Beginner's Luck

by Kate Clayborn

  It’s intolerable.

  I don’t even make eye contact with Marti as I leave Dr. Singh’s office. I’m already pulling my phone out of my pocket, SOSing to the only two people I want to see right now.

  * * * *

  The inside of Zoe’s condo is something straight out of Architectural Digest. It’s all clean lines and white furniture and fancy glassware that makes you feel at first like you should absolutely not touch anything. But what’s funny is that once you know Zoe, you know that she keeps it this way not so you feel you can’t touch anything, but so you don’t feel you have to. It’s a place totally free of distraction, of little messes or the chaos of life, and it’s the perfect place for me to be right now, crying it out on a stool at her kitchen island, a mug (white, of course) of tea in front of me, steaming up my glasses.

  It’d taken me a while to get the whole thing out to Zoe and Greer. At first, I’d been shuffled into the condo and placed in my current seat, Zoe getting to work on the tea and Greer scooting her stool right next to mine, tossing an arm around me so I could rest my head on her shoulder. After a few minutes of soaking in their presence, letting that high-strung initial response loosen, I’d finally managed to tell them about my meeting with Dr. Singh, about how Ben had tried to trade me for money. I’d also managed—and this had been the worst, sobby, choked-voice part of the whole thing—to tell them about what he’d said to me Saturday night, while we’d danced at his mother’s party.

  At first, it’s all the stuff I’ve come to expect from my friends—we do a sort of shared three-minute shock and awe (how could he do this), then we do some collective indignation over it (what a jerk), then we do the thing where I cry and they coo and fuss over me and then make promises to defend my honor (I wish I could punch him right in the dick). It’s pretty much a script we’ve mastered over our years of friendship, anytime we’ve been wronged at work or a social gathering, or anytime one of us has gone through a breakup. But this time, it feels like a script. We’re all going through the motions, because I think we all know there’s something bigger happening here, that this is the most upset they’ve ever seen me.

  And maybe this is why we cycle through it a bit more quickly than usual, why we’re definitely approaching the stage where we’re supposed to get rational, to get to the part where one of them starts giving out the advice that I’ve come here for anyway.

  “Okay, but…” Zoe says cautiously, and I already know I’m not going to like what I’m going to hear. “Have you called him?”

  “No,” I say, taking off my glasses to wipe them on my shirt. I appreciate, for a few seconds, that the world goes blurry around me.

  “Maybe you should call him. Let him explain.”

  “Let him explain that he basically used me? That he’s been sleeping with me and telling me he’s not involved with my recruitment anymore? While he’s—I don’t know what. Gathering information he can use against me?”

  “Kit,” Greer says. “It doesn’t seem that way.”

  “How does it seem?” I ask, putting my glasses back on, looking back and forth between them. “Explain how I should take this a different way.”

  “No,” Greer says, dropping her eyes. “You’re right. It does seem lousy. I just…it’s terrible. You seem to like him so much.”

  I love him, I think, and just as quickly, I think, thank God I didn’t say it back.

  “I’m not defending him, Kit,” says Zoe. “But it’s worth talking to him. Corporate stuff—it’s complicated, fast-moving. This might not be him. Or if it is him, it might’ve gone a different way than he intended.”

  I shake my head, unwilling or unable to see how to reinterpret this. I feel so upended. That’s the best way I can describe it. I feel like I’m going to wake up tomorrow and everything, once again, will be different. Everything will be new and I’ll have to relearn things, meet new people, steel myself all over again. It doesn’t matter if that’s not what’s really happening—it’s how I feel.

  My phone rings from my purse, and I ignore it, my doing so another implicit answer to Zoe’s suggestion. I can sense them looking at each other as it rings, waiting, but I concentrate on sipping my tea. It would be good to go back to the collective indignation stage—that part at least seemed to stem the surge of tears I keep feeling welling up in my throat, behind my eyes. It’s not that I’m never going to speak to Ben again. Obviously, at some point, I’m going to have to be an adult and find out what the fuck happened between him telling me he loved me and him selling me out to his fucking horrible company. But I don’t have to make it easy on him, either. I don’t have to talk to him now, when I’m weepy and freshly devastated.

