“You will,” Lillian said after a moment. “And you will have it with someone amazing.”
“Mom…” Kristina said sadly.
“No. Listen to me,” Lillian insisted. “This boy… this Keith… he’s not right for you. He’s just a bum who couldn’t stick it out in school. And if he couldn’t commit to his education then what makes you think he will ever be able to commit to you? He’s on a downward trajectory in life, Kristina, and you don’t have to go down with him. You hear me?”
Kristina opened her mouth to say something, but she changed her mind at the last second. “Yes, Mom,” she said finally. “I hear you.”
“This boy is not for you.”
“I know,” Kristina was forced to agree. “I know he isn’t.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Keith
“Keith?”
“Hmm?”
“Keith?” Kristina’s voice was louder than before and more indignant. Keith turned to face her as his eyes focused on her face. She had a kind of brightness that seemed to illuminate her features. It made everything so much harder for him.
“Yes?” he asked, keeping his tone emotionless and distant.
“Are you ok?” Kristina’s voice melted into concern. “You’ve been distracted since you picked me up from campus.”
“I’m fine,” Keith said a little too fast and a little too clipped. He knew he wasn’t being subtle, but the time for subtlety had long since passed. He saw Kristina’s eyes narrow with hurt, and he wanted to kick himself for letting it get so far that he was forced to resort to these methods.
“You don’t seem fine,” Kristina said accusingly. “In fact… you don’t seem fine with me.”
“Well, I am,” Keith insisted in a tone that plainly suggested that he wasn’t. “I’m just… I’m stressed out.”
Keith expected her expression to change. He expected her eyes to narrow as her face-hardened against him. He expected her to look at him with annoyance as she asserted that he had no right to talk to her that way. His hopes were dashed the minute he saw that look in her eye. It was a gentle look, the slightly maternal look of caring. When she spoke, her tone was soft and calming, and it lingered somehow in the air so that Keith felt as though he were being touched.
“I’m sorry,” Kristina said. “I don’t mean to harp on about irrelevant things. Of course you must have so many things on your mind what with everything going on. How are things at Seton and Lee?”
“Miles told me he called you,” Keith said.
Kristina nodded. “He told me that it was best that I stopped working there.”
“And you disagreed?”
“Yes,” Kristina said with a shrug. “But I also don’t want to cause trouble for anyone. So I told him I would stop working there, but I couldn’t promise never to come around.”
“Why would you come around?” Keith asked.
“To see you,” Kristina replied as though the answer was obvious. “And I told him that.”
Keith stared at her for a moment. “He’s right though,” he said. “Miles is right. You shouldn’t be coming around the auto shop for me or any other reason.”
Kristina raised her eyebrows as though she was trying to figure something out, but she didn’t say anything. There was silence for a few minutes, and then Kristina turned to him with a new expression on her face.
“I spoke to my mother yesterday,” she said abruptly.
That momentarily distracted Keith, and he looked at her with curiosity. “I haven’t ever heard you mention your parents.”
Kristina shrugged. “Well… I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them.”
“Why?”
“Well… cause it’s uncomfortable… kind of like my relationship with them,” Kristina said with a sigh. “They’re just so… well they’re a certain way, you know?”
“Not really,” Keith said honestly.
Kristina sighed. “Well, I wouldn’t expect you to… it’s different for you. I know you didn’t have a real father… but you had a mother who loved you, and so at least in one sense you knew what it was like to have family.”
“Did you not feel like you had family?” Keith wondered out loud, as he found himself being drawn into the conversation. She was opening up to him, and he found that feeling intoxicating. It was hard to resist, and he fell into it easily, without thinking too hard about the consequences, without thinking about the conversation he knew he had to have with her soon.
“Not really,” Kristina admitted, her tone was weighed down by her words. “I used to wish that I had a brother or sister so that I didn’t feel so lonely all the time. Half my life I was with nannies and the rest of the time I was with friends.”
“Friends can be family,” Keith pointed out.
“True,” Kristina nodded. “But you have to find the right friends, and it’s not as easy as you may think. I lost touch with all my high school friends after I started college. Marie is the one friendship that stuck.”
Keith watched her, as her eyes travelled some distance away. She was lost in her thoughts, in her past, in her childhood. He could see the memories reflected in her eyes; he just didn’t know what exactly they were. He could feel the tenor of her mood however, and he knew it was leading to something.
“I called my mother yesterday,” Kristina repeated again, as though she were sharing the information for the first time.
“You mentioned that,” Keith reminded her.
