Page 50 of Comfort Read

“Idiots, the both of you,” Eleanor growls, as she begins dragging Kit through the crowd towards the doors. “I gave you my number, Kit. I said to call if you ever needed anything! A ride to the airport in a media shitstorm is exactly the kind of situation I meant—no, don’t open your mouth until we’re inside. They’ll quote every damn word you say.”

There’s a lesson I shouldn’t need to learn again, Kit thinks, but he’s at least able to keep it to himself.

“Sorry,” he breathes, once they’re clear of the crowds, and Eleanor’s pulled him into a small alcove that’s blessedly empty of people. “I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking, when I came here. I didn’t think it would be, um… like that. And… I guess I figured you work for Sage, and he… we…” Kit swallows and blinks hard, choking back emotion with every ounce of willpower he’s got. “I guess I didn’t think I’d rate your help, at this point.”

Eleanor puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. Gently, even kindly, she says, “Well, I can see your logic there, although for the record I think it’s very stupid logic. Come on. Let’s get you back home.”

In the end, and for what’s surely the last time, he flies on the same private plane he’s grown used to taking with Sage.

He tries to protest—that it isn’t fair, that he can’t afford it, that Sage shouldn’t have to pay for the extravagance when Kit’s the one who ruined everything—but Eleanor waves his every objection away. She says, “Of course it’s fair, all’s fair in love and being hunted by paparazzi,” and then, “You don’t have to be able to afford it, you’re not paying,” and then, irritably, “Oh, for God’s sake, Sage isn’t paying, either, would you just come on?”

She explains on the flight home: Beth, the pilot, is her wife, and the plane is part of the full-service transportation business they own together, covering flights, driving, and on-the-ground protective services for high-end clients. Sage, of course, was their primary financier back when they were just starting out, and helped them go from town cars to limos to helicopters and planes. They’re a big operation with significant staff now, Beth mostly running the transportation side while Eleanor focuses on protective services, but they both insist on taking care of Sage’s requests personally, whenever they can manage it. He’s done too much for them, Eleanor explains, for either of them to be comfortable leaving his care to anyone else.

What the hell have I done? Kit thinks again, sharper and louder this time, more of a wail.

He doesn’t say it. What would be the point? Eleanor must know even better than Kit does how badly he’s fumbled this, how monumental his loss. She’s kind to him on the flight back, cordial, but that’s all—none of the camaraderie that’s grown between them these last few weeks is anywhere to be found.

He knows he shouldn’t—he knows the answer will only hurt him—but just after they touch down in Ithaca, Kit forces himself to ask, “Did you know? Did he tell you?”

Her voice is even as she says, “No, Kit. He didn’t say a word.” But Kit can hear the banked anger in it anyway, see it flashing in her eyes.

He swallows down his explanations, the part of him desperate to cry that it wasn’t his fault, that Maggie’s the one who dragged it out of him and then couldn’t be discreet once she had. It wouldn’t be fair. Maggie might have pushed him, but Kit didn’t have to crack. Maggie might have been the path through which the story escaped containment, but Kit was the one who let it out in the first place.

As she loads him into what will surely be the last private car he’ll ever take home from Ithaca Tompkins International Airport, he allows himself one more ill-advised question: “You only came and got me—only flew me back here—to spare him seeing me in the papers, didn’t you? You just didn’t want him to have to read about me?”

Eleanor shrugs, her expression betraying nothing. It still hurts, the words stinging like a slap across the cheekbone, when she says, “Honest to God, man: What makes you think I’d tell you anything right now? Goodbye, Kit.” She shuts the door and slaps the roof of the car, and the driver—a stranger, this time, who doesn’t offer Kit so much as a hello—pulls away from the airport and starts the now-familiar drive home.

When Kit gets there he blows past Allison, whose attempts to speak to him he doesn’t hear. He blows past a series of curious customers—their mouths move, but whatever’s coming out of them is lost to the ringing in Kit’s ears, the cavernous, yawning silence blooming up out of his heart. He even blows past Throgmorten, whose urgent meows are followed by a slightly more urgent attempt to attach to Kit’s pant leg with the power of his claws. Kit dodges him, and dodges him again, until he reaches his office.

