Page 30 of How to Walk Away

“Want to know who I’ve been staying with?” she asked then, brightly, evenchattily,and before I could say no, she went on, “Fat Benjamin. From high school. Do you remember him?”

This was a classic Kitty trick: pretending things were fine until everybody forgot they weren’t. She was trying to lure me in.

I didn’t answer.

“Remember how he used to give me rides home in that Jetta with the broken back windows with Hefty bags duct-taped over them?”

“Did you just call this guy ‘Fat Benjamin’?”

“Everybody calls him that.”

“Seems kind of mean.”

“He doesn’t mind. He’s the cute kind of fat. Anyway, he had a huge thing for me, but I never gave him the time of day because he was so doughy and had that mullet-y haircut? Well, he’s not exactly fat anymore—more ‘chubby.’ He’s cute now! He got cuter! Or maybe my standards went down. Anyway, I’m staying at his place, on the sofa bed, but I can tell he still likes me, and I’m sure I’ll wind up sleeping with him before long if I don’t get out of there.”

I didn’t meet her gaze. Was this her argument for why she should be here? So she didn’t accidentally screw a guy called Fat Benjamin?

She shrugged. “I wish I could stay here instead.”

“Don’t ask me again.”

“I’m not asking! I just said,I wish.”

“We can’t all get our wishes.”

“I just think it would be a bad idea to sleep with him.”

“Thendon’t.”

She shrugged. “I’m terrible at saying no.”

I met her eyes. “Well,” I said. “I’m not.”

She was not going to suddenly reappear in my life after three years and make me talk aboutboys,of all things. She could not just show up like this and expect to pick up in the same naïve place we’d left off.

“Anyway,” I said. “I’m pretty tired, so…”

“That’s fine,” Kit said, rejecting the hint. “I brought some magazines.”

I shook my head. “You need to go.”

She stepped a little closer. “I’d really like to stay.”

But I just shook my head. And then I turned my face away until she gave up and left.

Eight

THE NEXT MORNING,I learned something new about my hospital room: It had great acoustics.

This was after all the morning rituals: sponge bath, tooth-brushing into a bedpan, medicines, catheter change, bowel evacuation, breakfast of oatmeal and Jell-O, and OT with Priya for three breathless rounds of getting in and out of the chair and two failed toe-wiggling attempts.

My door was right next to the nurse’s station. For the first time, I noticed I could hear voices talking about medicine and medical orders. I could hear someone typing on a keyboard. Someone was making a run to Starbucks. An orderly tried to flirt with one of the nurses, but she shut him right down.

Then I heard Nina’s voice, a little louder than the others. “I need to talk to you about this schedule.”

A man with a slightly nasal voice replied, “Okay, shoot.”

“You gave Ian to this patient.”

---