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“I know.” And I do know. That’s what made it so hard to watch from the outside. “I just wanted to be part of it.”
She turns and looks at me and something complicated moves across her face. “You’re the whole reason it happened. But there’s a difference between being the reason and being the destination.”
That lands somewhere I don’t have a word for.
She looks around the room. At the boxes and dust bunny pillows, at the life I keep in storage while I’m out living a different one.
“How long do you think you’ll have to perform?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your dad will get better.” She says it like a fact not a comfort. “And when he does, they’re going to want the version of you that fits here. The engaged one. The one who stays. And you’re going to let them have it because you love him and you’re relieved and it’s easier than fighting.” She pauses. “And I’m going to be standing next to you in the right kind of dress, nodding.”
“Is that so terrible?” She tenses in my arms and as it comes out of my mouth I hear it.
“It is. This is supposed to be temporary. This engagement isn’t even ours, it’s for them.” She says it quietly, and I hear what’s underneath it. We stopped being temporary somewhere between Marseille and Cairo, and she doesn’t know what to do about that any more than I do.
“What are you saying, my Kat?”
She takes the coffee back and wraps both hands around it. “I’m saying I don’t want to be the person who fits. I spent time becoming someone who doesn’t and you’re the reason I did that.” She looks at me. “Don’t make me go back.”
“I’m not making you do anything.” I shift in my seat.
“You are. Just by needing me here. Just by looking at me like that.” She gestures vaguely at my face. “I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay. And every day I’ll be a little less the person I became and a little more the person your parents want standing next to you. And you’ll let it happen because it’s easier than admitting what this actually is.”
The room is very quiet.
“What is it?” I ask. “What do you think this actually is?”
She opens her mouth and closes it. Looks at her coffee. Looks at the tree on the wall.
“I don’t know yet,” she says. “That’s the problem.”
I want to tell her I know. I want to tell her I’ve known since I bought everything off that bathroom wall and sat in Colin’s bar with her photograph on the barstool next to me. I want to tell her I’m terrified she’s going to wake up someday and realize I’m just the acceptable version of what she was supposed to want, that I’m Chad with better luggage and her parents actually approve this time. Even though I’m not, but on paper, I look like it.
I don’t say any of it.
“Stay,” I say instead. “Just a few more days.”
“Of course.”
She hands me back the coffee and gets up to find her clothes.
Chapter 66
The Good Version
KAT
Boston
The Thai place on Boylston doesn’t close until eleven and one am on weekends. This is the most important thing I’ve learned about Boston in ten days.
We’re standing at his kitchen counter eating pad thai out of the containers because neither of us has the energy to pretend we’re the kind of people who use plates after a six-hour hospital shift. I’m still in the blouse Nan approves of. He’s still in the button-down his mother ironed. We look like two people who got dressed for someone else’s life and haven’t had a chance to change back yet.
He hands me a fork before I ask for one.
I look at him.