He shuts the door, ignoring the furious yowl from his cat. He sits in his chair. Without any better options, he takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes.

For the next two days, Kit doesn’t leave that office.

He slinks out to use the restroom a few times, when he’s sure Allison has either gone home or is otherwise occupied. Once, several hours after close, he shuffles to the front to accept a pizza he ordered. He opens the door, reluctantly, to let Throgmorten in after his first few hours home, and then has to open and shut it a number of times after that, in order to accommodate the simultaneous desire to be within and without that seems to plague all cats everywhere. That’s it. Otherwise Kit sits in his chair, and alternates between staring at his phone, his computer, his ever-present stack of unfinished paperwork, and the wall. It’s the same experience no matter what he looks at: He’s not looking at anything, no matter where his gaze lands.

All he can see is Sage. That horrible last conversation, sure, but also the wonderful, earth-shattering night before it, and every unexpected, delightful day before that. Every text message and shared joke; every awkward moment; every laugh that felt like winning an award. If only he hadn’t told Maggie—if only he’d warned Sage about it, instead of assuming Maggie would keep her mouth shut just because Kit asked her to—if only it had all happened differently, if only Kit had acted differently, maybe he’d be in California right now, pressing a kiss against Sage’s million-dollar smile.

Allison tries to get him out of the office with increasing urgency, first citing bookshop concerns, then concerns for his wellbeing, before finally insisting that a smell is starting to ooze out from under the door. He ignores her. And so, when a knock comes on Wednesday evening, he calls, “Go away, Allison. I’m not dead, you don’t have to call the fire department, I’ll come out when I’m ready and I’m not⁠—”

“It’s me, Critter,” Maggie says. Kit sighs, stands, and opens the door.

If Maggie were anyone else to Kit—a friend, a colleague, an acquaintance who happened across the life-altering information she’d then shared with the press—the conversation would start immediately and aggressively. Kit would demand to know what she’d been thinking, and lay out for her exactly what she’d cost him, and she’d defend herself, maybe, or apologize.

But Maggie is his older sister, so instead of any of that, he steps away from the open door, drops back into his chair, rests his head on his desk, and mutters, “Look, I know you’re probably expecting me to rip your face off, and I should probably want to, but I just don’t have the energy right now. How about you just go ahead and kill me instead, what do you say? Spare us both the trouble of talking about it? Plus, I mean, I’d be dead. That sounds pretty good to me right now.”

“I’m not sure if you realize this, but a significant portion of my childhood was dedicated to keeping you alive.” Instead of sitting, Maggie starts wandering around the small office, picking up books and papers, looking at the knickknacks and keepsakes Kit’s put on display since taking over the bookshop. “It’d be so wasteful to go through all that only to murder you myself. Also, Mom and Dad might have something to say about it.”

“Not Justin?” Kit doesn’t lift his head to ask this, but he can feel Maggie’s expression, somewhere between a laugh and a wince.

“Nah. He’d have an opinion—he always does—but I think that’s one of those rare circumstances where he’d keep it to himself. I wouldn’t get a Christmas card from him for a few years, though, that’s for sure.”

Kit sighs. “Really? I’d’ve guessed he’d be glad.”

“You have always been a pretty bad guesser.” Maggie makes a tsking noise when Kit doesn’t lift his head—he knows he was supposed to, that the comment was bait to engage him in an argument left over from a game they’d played on childhood road trips, but he can’t bear to right now. “Jesus, Kit. If this is how you’re going to be… I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know⁠—”

“Oh, don’t.” Kit sighs, rolling his forehead back and forth against the cool wood. “Of course you didn’t know. I didn’t warn you properly. I’m sorry—for not warning you, for getting you stalked and put up on all the gossip websites, for⁠—”

“Are you seriously going to do this?” She crosses her arms over her chest; Kit sees it, and the familiar mulish set of her expression, out of the corner of his eye. “Even now? Not everything has to be your fault⁠—”