Truth was, she wasn’t mad at all.
Confused. Scared. Embarrassed.
Those were the cycling emotions.
He knew more about her and her heart than she had realized. There was a certain amount of vulnerability she hadn’t been ready to share with him yet, but he’d already had all her weak spots in the palm of his hand.
All he would’ve had to do was clench his fist and crush her.
It had been a terrifying realization.
Especially the part where her heart cried out that it was safe. That being crushed in the palm of his hand would be a glorious and noble way to die.
Which was why she’d had to leave. Her heart was often a super-idiot which needed more protection than a kitten caught in a blue wildebeest stampede.
Spencer reached over and laced her fingers together with Tessa’s. The connection settled her racing thoughts.
“Did you flee?” Spencer asked.
“Like I was on fire.”
Spencer’s one glass turned into two and Tessa finished the bottle. They listened to the album several times through and each time the lyrics made more sense than the time before.
He’d been trying to tell her.
Since that first day when he’d chased her out of yoga class, he’d been trying to find the words to say but just hadn’t yet.
“Are you going to go back?” Spencer asked as they lay on the living room floor in the dark.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
***
TESSA
She didn’t even bother with the front door. She walked around the side of the house and headed for the beach.
Her lips twisted to one side as she chewed on the inside of her cheek, her thoughts mostly blank, her heart beating like she was walking into a warzone.
She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him yet. She hadn’t planned anything out.
When his silhouette came into view, she slowed her pace. Her chest constricted, or at least seemed to, and emotion crawled up the back of her throat to her eyes.
Kip’s lean frame flowed smoothly into the next asana and she almost smiled.
How she knew he’d be on the beach reaching for sunlight that early in the morning was more instinct than actual knowledge.
She took a seat on the blanket nearby and waited patiently.
It didn’t take long for Kip to notice her presence.
His motion paused as his green eyes flicked over her. The light breeze ruffled his thick dark hair and Tessa’s insides ached.
She wanted to run her fingers through that mess and find the tangles, untie them, and feel them come apart in her hands.
The notion should have startled her. But it didn’t.
It felt right.
Kip crossed the small patch of beach between them and took a seat across from her.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he responded, a flicker of apprehension in his eyes.
“I need to tell you some things and I need you to let me get it all out.”
He nodded once.
She took a deep breath.
“That year,” she lifted her eyes to his. “The year we wrote to each other.” He nodded. “I wasn’t okay that year.”
It was hard to force the words out. To reveal such an intimate part of her soul so plainly. Spencer and Lo knew all about it because she told her girls things like that. But sharing it with someone else, anyone else, caused a lot of second-guessing and anxiety to resurface—old feelings connected to the original story.
“Growing up, I believed in true love. In my mind, my parents were soulmates and I couldn’t wait to find my prince charming. Their love was everything I hoped to achieve someday.”
She paused, because the feeling was still true, it was still there, beneath the layers of everything that came after that.
“As children we tend to gloss over the faults in our loved ones,” she said softly. “We see what we want to see, and it colors our hopes.”
Kip nodded in agreement as he took a deep breath.
She wondered if he understood because she just made sense, or if he knew in the same way she knew. She wanted to ask, but she needed to finish this first.
“It was the night before my sixteenth birthday and I woke up to the sound of glass shattering. I listened to two people who I’d believed were soulmates, shout at each other. My dad was having an affair. Another one, which was news to me. And my mom had been spending money faster than he was making it, so he’d cut off her credit cards.
“After that night it was like something had permanently broke between them. They fought constantly. Out in the open. At the dinner table. In public. It’s like they took turns trying to be the angriest. And the most justified in their anger.”
She shrugged sadly.
“I had been mostly forgotten. Except for when I could be used to hurt the other one.”
She stopped there, some of the cruel words still echoing in her mind. She waited a moment for it to pass. It didn’t hurt like it used to. But it didn’t feel good either. It was just something that had happened.
“That was the year I learned that love could be a lie.”
Kip’s posture straightened slightly and she watched recognition filter into his expression.
And it was that—that connection they had to something she hadn’t even been able to express to her best friend at the time, but had shared with a complete stranger—that had propelled her to come back today.
Because for her, that connection hadn’t been small, or random, or kind of cool. For her, it had changed everything.
She’d been on a crash course to the darkest side of the unknown when she’d found Kip.
When he’d found her.
“I know it’s so small compared to what others in this world go through,” she said quietly. “The older I get and the more I see, the more I recognize that my life wasn’t terrible. But that year broke me. Maybe that just means I’m not as strong as others, I don’t know.
“For me though, at the time, my world was crumbling. Every belief I had about love and the future was falling apart. And I had no one to talk to about it.”
She closed her eyes briefly and when she opened them, they found Kip.
