by Sionna Fox
But Kate had gotten good at living out of a suitcase in the last year. She’d stripped herself of most of her possessions, carrying only what she needed. She was in a space of her own for the first time, responsible only for herself. She’d never lived alone. She’d gone from roommates in dorms and apartments, to living with Ian, and she’d shared sublets and hotel rooms with other fellows last year. It was nerve-wracking and freeing, living by herself, and some nights she longed to be told what to do. For life to be that simple. And god, she missed Ian’s spacious kitchen.
But it was good, being alone. The place wasn’t hers—she would never have chosen that particular shade of fuchsia for the walls—but it would do while she wrote her dissertation and got herself sorted. She’d probably have to find roommates again once the sublet was up, but who knew if she would even stay in Boston once she’d finished her program.
She stripped out of her clothes and left them scattered on the floor. She still felt a tiny, rebellious thrill every time she consciously broke one of Ian’s rules. Clothes were to be put away, not left in heaps on the floor. She’d never played the brat with him—she couldn’t begin to imagine him tolerating it. She would probably still be stuck in a corner holding pennies to the wall by her fingertips had she ever dared. Ian didn’t do “fun-ishment.” If she was being punished, it was for real, and usually involved denial and boredom. Often both.
But now, she could be whatever kind of submissive she wanted to be, if she still wanted to be one at all. She’d barely dipped her toes in the deep and murky waters before she committed herself to Ian. He’d been so careful and wary at first, actively trying to get her to experiment with other people, but she’d only wanted him. She should have listened.
She flopped onto the twin bed-couch and stared at the peeling paint on the ceiling, looking for patterns or pictures there. She’d done it since she was a kid, looking for faces and shapes in the swirling texture of the paint above her bed. She wondered what Ian was doing. Probably sitting in the battered chair in his office, drinking that Scotch that made him smell like lighter fluid even after he’d brushed his teeth.
She had known she was going to run into him at some point. Should definitely have been prepared to see him there tonight, at a celebration for their mutual friends, where all of their other mutual friends would be. They hadn’t split the group like assets in a divorce. Even if they had, he would have won, being the person who wasn’t leaving town for a year. She was the one who abruptly ended things and took off; it would be fair if they all took his side.
She wished that seeing him didn’t bother her so much. She’d had a year to get over it. She’d done the cliché bad breakup things: moved across the country, cut her hair, the only things she was missing were drinking too much and crying to her girlfriends. Because she had left them all behind, and she wasn’t going to bad-mouth Ian to them anyway.
He hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d simply outgrown him. Kate couldn’t point to the day or week or month when it hit her that she wasn’t in love with him. When they’d met, she’d been so sure he was what she wanted. Strong boundaries, the quick, clean catharsis of punishment, someone steady and stable she could trust with the decisions that overwhelmed her. She’d needed an adult, because she didn’t know how to be one yet.
She’d worshiped him, then slowly, she didn’t. The boundaries that made her feel safe and secure, that had held them together, started to chafe. And Ian was who he was. He was steady and serious, and she would never ask him to change for her sake, just as she couldn’t for his.
So when her advisor started talking about research opportunities and fellowships, Kate had started applying to things that would take her away from him. She’d needed to see what life was like on her own, with all of the decisions in her hands. He would never have told her no, that she couldn’t go, but she’d kept the applications secret nevertheless. That he’d suspected nothing, had reacted with absolute shock when she told him she was leaving, only confirmed how checked out he’d been and how right she was to leave.
The opportunity to work with this particular pilot program was one she wouldn’t pass up, and a chance to neatly sever ties, instead of letting it become a long, drawn-out unraveling between them. It was better this way.
But seeing him and knowing that she could still read his mood at fifty paces, that she could still worry about what was going on with him that he was rumpled and haggard walking into an engagement party for two of their closest friends, and worse, that she felt compelled to do something about it—it shouldn’t have hurt like hell, but it did.
She didn’t want to worry about him. She’d left him so she didn’t have to worry about anyone but herself and her dissertation. The massive amount of work waited for her, whispering that she needed to wake up at the ass-crack of dawn to get to it before the semester started and she added teaching for the first time in years to the pile.
Her stipend had gone a lot further when she didn’t have to pay Boston’s exorbitant rent, that was for damn sure. She turned into the pillow and groaned. Once the initial shock was out of her system, she would be fine. She had to be.
* * *
The alarm went off too soon. But getting her ass out of bed early meant getting to the coffee shop that was quickly becoming her second home with plenty of time to score a seat near an outlet. Yes, she was one of those assholes. But she tipped well, made friends with the staff, and actually bought something every so often, so she wasn’t a total jerk.
She’d tried working in the library, but the quiet-but-not got to her. Turning pages, sighs from the next carrel, clicking laptop keys, all the different sounds of footsteps—hard, soft, squeaky rubber, or tapping heels—crept into her brain and made her lose her place. Her apartment was quiet enough, but hunching over the coffee table where she could spread out books and journals made her back ache. And being in public kept her workday from devolving into binge-watching TV.
