by Sionna Fox
“Yeah, no. I mean, he’s not my cup of tea, so I never thought about it. I’d maybe describe him as doting in a way that makes me throw up in my mouth a little, but not service-oriented.”
“Oh. He kind of is, in a caretaking way. It extends into our day-to-day because it makes him happy to be sure that I’m taken care of. It’s not a formal thing, not like what you had, but he makes sure I’m fed and rested and that I’m taking my meds, that kind of stuff. He’d probably do more, if I let him, but I have some boundaries about taking care of myself.”
“And the sex?”
Jolene turned crimson. She read erotica for a living, but ask her about anything personal related to sex and she turned the color of a beet. “Is often more about me than it is about him. If I’m not getting off on it, it’s almost pointless for him. So we’re lucky that our kinks line up well.”
That was the most Kate had ever gotten Jolene to say about her actual sex life. She would have high-fived her if it didn’t look like she wanted to crawl under the table and melt into a puddle of sheer mortification.
“Huh. And he doesn’t feel taken advantage of, or like it’s a transaction?”
“No. No. I would hate myself if he ever felt that way.” Her face crinkled. “It’s how he shows love. ‘Acts of service’ if you believe in that stuff. And there are probably terrible people out there who would take advantage of it, but I hope to hell I never, ever make him feel that way. He doesn’t have to do any of the things he does for me to love him.” Her face went all misty. Kate had a feeling Matt was getting jumped by his fiancée when she got home.
“But how do you do that?”
“Appreciate it for what it is, openly, all the time. I say ‘thank you’ a million times a day, but I always mean it. And I set boundaries.”
“Like what, how does that work?”
“It would be easy for him to focus all of his energy on me, and it would exhaust us both. So I don’t let him. I make him do his own stuff, which lets me have a break. Like, if he makes dinner every single night, he might start to resent it, right? But if I make him take the night off, or order takeout when he stays late at work or goes out with friends, then he a, doesn’t have to worry about me and b, it shows him I’m not hanging around for the dinners. And it goes both ways, because I know what it’s like to feel like you have to earn your keep. Does that make sense?”
It wasn’t a perfect analogy for how Kate felt, but it gave her more context. A tiny prayer that someday, she could have a functional relationship even if she did feel compelled to show her love by doing stuff. If that was showing her love and affection, and not bartering it for love and affection in return, she could live with that. She didn’t have as much faith in Ian as Jolene did. He wanted to move on from the past, but Kate couldn’t see a future without getting it all out in the open. She had decisions to make about what came next for her, and she couldn’t let attempting to slowly work things out with him get in the way. Her work was already suffering for it.
“It does. Thank you.”
“Good. Glad I could help.”
“But now you’d like to get back to your fiancé and love on him?”
She snorted. “If the movement doesn’t make me sick first.” She clapped her hand over her mouth as her eyes went round and a bunch of dots connected in Kate’s brain.
“No fucking way. You’re—”
Jolene shook her head frantically. “Don’t say it. Plausible deniability. I’m not confirming or denying anything.”
“Fine. I know how to play that game.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh my god, though.”
“This conversation never happened. But yeah. I know. It’s super early, so I’m still sort of half expecting the worst? Because that’s how I roll. I mean, on the one hand, I’m certainly not expecting that any kid of ours will be neurotypical, but like, neither are we, so at least they’ll be supported. It’s everything else that could go wrong.”
“Oh, Jo. I’m sure it’s gonna be fine.” She took Jolene’s hands across the table. Matthew would make sure she had the absolute best care they could manage. Jolene wasn’t going to be one of Kate’s statistics.
“I know. It’s…the anxiety weasels have too much information to play with, and Matthew’s no help because he knows it all too. Neither of us are naive enough for this. But, uh, anyway, expect to be asked to go out of town for a weekend soon.”
“You’re eloping?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Matt does know you’re the world’s worst secret keeper.”
“I know. He knows. But I was doing really well.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and laughed. “I even saw you the other day and didn’t break. And I have come so close to letting it slip in front of Sarah, but I haven’t yet. She’s going to figure it out when ten million appointments start popping up on the calendar.”
“I cannot wrap my brain around this.”
“You know nothing.” She glared. “But dude, neither can I and it’s happening to me. At least I got engaged firmly before I got knocked up. Take that, aunts.”
“You guys want this, though, right?”
Jolene dipped her head and raised an eyebrow. “You know us. Would I be pregnant if we didn’t want to be? I mean, we fucked up the timeline because I did not expect to be particularly fertile. But you know…life, plans, blah, blah, blah.” She glanced at her watch and yawned. “But I should probably get home before I collapse. The tiredness thing? Not a fucking joke.”