Kristina nodded. “My parents are getting divorced; my dad cheated.”
Keith was silent for a long time. “How do you feel?” he asked at last, because he genuinely wanted to know. The expression on her face was confusing. It was as though she were trying to organize her thoughts, as though she were trying to make a decision. She didn’t look sad or angry. She just looked… intense.
“I feel…” Kristina stopped short of finishing her sentence, and then she shook her head. “You know that was the sad part. When my mom told me what had happened… I wasn’t even surprised. I was… nothing at all. I didn’t feel anything at all. It was almost as if I had anticipated this divorce happening years ago, and when she told me, I had this feeling of ‘oh at last, it’s finally happening.’ It was sort of like I had accepted the inevitability of this years ago, so I’d already gotten over it. Does that make sense?”
Despite her convoluted explanation, Keith did understand what she meant. “You suspected they might divorce one day?” he said.
“Yes,” Kristina nodded, as though she was glad she didn’t have to try and explain herself. “That’s exactly it. I suspected it since I was a little girl. My friends’ parents were getting divorced all around me and I kept looking at my parents and thinking… they don’t seem to love each other… so why aren’t they divorcing either? It didn’t make sense to me.”
“And now?”
“It makes sense,” Kristina nodded. “Which is what actually makes me sad. Isn’t that sad?”
Keith nodded. “It is sad.”
She seemed to be in a world of her own, trying to navigate the confusion she was surrounded by, and Keith had just happened to be there while she was trying to sort all of this out.
“I told my mother about you,” Kristina said, abrupt again, but this time she was looking directly at Keith and she was really seeing him.
“You did?” Keith asked taken back. “Why?”
“She asked a bunch of questions about you,” Kristina went on, ignoring his question. “She wasn’t too thrilled.”
“I can’t imagine she would be,” Keith said, as he put on a show of unconcern, but he was surprised that it bothered him slightly.
“She told me that you were not the boy for me,” Kristina went on.
“She’s right,” Keith nodded, wondering if Kristina was headed in the direction he thought she was headed. Perhaps he would never have to give the speech he had been preparing in his head this whole time. Perhaps Kristina would beat him to the punch. Perhap
s after all this time she had finally realized that he was beneath her and she could do a lot better.
“Yes, I know she’s right,” Kristina nodded. “And I told her so, too. But the thing is… even though I know she’s right… I still didn’t believe her.”
“Believe her?” Keith asked in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“There is no recipe, Keith,” Kristina said, as though she had found all the answers she had been searching for this whole time. “My mother thinks that in order to be happy you have to find the man who most reflects yourself. Someone who was born in the same place, with the same values, someone who is going in the same direction that you are.”
“That is what most people think, Kristina,” Keith reminded her.
“But are they right?” Kristina demanded. “Are they happy? Because that’s not what I’ve seen. My parents followed that formula and look at where they ended up. You can’t always lead with your head, Keith… sometimes you’ve got to go with your gut. You have to listen to what your insides are telling you. You have to go with what you feel is right rather than what adds up on paper.”
“Kristina…”
“I’ve never experienced that warm, fuzzy feeling of being a part of a family, Keith,” Kristina went on as she spoke over him. “The only time I ever did, I was sitting in your house, at your dinner table with your mother. And she was asking me questions and she was interested in my answers. She gave me advice even when I didn’t ask for it; she put food on my plate when I wasn’t looking; she wanted to know about my opinions, my dreams, my life.”
“Kristina—” Keith tried again, but again he was cut off.
“I know you and I are different, and I know we’re not right for each other… but who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong. It doesn't make sense on paper, and I know that, but the paper is not what’s important. Maybe the feeling is what’s important here. I can feel you pulling away from me. I can see it in your eyes, and I can hear it in your tone. I know that you’re scared to get close to me for whatever reason. But I think that’s a mistake. We’re good together, Keith, and I think we’ve been kidding ourselves by saying that this is not a relationship. It is. We’re just not willing to call it one.
“I care about you, Keith. I’m invested in you—and in this—and I don’t know where I got the courage to say these things, but since I’m talking I might as well tell you everything that’s on my mind. I don’t want to do this pretend friendship thing anymore. I don’t want to have to deny a relationship with you. I don’t want to avoid the question when someone asks me if I have a boyfriend. I want to do this with you, because it feels right. It feels right, and I know you’ve felt it too. I’ve seen that look in your eye when we’re together. You care about me, too, and you want this, too. You’re just scared to admit it.”