Her days were developing a rhythm, and she desperately needed it if she was going to stay on track to complete her dissertation. Drag herself out of bed, dress in dark jeans—the better to hide ink, highlighter, and coffee stains—and a thick sweater, bundle into coat, hat, and scarf, heave her backpack over her shoulder, and make the blessedly short walk to her neighborhood coffee shop.
From there, she could order her first coffee, set up, and people-watch while she sipped. The commuters would have mostly come and gone by the time she arrived. After eight, there would be a troop of mothers and poorly supervised toddlers coming from the school run for their older siblings. By the time the rest of the student crowd showed up to jockey for tables and outlets, Kate would be working with her headphones in.
Once the late morning shift-change happened, she would buy another coffee, maybe a pastry, and leave a tip for the new staff. At lunchtime, she would pack up and leave, having successfully gotten a few hours of work in before she had to eat something more substantial and probably head to the library, where she would spend the afternoon piping “café sounds” into her ears to keep the not-noise from driving her to distraction.
Every day the same. She was learning the crew of regulars who trooped through like clockwork. Phil for a small, black coffee three times over the course of the morning while he aggressively tapped away at his laptop. Mitzi’s French vanilla café au lait—skim milk—with very little foam and a drizzle of chocolate syrup. Charlie’s whole milk cappuccino, dry, so there was plenty of extra foam for the loopy golden retrievers hanging out of the windows of his panel truck. And the adorable bearded guy who came in every weekday morning for a large drip coffee, always to go.
He was the kind of guy she should have a crush on, in his navy duffel coat that he wore over neat blazers and plaid shirts, and occasionally a fucking bow tie. He was cute, in a preppy bear cub sort of way. And probably her age. He looked like he should have a rescue dog and liked to go hiking on the weekends. The total and complete opposite of the man she’d made a life with for five ye
ars. And so probably deeply not compatible with her.
Yet for some reason best left deep in her subconscious, she smiled at him every time he passed her table. And he smiled and nodded back. His eyes crinkled with each warm grin. He was a walking golden retriever.
This is what she should want. Normal, nice guys. The kind of guys her mother would call a catch and shamelessly flirt with if she ever brought them home. Not like Ian, whom her mom had wrinkled her nose at and called a weirdo but at least he had a good job. Kate got up and brought her mug to the bar, idling beside him for no good reason. She’d already doctored her coffee, but there she was, blocking his way to the creamer and fiddling with the sugar packets.
“Could you pass the cream?” His voice was warm, friendly. Like his face.
“Oh, sorry. Sure.” She handed him the carafe. This shouldn’t be so hard. She could flirt. She should flirt. How did a person flirt with vanilla people? She couldn’t hand him the cream and say: Hey, I think you’re cute, let’s go down a checklist to see if we’re sexually compatible.
“What are you working on?”
“Huh?”
“I see you here every morning with your laptop and a giant pile of papers. What are you working on?”
Right. Small talk. “Oh. Dissertation. I’m a doctoral candidate in public health working on maternal and neonatal outcomes in at-risk populations.”
“At risk of what?”
“Being treated like shit by the healthcare system because they come from poor and marginalized communities, then dying in childbirth.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry.” Don’t rage at the vanilla wafer. He’s being nice. “What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher. US History. And I’m about to be late, but maybe we can do this again tomorrow?”
Her cheeks flushed. “Make two minutes of bad small talk while you fix your coffee? Sure. I’m Kate, by the way.”
“Owen.” He lifted his cup. “See you tomorrow, then, Kate.”
Okay. She could do this. She could have a weird not-date with a fellow customer over the creamer bar tomorrow. That was a thing she could do. Good to know.
She was in the middle of patting herself on the back for flirting with Owen the human golden retriever—he was a teacher, for god’s sake—when the last person on earth she wanted to see came striding in on his long legs. She had a few guesses how he found out where she was spending her days, but most likely only needed one. Fucking Evie.
He did not look pleased, which made her wonder how much of that conversation he’d seen. Not that it mattered. They weren’t together. He had no say in how, where, or with whom she spent her time or who she flirted with.
“What are you doing here?” Her tongue tied trying to say his name, but she at least stopped herself from calling him Sir.
“What was that about?” He tipped his head toward the door.
“None of your business, Ian.”
He had the decency to look a little abashed when she used his proper name. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Again. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“How did you even know I was here?”
He looked around. “I wasn’t sure you would answer if I called. Evie told me you’ve been hanging out here.”
Got it in one. Their friends were a bunch of gossipy old biddies, and Evie was the worst of them, collecting information and doling it out strategically. “I don’t know what there is to talk about, but we’re not doing it here. I have work to do.”
He held up both hands. He’d never been one to make any gesture of surrender. “I know. Can we meet later?”
She sighed and scrunched her eyes shut, clutching her half-full and now overly sweet mug of coffee. She did not want to do this today. Or ever. Rehashing their relationship to make Ian feel better about how it ended was not high on her list of priorities. “I don’t know. Not today.”
