Little Secrets

by Jennifer Hillier

  The second heartbreak was J.R. He was never her boyfriend, but he was her first love, a guy from her hometown whose family knew her family. They hooked up the summer before she left for college. She lost her virginity to him on a blanket on the grass by the river, under the stars, and it was every bit as fucking romantic as a country song.

  “Am I going to see you again?” she’d asked him afterward, as she pulled her underwear and shorts back on. She felt sore, but in a good way, an adult way. There was a light breeze fluttering the leaves of the trees. The moon was a crescent, casting almost no light, but it made the stars shine brighter.

  “Of course you will,” he said. “We’ll both be back for Thanksgiving. And we’ll talk all the time between now and then.”

  But they didn’t. He didn’t. She left for college the next day, and for the next month, J.R. didn’t return any of her calls or texts. The only time he picked up the phone was when she used her roommate’s cell phone to call him, and he expressed polite surprise at hearing from her, but otherwise sounded distant.

  Kenzie got the hint. It was over, whatever “it” had been. It was clear that J.R. didn’t want a relationship, and though she’d worked hard at keeping her expectations low, the confirmation that it would never be anything more nearly ruined her. She was knocked sideways by the pain. She didn’t know she could hurt like that, that she could give herself to someone who could throw her away so easily, and it felt even worse than her dad leaving. Her only comfort was that they lived far apart, and she’d probably never have to see him again.

  Except she did see him again. J.R. stopped by her mother’s house on Thanksgiving weekend and invited her to go for a drive down to the river, acting like he hadn’t ripped her heart out of her chest and set it on fire a mere two months before. She agreed to go. She had things to say, and here was her chance to say them.

  “You used me.” The river looked different in late November than it had back in August. They sat on the same plaid blanket, but they were wearing their coats and boots instead of shorts and T-shirts, and drinking coffee with Baileys instead of cold beer. The same trees that had been lush with leaves a few months before were now stripped bare, their branches thin and brittle. Naked. Exposed. Which was how Kenzie felt.

  The air was filled with the sweet, skunky scent of J.R.’s joint. He offered it to her, and she took a long drag before passing it back.

  “How did I use you?” he asked. “Have I lied to you? Have I made you promises I’m not keeping?”

  “You said you’d keep in touch.”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, okay, so I’m not great with that. I should’ve warned you. I tend to focus on what’s right in front of me, and if you’re not in front of me, it’s kind of—”

  “Out of sight, out of mind?”

  “Something like that.” He offered her the joint again. She declined. Anything more than a puff tended to make her paranoid. “Don’t let emotions get in the way of a good thing, M.K. What we have is perfect just the way it is.”

  “And what is it we have?”

  “We’re friends,” he said, and she winced. The word friends had never sounded so dismissive. “We’ll always be friends.”

  “I want to be with you,” she blurted, and as soon as the words were out, she felt terrible. She’d worked hard at putting him behind her, and now here he was, and all the feelings were back. She didn’t know what to do with them; it was all so confusing.

  “You are with me.” He stubbed out the joint, cupped her chin, and turned her face toward his. “That’s the part you don’t get. When I’m here, I’m here.”

  “And when you’re not, you’re not.”

  “Don’t say it like it’s a bad thing. You have your whole life ahead of you. You’ve got school, you’ve got friends, you’ve probably got guys asking you out all the time. My advice? Say yes. To everything. Don’t let opportunities pass you by because of me. Your life is bigger than me, than this.” He swept a hand toward the river. “You wanted out of this town for a reason. Don’t let anything drag you back. Not even me.”

  “But I love you.” Kenzie cringed at the sound of her own voice. It was small, like a child’s.

  J.R. smiled. She would never forget that smile. It was full of wisdom, cynicism, disappointment. “You’ll get over it. Trust me.”

