by B. B. Easton
There was one more voicemail. I made eye contact with Ken from across the room as it began to play. Bobby and Chelsea were gone, but Ken had remained behind to bear witness to whatever bad news I was about to get.
Monday, April 7, 8:21 p.m.: “Fine. Don’t fucking answer,” Goth Girl slurred, sounding like she’d ingested half a bottle of vodka since her last voicemail. “I was just calling to let you know that Jason’s fucking dead, okay? He got shitfaced at Pearl Jam and crashed his car on the way home.” Her voice trailed off with a sniffle, taking some of her anger along with it. “Sorry. The funeral’s on Wednesday. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
I didn’t blink as I tried to process Victoria’s tearful, drunken message. I didn’t even lower the phone from my ear. I just stared, unseeing, at Ken, whose eyes were studying the carpet.
“Jason?” he asked.
My chin lifted and fell. Slowly. Mechanically.
“Is he…”
I nodded again. I think.
I continued to stare at the spot where Ken had been long after he walked into the kitchen. After he stopped three feet away from me and said nothing. After the distance between us had a chance to settle into my bones.
Three feet.
I was back outside the bubble.
The next day, Ken and I drove home from Florida in silence.
My mind, however, was anything but.
I just talked to him that night.
I knew he was drunk. We even joked about Ken being his driver.
We fucking joked about it.
I didn’t even see him last week.
I didn’t even think about him.
God, I’ve been such a shitty friend ever since I started seeing Ken.
I should have hosted an intervention or something.
But I didn’t. I didn’t do shit, and now, he’s gone.
I gave Ken a sidelong glance, his features blurry behind my unshed tears. He hadn’t touched me since we found out about Jason. All I wanted to do was curl up in his lap and let him comfort me while I cried, but it was clear that my messy feelings were not welcome inside his sterile little world.
Jason would have held me, I thought, bitter tears stinging my eyes. I remembered the way he used to pick me up off my feet and spin me in the air. Jason was always so happy to see me. Did he know I was happy to see him, too? Did he know how much I would miss his big hugs?
Orange groves dissolved into cow pastures before my eyes. Small towns grew into large shopping centers. And, as the sun slid out of the sky, the high-rises of Atlanta climbed into it. There was so much progress happening outside the car.
But the only thing progressing inside the car was the size of my hurt as I waited in vain for Ken to comfort me. To acknowledge my grief. To do fucking anything.
By the time he pulled up in front of my parents’ house after dark, I was ready to explode. He held his breath as he turned to look at me, probably expecting me to freak out or burst into tears or otherwise contaminate him with my messy feelings, so I didn’t. I kept them to myself. The only thing I gave Ken was my imaginary middle finger as I slammed his car door and stomped into my house.
My mother came running as a sob twenty-four hours in the making filled the foyer. “What happened, baby?”
I pressed my face into her shoulder, her long red hair soaking up my tears. “Jason died…in a car accident.”
“Oh, honey,” she cooed, smoothing a weathered hand down my bony back. “I’m so sorry. What a shame. What a damn shame.” She shook her head and squeezed me tighter. “He sure did love you.”
I might have been sitting next to my boyfriend at the Ivy and Sons Funeral Home, but he felt so far away; he might as well have been on another planet. From that day on, his black shirt/black tie combo would no longer hold the appeal it once had. It would just be a reminder of the day he refused to comfort me as I sat a foot away, holding back my tears.
“He sure did love you.”
My mom had met Jason only once or twice, but it had been enough for her to see what I’d been blind to. Jason had had feelings for me. And I’d spent his last few months on earth chasing someone who was incapable of feeling anything.
The longer I sat there, listening to Jason’s friends and family express their heartbreak behind the podium, the angrier I got. At Jason, for putting us through the pain of losing him. At myself, for not trying harder to get him help. But, mostly, at Ken, for not putting his fucking arm around me. For not loving me the way Jason had loved me. For not picking me up and twirling me around just because he was happy to see me.
