His fingers brush along my cheek, reaching my hair to tuck it behind my ear, exposing my tear-stained face to him. Turning now so I’m fully facing him, my head still resting on my knees, the tears still fresh.
“What’s going on? I thought we were having a good time?” he asks, thoroughly confused, and rightfully so. I bailed without explanation, but I really don’t owe him one.
I didn’t think he’d come to find me. I thought it would be over.
“How’d you find me?” I question, my words soft and exhausted. I’m spent, but my tears just won’t seem to run dry.
“I could hear you sobbing from the road,” Kai says, smirking at me as he tosses a soft elbow into my side.
He pauses, taking in my face, and just when I expect him to get up and walk away, he sweetly and calmly wraps an arm around me, and I lean into the warmth of his body.
“Wanna tell me what’s up?” His question is asked with complete sincerity, and there’s this weird feeling of safety that buzzes around him.
Maybe it’s that he really is a complete stranger, and sharing the most intimate details of my life feels easier when it’s not someone I know. A lack of judgment or whatever. I could leave here tomorrow, and Kai would just be a blip on a long life.
The only person who knows Sean and I have broken up is my sister. Although I’d wager my life’s savings that it’s spreading like wildfire. I haven’t allowed myself to look.
Blinking a few times, a headache beginning to set in, the words start to pour out of me like I’ve sprung a leak. They flood everywhere, covering everything with raw honesty and words I didn’t dare speak out loud.
I tell him how I ache, how I feel useless and stupid, taken advantage of, but that I also want Sean to want me. I want him to search for me, beg me to take him back, to make me feel like I’m not shattered into a million pieces. I want to hurt him the way he hurt me, but I’m so fucking broken that I can’t.
My emotions are a mess, desperate for closure, desperate for reprieve, but all I do is ache, painful and deep.
I let myself replay what happened in my head instead of pushing it away. I let it break me, ruin me and burn me to the ground.
Because I want to rise from this.
Learn from this.
After I’ve unloaded on Kai, ugly cried, and pleaded for it all to just disappear, he’s still here, holding me, softly shushing into my hair. And maybe I misread who he is after all.
“So that’s it?” he now says, and I pull back and glare at him.
That’s what he asks me after all of that? I just told him how my marriage crumbled and how my self-esteem is in a flaming dumpster, how I was cheated on and feeling like I’m not worth shit.
“Yeah, that’s it,” I quip back, second-guessing my thoughts that he might be a good guy. Did he not hear everything I said? Did he tune me out, afraid to try to slip away? Worried I’d murder him if he left since I’m such a loose cannon?
“Fuck that dude. He doesn’t deserve another second of your thoughts. His loss,” Kai says, lifting his chin, his lips pulled into an angry sneer.
“But you…” I start to say but stop. This isn’t about him. It’s about me, and he doesn’t get to make me feel a certain way. “So, I don’t think we should see each other.” The words come out bold and assertive, and even I believe myself.
“I thought we said friends?” It’s a question, not a statement, but there’s no way he thinks that’s all he wants. “Isn’t that what we just did there, Quinn?” Kai motions to where we were once huddled on the deck, me crying in his arms.
“Honestly, I don’t know what that was,” I admit, sort of wanting to take it all back. I should have told him to leave, but there was, and possibly still is, a connection here. I don’t want to like the way he makes me feel, but I do. “One stranger telling another stranger,” I add, but I’m finding it difficult to convince myself that’s the truth. I would rather push him away before he can hurt me, before he turns evil, because it seems like they all do in the end.
“Everyone needs friends, Quinn,” he tells me, my name said with a mix of seduction and compassion, and I hate it. It makes me feel torn and mean for pushing him away. “So, I’ll be here if you want a friend because it really sounds like you need one.”
Fuck my life.
He’s right, but I’m not ready to admit that just yet.
He’s like a surf bum Yoda with a hot body and a deep tan. The smell of coconut and sea salt wraps around him, intoxicating and all-consuming.
And something tells me we’d have mind-blowing sex.
But no.
“Okay, sounds good,” I reply, playing it cool despite the fact that I just had a complete emotional breakdown. I can still feel the remnants of it, crusty and dry on my cheeks.