  She put her hands over her face and sobbed. “You’re leaving me like my dad did.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” J.R. snapped. “You’re hearing what you want to hear, not what I’m saying. I’m telling you straight up what I can and can’t do. Your asshole father never did that—he made you promises he couldn’t keep. You’re eighteen, but you’re wiser than your years, M.K. Use your brain, not your heart. You have to learn to take care of yourself, or you won’t make it in this fucking world. Don’t depend on me, you understand? Don’t depend on anyone.”

  “I feel like I’m losing you.”

  “That’s factually impossible.” He spoke gently, leaning in. She saw the kiss coming, and could have turned her face away, but she didn’t. She wanted his lips on hers, wanted the connection. “Because you never had me.”

  Their lips met, and it was simultaneously the best and worst she’d ever felt.

  Kenzie’s since learned that when someone you love doesn’t love you back, there are two directions you can go. Option one, you can meet someone else and try again. And again, and again, until one day, if you’re lucky, you meet the person you’re meant to be with, who does love you back, and who does want to make a life with you. But there’s no guarantee you’ll find him, and even if you do, there’s no guarantee it will last.

  Option two, you never try again. You accept that love is shitty. Love hurts. Love takes away more than it gives, so what’s the point? So you stop chasing it. You spend time with whoever you want to, without expectations, understanding that the only thing you can trust is the exact moment you’re in.

  Once she let go of all expectations with J.R.—for real this time, no pretending—she was able to appreciate what the relationship was. She watched friends go through painful breakups, glad that was never going to be her. Like J.R. said, you can’t lose what you never had in the first place.

  For four years while she was in Boise for art school, she and J.R. kept in touch sporadically, and when they found themselves in the same place, they spent every moment together. When she moved to Seattle for graduate school, she stayed with him while she looked for an apartment. They still have sex, not always, but sometimes, if the circumstances are right. They talk about the people they’re dating, which is mostly Kenzie talking about the men she’s dating, as she’s not exactly keen on hearing about J.R.’s sexual relationships with other women. He gives her a lot of advice.

  He gave her advice with Paul, for instance, and it worked out well.

  The last time she saw J.R., he asked how things were going with Derek. Her married-man adventures turn him on—the greater she goes into detail, the more likely he’ll want to have sex after—but he seems particularly fascinated with Derek. Because of the missing kid.

  Kenzie understands that. It’s hard to separate Derek from the story that was all over the news. Seattle is full of millionaires, thanks to the slew of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city: Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom. Ordinarily a guy like Derek wouldn’t stand out.

  Except for the missing kid.

  “He give you money?” J.R. asked.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “A little here, a little there, if he knows I need it.”

  “He should be giving you more than a little. Dude’s loaded. The reward money for his kid’s a million dollars.” He was looking something up on his phone, and when he found it, he held it up for her to see. It was an article about PowerOrganix in a business magazine. “His company hit three hundred million in sales last year.”

  “Let me see that,” she said, trying to grab the phone out of his hand. He wouldn’t let her, not that she was surp
rised. Men are weird about their phones.

  “He should put you up in a condo,” J.R. said, and she could practically see the wheels in his head turning. “In your name. So that if this ends, down the road, at least you’d have that. It’d be a score without feeling like a score, if you get what I mean.”

  “It’s really not like that with Derek,” Kenzie said. “We’re not there yet, and we might never be. He’s not Paul, who was obsessed. Derek only reaches out when it’s convenient for him, and I never know more than a day or two in advance when that will be.”

  “Because you’re letting him control things. You’re too available. Guy like that, it’s only fun if it’s a challenge, if there’s a possibility he can’t have you.” J.R. was scrolling through his phone again. “How are things with his wife?”

  “He doesn’t talk about her much, but it seems like they barely see each other. He mentioned once that she’s not doing great after the kid thing. I think it’s why he hates going home,” Kenzie said. “So he doesn’t have to deal with it. With her.”

  “Why don’t they split up?”

  “He’s afraid she’ll kill herself.”

  J.R.’s head snapped up. “Really? He said that?”

