Page 48 of Composed at Randy's
I square my jaw and I just fucking do it, shouting, “I’m sorry!” Everyone in the room stops and stares at me. “I'm sorry I'm so stupid and that you all have to put up with me. Please don't be mad at me even though I know I deserve it.”
“Wren…” Kai says. He puts his list away, comes up to me, and goes down on one knee so he doesn’t loom over me. “We’re not mad, and you’re not stupid. The only people we’re mad at are ourselves.”
“It kinda feels like you’re all three seconds from murdering me, or telling me to go fuck myself.”
“Aw, buddy.” Marty rubs one of his biceps sheepishly and pulls up a chair to sit next to us. “Every single person here knows exactly how lucky we are to have you in our lives. You’re a gift, Wren. You light up everything around you, and all three of us love you to pieces.”
“Do you think I would work for someone if I didn't want to? It's not like I need the money,” Kai says.
This isn't news to me. Kai’s car alone is worth a year of rent in my fancy-ass apartment building. Hell, his apartment might be nicer than mine.
“What did you used to do for a living, Kai? You always laugh at me when I ask.”
Kai glances at Marty who gives him the thumb to the throat neck-slicing gesture.
“It's porn, isn't it? I'm old enough to know about porn, Marty. You don't have to hide it from me. Kai, I promise I’ll still love you even if everyone on the internet has seen your dick. What was your stage name? I promise not to look it up.”
You better fucking believe I’m breaking that promise immediately if he tells me. No, I’m still not hot for Kai, but don’t tell me you wouldn’t go straight to Google if a close friend told you they used to do porn.
Kai laughs and shakes his head, and Marty buries his face in his hands.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Marty says into his hands. “Maybe when you’re fifty.”
Marty always says this, and he always eventually caves. I am excellent at badgering people. I do wonder what Marty has over Kai that he could keep him from telling me. Kai isn’t known for listening to anyone if he doesn’t want to.
“And you’re not going to tell me?” I ask Kai.
He shrugs in awhat can I dosort of way, and I know that's all I'm going to get out of him. My excellent skills aside, Kai cannot be badgered.
“Soooo… just to make sure we're all on the same page, the three of you aren't about to make a mass exodus from my life because you’re sick of dealing with my smooth brain issues, right?”
“God no.” Shelly has Kai’s list in her hand now, and she stops writing in it to give me the full force of her mama bear executive energy. “Wren, even if I didn't love you like my own child, you make me millions of dollars a year. You're stuck with me, babe.”
Marty takes my hand. “Buddy, you have the most brilliant mind I’ve ever seen. They only let genius-level artists into our school, and you blew all of us out of the water. Why do you think our teachers let you get away with everything you did? Because they knew that a mind like yours wasn’t built to follow the samepath most people do. They don’t make tests for people like you because they don’t know how to quantify the way you think.”
I've heard this kind of talk before, but it's never made much of an impact on me. I know smart when I see it, and it's definitely not face down in a puddle of drool on a regular basis. It can also do taxes. I'm pretty sure that's a basic requirement for smartness.
“We all know who and what you are, Wren,” Kai says and takes my hand from Marty like it’s the group talking stick and he wants a turn now. “I’m grateful every day that I get to be someone you rely on. The art you create changes lives, and I’m honored to be part of your process. I’m not angry at you at all. It was my job to keep you safe, and I failed at it.”
“We all did,” Shelly pipes in. “All three of us should have slowed down long enough to check in with each other, and I promise you we won't ever forget that again.”
“Never,” Kai says. “In fact, I have several ideas about that to go over with you, Shelly, after the opening tomorrow.”
“I’ll tell my assistant to make a hole in my schedule for you,” she says.
Kai gets up and goes back to the kitchen area to finish helping Shelly with the list, leaving me with Marty.
I feel like a bomb went off in my heart. Never have I felt so loved in my life, and it makes my chest ache. It also makes me think of Bael, and my heart lurches.
How am I going to fix this?
“Kai!” I cry out. “Did you do the thing I asked you to do?”
“Not yet. My priority is you first, but I promise I’ll contact your friends as soon as I can.”
“I really need you to do it right now. It’s urgent. Like super-duper urgent.”
“And I really need you to rest right now.”
