Page 46 of The Beachgoers
“No strings,” Kyle insists, setting the platter of chicken and potatoes on the table, then dropping two slices of bread in the toaster. When he passes the refrigerator, he takes out a bottle of cheap wine and fills their glasses. “You can pack after you eat, and I’ll drive you home afterward. Like we agreed.”
Lauren stands there in her low-slung bell-bottoms, and lacy camisole over a tee.
Maybe the aroma of cooking chicken does it next. Or maybe it’s the comfort of that old kitchen, with its humming refrigerator and sticking cabinet doors.
But Lauren does it.
She gives in.
* * *
Crossing the black-and-white checkerboard floor, Lauren pulls out a vinyl-padded chair and sits. As soon as she does, Kyle wraps a dishtowel around the handle of his pot of beans and brings it to the table. After scooping a spoonful of beans onto her plate, he pauses. “Enough?” he asks.
Lauren nods and picks up a fork. But she doesn’t eat. It’s more like she just turns that fork, then stabs a chicken thigh and puts it on her plate. Kyle fills his own plate with beans, returns the pot to the stove, grabs the salt and pepper shakers from the counter and sits again.
What he’s been doing, and still does, is this: He keeps moving. Grabs a couple of chicken thighs. Spoons potatoes drizzled in chicken drippings onto Lauren’s plate first, then his. Plucks the popped-up bread out of the toaster. Goes to the fridge for a tub of margarine and spreads a slab on each toasted slice. Gets up and turns on the ceiling light when the room gets shadowy at sunset. He sits again and cuts into his chicken. Eats a mouthful of potatoes. Leans back. Sets down his fork. Looks at Lauren. Turns up his hands.
Lauren reaches for her wineglass and takes a sip.
“Hey.” Kyle nudges her plate closer. “Eat.”
She picks up her fork. The kitchen is quiet, with just their flatware clicking on the plates. Their glasses being set down. “You know, Neil had a saying,” Lauren lets on while spearing a piece of chicken. “And I’ve been thinking of it lately.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that?” Kyle asks, picking up the saltshaker and sprinkling salt on Lauren’s food.
She gives an ironic smile. “Karma’s only a bitch if you are.”
Kyle stops shaking the salt, briefly, until he resumes sprinkling it on his own food. “Don’t go there, Ell,” he says, his voice so low you might miss it. Then he swabs his forehead with his napkin before lifting a forkful of beans. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“But it serves us right, no? Me and Neil?” She turns sideways in her chair and crosses her legs. She pokes at a potato slice, too. “After what we did, and who we hurt? Karma came around and got us damn good.”
Kyle chews his mouthful of beans without meeting her eye. But that’s all he eats before looking across the table at her. “Yeah, well. Karma could bite me, too,” he says, still holding his fork. “Because hell, Neil and I had it out that night you broke up with me. It was bad. And the things I said to him? I can’t even repeat them. So is that karma? Huh? Because now he’s gone—and I’ve got to live withthat.”
Lauren watches Kyle for a moment, then turns away, blinking back tears. Blinking back emotion that shows in her quivering lip. In her panicked look. In the way she drops her head into her open hand. It’s as though she could just imagine Kyle’s and Neil’s words that night. And how those words must’ve fired off like bullets.
Kyledoesn’trepeat any of those words. Instead, he calmly sets down his fork, wipes his mouth with his napkin and gets up. When he returns to the kitchen minutes later, it’s with two things. Despair, for starters. It’s in his eyes, as though he’s at the end of his rope now.
The second thing he brings to the dimly lit kitchen? The diamond engagement ring Lauren left on his pickup truck’s dashboard two weeks ago.
When he crosses the kitchen floor, she’s not watching him. She’s too busy pressing her balled-up napkin to her eyes. So she doesn’t notice at first that Kyle doesn’t sit down and dig into his perfectly cooked, golden-crisped chicken thighs. Instead he drops that diamond ring into his cargo shorts pocket, then slides his vinyl-padded chair close to hers. And sits right there. He leans his elbows on his knees, clasps his hands and turns his head toward her.
“I want my ring back on your finger,” he barely says.
Lauren squints over at him. “What’s wrong with you?” she snaps.
“What do you mean?”
“How can you evenlookat me, after what I put you through?”
“Lauren, I want you in my life.”
“Damn it, Kyle. You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Howcanyou be? You should be so mad at me. You should be telling me this is all my fault. This whole mess—Neil being dead, your best friend, Jason, disabled now. Everything. Us. Sosayit, Kyle.Sayit. It’s. My.Fault.”
“Stop it, Lauren. Juststopit.”
