Suit (44 Chapters #4) Read online

  I knew if I hung up he would literally keep calling until I either gave up and answered or had the police come and escort him away.

  With a shaky breath and shakier hand, I lifted the phone to my head, holding it an inch away from my face. It was like I was afraid he could bite me through the phone.

  “Yeah?” I cringed.

  “Come the fuck outside.”

  I stared up at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on my ceiling and prayed for a sinkhole. “No, thanks.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? Just come the fuck outside and talk to me.”

  There was the tiniest hint of a slur, right where his Ts met his Ss, which told me to tread lightly. To anyone else, it would have been imperceptible, but I heard it. I’d spent the last six years of my life analyzing every subtle change in Knight’s posture, pitch, tone, and expression for signs of danger. And that tiny slur was one of them.

  “I can’t. My dad’s still awake, and he’ll call the cops if he knows you’re here,” I lied.

  “At least you have a fucking dad!”

  I leaned my head back against the wall. I could almost feel Knight’s rage radiating through the weathered wood siding on the other side.

  “Knight…” I took a deep breath as I absentmindedly rubbed the smooth leather pouch that housed my pepper spray. “I don’t have to come outside for you to talk to me. You can talk to me like this. I just need you to calm—”

  “He’s dead!”

  I sat up. “Who’s dead?”

  “My fucking dad!”

  I reached above my head and yanked on the cord hanging there, raising the blinds with one loud swoosh. Then, I turned and knelt at the window. As I looked down on the drunk, grieving psychopath below, Knight’s ghastly, colorless eyes locked onto mine in an instant. Even in the darkness, I could tell they were red-rimmed and bloodshot.

  “Knight, I’m…I’m so sorry.”

  Knight’s father had been a prominent businessman in Chicago with a picture-perfect family. An emotionally volatile bastard son wouldn’t have been a good look, so he never admitted that Knight was his son. He never even met him.

  And now, he never would.

  Knight growled and pointed at me with his free hand, then at the ground. “Come the fuck down here!”

  I pressed my fist, still wrapped around the black leather pouch, to the glass. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to hold him and comfort him as badly as I’d wanted anything, but I knew that wasn’t what he wanted from me. Knight didn’t want my caress. He wanted my flesh. My blood. My broken bones. He wanted to use my body as a receptacle for his pain and then leave it bleeding in the street once he realized what he’d done.

  “I’m right here,” I whispered, pleading with my eyes and my voice for him to calm down. “You can talk to me. See? I’m right here.”

  “I don’t want to fucking talk!”

  “I know, but it might help.”

  “Grrrrrrr!” Knight growled and squeezed the phone in his hand so hard I could hear the plastic cracking on the other end of the line. “Fuck you! Come down here!”

  “I can’t,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to the glass.

  Knight stomped over to the house and punched the siding with his free hand. I felt the window rattle against my face.

  “Come the fuck outside, Punk!”

  “Stop it!” I looked down at the top of his head. His slicked-back blond hair had fallen forward with the force of his punch. “Knight, you’re gonna break your knuckles, and you’re a fucking tattoo artist. Calm down.”

  Knight punched the wall again, and in that moment, I realized what it must feel like to be Ken.

  I knew what it was like to be in a serious relationship with someone you couldn’t handle. Someone who experienced things much more deeply than you did. I knew how it felt to care about someone who demanded more than you could give them, then lashed out at you for not being able to give it.

  I’d been doing it for six years.

  Maybe Ken wasn’t the problem after all.

  Maybe, like Knight, I just needed to take responsibility for my own fucking feelings.

  “Knight,” I said softly, doing exactly what Ken would do if I were on his front lawn, throwing a drunken tantrum in the middle of the night. I stopped cowering. I straightened my spine. And I said, “I’m sorry about your dad. I’m so, so sorry. But I can’t talk to you while you’re this drunk and upset, so I’m gonna hang up now and call you a cab.”

