She nodded. “I’m okay. It’s only Phillip imagining things when he hears the other soldiers talk. Why is there so much drama? Don’t they have anything better to do?” She sniffled and rubbed her nose. “How are you?”she asked, reaching a hand across the table. I pretended not to notice as I lowered my hands onto my lap.
“I’m all right. Just tired,” I lied.
If she could lie to my face, I could do the same.
CHAPTER SIXTY
I spent the next day working in the morning. I was getting used to the bags under my eyes, but I finally felt a little more alive. I whizzed through my shift—three clients back-to-back—and got higher tips than expected on all three. I was feeling pretty good as I walked down the street to my house. The sun was bright, and I felt more energetic than I had for the last couple days. I thought of the many ways I could spend my afternoon off. I tried to remember the things I liked to do before I met Kael.
I walked into my bedroom and looked at the stack of books on my dresser. I had read most of them and didn’t feel like starting a whole new story, so I decided to grab one of the poetry books I had bought while browsing in a favorite bookstore in Atlanta. Right now, poems suited my mood—the perfect length, room for my own emotions, and I could skip anything that made me think too much. I desperately wanted to distract my brain from reality.
It was the perfect temperature outside today, warm enough not to have to wear a jacket, but cool enough that I could wear a long-sleeved shirt and shorts and be comfortable. I pulled my hair up, grabbed a few things—my phone for music, a pillow from the couch, and the poetry book Lost and Found, and headed out to the porch. I sat down on the cool concrete and wished I had a swing. Another item for the “one day” list. One day when I redo the porch, I will make it big enough for a swing. One day.
As I skipped from page to page in the book, I felt like every single poem was being read to me in Kael’s voice. He was everywhere. He had become everything.
In the hollows under his eyes, I found a map
in the stars that dipped into his cheeks, I found solace
in the bow of his lips, there was truth
in the rise and fall of his chest, I found myself,
and if you ever need me, that’s where I’ll be.
I closed the book and tossed it, watching as it went skidding across the porch. The stars reminded me of Kael, the mention of his dimples, the truth I’d believed from him that wasn’t there after all. The feelings were too close and I wanted these words as far away from me as they could get. I stood up, took a few steps, and kicked the little white paperback, watching it disappear into the patch of weeds next to my porch.
Then I felt guilty. It wasn’t the poet’s fault that my first real connection with someone was so short-lived I stepped down off the porch to retrieve the book, digging my hand into the stringy weeds that surrounded the concrete slab. They were too long, too unmanageable; unpredictable vegetation was overgrowing my yard. This little house was what it was. I knew what I was getting when I signed on the dotted line for the basically abandoned house at the end of a commercial strip. It was the only thing in my life that wasn’t going to turn out to be something that it wasn’t.
I began to pull at the weeds in the yard. They were everywhere, the more I looked. I needed a distraction and had the rest of the day to do as I pleased. Minutes went by and I moved on from the weeds to sweep the gravel back into my driveway. I had decided to ignore this week’s Tuesday family dinner obligation. No way was I going to deal with that.
At first, I thought the dark blue Bronco pulling up to my house was a mirage. The sun was already setting and I seemed to have lost track of time. My mind was obviously playing tricks on me. I stood up and stared, watching unwaveringly as Kael parked in front of my house in his usual spot.
When he got out of his truck, it dawned on me that he was at my house for the first time since the blowout with my dad. I had so much to say, but couldn’t think of anything that would help the pain I felt in my bones.
“Karina.” His voice danced around me, almost hypnotizing me.
I opened my mouth to speak and heard my dad’s voice in my head, followed by Kael’s, then my dad’s again. I couldn’t sort out my own thoughts, and I still couldn’t make sense of everything that they had said, even though I had replayed it over and over in my mind. I realized that I wasn’t prepared to face Kael. Not tonight. I needed at least one hundred hours to mentally prepare to see him.
“For so many reasons, you can’t be here,” I told him just as he reached the grass. My back hurt as I stood there with one hand on my hip and one blocking my eyes from the blazing sun that had nearly set. Why was the sun so bright? Even nature was taunting me at this point.
He stopped and looked at me, seeming uncertain what to do next. Still too close. He held out my laptop with an extended arm and I quickly grabbed it from him. The last bit of me that he could have was now back in my hands.
“Karina, can’t we talk? I just want to explain myself,” he pleaded.
I had barely caught a glimpse of his face, and the emotion in it made me move my hand down to shade my eyes like a coward, so I couldn’t see his face.
He was staring at me, I could feel it though I avoided his eyes. He was attempting to register everything I was feeling, absorb it, and read me like a fucking book, and I regretted that I had ever given him this type of access in the first place.
“You had the chance to explain yourself and didn’t,” I said flatly.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Karina. You must know that.” The cool condescension in his voice sent me over the edge.
I threw my hands in the air. “Atlanta! You’re kidding, right?”
He shook his head.
“Actually, Martin, I don’t know anything about you at all.” I wanted to hurt him with my words, so I didn’t allow myself to filter my thoughts. “Everything you’ve told me seems to be part of a story that I don’t know. You’ve humiliated me, like it’s some kind of joke that everyone else knows who you are and what you do but I don’t. You may think I’m na?ve, but you are exactly the kind of person I’ve tried to stay away from my entire life. You need to leave . . . you need to go.”
His eyes went wide as if he were stunned, and the selfish satisfaction I felt from his reaction outweighed the pang of guilt I felt for purposely hurting him. He must have found something in my expression when my eyes finally met his that told him to back off, because he put his hands in the air and turned around and walked away.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
When I woke up the next morning, I was even more miserable than I’d been the day before. Would it really get worse every day? For how long? I washed my hair for a while, rubbing my scalp to ease the ache. My neck felt so stiff, my skull so heavy. It wasn’t fair that I was made to feel both physical and emotional pain. What sort of God, or universe—or whatever is up there—allows that? It was just cruel. An unfair punishment. I’m not a crier usually, but I couldn’t hold it in last night, and honestly, I’m not sure if it helped or was a waste of time because I still felt like shit inside and now my head was pounding, my eyes swollen, my skin blotchy and uneven.