The man in my memories teaches me to ride a bicycle. He runs beside me on the gravel path, one hand steady on the seat, and when I crash into the hedges he laughs instead of yelling. He smells like pipe tobacco and patience.
That man cannot be what Diane implied.
I pace my bedroom, her words circling like vultures: you just don't remember.
Remember what? My childhood is a patchwork of impressions—sunlight through kitchen windows, the weight of my father's hand on my shoulder, my mother's laughter from another room—but the specifics dissolve when I reach for them.
I know almost nothing about my parents' life before me, their marriage, the architecture of secrets Diane hinted at. The gaps feel like missing teeth, tender and wrong. I remember little of my childhood too.
I cannot sleep. Cannot read—the sounds through the wall haunt me still. Cannot leave.
I have no friends in this town, no one to call, and the thought of drinking alone at a bar makes my stomach turn with recognition. I would see my mother in every glass.
Evening arrives gray and quiet. I settle on the living room couch with a mindless procedural on the television. Tomorrow is Heinrich's formal dinner party, black tie and forced conversation, but tonight I have nothing required of me.
Heinrich and Diane left for a date an hour ago. Kai isn't home either.
Probably with Petra, I tell myself, and hate the jealousy that coils through my chest.
The car pulls up at eleven. My first instinct is flight: scramble upstairs, lock my door, pretend I was never here.
But that would be a sign of weakness, and Heinrich's voice echoes in my head: This is your house too, Skye. He's told me this repeatedly over the past few weeks.
I stay on the couch, forcing casualness into my posture as footsteps approach the door. Demonstrate ignorance, eyes fixed on the television.
Kai stops in the doorway, silhouetted against the porch light, holding a six-pack of beer. He's dressed for somewhere—dark jeans, a shirt that fits too well, hair slightly mussed. He looks surprised to see me.
"You're awake," he says.
"Observant. Did they teach you that at your expensive school, or does it come naturally?"
"The expensive school, actually. They charge extra for stating the obvious." He considers me for a moment, the weight of the beer shifting in his hand. "Want one?"
"No."
"Didn't think so." He starts toward the stairs.
I should let him go. Should be grateful for the continued silence, the distance he's maintained all week. Yet, I hear myself say: "Wait."
He pauses, one foot on the bottom stair, looking back with that unreadable expression.
"One," I say. "One beer."
He returns to the living room without comment, settles on the couch beside me, close enough that his thigh almost touches mine.
The proximity puzzles me. All week he's maintained distance. Now his arm rests along the back of the couch behind me, not touching but present, framing me in the space he occupies.
He is handsome in the lamplight, and I hate myself for the observation. Hate more that my body responds to his nearness.
The first beer goes down too quickly, cold and bitter and exactly what I need. The second follows before I've finished processing the first.
"Dr. Halloway wore a toupee to class today," Kai says, rolling his bottle between his palms. "I spent forty-five minutes contemplating whether it was cruelty or optimism that made him believe no one would notice."
"Optimism," I say. "Same reason he assigns Byron to freshmen and expects them to understand sexual jealousy."
"Byron understood sexual jealousy the way a forest fire understands timber. Efficiently and without remorse."
I feel his eyes on me, sharp and assessing, waiting to see if I'll rise to the bait. When I don't flinch, something shifts in his expression—surprise, maybe, or respect.
He takes a slow drink, watching me over the bottle's rim, and I meet his gaze with steadiness. The challenge hangs between us, neither of us looking away.
"You're comparing your literature professor to a Romantic poet?" I ask.
His mouth curves, and his gaze drops to my throat before returning to my eyes. The look is knowing, intimate in a way that has nothing to do with the words we're saying.
"I'm comparing him to a natural disaster." He leans closer. "The toupee is merely the warning tremor."
I laugh before I can stop myself, and his eyes brighten with triumph—he's won this round, made me break first. But when I look back at him, still smiling, the triumph in his gaze has softened.
We stare at each other, the silence stretching, the television forgotten, and I feel the shift like a physical thing: banter becoming something else, sparring becoming foreplay, the space between us charged with everything we haven't said.
By the third beer, I'm laughing at things I would normally find cruel. We're both tipsy now, the empty bottles lined up on the coffee table.
"I heard you," he says suddenly. "This morning. With Diane."
My spine stiffens. "Eavesdropping?"
"Walls are thin," he says, not apologizing. "And you were loud by the end."
I should feel violated. Instead I feel relief—someone else knows. "She was drunk. Saying things that don't make sense."
"Did they feel like they didn't make sense? Or did they feel like things you didn't want to understand?" he asks, his eyes are dark in the lamplight, fixed on mine with an intensity that feels almost tender.
"You're very good at asking uncomfortable questions," I deflect automatically.
"It's a gift. Comes free with the expensive education." He watches me steadily. "You didn't answer, though."
"She said my father hurt people." I swallow around the tightness in my throat. "I don't remember being hurt."
"Memory is strange." His voice drops, intimate in the quiet house. "It protects us until we're ready. Or until we're not."
I turn to look at him. His face is closer than I expected, and there is this slight flush from alcohol across his cheekbones.
"You're perceptive, Kai." I study his face in the lamplight, the way he watches me with an intensity that feels like reading. "I don't understand how someone so perceptive could fail literature."
He blinks, then laughs—a genuine sound, surprised out of him. "I can't believe you've just switched to this teaching mode of yours."
An awkward pause settles between us, filled by the television's low murmur. I turn the bottle in my hands, watching the light catch the condensation.
I should let the silence stand, should finish my beer and retreat to my room while I still can.
"I'm sorry about Dylan." The words come suddenly, almost clumsy from him. "You didn't deserve that."
I go still, the bottle forgotten in my hands. This no longer seems like a game.
He studies my face, and I feel exposed in a way that has nothing to do with the alcohol warming my blood.
I should remember Travis, remember every reason why men who offer vulnerability are warnings, not invitations. I should move back to my end of the couch, finish my beer, say goodnight.
Instead I say: "Oh fuck you, Kai."
And kiss him first.
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