“I might not like you,” I whispered, trying to remember what I was doing.
“But you like me now, don’t you?” He was challenging me to say I wasn’t attracted to him and god knew I couldn’t deny it. He knew I wanted him. He’d known for ages. “Or do you want me to kiss you again to make sure? I’m more than happy to, you know. I’ll happily kiss you for as long as it takes until you make up your mind.”
I felt a hot blush burning my cheeks. My pride was at war with my heart. When the two sides fell silent, I’d reached an odd compromise with myself. I knitted the raw edges together and hoped they’d hold. My plan wasn’t perfect, but it would just have to do. The only thing I could think was that I’d be kicking myself for the next eight years if I said no, but that an unqualified yes was even worse. I had to protect myself.
“I’ll give you a shot, but only on one condition: don’t tell Ward,” I said to Cole. “Promise me you won’t tell him or anyone else.”
“Why not?” he asked. His voice was confused and surprised.
I drew myself up to my full height in my desk chair to try and scrape together a bit of dignity. “Because I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anyone to know.”
“But why?” Cole looked like was fully willing to march into the other room and tell my brother that he wanted to date me, consequences be damned. Since that was exactly what he wouldn’t do six years ago, it should have made me feel good. I never seemed to feel the way I should where Cole was concerned.
“I don’t want people to know because I’m not sure about you,” I told Cole. “You seem so convinced that we’re perfect for each other. But you don’t even know me, and I sure don’t know you. And if you go tell Ward right now, and it doesn’t work out, then you can’t un-ring that bell. We share friends. You know I’m right.” I stared down my nose at him, waiting for an answer.
He looked at me and I could imagine what he was thinking, at least a little. He was seeing the logic, even though he couldn’t guess that this was my way of protecting myself. As long as no one knew, I could pretend like this wasn’t real. If he changed his mind again, I wouldn’t have to suffer explaining things to Emma, or Ward, or anyone. It could be my secret.
“Tell me you won’t tell,” I pushed when he said nothing. “Promise me.”
He looked genuinely conflicted and perhaps a bit offended. Maybe it didn’t feel so nice to know that I wanted to keep it a secret, but this was the only way. Eventually, by the time I was wondering if this would be a deal breaker for him, Cole nodded. I exhaled in relief.
“One day you’ll let me tell him,” he said, and sounded sure that he’d win me over.
“No, I won’t,” I corrected. “But, maybe, I’ll tell him myself.”
“Good enough,” Cole replied, smiling happily and clearly deciding the secrecy was something he could deal with. “I accept your conditions.”
“Promise me.” Until he promised, I wouldn’t be satisfied. I might be reduced to a silly school girl when he was around, but I was smarter than I used to be. I needed that promise.
He didn’t roll his eyes at my stubbornness, but I could sense that he wanted to. “I promise I won’t tell anyone until you let me.”
I smiled at him hesitantly. This was something. This was real. This time, finally, maybe, I would get to be happy.
And if I wasn’t, then this time, nobody needed to know.
14
Cole
Six years earlier…
Kate’s big, beautiful blue eyes were full of unshed tears, and although she tried to blink them away, one crawled down her flawless cheek anyway. I felt ill watching her cry and knowing I’d caused it. She looked at me like I’d just ripped her heart out.
My fingers twitched to touch her, but I resisted the impulse. It wouldn’t have been welcome at this point, that much was obvious from her expression. I also knew enough about Kate to suspect a swift right cross would be headed my way if I tried to touch her at that moment.
“I’m so sorry Kate. I thought this was a good way to push you away,” I said. “But I don’t want to. Not like this. I’ve got to tell you the truth.”
She frowned at me and shook her head. It looked like she wasn’t quite ready to say anything, so I just rushed forward with my half-assed explanation before she stormed off.
“This was a dumb idea Lucas and I had. We figured if you hated me it would be better.”
“What?” My plan clearly wasn’t the best, so it was no surprise that she looked confused.
“I thought it would be better if you didn’t like me anymore,” I tried to clarify.
“What would be better?” she warbled, brushing the fallen tear away like it had betrayed her. Maybe it had. But not as badly as me.
I cleared my throat uncomfortably. This was already harder than I anticipated. This whole night had been godawful, and I wasn’t even the one being subjected to the world’s crappiest date. It was the least I could do to come clean now. At least, as much as I could.
“It’s obvious you like me,” I told her. “And I’m about to graduate and you’re too young. Plus, you’re Ward’s sister.”
“You don’t like me?” she asked, searching my face for the truth. I hid it from her, staring away and down at my shoes. My non-answer was enough to convince her that I didn’t.
“You could have just told me you didn’t like me,” Kate said, a small spark of her personality showing back through her disappointment. “You should have just, like, let me down easy or something. It would have been kinder.”
Perversely, it made me happy to see her get angry. Not only because I deserved it, but because I knew that if she was angry, she would be ok. She’d recover just fine without me. She was strong, I knew that. After all, she’d proven that before I even knew her name. The vision of her with that squirt bottle was seared into my memory forever. This time I actually deserved to be doused with deer piss.