As soon as the service was over, I bolted. Wearing black high heels for the second time that week, I click-clacked down the aisle, holding the bottom of my short black dress in my fist. My sunburned feet were screaming at me to slow down, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t until I was finally alone and could cry all this bullshit out.
“BB!” a familiar, deep voice called from the middle of the chapel.
I managed to catch a glimpse of the bastard just before I blew past him. Hans was looking rock-star chic in a fitted black T-shirt and black jeans, but the girl sitting next to him, slouching in her baby-doll dress and hiding behind her long black hair, looked like a bitch I’d like to slap.
Again.
I tore past Amy, Allen, the Alexander brothers, and Juliet, who didn’t see me because she was too busy glaring at Ethan Alexander, who’d probably had the audacity to hit on her at a funeral.
I stomped all the way out to Ken’s car where I lit two cigarettes and smoked them both at the same time.
Calm down, BB. Jesus Christ.
I paced back and forth in the parking lot, tiny pieces of asphalt crunching under my stilettos.
Where the fuck is he?
My eyes and throat burned, but I refused to cry. Not until I got the fuck away from Ken. I was in enough pain as it was. The last thing I needed was to break down in the presence of somebody who couldn’t even pretend to give a shit.
I glared at the front door as a slow trickle of red-eyed couples began to exit. Old couples, young couples, gay couples, straight couples. They all held hands, linked arms, clung to one another, giving and receiving the support they needed.
I hated them all.
Especially the couple I’d found asleep in my bed last December.
When Hans and Goth Girl exited the chapel, their eyes landed on me immediately. She froze on the spot, but he kept walking, heading straight toward me.
Fuck. Not now. Goddamn it.
My heart rate rivaled a jackrabbit’s as I watched Hans waltz across the parking lot on long, skinny legs. He’d lost weight over the course of our relationship, thanks to a burgeoning drug habit, but since we’d broken up, it looked like he’d gone off the rails. His face was gaunt. His once-tight jeans were lashed on with a studded belt. And he’d completely buzzed off all his sexy, shaggy black hair.
The last time I’d seen Hans, I’d thrown everything we owned directly at his head. It had been four months since that day, but the urge to take off my spiked heels and chuck one at his face was still there.
So was the urge to run to him and let him hold me while I wept.
“Hey.” Hans held his hands up in surrender. His dark eyebrows were drawn together over two remorseful denim-colored eyes. “I know you’re still mad at me. I just wanted to come over and say I’m sorry…about Jason. I know you guys were close.”
I clenched my jaw, unable to speak around the lump in my throat, but my quivering chin gave me away.
“Shit. Hey, it’s okay.” Hans spread his arms, and just like that, I was back in them.
His hug wasn’t as good as Ken’s. He was too thin and too tall. His embrace was too loose, and he smelled like cigarettes instead of clean cotton. But he let me cry. Hans had nothing left to offer me, except his sympathy, and like everything in our apartment, I took that, too.
“Shh…” He rubbed his hand down my back too lightly, causing me to jerk in his arms. “Sorry, I forg
ot you’re ticklish.”
He forgot.
My body was already a stranger to him, and his felt like a stranger to me.
Stepping away, I swiped the mascara from under my eyes and glanced at the funeral home doors where Ken was now standing. He appeared to be talking to Allen and Amy, but his eyes were fixed on me. With a curt nod to his friends, he stalked toward us, hands in his pockets, mouth set in a straight line. The taillights behind me flashed as a beep sounded from inside Ken’s car.
“Thanks.” I sniffled, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. “I, uh, I gotta go.”
I stumbled backward, my stilettos scraping across the asphalt, until I finally found the door handle and jerked it open. Just as my ass hit the passenger seat, Ken slid behind the wheel next to me, looking utterly cool and unaffected—by the funeral, by the sight of his girlfriend in the arms of another man, by the mascara streaks under her eyes, by all of it.