He looked like a small child who’d had a favorite toy taken away. It had never occurred to him that she would say no. “Right, I’ll go, then.”
“Thank you.”
He walked out, and she sagged back into her seat. She drank the rest of her coffee, closed her laptop, and left, the day shot. If she got it over with and talked to him, maybe he would let it go and they could both move on.
Three
Ian walked out of the warmth of the café into the freezing cold, stuffing his hands in his pockets and turning up his coat against the wind that tunneled down the narrow streets. He’d forgotten his gloves and scarf again in his rush to get to Kate, to see her again after Evie ever-so-casually dropped that she’d heard Kate had been hanging out at this particular café since she’d returned to the city after Christmas.
She was a charming puppet master, their Evie. She’d known that of course he’d go running off to find Kate and…what? Patch things up? Get an explanation? Watch her flirt with some bearded hipster who was probably a more appropriate choice for her anyway? For all he knew, Evie’s mission had been for him to see once and for all that it was over. Over for Kate, anyway. He had yet to find a way to make it over for himself. Especially now that she was in town again. Some ridiculous animal part of him still signaled his brain to light up when she was around. Like a dog who doesn’t know its owner has left it at the shelter, who thinks his kennel is temporary, that they’re coming back. And now the pit of his stomach burned, seeing her with a new pet. God, he was pathetic. If his father could only see him now, pining at windows like a fool.
Jealousy and kink often made for impossible bedfellows—between a large contingent of the community’s natural inclinations to polyamory and the sheer impracticality of every top knowing how to wield every tool or play out every scene—rare were the two whose kinks and experience aligned so perfectly that they never so much as got a tutorial from someone else. And yet, hot, stinging jealousy had risen like bile in his throat watching Kate tilt her hips and blush at someone else.
Her round cheeks, flushed pink and tinged with freckles, were set off by her short-cropped hair. Even in dark skinny jeans and a lumpy sweater, she was the loveliest creature he’d ever seen. Sense-memory stopped him in his tracks, his fingers clutching around the mass of silky hair at her nape, guiding her mouth. His stomach churned—he’d never run his fingers through her thick mane again, never pull or tug or direct. But her short hair would afford easy access to the sensitive column of her neck, the place behind her ears that made her squeal and squirm. And those places were someone else’s to discover.
He didn’t know what he was expecting. Closure, perhaps. A chance to apologize for the damage he’d done. That desperate ache to atone had carried his feet to the shop. Where he’d invaded her space, interrupted her morning, and generally been a selfish ass all over again. He was too old to be this brokenhearted fool chasing girls into coffee shops to beg forgiveness.
And he’d made himself late for work. Again.
He strode into the building like there was a perfectly good reason for him to be forty minutes late and slipped into his office, promptly closing the door before dropping his head into his hands and tugging his hair. He could always blame it on some sort of delay with the T. Hell, a good chunk of the green line had gone out the other day mid-rush hour due to a bad bit of insulation, so it was entirely plausible at this point. When in Boston, always blame traffic, the MBTA, or both.
Except even that excuse was wearing thin for Ian’s underperformance at work. He’d never had issues. He’d always been committed, not quite first in and last to leave, but enough to have earned an office with a door and the salary and the performance bonuses that went with it. But he’d slipped, and they knew it. He was forgetful, preoccupied, late to a few too many team meetings. His last performance review had consisted largely of his sitting back in his chair cringing at the list of his failures. He hadn’t cost them clients—yet. But it was clear they were afraid he would if this kept up.
And now, Kat
e was back when he was finally starting to be functional again. His brain couldn’t resist thinking about her, poking at her like a sore spot in his mouth or a missing tooth. He knew how small her stipend was. He also knew she’d been able to save most of it while they were together because he’d refused her repeated offers to contribute to the mortgage and household expenses. He didn’t need her money.
But, fuck, maybe she’d needed to give it. He knew she’d promised herself she would never end up dependent on a relationship for financial solvency. He knew what her mother was like, the jabs and the guilt she spread thick in every phone call home. He’d applauded Kate’s determination, even, and told her that was exactly why she should save as much as she could, so if she ever needed to leave, she had a fuck-off fund.
Which she had. And she’d used. Goddammit.
The knock was the barest of courtesies before his boss blew through the door. Ian straightened his tie as he stood. Jeff glanced at his computer monitor, still blank because he hadn’t even booted the damn thing up for the day. Shit. Fuck. Dammit.
Jeff closed the door. This couldn’t be good. “Ian. Listen, you’ve been a tremendous asset to this company for over ten years…”
Ian’s ears rang and spots appeared in his peripheral vision. He’d been there since shortly after he completed his MS, in fact. His first and only real job, and oh, Jesus, fuck, they were firing him.
“I thought we were over this. What the hell is going on with you?”
It took him longer than it should have to recover from the version of the conversation that had already happened in his head, to shake off the tunnel vision and the beginnings of panic. “Hang on, you’re not firing me?”
“Not yet. But you missed a call this morning—Alice picked up the slack for you just fine, by the way—and I don’t believe it’s because of traffic. You look like hell.”