“So, you don’t give your heart away easily?”
“If at all.” I avoid his eyes. I’m not sure where he’s going with this, and talking about myself feels like sitting in the gyno’s chair.
“Are you saying you weren’t in love with Neil?”
I lean on the counter opposite him and dry my hands on a dishtowel. It should be an easy question to answer, especially since it’s been turned over in my mind hundreds of times. “I wasn’t as devastated as I should have been. I’ve seen my friends go through breakups, and I didn’t feel that. I was hurt, I was sad, but I didn’t feel like I lost the love of my life. Is that … you know … it’s like…?” My mouth is dry. I grab a glass from the cabinet, but Kit is blocking the sink. He holds out his hand, half-grinning, and I give him the glass. Instead of filling it with water, he reaches for the cabinet and pulls out a bottle of tequila.
“I thought you were a wine guy,” I say. He ignores me, screwing the cap off the bottle and pouring a shot. I can taste it, even though it’s in his mouth. It’s the way he sucks in his cheeks after he swallows.
“He wasn’t the love of your life,” Kit says, pouring another shot and handing me the glass.
“Oh yeah? You knew us for what? Five minutes?”
When Kit is dipping deep into his own mind, he looks you right in the eye. It feels like he’s trying to find himself in your eyes. I’ve seen people squirm under his looks. I take my shot just so I can look away.
“I know you,” he says softly.
I know you; I walked with you once upon a dream…
“What? No. What do you know?” I hold the back of my hand against my mouth to stifle my laughter. Tequila doesn’t work that fast. I’m buzzing on something else.
Behind Kit is the kitchen window. I can see cars drive past, their lights illuminating him each time they pass, and I realize that at some point during our dish duty, it became night. We never bothered to turn on the lights, and we make no move to now, though we probably should.
“I think it’s hard for you to fall in love because you like control, and you can’t control what another person does or feels, so you keep all your cards.”
I’d gasp, except he can’t possibly be right. Can he? Also, gasping is for damsels, and I’m a gangster.
“Word,” I say. “Maybe, if I had something more to go on other than love…”
“Like what?” Kit asks. “A dream?”
I don’t gasp, but I hear my intake of breath. The refrigerator hums, ice drops into the tray in the freezer, a motorcycle drives by. I hold out the glass for another shot. There’s the clink of the bottle on the glass rim as he pours, never taking his eyes off mine.
“Have you ever had a dream like that?” I ask, licking the tequila from my lips. “One that was so real you couldn’t let it go?” Something passes across Kit’s eyes.
“Yeah, sure,” he says. I’m about to ask the inevitable What about? when Della’s voice calls from the bedroom. It’s rare that she will ever go to bed without Kit tucked in safely beside her. Most nights he complains about not being tired.
“Couples’ bedtime,” I grin.
“I hate you,” he grimaces. “Are you going to watch that stupid show tonight?”
“That stupid show you keep sneaking out of your bedroom to watch with me? Yes.”
He narrows his eyes and grins.
“You better go, you’ve been summoned.”He takes one last shot before he leaves the kitchen. When he’s in the doorway, he turns around.
“I want her to be like you.”
“What?” I’m distracted, tidying up the last of the kitchen. I glance at him over my shoulder.
“My daughter,” he says. “I want her to be like you.”
I feel many things at once, but at forefront is hurt. I can still see Brandi in my mind, and yet I wouldn’t do a thing to change Annie’s existence.
“Then you should have had her with me,” I say.
Kit blinks hard, once, twice, then he’s gone.
I store the bottle of tequila, and rinse the glass in the sink, before putting it away in the cabinet to erase evidence of our night.
Kit graduates with his master’s. He doesn’t tell me, and the only reason I find out is because his parents send a card, which I find in the trash under an egg carton. Congratulations, Son!
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask him, holding up the card. The Congratulations is smeared and bubbled from egg yolk. I hear the accusation in my voice, and I flinch. I sound like a nagging wife. `
He glances at me from where he stirs something in a pot, and grins.
“With everything that’s going on, I just didn’t think about it.”
“That’s bullshit,” I tell him. “It’s a big deal.”
He shrugs. “It kind of pales in comparison.”
“No,” I say. “It’s something to celebrate and be happy about in the midst of all the bad.”
“Hush, lonely heart. Pass me the paprika.”
He hasn’t called me that in a very long time. I get tingles all over.
“I didn’t have wrapping paper, I’m sorry.” I push a package across the counter. He stops stirring to look at it, then glances up at me.
“Did you wrap that in a diaper?”
I nod. Kit laughs, drying his hands on a dishtowel. He leans against the stove and holds the diaper-wrapped present in his hands, looking it over.
“You didn’t even need tape this way,” he says.
“It’s really quite genius,” I tell him. He keeps his eyes on me as he lifts the diaper tabs, smirking until my stomach flips. I know that grin. Nights wandering around Port Townsend, a bottle of wine in his hand. His nose was always red from the cold … smirking, smirking. Tonight I am in the kitchen with the Kit of Port Townsend. Lately, it’s been Kit the dad, Kit the worried fiancé. Tonight, he feels like my Kit. And I’ve missed him so much.
He opens the diaper wrapping and inside is three things: a blue crayon, a wine cork, and a sketchbook. When he looks at me it’s not with confusion. His jaw works as he touches each one and then sets the crayon and cork down to open the sketchbook. I watch, my heart racing.
“You did these?”