Kate hugged her at the door, maybe a little more forcefully than normal. She went back to her apartment, her brain whirring like a nest of bees. In the dark of the little room, by herself, it seemed impossible she could get to the place Matt and Jolene were at. There was too much history, too much baggage for her to start over with Ian, even with all the time in the world to let him slowly acclimate to change. But maybe they could be friends, or at least cordial. Their weird little family was getting a new member, and Kate wanted to be around for that, no matter what happened between her and Ian.
* * *
Ian knocked around the house after Kate told him she was going out, wondering what other rooms held a bunch of crap he never touched, looked at, or thought about. He idly considered how much he could sell the house for and what he could get in return. He didn’t need this much space. Not sharing walls had its uses, and there were a few minor customizations in the bedroom that he’d be sad to part with. But overall…maybe if they were starting over, if he was starting over, a new space would help. They could leave behind the mental baggage of everything that had happened in this house and make a home.
But he was getting ahead of himself again. He’d sent Evie some numbers to review, needing a second opinion on his plan to ride out the rest of his paid vacation days while looking for work, quit, take the severance pay, and roll it into savings against either having not found work by the time he ran out of vacation, or for the future. Selling the house certainly had the potential to add to the nest egg, considering that the housing market was so tight people were sending personalized letters and batches of cookies with their bids.
Evie confirmed that he had more than enough money and time to ride it out for a while before finding a new position got dire. But she didn’t think it would. She’d already started tugging at her spider silks, snaring any passing friends and acquaintances who might know someone who knew someone. Between the lot of them, they knew plenty of people in tech in Boston. The overlap between nerd and kinkster could come in handy, though he didn’t want to work directly with anyone he’d seen around, so to speak.
Messaging with Toby about the company whose marketing department he worked for was one thing, but actually going in and seeing someone he’d seen naked and strapped to a bench sitting across the table for a conference call was another. Toby may have laughed and reminded Ian that he mostly worked from home, but Ian wasn’t sure he would fit into the structure there anyway. He didn’t want
to move into the same outmoded position he was already in.
Sarah had put him touch with a school library that would take a look at his books, especially the “classics” and either put them into circulation or use them for their fundraising book sale. She also put him in touch with people she knew who developed marketing tools and platforms for authors and publishers. He had plenty to keep himself occupied before he would see Kate again.
But he wanted to tell her what he’d decided. Even though it made his guts churn and his teeth sweat to think about it, all that uncertainty. But he had the same reaction thinking about going back to where he was. In the calculus of his brain, the uncertainty had the greater potential to bring him satisfaction, while the devil he knew was going to end at worst with him getting fired and at best with him faffing around being bored for the next forever.
He reviewed his spreadsheet again. The neat columns and rows of numbers, expenses, savings, income, balanced against each other, relieved some of the churning. If Kate came home, the expenses would go up, and it would shorten his buffer zone, but she would also be working. She was teaching this semester, and he certainly didn’t expect her to take the time, effort, energy, and money to get a PhD and not use it.
He resisted picking up the phone and texting her all night. And the next day. He had to hold himself back from launching himself at her the second she got in the door. He was brimming with anxiety and excitement, and he was doing this for them. He needed it for himself, to not be bored and vaguely miserable, which would help him be present with her. Everybody was going to win.
Except there was a look on her face that said otherwise.
“What’s wrong, kitten?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Of course.” He led her into the living room and sat on the couch. She settled on the opposite end. His stomach dropped. “What’s going on, Kate?”
She twisted her hands in her lap. “So, talking to Owen last night made me realize some things.”
“Who’s Owen?”
“My friend who I told you I was going out with.”
“You never said with whom.” He desperately tried to tamp down on the jealousy flaring in his chest. She was allowed to have friends. But she clearly hadn’t mentioned it for a reason.
“You never asked.” She crossed her arms.
“No, but you obviously thought I wouldn’t like it, so you chose not to volunteer that information.” He wanted to slap himself for the way that came out. This was going nowhere good, and he didn’t know how to stop the train wreck. Anxiety and jealousy twisted in his chest.
“You don’t own me, Ian.”
“No. I don’t,” he said quietly. “But you said you were in this, so why hide that from me?”
“Because of this. This thing you’re doing right now where you’re so jealous you could spit and you have no right or reason to be.”
“What are you trying to tell me, kitten? Did you sleep with him?” His heart felt like it was going to crawl out of his throat. He knew the answer by the way her head dropped.
“Not last night. Before.”
He knew she’d been with at least one other person while they’d been apart. But he hadn’t known it was someone from here. He suddenly realized who it must have been. “That guy at the coffee shop you were flirting with. That’s him, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re still seeing him. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
She rolled her eyes and balled her fists. “No. Not like that. He’s a friend.”
“Why?” Kate had plenty of friends. Why did she need a new one with pretentious facial hair and a hipster haircut?
