Page 45 of The Burning
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s old and creaky.”
“It’s so comfortable, though.”
I laughed, remembering Kael’s long legs dangling off the edge of it as he slept with it reclined. That felt so long ago. I wondered if we were thinking the same thing. It felt like we were.
“You can have it if you want?”
His face lit up. It was more of a reaction than I expected over an old chair that I’d taken from my dad’s when Estelle remodeled their house.
“Let me pay you for it.” He reached for his wallet. “Or just take that cash you owe me from the chair. Chair for chair.”
“Chair for chair?” I teased him. “You’re getting ripped off here. But I’ll take it as long as you know that.”
“I’m aware.” He smiled. “I like that one. I slept like a baby in that thing.”
I imagined Kael sleeping in a sleeping bag on the desert floor, his body having to adapt to the extreme climate change during the nights.
Kael looked at his phone right as I said, “Take it. Be my guest.”
I waited a couple seconds while he texted someone. Finally, he looked up. “Last chance to go to the baby shower?”
“As jealous as I am of the fun you’ll have, I have to . . . I have stuff to do. It’s almost over and I don’t have a gift or anything. I don’t even have real shoes on.”
Leaning against his new chair, Kael looked at me. “Okay,” he said, exhaling a deep breath with the word.
“Okay?” I repeated.
“I can tell them you said hi.” He shrugged.
“Then they’ll know you saw me. I don’t want that because Elodie might feel bad and I’m tired and have been out all day and—”
He lifted his hand to stop me. “I get it. I won’t mention your name. I still think you should go to give them all a big fuck-you. I do have to go, though, since it’s almost over.”
“Go ahead,” I said too quickly. My neck started to prickle. I wanted this confusing day to end.
“Okay?” He laughed softly. I liked that he wasn’t pressuring me, but also kind of wanted him to at least try to convince me. God, I was all over the place.
“I’ll drop the plants inside before I go, though.”
He was on his phone again. I wondered if he’d really just found out about the shower and whoever the distraction on his phone was and if they were there waiting on him. I wasn’t a part of the platoon’s little group like he was, so I didn’t know much of anything. Whether he spent a lot of time with them or not, he was at least in the platoon and was friends with a lot of the guys. My mind started down the path of a conspiracy theory that Elodie must have told her Army wife group about me and Kael and my chest started to burn.
“Karina? You good?” Kael asked.
His voice brought a slice of reality back to me. My mind always went to the most extreme places. I wished it wasn’t like that, but it always had been.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice tight.
Kael would notice it. I knew he would, and when he then looked at me, he would say something, his lips touching my ear, like when he woke up in my bed telling me—
“Are you sure, though?” he asked. “Not talking about me and you. I’m talking about you, just in general.” He stood in my doorway, still as a statue with his square jaw set.
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m just tired. Today was a long day . . . well, the month has been long, and I have to work in the morning, and shower. I’m fine. Really.”
Kael sighed and rubbed his fingers over his smooth chin. “Okay. See you around then?”
“See you around then,” I repeated.
He hesitated before he spoke. “Karina?”
