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I stole an enormous breath from the thin air around me, about to land the final blow that would send her right over the edge. But what else could I do? I couldn’t tell her to stop being so passive, and then be passive myself. Someone had to put their foot down. “Just…please, Kai. I can come get you. We’ll pack up your things. We’ll get dinner with your parents and explain everything to them.”
Her eyes snapped to me. They were filled with a very specific type of rage. The rage Kai got when I invalidated all of her hard work and difficult experiences with my simple solution of just come home. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to tell them. I don’t want you to pay for me.”
I flicked my wrist in the air dismissively. “All I’m hearing is that you’d rather stay in that shithole apartment with that fucking predator lurking around than have to suffer through a little bit of healthy confrontation and a helping hand.”
She tossed her bear to the side, set her phone up on her nightstand, and stood in front of it to flail her hands angrily. “I did everything right! I fit in and made friends. I moved out on my own to this shithole apartment which I pay for with my own money! I’m getting an education. I did everything I was supposed to do and I did it all of my own accord! I will do this of my own accord as well!”
“Do whatever you want, Kai! Do everything of your own accord always but, fuck, at least do something!”
“I’ve had a very hard fucking day, Jonah. Do not test me. I called you for help, not a fucking lecture!”
I dropped down in my computer chair, finally taking note of the blaring headache ringing in my forehead. My knuckles dug into my eyes until I saw colors. I blew air from my nose and pulled myself into my desk, nearing Kai. “I’m offering my help,” I said calmly.
“You are not offering, you are demanding, and you have been for the last two and a half years.”
My eyes shot up to her. As if my heart wasn’t already nothing more than a pile of shards in its cavity, it somehow ruptured once again. “I’m being assertive for your own good because you won’t be. Just like when you push me on my shit. That’s what we do because we love each other. I have been nothing but supportive since you left.” And you have no fucking idea how much I’ve been suffering for it. “I want you home so badly it hurts, Kai, but I have never demanded anything of you nor would I think to do it. But this, Kai…this? Think about what you would do if you heard I was going through the same thing. You wouldn’t even ask. You would just show up. And while you’re thinking about that, take a second to ask yourself why you don’t react the same way when it’s you who’s in trouble.”
She was silent for a moment before muttering something that sounded like the word dick.
I glared at her. “What did you just say to me?”
She leaned into the camera and articulated shamelessly. “I said you’re a dick.”
I rolled my eyes and sat back in my seat. “Shame you like me so much. Your life would be much easier if you didn’t have anyone begging you to live it.”
“Don’t get all high and mighty, you shithead. You haven’t left your room since you moved into that place, so don’t talk to me about living life.”
A low blow, perhaps, but it was true. I wasn’t being hunted by a dangerous ex, but I certainly wasn’t doing much to save me from myself. “There are 7.6 billion ways to live, and somehow we’ve both managed to fuck it up.”
“They say we’ll hit eight within the next five years. And I bet we’ll still suck.” She smirked, informing me that her demeanor was beginning to calm. That’s all it took, really. A joke. Kai was good at blowing out her frustration in one go.
I, on the other hand, had no idea how to handle it. I just bit onto it and kept talking. “So, what do you want to do?”
She paused for a moment before saying, “I want to come home.” My hands immediately shot up from the desk in front of me and slammed back down. That is exactly what I was fucking saying. “Well, I—” She clicked her tongue. “I agree with you, okay? But you can’t get all macho man on me.”
“Macho man?” I dropped my head to my palm and began tearing at my eyebrows with the pads of my fingers. “Kai, I weigh a hundred and seventy pounds. I’m not being a macho man. I am furious.”
A goofy giggle rumbled through the camera. “You’re not a skinny nerd anymore,” she said, using my own typical self-description to change the subject. Her wet eyelashes gave her new smile a sticky edge. This was some sort of trap if I’d ever seen one, set to make me love her even more against my own will. “You were really quite tall the last time I saw you.”
I dropped my hand from my brow and tapped my finger on the desk, allowing myself to shift from left to right in my spinning chair. “I know what I am, Kai.”
She stared at me for a few quiet moments as I let the energy drain out of me. I was still fuming. That would probably stay with me for a long time and would surely revive anytime I met someone named Javier for the rest of my fucking life. But I did need to calm down.
Kai was beautifully curious, explosively adventurous, and any attempts to speak against it were incredibly futile. If she had proven anything to me in these years of friendship, it’s that I would not, could not, hold her back. Not that I’d ever want to. It was just so hard to stomach sometimes.
“I love you, Jojo, and I’m so proud of you. But you need to let me be proud of myself, too.”
“How could you not be?” I asked immediately, lifting my hands in front of me as if I were catching air. “Look at everything you’ve built for yourself. The education, the life, the drive that you have, Kai…”
“And I’m so happy about it, Jo. But I have a bit further to go. You understand, right?”
I wanted to kick a cement wall with no shoes on, but I didn’t have one near me just now, so instead I groaned and let my head fall to the side. She pouted at me the same way she did back in high school when she really wanted me to get off the couch and get her a chocolate bar from the kitchen. I was helpless to her.
“Fine.” I humphed and crossed my arms.
“Now tell me about you,” she said, smoothly leading me away from all that had just happened. “How’s Caroline?”
Yeah, there was no way in hell we were going to talk about Caroline. If we did, I really would need that cement wall. Pronto. “Get some sleep for now. We can talk more tomorrow.”