“Who was that?” he asked, shifting the car into reverse.
“Hans,” I mumbled, staring straight ahead with my arms folded across my chest.
As Ken pulled out of his parking space, I noticed Hans getting into his little black BMW, alone.
Guess he and Goth Girl didn’t ride together.
The thought was a tiny consolation.
I waited for Ken to act jealous, grill me with questions about my tall, tattooed ex, but he didn’t. I waited for him to acknowledge how upset I was, maybe ask if I was okay, but nope. All he did was keep his eyes on the road as he reached over and switched on the mother…fucking…radio.
Kaboom.
With that simple click, Ken had unwittingly detonated the bomb that had been ticking away in his passenger seat.
“No,” I snapped, reaching over and turning it right back off. “No! We’re not gonna sit here and listen to fucking Incubus and pretend like everything’s fine. It’s not fine!”
“Brooke—”
I turned in my seat, facing him full-on. Anger swelled in my veins and made my temples throb. “Jason’s dead, and you don’t care!”
Ken didn’t say anything. He didn’t argue with me or defend himself. He simply clenched his square jaw and stared straight ahead and placed the final imaginary brick in the wall between us, shutting me out completely.
“Oh, perfect!” I threw my hands up. “You haven’t touched me since we found out about Jason, and now, you’re not gonna talk to me either? That’s great. Super supportive, Ken. Way to be there.”
“Jesus Christ! What do you want from me?” he finally snapped back.
Oh, it’s on.
I leaned forward, salivating over his jugular. “I want you to have a fucking feeling!” I snarled, thrusting my hand in the direction of the funeral home behind us. “I want you to put your arm around me when I’m sad and hold my hand in public and pick me up and spin me around when I come over just because you’re so goddamn happy to see me!”
“I’m sorry I’m a shitty boyfriend!” Ken barked, causing me to slink back in my seat. “This is why I don’t do fucking relationships!” His tone lost its edge just as quickly as it had appeared. “I don’t know why I can’t do all this touchy-feely bullshit you want, but I just…can’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe I’m fucking autistic or something.”
Now, it was my turn to be silent.
Autistic? No. Ken?
I ran through a mental list of disorders from my clinical psychology coursework. Symptoms. Ages of onset. Prognoses. Evaluation tools. I’d just assumed Ken was an asshole, but maybe there was more to it. An autism spectrum disorder? A personality disorder? Reactive attachment disorder? I was already pretty sure the stubborn asshole had oppositional defiant disorder.
“I could test you.”
For the first time since our fight had begun, Ken looked at me. His brows were knotted in confusion. His eyes guarded and skeptical.
“I have to do a full case study before I graduate. I could do it on you, if you want. It would take a lot of time though. A full psychological evaluation can take weeks.”
Ken flicked his eyes back to the road. “And this would help you with school?”
“Yeah, it would.”
But, mostly, it would help me figure out what the fuck is going on inside your head.
Ken sighed and glanced at me again. This time, his features didn’t look guarded or skeptical. They looked downright scared. “Okay.”
He nodded, turning away from me again. I noticed his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed.
“If it’ll help.”
May 2003
I placed my bare feet on Ken’s lap as we worked side by side in his bunker-like office at the Showtime Movie Theater. The room had beige walls, ugly, swirly movie theater carpet, two metal desks next to one another, a few metal filing cabinets, and stacks of rolled-up movie posters in every corner. Ken obviously hadn’t redecorated since his promotion to general manager.
He looked down at my feet on his thigh but said nothing, returning his attention to whatever spreadsheet he was working on at the time. I smiled to myself and continued scoring the IQ test I’d just given him. I’d been testing him in his office whenever he worked the night shift. It was Ken’s idea. After he started the last movies of the night, he had a solid two hours before he had to close up the theater, which was just enough time to get an evaluation session in.
Ken was so smart.
And, as I marveled at the numbers I was getting back, I began to realize just how smart he actually was.