“Until this anonymous person started talking to me through lines of poetry on a desk. Kip,” she sighed and shook her head once. “You have no idea—you couldn’t possibly understand what that did for me. I had been on the edge of some very dangerous thoughts and suddenly…someone was there to pull me back.”
She held his eyes for a beat.
Maybe trying to wing it hadn’t been the best idea this time. It was too big an explanation to skip through. And there was no way she was doing it right.
“Tessa—” Kip interrupted her thoughts and reached for her hand. Instead of grasping it though, he simply rested his hand palm up on her thigh.
It was a question, an invitation.
She slowly slid her hand into his and they laced their fingers together. Contact with him had become one of her favorite things and her heart responded.
“I should have told you,” he said. “I wanted to tell you it was me. I wasn’t sure at first, but once I figured it out… I was” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Scared.”
“Scared?” she repeated, not expecting him to say that.
“Yeah.” His voice and mouth both flat. “Really scared.”
“Of what? Me?” She tilted her head to the side to try to catch his eye.
His hand flexed and his beautiful eyes finally met hers.
“I was afraid I’d romanticized the entire connection. And I wasn’t sure if I was ready to find that out. Which is so selfish…” he trailed off on a mumble and looked toward the sea. “I should have just told you,” he said so soft she almost didn’t hear it.
“You saved me too, you know,” he said, turning his serious gaze back on her. “That year and the things we wrote, it got me through—” he took
a deep breath, but it was as if his entire soul was reliving a moment so exhausting it couldn’t be described.
“It got me through,” he said with a finality that indicated he wasn’t going to be sharing as much as she had.
Tears crawled up Tessa’s throat and she swallowed them back down.
Maybe he didn’t want to be as wordy as she did, but she needed to know a little more.
“It was important to you?” she asked, trying not to fly apart inside. “Our words? That we made together? They weren’t…just…”
Kip shook his head in answer to the question she didn’t have words for.
“But I was in a weird place back then too. And the poetry with you was different than the things I wrote on my own.” He huffed an almost-laugh. “It’s still different from the things I write.”
“You still write?” she asked, too much hope jumping into her words. “More than I saw last night?”
He rolled his lips inward and nodded once, holding her eyes.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he replied cautiously.
Her eyebrows arched at his tone. “You have more secrets,” she whispered.
He didn’t deny it and something about that made her heart jump back and forth in her chest. In a good way.
She squeezed his hand, thankful for his presence.
So much had shifted in her soul and life since he’d become a staple in it. While she wanted to know all of his secrets, she realized she’d be fine with uncovering them slowly, one at a time, for the rest of her life.
“I can wait,” she confessed, the words pulled from a place deep inside her she didn’t know she had. Tessa wasn’t a patient person. She pushed and pulled and wiggled until things broke free. Life was better lived out in the open.
“It’s complicated,” he said, eyes narrowed in concentration. Or pain. She couldn’t tell which.
He took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “I want you to know all of that. But I really like what we’ve been doing—getting to know who we are now. Like, a lot.”
He licked his lips and her limbs buzzed with the memory of his mouth on hers just last night.
“Me too.”
“But, I can’t help thinking a normal person wouldn’t be okay with any of this,” he pointed out with a humorless laugh.
Tessa frowned and leaned towards him slightly. “What about me made you think I was normal? I’m a train wreck of possibility and proud of that fact.”
Kip’s laugh burst forth and filled the space around them with joy. He squeezed her hand, his smile radiating pure adoration.
He hummed something in the back of his throat as he gazed at her and she couldn’t help but wonder what it translated to.
It was probably something important.
Maybe someday he’d tell her.
“I’d really like to keep this thing going,” he said. “But maybe keep things slow. Because, you know, reasons.”
She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
Because, reasons.
“I think that’s a really good idea.”
CHAPTER 13
I want to be complicated with you
to be tangled
in your incompleteness
I want you tousled
in my arms
-Kip
KIP
“But you didn’t tell her about your alias?”
Kip glanced up from the cream-colored carpet to meet the gaze of his therapist.
Dr. Harris waited calmly for Kip’s response. His brown hair had light touches of gray at the temples. He wore his spectacles more often, and the crow’s feet were a little more pronounced. Those were really the only indications that Kip had been seeing him for any length of time.
The office was the same. That carpet, clocks, lamps, arrangement of books, the coffee cup on the side table. Those never changed from week to week.
But the doctor slowly began to show his age.
It wasn’t something Kip liked to notice. The passing of time made him feel like he was running out of it.
Like he needed to hurry up and… live.
Dr. Harris had taken him on as a patient shortly after Kip had been diagnosed. It had been his oncologist’s suggestion and it had sounded like a good idea.
Now, Kip couldn’t imagine life without therapy.
Would he have made it through treatment the same?
