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“I loved her.” He avoids my gaze completely. “I’d fallen pretty hard. Thought she was the one.” He shakes his head. “We were inseparable. She loved me too. Or so she said.” He grows quiet. I continue to watch him in silence until he actually looks at me again. “I came home one night and caught her cheating on me.”
I grimace. “Kai, I’m sorry…”
He holds my gaze. I can see the pain there, like a traumatic memory that won’t go away. “She saw me come in, but she didn’t even stop.” He presses his lips together as his eyes tell me the horror. “Nope, she just kept on going.”
My heart sinks for him. I don’t have the experience to know the pain he’s endured, but I can see it so clearly within him. The night suddenly seems quieter around us.
“And that was it. We never spoke again.” He glowers at the ground. “Well, until I messaged her the other night.”
I gulp. “Did she reply?”
“Nope.”
“Sorry you had to do that…” I frown. That game was evil to him too.
“The most shocking thing to me, back then, was that a relationship that seemed so perfect could drastically change in an instant.” He kicks a stone, trying to appear casual. “And someone I thought had loved me was so clearly lying straight to my face… so much that she never even apologized. After that night, she just…disappeared.”
I’m silent while I put the pieces together and begin to finally understand where his motives and his reservations come from. He’s been vulnerable himself. He’s fallen in love. It all came crashing down around him. I think about the way Jarrett made me feel when he took what he wanted and then asked me to leave. “So, you do understand what it’s like.”
“What what’s like?” He regards me curiously.
I meet his grief-stricken gaze with my own. “Having someone make you feel worthless.”
A sense of empathy crosses his expression and he nods. “In a different way than you probably do, but yes.”
“You know she’s not the standard, right?” I peer up at him.
He observes me with gentle eyes. “You know he wasn’t either, right?”
I focus on my feet. They pick up pace on their own as my nerves spike again. I let out a breath and try to lighten the tone. “Well, this got deep.”
Kai laughs softly beside me. “That was not my original intention.”
When we come to a stop in front of my apartment, I bravely meet his gaze again. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
He shrugs. “At least now we know why we’re so different.”
Yet strangely the same. I don’t say the words, but I think them. They are so raw and true, but I don’t even understand them fully myself.
He smiles and looks toward my building. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
I return his smile just slightly. “See you tomorrow.”
***
Tomorrow comes too fast. I can’t stop thinking about what Kai told me, trying to figure out why he’s gone out of his way to be so cautious of my feelings. Memories of Leah’s words flood my mind; ‘…he’s got it bad for you.’ I know he was into me that night in Long Island, but that had been purely physical, for both of us. Surely, he’s over that by now?
With so many questions clouding my mind, I barely sleep, but somehow the night still flies by, and before I know it, I’ve arrived at the green room as the sun comes up. With a deep breath, I enter to find Sarah waiting for me.
“Good morning!” She’s at a small table at the center of the room.
“Good morning,” I reply with slightly less enthusiasm.
Kai isn’t here yet, so I sit down and lay my script in front of me. I stare at the words on the pages. I’ve imagined for months how I’ll make them believable in the moment. Elaine is giving herself, for the first time, to William. My first—and only—time was a disaster.
William and Elaine aren’t perfect. They fight…a lot. But they make up, and they love each other more deeply than even my own heart can comprehend yet. Today, I have to figure out how I’ll show that to an audience. I have to become her, I have to love William, I have to trust him, and I have to do it all with my face and my eyes and my hands and my words. I have to look at Kai, who has to look at me, and we have to eventually make the audience believe we are in love.
I run my fingers through my hair and take a deep breath as Kai walks in. He smiles at me as he sits down with a coffee.
