ix. baking on a rainy day, high fives, a first kiss
"Home," I say.
My voice sounds cracked but cool, and far harsher than I intend. I'm so harsh lately. I'm still mad, I remind myself, and our fights warrant this type of wall, this type of response.
There's silence again.
"Oh."
"You're not home." Now my voice clips up into an accusation. Are you with someone else, is what I don't say, don't dare say, but he knows that's the point.
I can almost feel his loud sigh in my bones when it comes through the line. He's running a hand through his messy hair, I know it.
"I didn't want to be there without you."
I wait.
"It didn't feel right."
A small crack in my restraint slips through at his words, because they are so Kai and so exactly what I need to hear right now. He wasn't fooling around with someone else. He wasn't home because I wasn't home.
I'm the one who left first, I remind myself. I'm the one who didn't stay to repair. If only I could fix relationships the way I fix cars.
I finally say, "Where are you, then?"
"The Kesleys'." I high-five myself mentally, thanking my lucky stars that I didn't go there, then, after I almost left Cress and Thorne's house. When I don't say anything, Kai adds, "You know Scarlet's the best at baking." He laughs, but it's forced. "Nothing like cookies to cheer you up on a rainy day."
"Right."
"Can I come home, Cinder? I miss you."
The photo on the ground of the two of us at our wedding threatens to bring a fresh tear to my eye.
"I—I don't know," I say. "Maybe it's better if we have more space. That's what you wanted, isn't it? Space."
A blurry vision of Thorne trying to break this news to me at a shady bar bubbles to the surface. The truth is that I do want Kai home more than I will ever admit. But I want this version of him, the version where he misses me and tries to lighten the conversation by talking about cookies.
Not the one where we have to dig through years of emotional baggage to try to unearth problems that keep us from being us.
What if 'us' is the problem?
There's ice between us now. Kai's standing on top of the lake looking down, meanwhile I'm in the water struggling to see a crack in the thick sheet above me, wondering if he would pull me up if I found one. This hypothermia could be the death of me. Perhaps it already was the death of me, and it's too late for a blanket, too late for warmth.
Maybe trying won't change anything.
"I'm sorry," says Kai. I can hear the break in his voice and it hits me so hard that maybe Kai is the one who needs warmth. It feels like a trick, one that I always fall for, one that lately ends with me sleeping at Cress and Thorne's. "I was mad, Cinder. You hurt me, so…so I wanted to hurt you too. I don't want space. I want you."
"Well. We can't always have what we want, can we?"
I hear Kai sniff, and I wonder if he's crying, or trying not to, the way that I'm trying not to. He utters four words, spoken in a voice so low and hollow that I wonder if I imagined them. "But you're my wife."
We're so happy in this photo. We're so happy in this photo. We're so happy in this photo.
"Cinder? Please don't do this."
"I'm not doing anything." And maybe that's what makes me even more horrible of a person.
"What about—what about meeting halfway? I won't come home, but you'll at least see me."
"I'm not coming over there." I can't be around any more happy couples right now.
He inhales sharply, like my answer has somehow given him renewed energy. "Not here, no. Let's—how about the pier?"
"The pier?"
I know exactly which pier he's talking about, but the suggestion catches me off guard. It's where we had our first kiss, and it's been almost that long since we've been back there.
"Off the boardwalk, right by Luna's Shells? You know, where we—"
"I know."
"Will you meet me there?"
I chew on the inside of my cheek. It's raining, and I look like a mess, and what if this is the wrong move, and—
"Okay," I whisper.
