The Revelation

by Lauren Rowe

  Kat wipes her eyes again. “I get it. Take as much time as you need. You’re not ready for a commitment of any kind. Good for me to know—better I learned it now than later.” She wipes her eyes and sets her jaw. “Obviously, I can’t take you home to meet my family tomorrow. I’m sure you understand.”

  “No, I don’t understand. I really wanna meet your family—I’m dying to meet your family.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s not possible—not when my heart is on the line like this.”

  A little voice inside my head is screaming at me to tell her my heart is on the line, too, but the words don’t come. I swallow hard, forcing down the lump in my throat again.

  There’s an awkward silence.

  Her eyes are glistening with obvious hurt.

  “Kat,” I finally say. “Maybe I should have mentioned it. I just... Please believe me—you’re my fantasy sprung to life.”

  Her jaw tightens. “Yeah, I’m the fantasy you don’t want ‘tainting’ your real life when you move back home.”

  Shit. That was a not-so-subtle reference to my application to The Club, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was. Because I don’t want this shit to taint my real life, I wrote in my application. Oh, God, this is a complete disaster.

  “Kat, no,” I say. “You’re not a Mickey Mouse Rollercoaster. Now you’re just being crazy. Please don’t do this. You’re spinning out of control.”

  “I’m not doing anything but agreeing with you. From here on out, we’re gonna do things Josh-Faraday-style. The future doesn’t exist. There are no expectations, no commitments. All we have is right now. YOLO.” Her lip is trembling. “If I wanna stay, I’ll stay. If I wanna go, I’ll go. There’ll be nothing to keep us tied to each other but however the wind blows on any given day. Just the way you like it.”

  Chapter 40

  Josh

  I flip on the TV in my hotel room and quickly turn it off again.

  What’s wrong with me? Am I really this fucked up?

  I told Emma the magic words, didn’t I? Which means I’m capable of saying them. But Emma gave me a lot more time than this—ten times more time than this.

  But what am I thinking? There’s no comparison between Kat and Emma. I never felt this white-hot passion with Emma—this electricity. How the hell does Kat expect me not to fuck up when I constantly feel like I’m gripping a goddamned electric fence around her?

  I get up and look out the window of my hotel room, a glass of Jack Daniels from the mini-bar in my hand. I’ve got a perfect view of the Space Needle from my room. It’s lit up like a Roman candle at night.

  I could have stayed at Jonas’ house tonight, of course, but I was too embarrassed not to be staying with Kat to ask him. Plus, Jonas looked so happy tonight, I didn’t have the heart to bring him down with my pathetic sob story. Jonas is the one who’s supposed to cry like a big fat baby to me—our relationship doesn’t work the other way around.

  “Let’s take a break for a couple days—see how we’re feeling then,” Kat said when I walked her to her door earlier tonight. “Maybe I’ll realize I’m overreacting; maybe not. I’m just too hurt to think straight right now. I think I need some time to regroup and figure out what I’m feeling.”

  I take a swig of my whiskey, shaking my head. How did things go so wrong? I was on top of the world when I picked Kat up tonight. I couldn’t wait to see her—the same way I always feel when I’m away from her. I couldn’t wait to take her to the fish market tomorrow morning to sing the “Fish Heads” song with her like a couple of dorks. And I was losing my mind about meeting her family tomorrow night, too. And, most of all, I was chomping at the bit to fuck her on her Hello Kitty sheets.

  And now it’s all gone. Poof. And here I am, yet again, where I always am, sitting in yet another hotel room, another drink in my hand, looking out at yet another lonely cityscape.

  I turn on the TV and flip the channels. Sports. Local news. I flip around and around and finally land on a music station. Lenny Kravitz is singing “Fly Away.” Hey, at least something’s going right for me tonight.

  I sit down in an armchair in the corner, lean back with my whiskey, and listen to the song. Yeah, Lenny, I agree: let’s fly away to anywhere but here—you and me, bro—to a place without stress and responsibility and worry. A place where I won’t have this thousand-pound weight on my chest at all times—a place where I won’t feel so fucking lonely all the time. And so fucking guilty. To a place where I’m not constantly being crushed by shit I can’t control and feelings I can’t express and memories that haunt me.