  “Not in so many words,” she said. “But she’s pretty messed up. He told me once, after we’d had too much wine, that she was hospitalized a month or so after the kid disappeared. She ran a bath, took a bunch of pills. He found her just in time. They kept her in the psych ward for five days.”

  She couldn’t read the look on J.R.’s face, but it was making her uneasy. “What?”

  “There’s no way they’re going to last,” he said, and it sounded like he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to her. “What they’ve been through, it’s too much. At some point they’re going to separate the whole way. It sounds like they’re getting there. I’m thinking there could be…” He paused, choosing his words. “… an opportunity in it for you.”

  “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “Maybe this is the one you hitch your wagon to.”

  Kenzie laughed. “How high are you? Since when do you believe in marriage?”

  “I don’t believe in marriage. I believe in money. And he’s got a lot of it. More than any of the others.”

  “I don’t love him, J.R.,” she said, but what she really meant was He doesn’t love me. She didn’t want to say it out loud. She didn’t want J.R. to know she cared.

  He shrugged. “So? To quote the legendary Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it?”

  “I’m not a homewrecker.”

  “Gold digger, homewrecker, same thing.”

  No, they’re not. At all. The one term Kenzie has never liked is homewrecker. She is not a homewrecker, and neither was the woman her father left them for.

  Men wreck their own homes.

  She understands that J.R. is trying to help her get whatever she can out of this, because someday, this affair will end. Affairs always do, one way or another. It will either morph into something “real,” in which case Derek will leave his wife and ask Kenzie to be with him forever, or it will fade out, and Derek will choose to stay with the woman he married. Either way, what they’re doing right now won’t go on forever. It isn’t sustainable.

  Especially since Derek still loves his wife.

  Derek rarely talks about his family with Kenzie, but he dreams about them, and his son, all the time. During their trip to New York, he once cried out Sebastian’s name so loudly in the middle of the night that it woke her up in a panic. She turned on the light to find Derek thrashing in bed beside her, his hair matted from sweat. Sebastian. Sebastian. Bash. Come to Daddy. Please.

  “Wake up,” she said, shaking him. “Derek, wake up, you’re having a nightmare.”

  His eyes flew open, and as he regained consciousness, his face crumpled. “Oh god, I couldn’t get to him. He was right there, and I couldn’t get to him in time.”

  “Shhh…” She turned the light back off and settled in beside him. “It’s okay. It was just a dream. Try and go back to sleep.”

  In the morning, they never spoke of it. She wasn’t even sure he remembered, and she never brought it up.

  But he says Marin’s name, too, sometimes. Not often. Every once in a while. In fact, the first time Kenzie ever heard him speak his wife’s name out loud was the night after his nightmare. His tone was anguished, his words clear.

  And what he said was, Marin, I’m sorry. Oh god, Marin. I’m so sorry.

  Chapter 17

  Three days, and still no texts from Derek.

  Kenzie thinks about him as she wipes down the table by the window with Lysol and paper towels, because a small child vomited on it a few minutes earlier. She thinks of this as Derek’s table, because this is where he always sits. He likes to people-watch, and keep an eye on his precious Batmobile. He’ll never admit it, but he loves it when people gawk at the Maserati. Kenzie was sitting with him the afternoon two college girls stopped on the sidewalk and took a furtive look around. One posed against the car while the other snapped a photo. Then they switched places, and hurried off laughing, no doubt psyched to have something to post on Instagram later.

  She checks her phone, ignoring the reminder email from her mother’s care facility that the next month’s payment is now due. She’s planning to use the money Derek gave her to put toward her credit cards and get current on bills. Once her Visa clears, she’ll make the payment. It could be worse. It’s been worse.

  She could text him now, she supposes. Three days of no communication is a long time, and any normal human being would check in. The uncertainty is getting to her, so she sends Derek the most benign text she can think of. One word.

  Hey.

  She waits. Nothing. She slips her phone back into her pocket with a heavy sigh.