  The phone goes quiet, but only for the barest of seconds before it starts ringing again, and it’s twice more that way before Greer finally slides off her stool and goes over to my purse, pulling it out to silence it. But she must look down at the screen before she does, because she says quietly, “Oh. It’s your brother.”

  I haven’t talked to Alex since he left a few weeks back, aside from a few brief emails, him letting me know when he got back to the States, nothing about our fight. I’d wanted to give him time, space—to be on his own, the way he’d said he’d wanted. And I’d been wrapped up in Ben too, the happiness and excitement I’d felt about being with him dulling what I know, at any other time, would be a lot of pain and grief over what Alex had said during our argument. But Alex calling me this many times in a row, it sends a current of fear through my already overloaded system, and I’m off my chair headed to take the phone from where Greer holds it out to me.

  I don’t even get out a hello before Alex says, “Kit. I’ve got bad news.”

  Barely three hours later, I’m on a plane.

  Chapter 18

  Ben

  I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing, and it takes me a minute to register where I am—on Dad’s couch, the remote on my stomach. The trip out and back to North Carolina was a slog, even though I’d made some good purchases of building materials—high quality, high resale value, and good for this time of year. But I’d spent extra time sorting transit for it all, and everything had been made worse by the flat tire I got out on one of the backroads I’d used to get to the highway more quickly. I’d finally come in around nine, Dad watching a ballgame on TV, and muttered about needing a few minutes to sit down, but I guess that had turned into a full night of sleep. I jerk to a sitting position and look around, panicked. Did Dad get ready for bed on his own? Did I miss Kit’s call?

  “Kit?” I say as I pick up, standing to check Dad’s room.

  “It’s Jasper.” I cross the living room again, peek into the kitchen. Dad’s there, at the kitchen table, sipping a mug of coffee, which he tips to me in greeting, and I breathe out a sigh of relief. He must’ve got himself ready for bed, got up on his own, made his own coffee—it’s huge progress, and I should feel happy, but something in me, again, feels a bit bereft. “You there?”

  “Yeah,” I say, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Sorry. I overslept.”

  “You know anything about what’s holding up Averin’s decision?”

  “What?” I say, confused. My brain still feels sludgy, sleep-deprived, unprepared for Jasper’s work-ready attitude. “What decision?”

  “Singh called me this morning to tell me he’ll need a couple weeks before he can give me an answer.”

  Something goes cold inside me. But it’s been a rough couple of days. I must be missing something. “Singh?” I repeat. “Jasper. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jesus, I thought you were involved with this woman. She hasn’t told you?” It’s that cold feeling again—I say nothing, waiting for him to go on. “I went to Singh, Averin’s boss. We offered project funding for three years, some equipment too.”

  I have to lean against the doorjamb to keep my legs holding me up.

 
“Told him we wanted her to come work for us, that she could stay involved in the research he’d do for Beaumont, regular travel back, all that. This guy, he needs the money. He’s running last in his department for external grants. It’s a good offer.”

  “Jasper,” I say slowly, my brain trying to catch up. “You tried to get Singh to trade Kit?”

  “Yeah.”

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kit told me herself—she’d do anything for Dr. Singh. If she feels responsible for him missing out on that kind of funding—it’d be terrible for her. I owe him everything, she’d told me. “Jesus Christ. I can’t believe you—”

  “This guy, he’s clueless. Kept asking about what we’d be able to do for her, salary-wise, like he’s real worried about her? He didn’t even know she’d won the lottery.”

  “What?” I shout this through the phone. “How the fuck do you know about that?” My heart is pounding. This conversation with Singh—if he’s gone to Kit with this, she must be devastated.