  September 2003

  “Ken, will you hand me that teapot?” I reached across the string of card tables and metal folding tables that stretched from one side of Ken’s back patio to the other with my hand out.

  We’d covered them in white tablecloths to make it look like one long, elegant table, but since there was nothing we could do about the mismatched chairs, I’d just decided to make it a theme.

  Ken glanced down into the box of equally mismatched teapots that I’d collected from every thrift and antique store in the county. “Which one?”

  “The blue-and-white one.” I flicked my fingers at him impatiently.

  Ken raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips.

  “Ugh! Please!”

  Ken gave me a satisfied smirk and handed over the vessel.

  In the two months since my altercation with Knight, Ken and I had settled into a comfortable routine. I stayed there almost every night. He packed lunches for me on the days that I had school. I gave him psychological tests when he was slow at work. He watched Sex and the City with me on Sunday nights. Life was surprisingly good, and the only thing that had changed was my attitude.

  Ken and I had spent the morning picking wildflowers in a nearby field and arranging them in the teapots I’d collected.

  When I’d asked him if he would help me host a wedding shower for Allen and Amy, Ken hadn’t hesitated to say yes. But, of course, his brand of help involved borrowing all the tables and chairs from his neighbors, trading movie passes with the manager of a local pizza place in exchange for free food and buying all of the drinks, plates, and napkins at bulk prices through the theater. All in, I think the entire party cost us less than a hundred bucks.

  “I left that questionnaire on top of your backpack,” Ken said, handing me another flower-filled teapot. “That one asked some fucked up questions.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, that one screens for all kinds of fun disorders.”

  “Bed-wetting though? Really?”

  I grinned. “Bed-wetting, fire-starting, shoplifting, cruelty to animals…let’s see…what else? Bloodplay…” My face fell as I thought about someone else who fit that description. “They can all be symptoms of childhood trauma or mental illness.”

  “I think I’m good then. The only one I answered yes to was self-flagellation, and that’s only because you won’t do it for me.”

  “Oh my God!” I cackled, swatting at him across the table. My fingertips grazed the soft cotton of his vintage Braves T-shirt. “You’re such a masochist. That’s what it’s gonna tell me. It’s gonna say, Kenneth Easton is a stage-five masochist. Get out while you still can.”

  I watched the jovial smile slip from Ken’s face just before Amy burst through the back door with a, “Haaaaay!” dragging her fiancé, best friend, and sister from Arizona behind her.

  At one point, we had about twenty-five people gathered on the patio—guys on one side, shouting at the TV, which Ken had dragged outside, every time John Smoltz struck somebody out, and girls on the other side, oohing and aahing over Amy’s three-inch-thick wedding planner. Citronella torches kept the mosquitoes away as we drank pink punch—generously spiked, thank you very much—and admired her collection of fabric swatches and wedding dress photos and magazine cutouts and invitation samples.

  I smiled and nodded, pretending to be happy for her, but the entire time, I was dreaming about the day that I’d have my own three-ring binder to fill. Glancing over at the opposite end of the table, I watched Ken, smiling his movie-star smile, as he la
ughed with his friends. Our friends.

  We could do this every weekend, I thought.

  I glanced at his deep, wooded backyard, dotted with fireflies and blooming azalea bushes, and tried to picture where the swing set would go. I glanced at my ring finger and imagined a princess cut diamond twinkling back at me.

  I was happy there, with Ken. He made me laugh and he made me crazy and he made me a better version of myself. But, most of all, he made me want things that I wasn’t sure he could give me. Things he didn’t believe in.

  Things like weddings and babies and magic.

  I just hoped I believed in them enough for the both of us.

  I woke to the familiar sensation of having my feet seared off with a blowtorch.

  It used to bother me, the way the sun’s rays through Ken’s arched window tried to burn me alive at daybreak. I’d begged him to get custom blinds made. I’d even resorted to cutting a piece of cardboard into the shape of a semicircle and shoving it into the top section of the window, but after it had come loose one night and fallen, corner first, into my forehead while I was sleeping, I’d given up.

