddled with it. That’s the word I remember. Riddled.”
“Oh, Jake. I’m so sorry.”
“I can’t forgive her,” he whispers, barely shaking his head, barely speaking. “Even after all the therapy, all the fucking work, I still can’t.”
“You don’t have to,” I reply.
“She came to see me once. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it.”
I’d thought Clark broke my heart. I’d thought he’d cracked it right down the middle, but that was nothing to how this man’s just pulverized it. In my chest, there’s nothing left but powder.
“See now? See why I can’t do the whole family thing?”
“Yeah.” I laugh-sniffle, only barely conscious that tears track down my face. “I totally get it. I do, but…you cared, Jake. You were the only one. You were the family. You, on your own, trying to hold her up, hold the whole thing together. You were there for her and she…her fears or whatever kept her from doing the right thing.”
“Fuck, you’re just like Frank.”
“What? No way. Frank’s annoying.”
“Frank said the same shit. Told me I was the only right one in that whole mess.” He glances up for a split second. I think this is the closest I’ve ever really looked at him, in bright light, and his irises are as delicate as cracked ice. “Frank also taught me to stay alive inside. I owe him my life.”
“You don’t owe him.”
“It was bad, Kit.”
“Frank wouldn’t expect anything in return.”
“Pretty sure he’d expect me not to knock his sister up.”
Almost smiling, I look at him, close up, those long lashes, the very faint fan of laugh lines around his eyes, and I have such a depth of emotion that, for a handful of seconds, the world around me corkscrews. It’s the worst kind of vertigo. The kind that doesn’t settle after you blink. The kind that isn’t just a momentary lapse, but a permanent shift. A pressure change that reaches all the way to my marrow.
He hasn’t broken my heart, I realize, drinking up every detail of his face. He’s dug it out of the rubble it’s been hiding in all this time. Forced it out into the light, where it’s tiny and weak and shivering from cold, but also weirdly whole.
“What happened with Frank,” I share, a paltry offering in return for the confidences he’s just given me. “When he was sentenced and went to prison, I was a mess, you know. I lost my brother to a system that isn’t remotely kind or fair. My parents were gone. They’d died.”
“Frank told me. Car crash.”
I keep going, because I want him to understand. I want him to see how I got here.
“Yeah. Yeah. And Frank was my rock, before that. My grandmother and Frank. Then what he did…well, I couldn’t hate him for it, no matter how bad it seemed. Our Grandma Esteban couldn’t pay for his defense. And I…tried.” I huff out a sound that’s not even close to a laugh, remembering how I quit every one of my many extracurricular activities in order to wait tables. “Frank wouldn’t let me. He was so pissed when he found out I quit theatre and soccer. That fall, he made me go to college, as if nothing had happened. Like our whole world hadn’t been flipped upside down. Told me he wouldn’t take a cent from me.”
“He was proud of you, Kit. He still is.”
I shake my head ruefully. “Frank always hated Clark. Only met him once, when we went to visit, and still, he knew . But, Clark was a shoulder to cry on. Stability. I thought. The years went by and I pushed on and on, held him up, supported him while he went to school. We were going to make a family. I was going to go back and finish my degree. And that fucking asshole didn’t keep a single one of his promises. I was the stable one, the supporter, the heart of everything. I tried. I mean, I worked and worked and I can’t even talk about how things were in the bedroom and… I’m forty years old and all I wanted, all I want, the only thing that matters…is love.”
When he lifts his eyes and meets mine, the shock of that connection reverberates right at the center of my being.
Love. That’s it. Love.
“Kiss me,” I whisper against his lips.
“ Now you say it. Now? Here? ” His eyes flick to the side and, for the first time in ages I hear the sounds that exist outside our little bubble. Crying baby, silent weeping, in the distance, a siren. From the back, a voice is screaming that someone’s stolen their eyebrow.
“No way. Not here. Nope. Come here.” He grabs my hand and stands. Together, we walk out the front door into the chilly night.