“Why do I need friends who aren’t you and everyone we were friends with as a couple? Why would I want to hang out with a person—who is the most vanilla human being I think I have ever met, by the way, so calm down, caveman—who is my age and single and worries about rent and student loans and roommates and job security and healthcare and everything else? Gosh, I don’t know why I would have wanted to hang out with someone like that.”
“Okay, I get it. You are absolutely allowed to hang out with whomever you want to.”
She half screamed into a pillow. “I don’t need your permission or allowance. This is what I was trying to avoid, because now we’re talking about why I want to have friends who aren’t you and not about anything actually important.”
“You’re right. I’m acting like a Neanderthal and I’m sorry.”
“You know what, let’s do this. We’re on a fucking roll. Who’d you fuck while I was gone?”
Ian winced. Everything he said made her angrier, and he was stuck in a minefield he didn’t understand how to navigate. “Do you really want to do this right now?”
“I know you weren’t celibate the whole time. Who’d you call, Ian?”
He braced himself. She wouldn’t like the answer on a good day. She’d always claimed she understood that he and Juliette had never been anything more to each other than friends and play partners. But they’d never liked each other. Juliette had tried to persuade him more than once that Kate was too young and inexperienced for him, and she’d been adamantly against their moving in together. Their friendship had cooled over the last five years, but still. She was there. “I got drunk and called Juliette.”
“Of fucking course you did.”
“And it was awful, Kate. I couldn’t do it. She safed out before we’d done much of anything because she could see I wasn’t in any kind of headspace for it. Then she lit into me to get my shit together before I even thought about playing with anyone else. I called her the next day to apologize again, and we haven’t spoken since.”
“Did you fuck her?”
“No.” Juliette was the last person to allow him a pity fuck after he’d screwed up a scene.
“So who else were you with?”
“No one that matters. No one for kink.” He’d had a couple of sloppy hookups with women who would be perfectly lovely partners for someone else. But not for him. Not when all he wanted was her. “Was there anyone else for you?”
“Kind of hard to hook up when you’re sharing a shitty hotel room or temporary apartment with another grad student or two.”
“No, I imagine that would make it difficult.”
“The whole time I was gone, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think about you, or our friends, what was going to happen when I came back here. I focused on the work in front of me.”
“Then why are you here, Kate? What did you actually want to talk about?”
“I can’t do this.”
Ian froze. “We don’t have to talk about it right now. We can have dinner and see how you feel.”
She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “That’s just it. You want to move on, and all I can see is an insurmountable pile of bullshit between us. I can’t sweep this shit under the rug and let it go.”
“Sweep what under the rug, Kate?”
“It’s too much. This isn’t going to work. That’s what I realized last night. I can’t move on and pretend we’re fine when there are fucking skeletons in every closet. I can’t erase the fact that I resented you for so long, that I felt indebted to you and it kept me here longer than it should have. I can’t erase the fact that I feel gross and guilty about trading sex for financial security.”
“Kate, it was never about that for me.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. It doesn’t mean that I don’t see the way people look at us, that I don’t have my own mother on the phone telling me I lost a good catch by breaking up with you. It doesn’t change the fact that I wanted to be with you at first because you had nice things and a nice house and you could take me places and do things to me that no one my own age could. It doesn’t change that I relied on you back then because I was so fucking scared of making choices, and now I’m on the cusp of big changes again and what do I do? Run back here for you to make it all better.
I can’t do it. I can’t arrange my life around you because it’s easier and safer than figuring out what I actually want. I can’t let you distract me from that.”
“Jesus, Kate.” He swallowed. “I never—”
“I know. I know you never meant for me to feel any of those things. But I did. And you didn’t notice because you are so wrapped up in keeping your own safe little world from crumbling that you ran right back to me too the second things got hard. It’s not good for either of us.”
Ian swallowed. “Kate, I missed you the whole time. I would have wanted to come back to you even if everything else was perfect.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t change the fact that all we do is enable each other’s worst habits. The thing I realized last night is that I don’t know how to exchange service for feeling like I deserve love. I don’t know how to make a relationship that isn’t a transaction I end up resenting because eventually the validation runs dry. You stopped caring when I got things right.”
Ian started to speak but she held up a hand.
“And I know I fucked that up by stacking the rules against myself.”
“We can change the rules, Kate.” He wanted to pull her into his lap, to feel the solid weight of her, to make this okay. “It’s been different this time.”
“But for how long? How long until I need something and let it slide because I don’t want you to stop loving me?”
“You don’t trust me to love you?”
“I don’t trust myself to believe it.” She inhaled deeply and swallowed. “So I can’t do this. I know I said I was in, that I was here, but I…I just can’t. And I’m so sorry.” Tears started tracking down her cheeks. “But I need to go.”
He didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t beg her to stay. Couldn’t promise her he’d be different, that he would notice, because sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he did get so far into his head that he barely remembered to eat. But fuck, he was willing to try.