  But I didn’t mind waking up with the lower half of my body on fire anymore. Because it meant that I was waking up next to Ken.

  I rolled over and molded myself to his firm back. He always slept in the fetal position, so the whole flaming-hot-rays-of-death-at-the-foot-of-the-bed thing didn’t impact him at all.

  I wrapped my arm around his waist, snaking it between him and the pillow he was clutching, and nuzzled a kiss into his back. “You awake?”

  “No.”

  I lifted my red-hot foot and pressed it against his calf. “What about now?”

  Fucker didn’t even flinch.

  “You know what? I think today’s our six-month anniversary.” I smiled against his back. “Well, it’s been six months since we went to Cirque du Soleil. I guess, technically, we were dating before that, but that was the first time you called me your girlfriend, and—oh my God, do you remember how drunk I was?” I giggled, reminiscing about how I’d pretended to be asleep when he got pulled over. “We should go out tonight to celebrate! Wait. Shit. You have to work. Can we go out tomorrow?”

  Ken nodded slightly and hummed something that sounded like, “Mmhmm.”

  I squealed and squeezed him with my whole body. He was so cute when he was sleepy. Normally, Ken was all hard and cold and serious—or seriously sarcastic—but the man slept, curled around a pillow every night like it was a teddy bear.

  And nobody knew it but me.

  Ken found my hand under the blankets and covered it with his. That simple gesture made my heart sputter and my smile spread. I laced my fingers through his, psyching myself up to finally say what had been on the tip of my tongue for months. What I’d decided needed to be said the night before while I thumbed through the pages of Amy’s wedding planner.

  What I was terrified that Ken didn’t feel in return.

  With my heart in my throat, I pressed my forehead against Ken’s broad, strong back and whispered the truth into his freckles, “I love you.”

  The second those three words left my mouth, Ken’s warm, relaxed body tensed and turned to granite in my arms.

  One second went by.

  Then, two.

  Then, two hundred.

  All the while, the statue man lay there, mute and rigid, in my regretful embrace. Confirming my fears without saying a word.

  Bitter, humiliated tears stung my eyes as I waited, suspended in awkward agony, for something to happen. For Ken to speak. For lightning to strike. For my fucking alarm to hurry up and go off.

  With every second that ticked by, so did another hope. Another dream. Another shiny trinket from my imaginary fucking future.

  Tick.

  He doesn’t love you.

  Tock.

  He doesn’t believe in marriage.

  Tick.

  He doesn’t want children.

  Tock.

  He said it right to your face.

  Tick.

  You don’t actually live here.

  Tock.

  You just pretend like you do.

  Tick.

  Ken loves nothing.

  Tock.

  You knew it right from the start.

  Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

  I rolled over and smacked the alarm clock, wiping an angry, embarrassed tear from my cheek with the side of my hand.

  And now, time’s up.

  I got up and sprinted for the bathroom. I couldn’t get away from there fast enough. From Ken. From that house. From the lie I’d been living in.

  I got ready for school in a haphazard flurry, using the few products I had in my purse and the ones I’d stashed under Ken’s sink. I pulled my purplish mop with two inches of auburn roots up into a messy bun and didn’t even bother with my signature wing-tip eyeliner. There was no point. It would be running down my face by the time I got to school anyway.

  With my combat boots still untied, I bolted down the stairs, grabbed my backpack off the floor by the couch, and took off out the front door without so much as a good-bye.

  I was pretty sure the window-rattling slam had said it for me.

  I replayed the events of that morning on a loop as I stared, unfocused, out the grimy subway train window. I had an hour commute to Georgia State University, which I usually spent reading or studying before class. But, as the pine trees and single-family homes of suburbia gave way to the skyscrapers and gridlocked highway traffic of Atlanta, my mind was anywhere but on my studies.

  It was on a beautiful man inside a beautiful house inside a beautiful life that I’d been dumb enough to think I could actually have.