“I didn’t want you to keep hoping there was a chance with me,” I told her. “Sometimes girls get really clingy with me.” It wasn’t just that, of course. It was that I knew that if I left any chance, I wouldn’t be able to resist her. Just looking at her now was almost too much. She was flushed, passionate, and so beautiful it drove me half out of my mind. I wanted nothing in the world more than I wanted to see Kate spread out and flushed in my bed, to touch her lush tits, to see those pink lips part when I kissed her neck, and feel her warm hands grip my shoulders when I took her…
“You really don’t like me at all?” she asked again, staring at me in confusion. “But you’ve always been so nice to me.”
“Kate… I was just being polite,” I lied. “You’re just a kid. I’m not interested in you that way.” It didn’t feel like she should believe me, but of course she did. A good woman’s heart is a fragile thing. Easily broken by an asshole like me. I’d never felt as evil as I did at that moment. It was made worse because I was breaking my own heart at the same time. She hung her head in defeat.
“Oh.” Kate was no longer looking at my face. She must have figured out whatever it was she needed to know. She focused her eyes somewhere down on the ground between us. “Well, thanks for being honest, I guess. It’s better than the alternative.”
She was braver than me. I wasn’t willing to be honest with her, not really. But there she was, listening to me tell her that I didn’t want her, and still displaying more poise than ever could. I didn’t deserve her anyway.
“I should have been honest from the start,” I told her, and then followed it up with a half-truth, “but I wanted to show you such a lousy time that you never wanted to see me again... anyway, it wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have done it.”
Her bright blue gaze flipped back to me. “It was a lousy date, but it wasn’t any worse than hearing you don’t want me. If you ever change your mind, let me know. You know where to find me.”
I dragged a hand through my intentionally ugly, unwashed, messed up hair as she walked away. Nothing could h
ave prepared me to deal with those being her parting words. They cut me like a knife and were delivered with just as much sharpness. She might have been younger than me, but she was worlds more mature, and infinitely classier. Trailer park upbringing notwithstanding, Kate was living proof that money meant nothing when it came to what really mattered about a person. The fact that Kate could have been mine, and never would be, wounded me in ways that I didn’t think it even could.
I sent her daisies the next day to apologize again, but the flower shop called and said she wouldn’t sign for them. They had to leave them on her doorstep. I didn’t doubt that she threw them in the dumpster. It would take a lot more than a handful of daisies to win Kate’s forgiveness this time.
My remaining year at college was spent playing football and avoiding Kate like the plague. When I saw her on campus, she immediately went the other way, so it wasn’t exactly hard work. Then I graduated and spent the next few years meeting woman after woman who couldn’t begin to hold a candle to Kate Williams.
15
Cole
Present day…
I’d never put more effort into planning a date than I put into my first real date with Kate. The first time around was just a mulligan. This time it was going to be absolutely perfect.
When I picked her up from her little condo in west Austin on the following Friday night, I had a bouquet of yellow and pink daisies in my hand. She grinned when she saw them.
“You remembered!” Kate said, taking them from me and ushering me inside so she could put them in a vase before they wilted. I followed her into her little kitchen.
“Of course, I remembered,” I told her, looking at my surroundings with interest. “I don’t think I could ever forget.”
Kate’s kitchen was as eclectic and quirky as her fashion sense, but just like her clothes, it totally worked. Her kitchen cabinets were painted bright red, and the appliances were the minty green color that was popular during the 1950’s. The countertops were white tile and the floors were stained concrete. Dozens of little prisms hung from the window, filling the whole room with late afternoon rainbows. It was dazzling, and almost tacky, but too charming to be anything but wonderful. Just like Kate.
Tonight, she was wearing a black sheath dress that was nothing like her usual vintage look. It hugged her every perfect curve but was otherwise completely simple. Her hair was free and loose, and she was wasn’t wearing any makeup I could see at all. The look was a stark but lovely departure from what I usually saw her in. Any time I thought I had her figured out, she surprised me.
“Perfect,” she said, setting the glass vase down and smiling at it. The delicate flowers did fit right in on her kitchen island. She’d clearly mastered her look. Everything around us was very Kate.
“Do you cook in here a lot?” I asked, wondering about Kate’s life away from the bar. She shook her head.
“Almost never,” she admitted, looking the tiniest bit embarrassed. “I don’t cook very well and it’s hard when I have all the free food I can eat from the food trucks by the bar.”
“I don’t know how to cook either,” I admitted. “Ramen, sure, but that’s about it.”
“Your mom didn’t teach you?” She looked somewhat wistful. I wondered if her mom didn’t have time to teach her. From what I understood from Ward, before she had the alpaca farm, Ward and Kate’s mom worked her ass off as a nurse. I’d never met her, but anyone who could raise both Ward and Kate must be quite the woman. I could only imagine she had a personality the size of Texas.
I frowned as I considered her question. “We had a cook,” I admitted. The only thing I could actually remember my mom cooking were grilled cheese sandwiches and cookies. However, both were delicious.
She arched an eyebrow at me. “Well aren’t you fancy? I didn’t know you had a cook.”
