She was.
Not that I’d expected anything different. By that point she was already taking on mythic proportions of her own in my head. Now, I could look at that tattoo and see not a burden, but a responsibility. The ink held strength instead of bitterness.
I lift my head and finally meet Kalli’s gaze. She’s as close as she can possibly be without touching me, and I wonder how that sliver of space between us can feel so small and so big at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I shake my head. “Don’t. No one should feel sorry for me. I spent a lot of years being a spoiled prick. And I’ve still got it a lot better than most.”
She toes off the ankle boots she’s wearing and pulls her socked feet up underneath her on the couch. Then she leans on the arm she has perched on the back of the couch, her cheek resting in her hand. She’s still not touching me, but she feels closer. If we both happened to breathe in at the same time, we’d make contact.
She says, “There’s this funny thing about empathy. It’s not actually in limited supply. Just because other people have it worse doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be understood. To feel comfort.”
“Says the girl who took only one night of comfort for herself.”
“If you had any idea how big a step that was for me …”
“I don’t have any idea. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
She lifts her head from her hand, her fingers trailing down her cheek. But just as I start to hope, her expression goes blank, and she draws that hand in a fist to lean against. And I know … she’s not going to tell me anything.
Still careful to keep our bodies separated, she bends toward me and places a chaste kiss against my cheek. It’s light, so damn light, but I swear I can feel the exact texture of her lips. The bow at the top and the tiny grooves that form when her lips pucker. It should feel good to have her lips against me, but instead it’s torture. Not just because I want more. But because everything about this kiss feels like an apology, the metaphorical ‘but’ before everything goes to hell. A goodbye.
Then she’s pulling back and climbing to her feet.
“I’m going to go get my own chaser.”
She walks to the kitchen without looking back, and the words come to me then, as fresh and easy as if I hadn’t been quelling the urge for nearly a year. I picture the stroke of my pen on the page, the messy script as I always hurried to scrawl the words down before they left my head. The notes I occasionally drew in above, already imagining how it would sound against the strum of my guitar.
I need a chaser for you, babe.
Something to take the sting away
I’m trying not to chase you, babe.
But my heart wants its own say
No. That’s not quite right. Its own way? Maybe … But my heart just won’t obey.
I’m still thinking over options, cycling through rhymes in my head for a song I’ll never let myself finish when the party returns to the living room. And in a gesture that no one misses, Kalli sits on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. She’s in the open space between the girls with names I can’t remember and Avery and Jack. Carefully alone, just like she prefers.
As everyone pours out their two shots, I pour two of my own even though I technically won. Because suddenly, I understand exactly why Lennox wants to be drunk on Christmas.
I need a chaser for you, babe.
Something to ease the sting I feel.
I wish I didn’t have to chase you, babe.
But you’re a burn that just won’t heal.
Chapter Fourteen
“Merry Mustache!” Lennox and I scream at the same time. She jumps up from her spot on the couch, hands on her hips. I follow, and when she’s left looking up at me, she climbs up onto her seat cushion so that she’s higher.
“I said it first,” she says.
“I’m pretty sure we said it at the same time.”
“So what now?”
We look at each other, and I’m grateful when her eyes don’t flick to Kalli. She’d given me one sympathetic look about four shots ago, but since then she’s been my partner in crime, in complete lack of sobriety. Our eyes bore into each other, and somehow we come to a nonverbal agreement.
“Everybody drinks,” I say.
“Yep.” She ends the word with a particularly forceful p. I finished my beer a while ago, but rather than getting another and continuing to mix beer and liquor, I decided to embrace the inevitability of getting completely shit-faced.
I pour us both a shot of tequila, and we cheers before we tip them back.
We’re not the only ones trashed. Mick was already quiet, so nobody noticed he had passed out until it was his turn to pick his Secret Santa gift. Lennox had tried to wake him, but the dude was gone. So, Lennox chose his gift for him. Then she got right in his face and said different types of alcohol until he finally groaned and tried to push her away after a particularly loud and drawn out, “Whiskey.” We took that as indication of his guess, and miraculously, his present was indeed whiskey.
That shot was the last straw for one of the you-have-a-name-and-I’m-a-dick-for-not-remembering girls. She convinced one of her other friends to head home, but the third stayed to flirt with one of the preppy dudes. Whose names I have also forgotten. I’m apparently an equal opportunity name forgetter.
I’ve been avoiding looking at Kalli. Because the more I drink, the more likely I am to do something stupid at the sight of her. Like leap over the coffee table, throw her over my shoulder and drag her into the kitchen where I can pay her back for that kiss on the cheek. I could fight those walls of hers. Press my body to hers. Whisper the things I want to do in her ear. I could make her change her mind.
But just because I could do it, doesn’t mean I should. For one, I’d feel like an asshole (though likely only up until the moment she gave in, then I’d just be thinking about her, how fast I could get her alone). And more than likely, it would end exactly the same way our first encounter had. Her gone, and me wanting to bang my head into the wall to relieve the ache of pent-up want.
Jack has gradually moved closer to her, inching his chair forward every once and a while in a ploy to get closer to the table, but I know it’s about her. Because it’s probably what I would do, too. I’m tapping my fingers against my knee to keep myself from tensing up in frustration, and eventually I find myself tapping out the same beat again and again. It’s the rhythm to go with the words I’d thought of earlier.