Smarty Pants, page 16
“That was amazing,” she said. She and Kit were leaning against one another, and now brought their mouths together. “You are amazing.”
Kit gave a mock bow. One of her breasts, which had been freed from her bra during their wandering hands, now became free of her shirt, too. The V-neck she’d worn had been off kilter, and now Hailee reached out to help fix it. “As much as I love this look…” Hailee said, running her fingers along Kit’s nipple as she did. Her smile was off kilter for one moment before she finally righted Kit’s top. “There.”
“Thank you.” Kit brought Hailee close to her mouth again, just so she could also feel her up as she helped her get back into her top. A few moments later, they were putting back the chair and the newsboy hat.
“You want to grab something to eat?” Kit asked. “We can go see Jake and the rest of them at Mel’s, too, if you want?”
“Hmm?”
“I said we could go to Mel’s if you want,” Kit said. “You okay, Hailee?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” Hailee smiled, but it was strained. She’d been looking in one of the prop bins when she hadn’t heard Kit, but Kit realized that seemed to be a disguise for looking at her phone.
“Are you sure everything is all right? Should we see Jake or—”
“Everything’s fine.” Hailee slipped her phone into her back pocket. “I’m just not feeling retro diner fair. But pizza, maybe. What do you say?”
Hailee held out her arm for Kit to take by the backstage exit. Kit’s heart fluttered in her chest. Whatever had worried her was now gone, and only the early sensations of love—yes, love, Kit was sure of it now—remained.
“Sure,” Kit said as she took Hailee’s arm. “Pizza sounds great.”
Chapter 23
Hailee looked up from her laptop to realize that the milkshake she’d ordered an hour ago was probably no longer safe to drink. The whipped cream on the top had completely congealed. She grabbed the straw and tried to stir it around, but it didn’t make it look any more appetizing. She sipped it, decided that the sugar was still good, and probably exactly what she needed.
Her laptop screen displayed the self-publishing software for Amazon. She’d come here over two hours ago to edit, design, and maybe upload some of her erotica. Kit’s comment had gotten to her, in the best way possible, and she’d convinced herself that it was the main reason why she hadn’t been able to sleep the past few nights. With still no response from Olive, save for a brief rescheduling of their meeting, what else did Hailee have to do? She was bored, and so, she was going to take her erotica online.
She swallowed back a thick sludge of sugar from the milkshake. She’d been in the middle of editing one of the stories when her description of Kit’s breast caught her off-guard. Her work was standard in terms of erotica—pert breasts, wonderful breasts, and so on—but it was the difference in tone and texture that threw her. In this story, Kit’s breasts were immaculate, perfect, and oh so wonderful.
But backstage…her breasts had felt different. Lumpy? No, that wasn’t the right word. But hard. Like there had been a small bump in them, and no matter what direction Hailee had sucked her from, the bump or ridge or whatever was there. Hailee swallowed again now. She was trying to make a cover for this story, along with setting up her author page online, but it was too hard. So hard.
Too many tabs open? She minimized all of them and tried to start again. She was on her homepage of Google when she decided to Google what she’d felt.
She immediately regretted this decision. It reminded her of the onetime she’d felt sharp pains in her chest and Googled, then made the whole thing worse by thinking she as having a heart attack. Thankfully, Indie had been the one to throw antacids at her and told her to calm down for at least an hour before she went to the ER. Hailee had done just that, and she was fine. Dr. Google is always going to make you feel like you’re dying, Indie had told her. So don’t Google anything unless you’re prepared for that.
Hailee saw that reality so clearly right now. All of the results pointed back to breast cancer. She wanted to minimize the screen, pretend she’d never seen this, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t just a stray thought or a random search. Kit had history. Kit’s breasts could be ticking time bombs. Hailee was in the middle of typing more specific searches—like Kit’s age, her family history—when she heard her name being called.
“Hailee girl,” Yessina said. “Thought that was you.”
“Oh, hi Yessie.”
“Ouch. Way to be enthused.”
“Sorry,” Hailee said, sighing. Yessina was standing on the other side of her small booth, her screen not visible to her. She held a to-go bag in her hand. “I’m just working and got distracted.”
“Same here. But what’s up? Your supervisor gave you bad feedback? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I wish. I just…” Hailee wished that out of all her friends that Indie had shown up. Indie would have calmed her down, told her she was being stupid. But maybe Yessina was exactly who she needed. She’d known Kit far longer than any of them. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” Yessina sat in the booth without another word. She opened up her bag and started to eat some of the fries. “What’s up?”
“I…I was…Oh, wow, this is going to sound bad.” Hailee stopped and started another handful of times before she finally was able to spill out the story. Kit’s history with her mother’s cancer, and her sister, was not new to Yessina. And she didn’t even bat an eye when Hailee said that she’d felt something the last time they were together. “And I’ve Googled it now, and while I know that’s not a diagnosis, I’m scared.”
“Google depends on you being scared. That’s how the algorithm works.”
“I know, but if this was me, I would have just written it off. It’s always going to say cancer, but the likelihood for me is low.”
“And not for Kit?”
Hailee gave Yessina a wide-eyed look. “You know about her mother.”