  The table reeks of bleach, but at least it’s finally clean. How do parents do this? The mother of the little girl who threw up felt terrible about the mess, but she was more than happy to leave the cleaning to Kenzie. At least she’s getting paid to do it. What’s the upside if you’re the parent? Cats are so much better than kids—they’re self-cleaning right out of the gate.

  “You know what it’s like having a child?” her mother once said to her, when Kenzie was eight. She’d asked to sleep over at her best friend Becca’s house. “It’s like your heart walking out the door on two legs, vulnerable and unprotected. It’s scary as hell.”

  Yeah, no thanks. The world is hard enough without bringing another tiny, needy human into it.

  She hasn’t thought of Becca in years. Kenzie can count on one hand the number of close female friends she’s had in her lifetime. Becca in grade school. Janelle in high school. And Isabel, her college roommate during undergrad.

  She often thinks about Isabel. They met during frosh week, when Izzy walked into their dorm room with a suitcase that Kenzie later learned was half full of makeup and hair products. Izzy had gotten into college on a dance scholarship, and her only goal in life was to marry a rich man.

  “It’s not like I don’t believe in myself,” Izzy had said matter-of-factly over pizza later that night. Her new roommate took a huge bite, which she’d vomit up later, Kenzie would soon discover. “My dream is to dance professionally. But I could break my ankle tomorrow. And then what? I have no other skills. That’s why I’ve got David. He’s my backup plan.”

  They bonded over older men. Izzy’s boyfriend was a forty-three-year-old surgeon, and Kenzie was dating Sean, a thirty-nine-year-old real estate agent she’d met in yoga class. Unlike David, though, Sean was married.

  “Yeah, I’d never go there with a married guy,” Izzy said, her perfect nose wrinkling in distaste. “But, whatever, girl. You do you.”

  After freshman year, Kenzie and Izzy moved out of the dorm and into a tiny apartment together off campus. Kenzie was still dating Sean, but his wife had threatened to take the kids and leave, and there was tension at home. She could sense he was losing interest.


  Izzy had moved on to a new older man, Rick, who loved to travel. In between her dance classes, he took her to Mexico, Barbados, Paris, and they even did a Mediterranean cruise, which Izzy said was boring because the median age of the ship’s passengers was “eleventy billion years old.”

  “I’ll never do Holland America again,” Izzy declared when she got home. “Everybody was in bed by nine. What did I miss? How’s Sean?”

  “I’m pretty sure he ended it,” Kenzie said, morose. “At dinner the other night, he said he needed some space, that he needed to focus on his kids. He actually gave me money. It felt like … severance pay.”

  “How much money?”

  “A thousand.” Kenzie wasn’t sure how to feel about it. “He pulled out a wad of cash, paid the check, then handed me the rest.”

  “And you said…”

  “‘Thanks.’”

  “Girl, have I taught you nothing?” Izzy rolled her eyes. “You don’t take the first offer. It’s a negotiation. He wants you gone, he’s gotta pay to get you gone. A thousand … shit. David used to give me that every month, just because.”

  “What should I have done?”

  “You should have stroked his ego, played his heartstrings a little, appealed to his manly protector side,” Izzy said. “Said something like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t see this coming.’” Her voice went up an octave and softened, her face an exaggerated impersonation of someone who was upset. “‘I don’t want to lose you. This is real for me, and I’m not ready to let you go.’”

  Kenzie burst out laughing. “Dude, come on. There’s no way I could have said that with a straight face.”

  Izzy did not laugh. “Then you’d better practice. This breakup should have cost him way more than a thousand. When David and I broke up, he gave me ten.”

  “Ten thousand?”

  “You think that’s a lot for them? It’s nothing. That’s a poker weekend.” Izzy sighed and shook her head. “You know I don’t do the married guy thing, but if you’re going to go that route, you might as well capitalize. Professional girlfriend rates go up if the guy has a wife. They have more to lose.”