“Uh, Ken?”
“Yeah?” he replied, not looking up from the clunky computer on his desk.
“I think I scored this wrong. Will you look at it for me?”
I turned the assessment manual around and showed him how to find his age and the raw score on the subtests I was looking at to calculate his nonverbal IQ.
“One fifty,” he said, handing the manual and test booklet back to me.
I blinked at him. “That’s what I got.”
Ken shrugged and went back to work as if I hadn’t just told him he was a goddamn genius.
“Ken.” I pulled my feet off his lap and turned toward the desk where my binder sat open. Pulling a laminated piece of paper out of the front pocket, I shoved it in his face. “Do you see what this says?”
Ken raised an eyebrow at me, refusing to read it out loud.
Stubborn asshole.
“Ugh,” I grunted, pulling it away. “It says Psychometric Conversion Table. Do you see this column where it says Standard Scores? What’s the top score on the chart?”
He still wouldn’t budge.
“One fifty, motherfucker.” I poked the page repeatedly with my finger. “You have the highest nonverbal IQ on the fucking chart. That’s visual memory, spatial relations, mathematical reasoning…”
Ken lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “So, I’m good at math.”
“No, you’re not just ‘good at math.’” I made air quotes around the words with my fingers. “You’re fucking Good Will Hunting. Why the hell aren’t you working for NASA right now?”
Ken opened his mouth to give me some smart-ass remark, but I cut him off, “And don’t tell me it’s because their 401(k) program is shit. I want a real answer.”
Ken closed his mouth and glared at me.
“Why are you working here?” I asked, my tone softer.
“Because I didn’t go to college.”
“Why didn’t you go to college?”
“Because I hate school.”
“Why do you hate school when you’re so fucking smart?”
With every successive question, I leaned another inch forward in my seat.
“I don’t know. I’ve just always hated it.”
And, with every question, Ken’s impenetrable wall of mystery grew stronger and stronger.
“You were even good at sports. You could have gotten so many scholarships.”
“Not everyone has to go to college.” Ken folded his arms across his chest.<
br />
“Um, people with these scores do.” I flicked his test booklet with two fingers. “Like, you owe it to humanity to do something with this. You could fucking cure cancer.” I laughed, remembering that you had to care about people to want to cure them. “Or…you could at least come up with some breakthrough economic plan that could reverse the national deficit!”
That got Ken’s attention. His eyebrow lifted, but he said nothing. The wall was built. Now, all Ken had to do was hide behind it.
I stared at him like a puzzle that was missing most of its pieces. I’d been testing him for weeks, and I still didn’t feel like I was anywhere close to figuring him out.
“Ken, why didn’t you go to college?” I practically whispered, speaking to him like a caged animal. “Why’d you quit the football team in high school? Why didn’t you date?”
You’re so smart and handsome and athletic. Why are you wasting all of it?
“That’s why we’re doing this, right?” Ken deadpanned, his eyes iced over. “So, you can tell me what’s wrong with me?”
“Hey.” I reached over and cupped the side of his beautiful face with one hand, his midnight stubble scratching my palm. “As far as I can tell, the only thing wrong with you is you.”
Ken dropped his eyes, sending his sable-brown lashes fanning out over his enviously high cheekbones.
I relished the fact that, for once, my touch seemed more comforting than uncomfortable to him.
Rolling my chair closer, I leaned forward and dusted his lips with mine. “You need to go to college,” I whispered more gently than before. “Just think about it. Okay? You might not hate it if you find a program you like.”
Ken didn’t respond, so I kissed him again. I kissed him until he kissed me back. I kissed him until he forgot about the invisible wall he’d built between us and pulled me onto his lap.
Then, I reached between us and unbuckled his belt.
“What are you doing?” Ken asked, alarm in his voice.
“I forgot to tell you.” I blinked up at him, trying my best to look coy as I unbuttoned his gray slacks. “This evaluation includes an oral exam.”