Page 160 of Faithful

This is where Fingers volunteers to get Kai, and Gin finally arrives with a homemade hummus and veggies spread.

For a second, the living room is in an uproar with everyone excited over food.

There’s a need for another chair and Gin and I walk over to the balcony where I remember leaving a spare one last night.

The small heater we typically always have on out here when we’re home, because Kai still smokes occasionally, is buzzing softly. Regardless, it’s quite chilly outside, and patches of snow still cover the ground and the roofs of the buildings and the distant mountaintops. The sun has almost dropped below the horizon and night is slowly but surely taking over the city.

“You two got a great place, kid,” Gin says, pausing to drink in the view of the city.

“I didn’t think I’d like being in the middle of it all, but it’s actually not so bad,” I confess.

“Soundproof walls make a huge difference, right?” She gives me a wink.

“Agreed.” Besides the obvious benefits of an urban lifestyle, there’s also the fact that Kai was able to turn the second room into a small studio, which comes in handy.

Apparently, living with a moody songwriter isn’t as glamorous as some people think.

Two weeks after my move, I was woken up at three in the morning by the rattle of dishes in the kitchen and Kai’s voice humming something unintelligible.

“I got a new song idea,” he declared as I wandered out of the bedroom, still sleepy and bleary-eyed, trying to understand what was going on.

Kai was making coffee and pancakes using an instructional TikTok video as a guideline. He then locked himself up in the studio until lunch, passed out after another meal, and woke up sometime between midnight and three in the morning and wrote more music.

That went on for about a week.

So his odd working hours are something I have to deal with on a regular basis.

His lengthy trips too, but that’s a given. Only now I don’t have to hide or travel incognito when I visit him on tour. So far, I’ve been to Italy, France, and the UK, and I plan on accompanying him to Japan when Iodine flies out there to play a festival this summer.

I can’t say Gin is happy with me taking so much personal time off, but we’ve developed a new system where I’m able to work remotely, and honestly I love it.

“Hey.” She directs her attention back to me. “Remember that conversation we had when I took you under my wing?”

“Huh?”

“I asked you if you knew why you wanted to do social work and you had no answer.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Did you ever figure it out?”

I take a deep breath and glance at the city again, at the flickering lights of the busy streets and the dark calm of the water. I hold that cool, refreshing air in my lungs for a good minute. I hold it there, and in my mind I rewind my life to the moment I pulled up to that old warehouse in Tacoma and saw a guy wearing eyeliner as he was coming out of the shadows to say goodbye to my sister.

I think about that very second he came into my orbit, unknowingly planting himself in my heart.

Screw people who don’t believe in soul mates.

“I believe I did,” I finally tell Gin, thrusting one hand in the pocket of my hoodie and checking if the little velvet box is still there. “A long time ago, actually.”

She continues to look at me, waiting for more.

“So people like Kai, or me, or you, or Val, or Winona don’t think they are not enough just because they are different.”

“People are different, Dylan.”

“They are in some ways. But is it right to assign them a certain social status because of that? Or assume things about them based on what they do for a living or what clothes they wear or where they live? In the end, we all bleed red, and we all die. In the end, that makes us equal.”

“That’s my boy.” Smiling, Gin gently pats my arm, picks up the chair we came here to grab, and heads for the living room.

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