“Well, I mean, our housekeeper cooked. She wasn’t just a cook.” I didn’t deny my privileged upbringing, but I generally didn’t advertise it either. Usually people assumed that a guy who grew up in rural Arkansas with a weird Uncle Jimmy and a pack of coonhounds lived in a shack in the woods rather than a sixteen-room antebellum mansion, and I was just fine with that. Better that they think me simple than spoiled.
That made her giggle and shake her head. “Ok rich boy. Let’s go before I decide your privilege is too much for me to stand.”
There was the sassy, mouthy Kate I knew. I grinned at her. “Don’t you want to know where we’re going?” I asked as we drove.
“Is it a strip club again?” Her tone was suspicious, but her eyes were smiling.
I cringed but simultaneously laughed so hard I nearly choked. “No,” I managed when my fit subsided into coughing. “It’s not. In all fairness, Lucas and I had no intention of ever actually going to that strip club. Amy was a friend of Lucas’ from his women’s studies class. She went along with our plot because he described it as some kind of weird performance art.”
“Oh yeah, that makes it all ok.” She pouted her full, pink lips at me.
“I only bring my dates to the classiest of strip clubs,” I asserted confidently, still feeling internally mortified. Bringing her to a strip club had been a real stroke of asshole genius, but not one I could take credit for. No, that had been all Lucas.
In reality, I was taking her to Uchi, a particularly well recommended local sushi place. According to the internet, it had won practically all the awards a restaurant was eligible for. It was like the EGOTs of sushi places. Kate grinned when we pulled in and she realized where we were eating.
“I’ve always wanted to come here!” she said excitedly. “They have a really good vegetarian menu.”
I looked over at her in surprise. “You’re a vegetarian? Since when?”
She made a face and rolled her big blue eyes. “Since living with Emma sophomore year. She ruined me with her whole sappy but well-reasoned ‘meat is murder’ thing. Now I can’t even enjoy a hamburger without feeling oodles of guilt.”
I briefly reflected on the fact that Ward, Mr. Medium Rare Steak himself, was marrying a vegetarian. His children would grow up eating salads. I couldn’t actually remember ever seeing him eat a vegetable, let alone an entirely meatless meal. It must be absolute torture for him to marry a woman who subsisted entirely off of what I’d heard him refer to condescendingly as ‘sports candy’. I made a mental note to give him shit about it at my earliest opportunity.
“Do you at least eat fish?” I asked Kate hopefully when we settled in at the intimate table. She nodded.
“I eat fish sometimes,” she said carefully. “But I’m not eating any raw fish. That’s an absolute no-go so don’t even ask.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“Yes, and it was totally revolting.” The expression on her pretty face was firm.
I swallowed my disappointment and tried to look charming. She couldn’t be more wrong. Raw fish the best type of fish. But seeing Kate happy was more important than my need to shovel fatty tuna into my mouth. “Ok, deal,” I told her. “No raw fish.”
If this date went well, and I didn’t blow it, maybe I could slowly ease her into enjoying proper raw sushi. Really, there was nowhere for us to go but up. Even now, I could see distrust and skepticism in her eyes. If I could convince Kate that I wasn’t just a douche-canoe who led girls on to break their hearts for fun, it would be well worth every bite. Even if those bites weren’t full of delicious raw fish.
16
Cole
The after-dinner bat cruise was a risky move for a first date, since it set the bar high, but I was glad I took the gamble when I saw how Kate’s eyes lit up. As the one and a half million Mexican free-tail bats came streaming out from underneath the Congress Avenue bridge where they roosted, they formed great, black rivers in the evening sky above our boat. They went out hunting every night during the summer months, feeding off mosquitos, moths, and any other unlucky insects they happened to find. And yeah, I did read the bat cruise pamphlet that came with the tic
kets.
“Did you know a person who studies bats is called a chiropterologist?” Kate asked me as the flow of bats tapered off from a massive flood to a trickle.
“I definitely did not know that,” I replied, impressed. Kate’s smile was sheepish.
“I learned that word from Emma,” she admitted. “She’s really good at pub quizzes.”
“They ought to just call someone that studies bats, a Batman,” I told her, pointing to the four or five young kids all dressed as the caped crusader for the occasion. They were running around the boat’s deck like a tiny, chaotic, masked army of bat-children. “I feel like it would increase youth interest in the sciences.”
Kate squinted at them. “You know, I think I recognize one of those Batkids…” she said, right as someone called her name from behind us. We turned around to see a woman approaching from the stairs.
“Cameron!” Kate cried, embracing the woman happily when she got close. “You didn’t tell me you were in town.”
The stranger grinned, snagging one of the smaller bat-children toddling past and scooping him—no her—up into her arms. “Janey and I are just here for the weekend to visit with my grandparents. She’s doing stuff with her friends tonight, so I thought I’d show Maya the bats.”
Maya, who looked somewhere between one and two years old, squealed happily in her mom’s arms and warbled something unintelligible while pointing at the last few straggling bats that were flying out. Her pudgy fingers reached up for the bats eagerly, and then towards her mom’s face. Cameron looked at me interestedly from between her daughter’s stubby digits. She looked about Kate’s age.
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