  I spent my school day in a state of physical and emotional hell. Burning eyes. Churning guts. Black hole in my chest. Ken-shaped hole in my life.

  I spoke to no one. I ate nothing. I focused all my energy on keeping the tears at bay until I got off the subway train that afternoon. I clenched my teeth as I trudged through the MARTA parking lot, counting the steps until my ass hit the cigarette-burned driver’s seat of my black Mustang hatchback.

  Then, I let myself fall apart.

  I cried because I felt rejected.

  I cried because I felt stupid.

  I cried because I’d thought I was done crying over boys.

  I cried because I missed him already.

  I cried because I knew he wouldn’t miss me back, which reminded me how stupid I was and made me cry even harder.

  I cried until I ran out of tears. Then, I took a deep breath, lit a cigarette with shaky fingers, pulled out of the parking lot, and called the one person I knew who wouldn’t try to make me feel better.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Juliet asked, crunching on what sounded like a handful of Romeo’s dinosaur crackers after I told her what had happened. “Are you seriously crying in your car about a guy with no personality and a closet full of ties?”

  “Yes!” I wailed.

  “Oh my God, B. You’re such a dumbass. So what if he doesn’t love you? You know who will? Literally any…other…guy. Fuck Ken Easton. I know, like, three cute guys I could set you up with right now.”

  “Really?” I sniffled.

  “Um, hello? Remember Zach? He asks about you all the time.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does. It’s annoying as shit. Oh my God!” Juliet exclaimed with more excitement than I’d heard out of her in a long time. “Come see me at work tonight! Zach will be there!”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror at my puffy eyes and fluffy purple bun with auburn roots. “Ugh. I look like shit.”

  “Whatever. Just be there.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, swiping the tears from my cheeks. “I’ll come.”

  “Yes! I swear to God, B, I’mma find you a new man by the end of the week.”

  “You promise?”

  “Girl, I fuckin’ pinkie swear.”

  Just then, I pulled into Ken’s drivew
ay and had to fight back a fresh wave of tears. Seeing the white house with the red door that I’d once thought I’d get to call home made it all so real. The swing in the gazebo was even swaying a little in the breeze, as if it were waving goodbye.

  “Say it.”

  “Huh?” I asked, blinking back the moisture in my eyes. “Say what?”

  “Are you even listening? Say, Fuck Ken.”

  “Oh. Fuck Ken.”

  “Now, say, Helllllooooo, Zach.”

  “Who’s Zach?”

  “Jesus, B! The fucking bartender! Snap out of it!”

  “Oh, sorry. Hello, Zach.”

  “Good girl. See you tonight. Wear something slutty. I love you!”

  “I love you, too.”

  I ended the call and stared at the arched window above the garage.

  See, Ken? Even Juliet tells me she loves me. What the fuck is your problem?

  It only took me about two minutes to grab the few things I’d been keeping at Ken’s house. A bottle of Jameson. A few cans of beer. A lighter. A toothbrush. A handful of travel-sized toiletries from under his bathroom sink. Every room held a little piece of me, but just like my presence in Ken’s heart, it was a lot less than I’d realized.

  The only signs I left that I’d ever been there at all were the framed pictures of us on the mantel—the ones I’d put there in the first place—and my key on the kitchen table.

  Good-bye, house, I thought as I locked the front door and pulled it shut behind me. I’ll miss you.

  As I drove to my parents’ house, I wondered what Ken would think when he got home from work and saw my key sitting there.

  Would he even notice? Of course he would. Fucker had a photographic memory. I couldn’t move a coaster without him noticing.

  Would he realize that it meant I was breaking up with him? Probably not. That would require him to interpret my feelings, which would be like asking a blind man to describe the color chartreuse.

  Should I go back and leave a note? Set up a time for us to talk in person?

  You know what? Fuck that, I thought and reached into my purse.

  I was exhausted. From school. From work. And from chipping away, day and night, at the fortress Ken had built around his heart.