  I run my hands through my hair. I’ve never thought of this song as sad before, but, motherfucker, it’s making me wanna cry. Fuck this shit. I turn the channel to the next music station, only to run smack into “Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons. They’re in the midst of singing the chorus and it’s like they’ve written the words for me. Kat told me her heart is on the line tonight, didn’t she?—and I really, really fucked it up.

  Jesus.

  I take another huge guzzle of my whiskey and stare at the Space Needle.

  The torturous song ends, thank God—but there ain’t no rest for the wicked: the next song is Adele. She’s wailing her heart out in “Someone Like You.” And kicking me square in the balls.

  I take a gigantic gulp of my whiskey.

  No, Adele, I’ll never find another woman like Kat. Fuck you. She’s a fucking unicorn, Adele. One of a kind.

  I rub my forehead and look out the window with burning eyes.

  Goddammit, I fucked up—maybe even irreversibly. I didn’t realize it at the time, but tonight was a fork in the road for Kat and me and I took the wrong path. I should have told Kat about my move to Seattle in the first place, for sure, but even more than that, I should have handled things differently tonight when the shit hit the fan. I should have said all the right things—the things Kat was dying to hear.

  But I didn’t.

  I imagine myself saying, “My heart’s on the line, too, Kat.” Damn, I should have said that to her. Or, at the very least, “Mine, too.”

  But who am I kidding? Kat didn’t want to hear me say my heart’s on the line—she wanted more than that. She wanted the magic words—the whole nine yards. And I let her down.

  I drain the rest of my drink and pour myself another tall one.

  Jesus. Adele’s voice is cutting me like a thousand razors dragged across my heart.

  Kat wanted a promise of forever from me tonight. It was written all over her face. But what she doesn’t understand is there’s no such thing as forever—I mean, shit, there’s no such thing as next week. Anything could happen. Nothing’s guaranteed. A guys’ life can change in a single afternoon. I mean, hell, a guy might go out to a football game with his dad in the morning and come back later that day to find out no one will ever sing “You Are My Sunshine” to him again. Or call him Little Fishy. Or, worst of all, say the words, “I love you.”

  I take a long swig of my drink.

  “No, son, they don’t let kids go to the morgue,” my father said. “You’ll just have to say goodbye to her in your prayers, son.”

  “But I wanna say goodbye to her face and kiss her lips and tell her I love her. Not like in a prayer. For real.”

  “You can’t do it to her face—you have to do it in a prayer.”

  “But I wanna see her face when I say it. Not like talking on the phone.”

  “Fine. Shit. I dunno. Then say it to her photo, then.”

  “But I don’t have a photo of her.”

  “Well, Jesus Fucking Christ, Joshua William. Fine... Take this one. Your mother always loved this photo of the three of you. Say everything to her face in the photo and stop talking about it. I’ve got my own goodbyes to say, son—we’re all hurting, not just you. I’m sorry but I can’t talk about this anymore.”

  My eyes are stinging. I rub them and take another long gulp of my whiskey.

  Kat wants me to promise her fifty-two days? Shit. I can’t even promise her
tomorrow.

  Because a guy might go to school one morning and then return home that afternoon to find out his dad had shipped his brother off to a “treatment center” without even letting him say goodbye. And just to add insult to injury, the guy’s dad might even say his brother will “never come home again” because “that boy’s fucking crazy” and “we’re better off without him” and “you need to stop crying about him like a little fucking baby.”

  Motherfucker.

  I drain the last of my drink, refill my glass, and settle into my chair again.

  What’s the point in putting anything on the calendar at all when a guy could get called at a football game because his dad’s brains have unexpectedly exploded all over the carpet in the study? And not only that, his brother’s lying in a hospital bed, not talking or responding to anyone, after driving himself off a fucking bridge? When a guy could sit in his big, empty house in the dark, right after the cleaning crew’s finished scraping his dad’s brains off the ceiling, and fight tooth and nail to convince himself that marching into his father’s bathroom and taking every fucking pill in the medicine cabinet is a terrible idea rather than the best fucking idea he’s ever had?