  She must be done with me.

  “It’s public record, bud. State law where you are, she had to disclose her identity to claim. There wasn’t much news about it, because the jackpot wasn’t all that big, but I found it.”

  “Jasper, what the fuck. How could you do that?”

  “Do what? I don’t know if he’ll take it, but he at least listened—I thought I might have him. But then he called me late yesterday and told me something had happened, that Kit would need some more time. He ought to take it—he’s not going to get the kind of funding we’re offering anywhere else, but he seems reluctant to lose her, so I guess you two have that in common, though—”

  I cut him off before he can go anywhere else with that sentence. “I need to go.”

  “Wait—”

  “No.” I’m already in my bedroom, grabbing clothes out of a drawer. “You have no idea the shit you’ve buried me in, Jasper.”

  “Tucker, come on. This was your idea.”

  “This was my idea over a fucking month ago. I told you I was involved with her. I told you I wasn’t recruiting her anymore.”

  “Well, I told you. You’re not the only one who can recruit.”

  “You had me on the phone for two hours yesterday. You didn’t say a goddamn word. Tell me that’s not fucking shady, man. Tell me.” I shout this, slamming my fist against my dresser.

  His pause is too long, and right now, I don’t give a shit what he has to say anyway so I hang up, immediately call Kit’s cell—voicemail. It’s the same at her office, and when I call the front office, the secretary tells me Kit’s not in. I quickly brush my teeth and pull on fresh clothes, then go out to the kitchen. “Dad,” I say, “Can you—?” I don’t even know where to start. The salvage yard is supposed to open in two hours. I can’t remember if River’s coming today. I don’t know if Sharon is working. Does Dad have PT today, or a doctor’s appointment? Everything I’ve been keeping straight in my head over the last weeks—it’s all gone to shit. I can only think of getting to her.

  “I’m fine,” Dad says, his brow furrowed in concern. “I’ll call Sharon. You all right?”

  “No,” I say. “I have to go, but I’ll call.” I pat his shoulder before leaving the house, driving to Kit’s as fast as I can. The whole time, all I can think about is everything that has been violated for Kit—her job, which she loves, the loyalty she has to Dr. Singh, the risk of having to leave this place, the privacy she guarded about her win.

  I barely remember to shut off the truck when I pull up to her house.

  The door opens before I’m even all the way up the steps.

  “Zoe,” I breathe, and fuck, I wish it were Greer. Zoe looks as if she wants to slit me from neck to nuts. “I have to talk to her.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet you do.”

  “Is she here? Her phone is off, and there’s no answer at work. This was not me who did this, Zoe. This was not me.”

  “Who was it?”

  “It was my partner, he—”

  “How did he know to go to her boss? How did he know that would work on her?” And yeah—it’s exactly what Jasper said. It’s because I fucking told him, when I’d still been keeping him in the loop about what I’d learned about Kit, when I’d still been lying to myself about why I wanted to be around her all the time, why I wanted to know so much about her. I have never hated myself more, and I’ve almost gone to prison, so that’s saying something. “You told her you wanted to be with her, that you loved her. Do you realize what she thinks?”

  “It wasn’t about the job, Zoe. That was never about the job. I swear to you. I need to see her. I’ll do anything for her.”

  “You tried to just push her. Right into the fucking fast lane,” Zoe says, and I have no idea what that even means, but at least she hasn’t slammed the door in my face yet. It’s Zoe and Greer who Kit wanted me to go to, before she’d even really listen to me about Beaumont, and somehow I know it’ll be Zoe and Greer who I’ll have to get through if I ever want to see her again.

  “Please,” I say, and it’s almost a whisper, how it comes out.

  She sends a long, assessing look down at me. I’m grateful to be on these steps below her. I’ll get on my knees if she wants me to, but there’s something in her expression, some whisper of familiarity or sympathy that makes me think Zoe’s been where I am. She’s had to beg for forgiveness too. “She had to leave town. Her dad—he’s not well.”

