Page 54 of Unmade

“Do you want me to get the afternoon flu?”

He sighed. “Bo.”

I didn’t have time for this shit. “Can we do this another day? For a benched operator, I sit in your chair a whole fucking lot. A chair that’s very uncomfortable, by the way. You can’t lie down.”

“I had a sofa once. Operators tended to fall asleep on it,” he mused. “And for the record, you’re not benched. You’re working your old assignment, aren’t you?”

If he was gonna bury me in semantics, I wanted to wrap up. “I’m about to lose my signal, Doc, but it’s been a pleasure as always. We’ll count this as a session.” I ended the call and made it onto the dirt road.

I slowed down at the first gate and rolled down my window, and I inserted the code.

The gate opened slowly, its sign welcoming me to a company that only existed on paper.

Kat thought that was an excellent time to call, and it was best not to dodge it. I understood why she was worried about Alex, and with any other kid, maybe I would’ve been worried too. But that girl was turning into the Hillcroft mascot at this point. She said hello to everyone, high-fived several of the operators, and was ridiculously easy to please. Just keep her busy with books, her favorite markers, a coloring book or two, and some toys.

“She’s at her sleepover at Em and Danny’s,” I said. “She’s literally surrounded by puppies and Em’s nephew’s children.”

Kat exhaled a laugh. “Hello to you too! I wasn’t calling to fuss over anyone but you.”

Oh, joy.

“What have I done now?” I slowed down at the second gate and reached for the lockbox, where I inserted a key and punched in a second code.

“Kristen called me today.”

I grimaced and scrubbed a hand over my mouth. That was a closed fucking chapter. Why the hell would she go and call my sister?

“Is it true that you haven’t talked to her since you broke up?” she asked.

“Why would I talk to her again?” I drove through the gate and continued down a narrow, bumpier dirt road with nothing but trees and darkness all around. “She said if I wanted to work things out, I could call her, but I don’t. I was a shit boyfriend, and she wasn’t great either. She thought she could change me, and I stubbornly made her my target for my last-ever attempt at committing to someone.”

I wasn’t doing it again. This past year, I’d seen her once a week at most, and I’d been late to almost every dinner. I hadn’t been able to stay past the meal—hell, I wasn’t sure we’d slept together a single time in six or seven months, and whenever we had, I’d woken up with an insane urge to escape before her alarm went off.

Attraction was tricky with me. Like a flip of a switch, I could go from “Yeah, okay, let’s give this a go” to “Honey, you make my skin crawl.”

“It’s always the same story with you, isn’t it?” Kat sighed. “It happened with Tara, with Emily, with…”

“I vaguely remember their names. Go on.”

“Well… Do you still talk to Adam?”

I furrowed my brow. “We have our once-a-year beer around his birthday in February. Why?”

Kat cleared her throat. “He once made you question your sexuality.”

Uh.

“What the fuck are you smoking?” I asked. The trees parted up ahead, and a beat later, the facility got caught in the headlights. It looked pristine as always, yet abandoned and ghostly at the same time. Just a white-painted box-like structure nestled in the thicket. “There’s absolutely no reason for you to rehash a confused fourteen-year-old’s?—”

“Don’t downplay it,” she responded abruptly. “You can’t blame me for wanting you happy, Bo. And if you’re living in denial of some sort?—”

“I’m not in denial about anything,” I chuckled. It was my turn to cut her off. “I’m also not blaming you for shit. I just think you’re overdoing it because you’re afraid I’m gonna be alone now that you’re moving.”

Frankly, the day couldn’t come soon enough.

To think I was, what…gay or bi, all of a sudden? For chrissakes. No. Our folks had been weirdly accepting and inclusive all our lives—even our old man—so that whole thing had never been a stigma in our family. Hell, I’d spoken openly about my so-called confusion as a teenager. It hadn’t been a big deal. But after messing around with Adam and a couple other guys, I’d just found it way easier with girls.

I was by no meansgoodwith them, as my exes could attest, but at least I knew what I was supposed to do. Be present, listen to her, compliment her clothes, send her flowers for Valentine’s. Shit like that.

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