“Exactly. And so does she. Don’t’ you think she may have already vetted something like that? That she’s done her homework and knows what to do?”
Hailee nodded. Sure, probably. Kit was a smart girl and almost always had something going on. “But what if she went before this lump or whatever appeared? Shouldn’t I tell her?”
“Depends on what you want to tell her,” Yessina said. “So what do you?”
“Um. That she needs to go to the doctor. She should get that checked out. That she should—”
“Forgive me,” Yessina said, holding up one of her hands. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I was wondering how long the two of you have been sleeping together. Is that weird to ask?”
“No, it’s fine. A couple weeks? A month?” Hailee made a face. “Suppose it depends on when you started counting. We…resisted a lot at first.”
“Well, okay, congrats for getting over your egos.” Yessina grinned and for a moment, they were happy. Then Yessina ruined it by asking, “How long was your last relationship?”
“What?”
“Your last one. How long did you sleep with Cassandra or Julie or Robbie?”
“Um.” Hailee baulked when she realized that had been a month, maybe six weeks, with them as well. “Why? What does that matter?” she asked after she’d informed Yessina.
“Do you ever wonder if you’re looking for a reason not to commit? One day, it’s because Cassandra is vegan and you like Mel’s Diner too much. The next it’s because Robbie is dumb and you two can’t have conversations.”
“But that’s not Kit. She’s perfect.”
“No one is perfect.”
“For me, then. I love her.” Hailee bit her lip, not realizing the gravity of the statement until it came out. She blinked several times before she got the nerve to face Yessina again. “I really do love her. She’s not like the others. She’s different, and I—”
“You’re a good person, I know that,” Yesinia said. “But if you do love her, then you have to let her figure this out on her own.”
“This is life and death, though. If she doesn’t know—”
“So tell her. But you if you do love her, you have to trust her to figure out what she wants to do, okay?”
Hailee twisted her face in horror and confusion. What else was there to do? You told someone when you were worried about them. And from there, you stuck by them. Right? Yet there was something Yessina wasn’t saying, a part of this puzzle piece she just did not have yet. And she would not have until she met with Kit.
“I have to get back to work,” Yessina said. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes. I think. I just…”
“You will do the right thing,” Yessina said. “And so will Kit.”
Hailee nodded. She barely waved as Yessina left. She sighed as she went back to her laptop. She minimized all the windows and tried to start again. She sent a text to Kit, asking to see her. Where are you? I’ll meet you there.
She tried to go back to uploading her stories when she received no response back. It wasn’t until she remembered Kit’s women’s studies homework, and that Professor Browne also taught on campus around this time, and that she knew exactly where to find her. Response or not, Hailee was going to see her right away. Everything else important depended on it.
Chapter 24
The three-hour class was taking its first break by the time Hailee arrived. Hailee was only in the foyer for a few minutes, watching Professor Browne lecture through a small window in the door, before the scraping of chairs covered up any other sounds. When Kit came out of the room, she was right after a group of girls who seemed far too young to be in this course. Kit smiled almost immediately upon seeing Hailee.
“Hey, you,” she said, and then quickly glanced down at her phone. “Sorry! I put this on Do Not Disturb. I didn’t know you texted.” She furrowed her brows as she read the messages. “Everything okay?”
“No,” Hailee said. She realized she was probably making this worse with how dower and sad she looked. But how did you tell someone this? She extended her hands to Kit, hopeful. She tried to smile. “Do you have a second? I need to tell you something.”
“Oh no.”
“It’s not a break-up,” Hailee said. “I know it might seem like that, but I’m not that callous.”
“You would wait until I was at least out of class entirely? After learning the first time?”
Hailee furrowed her brows. A distant memory of her and Jake, in their hometown, breaking up during a break in a similar manner came back to her. “Oh, man. How many people talk about my relationships behind my back?”
“Not many. That was a lucky guess.” Kit folded her arms over her chest defensively. She seemed to wince at the action. “So, go on. Let’s get this over with.”
Hailee was still struck by Kit’s body language. She was wincing around her own breasts. How could Hailee not have noticed this before now? How could she have ever dreamed of keeping it secret? So, in spite of the horrible feeling mounting in her chest, she told her. “I think you should go to the doctors.”
“What? Why?”
“The last time we were together,” Hailee said, stepping closer so she could lower her voice. “I felt something.”
“Like…feelings? Is this your strange way of saying I love you?”
“No. But I do. And I think you should go to the doctors,” Hailee repeated. When kit was silent, she added again, “I felt something. In your breast. Like a lump.”
“What?”
“I know that’s scary. It wasn’t big. But from what I’ve been reading, with sharp edges, it’s far more likely to be a tumour and—”
“And so you’re not my doctor? You do know that a PhD doesn’t give you a medical license, right? You can’t even call yourself a doctor on a plane.”
“What? No. I’m not saying I am a doctor. You should get it checked out, though.”
“But I have. I’ve gone to the doctor all the damn time.”
“But maybe they missed it? You should go again. I’m just scared—”
“How do you think I feel?” Kit asked, her voice raised. “You’re feeling me up and then diagnosing me, when I thought we were just having fun.”
