Page 34 of Risk
“We’re going to hash everything out tonight, huh?” I ask her, not sure if there are enough hours between now and when the sun rises to broach all the topics we need to touch base on.
“We’re going to try our best to, yes,” she answers, walking around my bed and making it. I need to change my sheets and the comforter because night sweats are something I suffer from but I haven’t had a free moment to make that a priority. “These smell like a boy’s locker room, Risk.”
“I know,” I tell her. “I’ve been running myself ragged so I haven’t done anything other than face plant onto my bed when I come into my room.”
She clears her throat, mirth dancing in her eyes when she asks, “Do you have a new set in here anywhere so we can go ahead and switch them out while we talk?”
“Yeah, in the closet. Top shelf,” I say, my eyes locked onto hers.
She snickers at me before ordering, “Strip the bed, Risk. I’ll go grab the fresh ones and then when they’re changed out we can sit on the bed and talk, seeing as you only have one chair in here. What’s up with that?”
“Not in here much, Kenna,” I murmur, reaching down and yanking the top two layers of bedding off. “This room is literally only used when I need to sleep, shower, or change clothes. I don’t sit in here and contemplate my life, that’s a dangerous activity. I need to be surrounded by people, even if I’m only just sitting there by myself, listening to them bantering back and forth.”
“You’ve always been a people watcher,” she concludes as she walks into my closet. I complete the task given to me, but as always, I forget about the pillows. When she comes back into the room, she clicks her tongue at me when she sees them tossed onto the floor, cases still on them. “What is it about you and never changing your pillows out?”
“Don’t know, it just never seems important, I guess,” I ponder. Even though she previously said she wanted to talk while we remake the bed, neither of us says a word. Once it’s nice and neat, she plops down on the mattress and pats the spot beside her. “Why am I so nervous?”
“Because you’re fixing to get the answers to things you may have consciously wanted to know, but subconsciously don’t want to hear,” she surmises.
I snort and say, “You’ve always been smarter than the average bear.”
Tsking, she asks, “Is that supposed to be a compliment, Risk?”
“To me it is,” I state as I twist my body and sit sideways on the bed, facing her. “I have so much to say that I don’t know where to start.”
“Then let’s start at the beginning and work our way through the years,” she suggests.
“That’ll work,” I agree with her recommendation.
Licking her lips, she asks the one question that’s been the elephant between us. “What did I do wrong that had you sleeping with another woman?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I quickly correct her. “I think there’s something fucked up in my head that when things are good, I have to test the waters and the end result is me messing everything up.”
“Because of your dad?” she whispers out the question.
“You got it in one,” I affirm. “It’s in my nature, I suppose.”
“It’s a ramification of your upbringing,” she rectifies. “Hearing stories about your dad always reminded me of myself.”
“Kenna.” I sigh. “How so?”
“Because I don’t have the Midas touch, I have the exact opposite effect on people and things around me. Intellectually, I know the right thing to do but my destructive impulses steer me in the wrong direction. My brain is wired wrong.”
“Something we seem to have in common,” I rumble out. “We’re quite the pair.”
“It’s one of the many ways we bonded, Risk.”
“Fucked up minds, now there’s a brain twister.” She reaches over and smacks me on the shoulder with the back of her hand causing us both to laugh. “Alcohol played a role in me doing what I did, but I didn’t lie earlier when I said that I honest to fuck thought it was you with me in that bed. Y’all’s hair was styled similar, same color, your body builds were dead on, and she called me MC.” When I say that, McKenna gasps because it was her nickname for me back in those days but it was expanded—to be exact, she called me her MC man.
“How did she know to call you that? That was mine,” she states, balling up her fists.
“Don’t know,” I gratingly answer, shrugging my shoulders because I don’t know how else to respond. Admittedly, it’s something I’ve often wondered about as well. Seeing as I’ve never seen that woman again after Kenna walked into that room and witnessed me making the worst mistake of my life, I don’t think we’ll ever know. “There’s something you don’t know, something I was too ashamed to admit to you before now.”
“Since we’re being honest with one another, I think you should tell me what that is now,” she insists.
Hanging my head because I can’t bear to look her in the face when I say this, I tell her, “My memory of that night is fuzzy. I can’t remember much after finishing my first beer, a beer that she personally brought to me.”
“You accepted an opened drink from a stranger, Risk? You know better than that,” she scolds me.
