Kai checked his watch, and then he seemed to decide something. He pulled me down so that we were sitting together. He smelled so good, it was driving me crazy. “Ember, I want to answer this. I do. But I’ve got a new priority. I just made a promise to myself that in the next fifteen seconds, I’d either get your phone number or kiss you, or both.”
My heart was a piston. “I never give out my cell.”
“What if I give you mine? Not that this is some big deal— I hardly ever turn it on. But I do check my messages. Besides, I was watching you before you saw me. So I’ve known you a few minutes longer than you’ve known me, right? I feel like I’ve known you a long time.” He seemed suddenly shy. “Anyway…”
“Anyway what?”
“Anyway I think you want to kiss a stranger.”
“Ha! I’m not sure you know as much about me as you wish you did,” I challenged. Or flirted. Probably both.
“Five seconds.”
And then I decided to take hold of the moment. Quickly leaning over to kiss him before he could kiss me—and why not? I wanted it just as much—even if the nerve of acting on this sudden urge turned my face hot.
Kai’s lips were warm on mine, and so I kissed him again. A real kiss. Slow enough that he could push against my mouth before I parted my lips for the pressure of his teeth against mine.
The catch of his fingers on my neck, the thrill of his hands cupping the back of my head to draw me close, and the newness of it all, the stranger’s hands mouth lips tongue click bite shot sparkling pinwheels through my body.
“Fireworks,” he said softly. “Do you see them? They’re everywhere.”
“I do; I see them everywhere.”
“Because there are no coincidences.”
And as I opened my eyes, I recalled the honey-menthol cough drops I’d take whenever I had a sore throat. How the menthol was a balm after the sweetness had been sucked away to nothing.
Kai’s kiss was the same—a balm.
Mine and mine and still mine, even after it had ended.
7
Two Cats in the Washer
It wasn’t until I’d jumped off the J train, my mind still in a sandstorm of him—Kai, Kai, Kai, who are you, Kai?—that I remembered.
Friday Folly. My house. Holden and Rachel.
The moon was a visible sliver when I turned on my phone. Five voice mails. Two were from Rachel and three were from an increasingly tense Mom—the last with the bass-note rumbling of Dad in the background as Mom pleaded with me to please call them back.
Where had the time gone? I couldn’t make sense of it. It was past seven—two hours snuffed out. My muscles were kinked and knotted. I tried to piece it together. I’d watched the sun sink into a warm rainbow sky while I was out on the fire escape. Then I’d left Kai—was it dusk by then?—with twenty more minutes on the subway.
Time had buckled and flexed and swirled down the drain.
Had my phone been off the whole time? Yes, I must have shut it off right after I called Jenn.
“It’s me again,” began Mom’s final message. “It’s gotten so late, Ember. Much too late. Will you call, please?” Then Dad’s grumbling: “As soon as she gets this.” And Mom again: “As soon as you get this message. We need to hear from you. Okay?” There was no hiding the tremble in her voice.
When I saw them—Mom, Dad, Rachel, and Holden, all gathered in the kitchen—Mom started to cry in earnest.
“Oh, Mom.” I hugged her and she clung to me in a damp clamp of relief. “I’m really sorry. I lost track of time.” Which sounded so lame, even if that was the truth.
“We sent the others home,” piped up Rachel. “There was some party they wanted to hit. But Sadie left those brownies.” She indicated the wrapped pan on the counter.
“I feel terrible.”
“We’re just glad you’re safe.” Rachel gave my arm a squeeze. “Not that we were all worried.” Rachel’s reproach was gentle but it was there. Because yes, my mom was overreacting, but—Rachel’s eyes seemed to entreat—how else did anyone expect her to act? “We ordered takeout from Mumbai Dream. It just came. I was betting hard that you’d show up hungry.”
“I am hungry.” The takeout was lined up buffet-style, lids off, but nobody had touched a thing.
Holden came around from the other side of the kitchen island. I’d been over-aware of him from the moment I’d walked in the door, and now I let myself observe him. He looked great.
“Emb.” He reached for me, a quick, firm hug.
“Loving the five o’clock.” I let my fingers brush the scruff of his chin.
“Thanks.” He rubbed at it sheepishly. There was something else about him, too, something new—an elegance. Maybe it was simply the fact that he was out of his parents’ house, living at the NYU dorm. Or maybe it was just that I hadn’t seen him in a while, and I missed him.
“I’m really sor—”
“No worries.” Then he tweaked my ear, something he used to do back when we were going out. It seemed natural—but I could feel Rachel absorbing the intimacy of it.
“Kids, I’m starved,” said Dad. “Let’s eat.”
That’s when I spied tonight’s Folly ingredients—brown rice, cans of chickpeas, red and yellow bell peppers, scallions—heaped on the counter. Waiting for me. I felt horrible thinking of my parents pacing up and down the aisles of the grocery store with my list of items, fussing over brands of long-grain rice, accepting and rejecting onions and peppers, all for a dinner I hadn’t bothered to make. “Wow, I really screwed up. I didn’t mean to—”
“We know you didn’t mean to.” Dad looped his arm around my shoulders. “We’re just glad you’re safe.”
“Where were you again?” Rachel cut in.
“Just walking around.” My racing heart would have betrayed me, if anyone had heard it, as I began to heap my plate with garlic naan bread, basmati, tamarind sauce, palak paneer, and then the korma glopped like the world’s most delicious baby food on top—with a glass of mango lassi so it all went down sweet.
It was inexplicable that I’d lost that time. I thought it had been an hour or so. It would upset everyone if I told them that. It frightened me. “I missed my stop on the way to therapy. So I got out at Bushwick. There was a club…something I wanted to check out.” It was then that I remembered—I’d gone looking for memories of Anthony Travolo.