  I swallow hard, keeping my emotions at bay, and take another long sip of my whiskey.

  Kat wanted to hear those three little words tonight—I know she did. But those are words I simply can’t deliver to her. Not yet, anyway. If only she’d give me more time. If only she’d understand. I said those loaded words to Emma and look what happened—the relief of saying them for the first time lulled me into saying other things, too—things I shouldn’t have said—and only a month after I’d first said the magic words, Emma was long gone. I love you, I told her. Please don’t leave me. Please.

  But she left.

  I bought myself a fucking Lamborghini after Emma left me—so what am I gonna buy myself this time when the girl doing the leaving is my fantasy sprung to life? A jumbo jet?

  Fuck me.

  I look down at the glass of whiskey in my hand and, suddenly, a rage wells up inside me like a fucking tsunami. Fuck overcoming. Fuck this shit.

  Fuck me.

  Without a conscious thought in my head, I hurl my glass against the wall, shattering it into a million tiny pieces and spraying glass and whiskey all over the white fluffy bed.

  My chest is heaving. My eyes are stinging. I rub them and force down my emotion. Fuck you, Adele, you fucking bitch. No, I won’t find someone like Kat. I’ll never find someone like her again as long as I fucking live. I’ll be alone and lonely and fucked up and worthless—just like I’ve always been. Just like I’ll always be.

  Forever.

  Chapter 41

  Kat

  Whitney’s sitting in her private jet, a scarf wrapped demurely around her head, looking out the airplane window at Kevin standing out on the tarmac, his arm in a sling.

  Why is Kevin’s arm in a sling? Because he took a bullet for Whitney. Because he loves her. And she loves him, too. But the horrible tragedy is that, despite their love, even though he took a freaking bullet for her, they simply can’t be together. And they both know it. Because they’re from different worlds, after all. And life isn’t always fair, motherfucker. But the injustice of it all only makes their love more intense—harder to give up.

  Whitney yells to the pilot to stop.

  The jet engines abruptly stop and the airplane-steps come down. Whitney runs out of the private plane to Kevin and throws her arms around him. They kiss passionately.

  And the most gigantic ugly cry ever released in the history of ugly cries leaves my mouth. “Josh!” I sob, throwing my head back onto the throw pillow on my couch. “Jooooossssshhhhhh!”

  Oh, I talked such a good game in front of the karaoke bar, didn’t I? “From here on out,” I said, “we’re gonna do things Josh-Faraday-style. The future doesn’t exist. There are no expectations, no commitments.”

  But I was full of shit.

  I love him. With all my heart and soul. I don’t want anyone but him.

  I know he’s ‘crazy about me.’ And that he’s done a million amazing things for me, just like Richard did for Julia in Pretty Woman. Yes, just like Julia, I’ve been showered with gifts and money and offers to help me in countless ways—and, I suppose, for most women, all of that would be more than enough. But I’m not most women. I’m just like Julia—I want it all. I want a commitment. I want true love. I want a knight in shining armor on a white horse. Goddammit, I want more than florebblaaaaah. And I simply can’t pretend I don’t.

  I clutch my stomach and put the pint of Ben & Jerry’s I’ve been scarfing down onto the coffee table. I’m so worked up about all this, I feel physically ill. Queasy. And my nipples are sore, too, by the way, which is really weird. I know Josh pinched my nipples pretty hard yesterday when he fucked me in the bathroom at The Pine Box, but did he really pinch them that hard? Jeez. They still hurt.

  Whitney’s glowing face appears onscreen in close-up, her teeth a spectacular shade of computer-paper-white, her mocha skin flawless.

  She begins singing The Song—the most famous song in the world.

  Oh, God, she’s an angel. My beautiful Whitney.

  And I’m a sobbing mess. Again.