He stopped that train of thought, recognizing it’s needless and unhealthy track. Instead focusing on the present question at hand.
Had he told Tessa about his alias?
“No.”
The sound of pencil on notebook paper roared in Kip’s ears. He knew there was probably an entire drawer in a cabinet somewhere filled with notes about all of Kip’s decisions or lack thereof.
“I’m going to tell her,” Kip said.
More scratching.
“I know I need to tell her.”
“Do you?” Dr. Harris tilted his head to one side. “Need, I mean?”
“Shouldn’t I?” Kip asked.
“Should is a cognitive distortion, remember?” Dr. Harris reminded patiently.
Right. Life wasn’t black and white. It came in stages of gray.
“I want to tell her,” Kip clarified.
More writing.
“So why haven’t you?”
***
Spencer answered the door and for a second Kip was a little surprised. He knew Spencer was supposed to be there, but she’d been so off and on the past couple of weeks, he’d half-expected her to cancel on them.
“Kip,” she greeted.
“Spencer,” he matched her tone.
The sound of a muffled struggle and something heavy falling against a closed door reached him. He frowned and peered past Spencer’s shoulder into the apartment.
“I’m okay!” Tessa’s voice sounded in the distance.
Spencer rolled her eyes. “I swear, that girl is going to cost us our security deposit. Thank God she has health insurance.” She stepped aside. “Come in, make yourself at home.”
Kip took a seat on the sofa just as Tessa entered the room. She wore a boxy white tee that hung off one shoulder and peach colored sweat pants. She’d left her hair loose and it hung in soft waves all the way to her waist. Her face had a glow from being freshly washed and her blue eyes lit up when they landed on him.
She paused when their eyes met and her smile widened.
He swallowed the skip in his heart.
Maybe everything about this was the worst idea he’d ever had.
Or maybe it was everything.
She stuck her tongue out at him and he reciprocated her goofiness by pointing finger guns at her, making her laugh.
She danced into the kitchen with Spencer and Kip took another breath.
Movie night with the girl of his dreams and her bestie. It hadn’t seemed this terrifying when he’d agreed to it. Why he was fighting the urge to bolt, he didn’t know.
Because he didn’t actually want to leave.
He wanted to be there.
But the impulse to get up and run around the block was nearly overpowering.
The reality of that moment had an intensity he hadn’t expected. Now that Tessa knew how their pasts were intertwined, it changed the dynamic when they were together. Or at least it did for him.
Having the girl in his poems combined with the woman of his now, created a powerful combination that he didn’t want to fight. If anything, he wanted to surrender to the chaos and perfection of it and let it wash him away.
But what he needed to do was take it slow. Learn this new combination by heart.
That way, when the tide came to take him, he knew he would be right where he was supposed to be.
The women returned with popcorn and beverages. Tessa plopped onto the sofa right beside Kip while Spencer took a seat on the floor off to the side.
Spencer scrolled through the selections on the TV, choosing For All the Boys I�
�ve Loved Before.
He took a handful of popcorn and sank into the couch, leaning towards the middle so he could be closer to Tessa.
“I know this selection is designed to test me in some way, but you should know I happen to love this movie.”
Both Spencer and Tessa turned round eyes towards him.
Kip shrugged while munching on the popcorn. “Peter Kavinsky’s a stud.”
Spencer’s head dropped back so she was looking at the ceiling. “You’re annoyingly perfect,” she grumbled.
Tessa elbowed him in the side as she snuggled closer and placed the bowl of popcorn in his lap. He draped one arm along the back of the sofa to better accommodate her.
“You might be okay with this,” Spencer said, twisting toward them to get her own handful of popcorn. “But we’ll see how long you last during Bachelor season.”
He narrowed one eye at Tessa. “You watch The Bachelor?”
She fluttered her eyelashes, unconcerned. “I think drama can be fun.”
His eyes roamed her face and hovered on her mouth for a second. “I want to kiss you.”
Her cheeks blossomed a hot pink and she stared straight ahead at the TV.
It was something they were doing to keep things from moving too fast too soon. Instead of kissing, they just told each other when they wanted to.
Honestly, it was the hottest thing Kip had ever been a part of. Somehow the declaration was just as intimate as the act.
As evidenced by Spencer gagging and throwing popcorn at him.
“No overt couple’s stuff!” she declared.
“Oh!” Tessa jumped up. “I got something for you today.”
She rushed out of the room and Kip sent a questioning look to Spencer.
“Don’t look at me like that, homeboy. Even if I knew her diabolical plans, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Kip grinned. Second chances were a thing of absolute beauty. Gratitude filled him up and pushed out the last of his apprehension.
Hanging out with Spencer and Tessa was something he thought he’d missed out on permanently. And yet, here they were.
Sushi and Sun Salutations Page 13