  My mind empties of everything about Beaumont, about what I have to explain to Kit. “What happened?”

  “Her brother called yesterday afternoon. Kit’s dad maybe had a stroke. They don’t know much yet. She flew out to Ohio last night.”

  “Zoe, Jesus. Do you know where she is? What hospital?”

  “I’m not telling you that. I’ve told you enough.”

  It doesn’t matter. I’ve listened to everything Kit has ever said to me. I know roundabout where her dad lives these days, or at least where she sends his money. I’ll find the hospital closest. I’ll go to every goddamn hospital in that state if I have to. I can’t imagine her alone right now. I can’t imagine not being with her.

  * * * *

  In my job as a recruiter, I’m on the road for probably 150 days out of the year, and while that’s pretty exciting at first, mostly, after a while, it sucks—it’s all mediocre food and nondescript hotel rooms and a regular feeling of jet-lagged fatigue. But it’s also massive frequent flyer miles, and I use God knows how many to get myself on a flight to Ohio.

  I don’t bring extra clothes, a toothbrush, anything. I call my dad from the airport, where I drive immediately after leaving Kit’s, asking if he’s okay for at least the rest of the day and tonight. I call Sharon too, to make sure I haven’t dropped the ball on his care in any way, and thankfully neither of them asks much of anything, other than whether I’m all right.

  I’m not all right. I’m panicked. I’m not a nervous flyer, ever, but on both of those shitty regional flights I’m a sweaty first-timer, clutching my armrests and keeping my jaw clenched tight. I keep thinking, what if I don’t get to see her? By the time I’ve touched down, I’m sweaty, tense all over, and I take a few minutes in the airport bathroom to rinse my face, calm down so I can think long enough to make the calls I need to make.

  I luck out, at least, in finding the regional medical center where Kit’s father has been admitted, paying an unholy amount of money to a cab driver to make the hour drive there. And I lie like a fucking dog to the receptionist in the lobby, saying I’m family, and it’s wrong, but I don’t care.

  All I care about is seeing Kit.

  When I do see her, she’s at the end of a long hospital corridor, her small form huddled in the hard plastic chairs that are always an extra cruelty at hospitals. I spent days in an almost identical one, next to my dad. Sitting across from her is a small, plump woman with bottle-blond hair, her ha
nds clasped as if in prayer. And beside her is a tall, lean man with jet black hair and a beard. He sees me first and stands as I approach. This is Kit’s brother—despite his height and his light-colored eyes to Kit’s almost black ones, there’s a similarity to their faces, to the arrangement of their features.

  Except on this dude, those features look mean as hell.

  “No,” he says, walking toward me, putting out a hand. “No.”

  “I’m Ben Tucker,” I say needlessly, because from the look on his face I know already that he’s heard everything he thinks he needs to know about me. “I came to be with Kit.”

  “I’m her brother. And I don’t give a shit what you came for.”

  “Alex,” Kit says from her chair, and then she unfolds herself, standing wearily. Oh, fuck, she looks so tired. Her cheeks seem gaunt, and the pale skin under her eyes, nearly transparent even when she’s well, is purpled with fatigue. I level a look at this Alex person, try to fill it with as much accusation and judgment as I can manage. Why isn’t he feeding her, making sure she sleeps?

  As if you have any right, I think to myself.

  Kit stands beside her brother, setting a quelling hand on his forearm, which I now notice leads down to a clenched fist that he has rested at his side. I’m not immune to such a show of aggression. Part of me wants to take out all my anger, all my frustration, on this guy, this guy who’s acting like he’s Kit’s protector and I’m the big bad wolf come to blow her house down. I feel it close to the surface, that urge, that hair-trigger intensity that was under my skin almost every day of my teen years. But I won’t do that to Kit. I won’t make this worse for her.