  This song was written for Josh and me and no one else. I love him and he doesn’t love me back. He’s crazy about me, sure—addicted to me. But he can’t promise me tomorrow, he says. Which is a telltale sign he’s not in love with me. Because when you love someone, you’re willing to promise forever, even though you intellectually know you can’t make that promise. You don’t not promise forever to the one you love simply because we’re objectively mortal—you promise it, regardless, and hope forever turns out to be more than fifty-two days.

  No one knows what life might bring or what might happen two months from now, I get that, but the point is that when you’re in love, you’re stupid enough to think you can promise forever. You wanna believe it so badly, you’re willing to tell that little white lie. And if you’re not willing to tell it, well then, that’s the surest way to know you’re not really in love, after all.

  Whitney’s done singing.

  I grab the remote control, and just that sudden movement makes my stomach flip over violently, almost like I’m gonna barf. But that’s ridiculous. I hardly drank a drop tonight.

  Out of nowhere, my body dry heaves.

  What the hell? I cock my head to the side, totally perplexed. What the heck was that? My body heaves again—only this time, holy shit, fluid has gushed into my mouth.

  I sprint off the couch into the bathroom, my palm clamped over my mouth, and only semi-make it to the toilet before another, violent heave makes me vomit up every drop of fluid and Cherry Garcia in my stomach, not to mention the chicken wings and guacamole I ate at the bar.

  Oh, jeez. Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

  What the hell? I barely drank tonight.

  I barf again.

  Damn, I feel horrible.

  Were the chicken wings bad? I wonder if anyone else is feeling sick, too?

  I rinse out my mouth and clean the barf off the toilet seat and floor and shuffle back to my couch.

  Damn, my nipples are hurting.

  I can’t imagine bad chicken wings would make my nipples extra sensitive.

  I begin to nestle back onto the couch and grab the remote, but then all of a sudden, I sit up, tilting my head like a cockatiel. An alarming thought just skittered across my brain like a cockroach after the kitchen lights have been turned on.

  No.

  It couldn’t be that.

  I took a pregnancy test ten days ago and it was negative—and I haven’t missed any pills since then. Have I? I don’t think so. I didn’t take them at the exact same time every day like you’re supposed to, granted, but close enough.

  I sprint back into my bathroom. The box of pregnancy tests I bought the other day had three pee-sticks in it, and I’ve only used one.

  I pull out one of the un
used pee-sticks, sit on the toilet, and pee on it, my heart racing. There’s no effing way. That would be ridiculous. Unthinkable. I just quit my job with medical benefits today. Ha! No. God doesn’t have that mean a sense of humor.

  I sit and stare at the stick, waiting. One line means I’m in the clear. Two lines means I’m fucked six ways from Sunday.

  I sit and wait.

  I thought it was weird I almost barfed in the sex dungeon, but when I Googled “vomiting from intense orgasm,” the Internet was littered with countless women who’d experienced the exact same thing. So I didn’t sweat it.

  “Don’t you dare let me catch either of you ever making an accidental Faraday with a woman unworthy of our name or I’ll get the last laugh on that gold digger’s ass and disown the fuck out of you faster than she can demand a paternity test.” That’s what Josh said his father told him when he was barely a teenager.

  The faintest second pink line begins to appear on the pee stick and my eyes pop out of my head.

  “No,” I say out loud. “Go away. Go away!”

  The line is getting darker.

  “No,” I say, pulling at my hair. “Please, God, no.”

  This has to be a mistake. A false positive. Yes, that’s what it is. A false positive. Of course. I run into the living room and grab my laptop. I Google “false positive pregnancy test” and it turns out there’s no such thing, basically—except in cases of certain medication (no), defective test (maybe?), or, rarely, certain kinds of cancer. Is it wrong to be wishing I have cancer right now?

  Okay, maybe the test was defective. That’s my only hope.

  I drink a couple glasses of water and sit on the couch, Googling like a madwoman for at least thirty minutes, trying to find a reasonable explanation for those two pink lines that doesn’t involve a little Faraday growing inside me, and when I feel the tiniest hint of pee in my bladder, I run back into the bathroom and pee on the third pee-stick.

  I would never try to trap you, I assured Josh. I’m a millionaire now, Josh—I don’t need your stinkin’ Faraday money.