Keith swallowed hard and stared at Kristina. She was standing before him, framed in the half shadows of his poorly lit apartment, and yet, her face was ablaze. It was as though a spotlight had been cast on her person, and Keith wasn’t sure if his mind was playing tricks on him or if the light was naturally falling that way. He had never heard a speech like that before; there was something dramatic about it. There was something so intensely natural about it that it floored him. It made him feel like he had a spotlight falling on him, too.
Her blue eyes were burning, and they made her look delicate and fierce. She was so full of contradictions, and they only served to heighten her beauty. Her breasts were rising and falling slowly from her passionate speech, and Keith appreciated the nerve it took for her to make it in the first place. It was a hard thing to stand in front of someone and bare your soul, to make yourself as vulnerable as the day you were born and not know what you were going to receive in return. Rejection left a bitter taste, no matter who you were or where you came from. It didn’t matter how strong or how powerful you were, rejection could have you on your knees in a heartbeat.
“Kristina,” Keith said for what felt like the hundredth time. “I can’t.”
Her expression didn’t change. “Why?” she demanded.
“I can’t get into it.”
“I deserve an explanation,” Kristina said in the same tone.
Keith looked down at his tattoo instinctively. “Natalie,” he said.
“Yes,” Kristina nodded. “You lost her.”
“I lost her to Kovic,” Keith replied. “In a gang war much like this one. I won’t go through that again.”
“What makes you think you will?”
“Experience,” Keith said shortly.
“Don’t you have faith?”
“Believing has never been part of my DNA,” Keith replied. “You’re right, Kristina, I do care about you, but I was clear from the start. I don’t want a relationship with you… or anyone. I want to ride, I want to drink, and I want to fuck without strings or attachments or names. That’s my code now…and there’s no room for you in it. After this battle is over, you will be safe and you can get on with your life. Until then, I’ll have Tucker watch over you.”
“You’re not going to do it anymore?” Kristina asked.
“I think it’s best we end this now,” Keith said. “We’ve already taken it too far.”
Kristina stared at him for a long while. “I want one thing from you before I leave.”
“What is it?”
“Promise me that whatever it is, you will do it without argument.”
Keith hesitated, but then he nodded in agreement. “Tell me.”
“Since Tucker will be my guardian angel from now on I won’t be seeing you after this, will I?”
“Probably not,” Keith said.
“Fine, then I don’t want any goodbyes or farewells. I don’t want empty words. I want something real before I walk out of here, something that can’t be faked.”
Keith frowned. “What do you want?”
“I want you,” Kristina said, and for the first time since they had begun this conversation, her voice shook slightly. “I want you to fuck me one more time before I leave. I want you to give me that one thing at least so that I can take it with me through the rest of my life. I don’t want words. I want you to fuck me goodbye.”
Keith felt every nerve in his body come alive suddenly. It was almost as if he could feel everything. “That I can do,” he said at last.
Chapter Twenty Five
Kristina
Kristina didn’t know what had made her speak out so boldly. She didn’t know what had possessed her to be so honest, to be so completely uncaring of everything and anything, but once she had spoken all sense of embarrassment or shame left her. It was as though she had released herself from every feeling that could possibly make her shy or hesitant.
“I can’t,” Keith’s words resonated in her ears and made the choice final.
Kristina knew that once she was back in the privacy of her own bedroom she would feel the sting of his words. She would feel the black heat of rejection, and it would hurt her more deeply than any rejection that had come before. But in that moment, she was immune to it, and she knew she had to capitalize on that immunity.
“Why?”
“I can’t get into it.”
“I deserve an explanation,” Kristina demanded. She deserved at least that.
“Natalie,” was all he said.
Kristina already knew this. She had known it the minute she had seen that tattoo ingrained on his skin. For all Keith’s body art, the one thing that was most clearly written all over him was loss. “Yes,” Kristina replied. “You lost her.”
“I lost her to Kovic,” Keith said in a deadpan voice. “In a gang war much like this one. I won’t go through that again.”
“What makes you think you will?”
“Experience,” Keith said in a tone that suggested he was done talking.
She could see it in Keith’s eyes. She knew he would not bend for her, the pull of his past was too strong, and it was keeping him from admitting what he really wanted.
Kristina had never trusted her instincts more and her instincts told her that he did want her. He wanted more than just the carnal pleasures of her body, but he was too mired down in guilt and fear to admit to it. That was the reason she knew she could ask for that one parting gift before she left, and he would not refuse her.
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