“We were having fun. It caught me off guard, and—”
“And you decided to investigate for me? That’s fucked up.”
“No, it’s not. I was worried. I sought out advice. And even Yessina—”
“Oh, Jesus.” Kit ran a hand over her face, combing through her hair. “She told you all my fucking secrets, then, didn’t she? About my sister and Brad, and how when she decided to get her own damn mastectomy, he left her.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he said he wasn’t attracted to her anymore, and so he left. Didn’t matter he had a kid with her, that they’d been together for ten years. he just left. Because of boobs. All because of fucking boobs.” Kit huffed. Her cheeks were red, and her bottom lip was trembling. Hailee wanted to reach out and hold her, tell her everything was okay, but she also felt the rage radiating off of her.
“I won’t do that. I’d never do that,” Hailee said. “And I didn’t know about that. Yessina never told me. She just said that you could figure this out.”
“Ah, for once, good boundaries, Yessie. Good job. But she’s right. I can figure this out on my own.”
“I won’t leave. Not like that. I don’t care if you get a mastectomy, I will be there.”
Kit gave Hailee a long look filled with derision. It cut her to her core. Why was someone she loved so much looking at her with hate in her eyes? It didn’t make sense. “I just want you to be safe.”
“I am. I was. All before this.” Kit gestured to the space between their bodies. Hailee had no idea if she meant them, or her breasts, or a combination of both.
“What…what will you do?”
“I don’t know,” Kit said. “But that’s for me to decide, okay? Just…let me decide about my own damn life for once.”
Hailee nodded. She wanted to say so much more. She wanted to wrap her arms around Kit and hold her so tight—but she stayed put. She already felt like she’d violated everything in all the ways she’d never be able to put back together. She touched Kit that first day without permission, and touch again was going to cost her. She wanted to chop off her hands, like she’d wanted to chop off her tongue as a child.
“I-I-I-,” Hailee shut her eyes. She rephrased. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, thanks. But I’m still going. I can’t do this right now.”
“Where you are…” Hailee trailed off. Kit walked around her, without touching or saying another word, and she walked right out of the building. She didn’t even bother to go back to her class. As the remaining student filtered in, and Professor Browne started to lecture again, a wave of pain rolled across Hailee’s chest. The fact that everything went back to normal hurt so much more. And she knew, no matter how many antacids she could take this time around, or Google symptoms, or pester Yessie or Indie, nothing would solve this pain.
This time, Hailee was on her own.
Chapter 25
“Is that the…Oh, I don’t know, some strange Icelandic word?” Rae said, then gestured to the piece of Ikea furniture that Kit had in her hand. “Wait. You’re not supposed to attach that thingie to this thingie, to make the perfect thingie-majig.”
“Crap.” Kit huffed. She’d already attached the wrong legs to her desk not ten minutes ago. Her sister had taken over that task when Kit felt as if she’d cry or drop-kick it across the room. So she’d moved not the shelving unit for her apartment, but apparently even something as simple as a white shelf that was called an EKENABBEN was too hard for her. “This is impossible.”
Kit chucked the instructions across the room. “Fuck this. Why do I even need furniture?”
“Because you’re not some noir detective who only lives for murder and crime. You have a life, and we’re going to put those damn women’s studies tomes on a shelf, so help me God.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I can’t look at those phone books of sadness anymore. They are going on a shelf, and I am going to cover them with stickers of mermaids from my daughter so I don’t have to see the words female circumcision anymore. Capisce?” Rae narrowed her gaze in a manner that gave no argument. It was the same one she used on Anissa, and that she’d honed growing up with Kit.
Kit nodded but did so while frowning. She tried to go back to assembling her shelving unit but grew frustrated within seconds again. This day was supposed to be easy. She was supposed to meet Rae for breakfast with Anissa, and then while Anissa played with Abigail across the hall, she and her sister were going to get her furniture so her apartment didn’t echo anymore. They were going to get Swedish meatballs, too, but Kit didn’t have the stomach for it. Kit didn’t have the stomach, or the patience, for anything anymore.
“Maybe we should have gotten food,” Rae said, noticing Kit’s petulant stare at the Idea furniture. “Maybe you wouldn’t be as hungry as you are right now.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Then horny, or something. We should have brought along Hailee. Maybe then you’d know what to do with your hands.”
“Shut up.”
“Whoa.” Rae shot Kit a look from across the living room. Her brows were high, her mouth set in a serious scowl. Kit braced her for her sister to begin yelling, like the many times she lost her cool in their youth, but she didn’t. She set aside her own building project and gestured to the couch.
“Something is going on,” she said slowly as she sat down. “So you’re going to tell me what it is before we both end up using an awl to carve one another’s eyes out.”
“I’m sorry,” Kit said. She slumped over her legs and cradled her face in her hands. “I shouldn’t have brought you over to do this. I shouldn’t have even gotten this apartment. Everything always goes to crap.”
“Those are very different statements and not all of them are connected. Come on, sweetie,” Rae added after a moment of silence. “What’s going on? Does it have anything to do with the fact that you’re binding your boobs again?”
