Page 44 of Jar of Hearts
“Hello to you, too,” Kaiser says. “I was about to leave, and I saw the light come on. Can I come in?”
“How long were you out there?”
He pauses. “A while.”
“Why?” she asks.
“You know why.” Kaiser looks exhausted, the lines around his eyes and mouth a little deeper than the last time she saw him. He looks older. But then again, she does, too.
“I haven’t heard from him,” Geo offers. She doesn’t have to say who “him” is. They both know.
“Okay.” He turns to leave.
“Wait,” she says, and her voice sounds more desperate than she intends. She doesn’t want him to go. She doesn’t want to be alone. “I was going to make some tea. You’re welcome to join me.”
He turns back, gives her a tired smile. “Sure. Thanks.”
He steps inside the house, and she closes the door behind him, locking it with both the dead bolt and the chain. They stand awkwardly for a moment. Like the last time she saw him, she notices how much taller he is now, how different he looks, how different hesmells. This version of Kaiser doesn’t jibe with the boy she always pictures in her head.
This version of Kaiser is a man.
He follows her to the kitchen, and Geo frowns as she scans thecounter. “We used to have a teakettle,” she says, opening cupboard doors one after the other.
“Use that.” Kaiser points to a machine she hasn’t seen before. It’s sitting beside the fridge, and it looks like a miniature shiny red version of a coffee shop espresso maker. “I’d prefer coffee anyway, if you have decaf.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s a Nespresso,” he says. Seeing the blank look on her face, he points to the table. “Sit. Allow me. We have one of these at the precinct. It’s pretty good, though the coffee in the morgue is better.”
“The morgue?”
He chuckles, pulling open the tray underneath the Nespresso machine, which also doubles as a stand. He selects a pod, then opens the fridge and takes out the milk. There’s a foamer sitting beside the coffeemaker, and he appears to know exactly what he’s doing as he makes her a decaf latte. He hands it to her, waits for her to take a sip.
“Well, shit,” Geo says. “It’s good. I can see why my dad bought one of these.”
He fixes a cup for himself and takes a seat across from her at the kitchen table. It’s surreal to be in the kitchen with him, the same place they’d spent a lot of time in as teenagers, eating pizza and hot dogs, working on a chemistry project, making Jell-O shots for a party they weren’t supposed to go to using vodka that her father forgot he had. Now it’s only when he smiles that she sees glimmers of the old Kaiser underneath the leather jacket and three-day scruff.
She wonders what she looks like to him.
As if reading her mind, he says, “You look good.”
She looks down at her coffee. “Liar.”
“No, you do,” he says. “You really look okay. The woman I arrested that day five years ago, I didn’t recognize her. But you, right now? This is a person I remember.”
“It must be the sweatpants and no makeup,” she says, but he doesn’t laugh. And if she’s being honest with herself, she knows what he means.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks. Just like that, they’re sixteen again.
She shakes her head, allowing a small smile. “For what? Doing your job?”
“Walter hates me.”
“My dad doesn’t hate anyone. He’s protective. And he blames himself.”
“For what?” Kaiser looks surprised.
“For working too much. For not being home a lot.” Geo sighs. “For not knowing I was dating a guy so much older. Mind you, Calvin was only twenty-one. But that was a big age difference back then.”
