It's Like This (8 page)

“Do you seriously want to go into all our shit right now?” he replies earnestly. “Like we can, I mean, I absolutely will, but we’re tired and—do you want to, honestly?” I shake my head, unequivocally relieved, because I realize I don’t want to talk things out. I mean, I do. But not now, not when I feel like a sudden movement could dissolve me into splinters. “We will though,” Rylan promises, as if reading my thoughts, “and soon, OK?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Soon.”

Rylan sighs softly, his palm running up and down my back, slow and constant.

“What are you doing?” I ask, half by accident and unable to stop myself. “We don’t
do
this.”

“Yeah,” he replies, “well, maybe we should.”

I find myself nodding into his chest again, and I allow one arm to creep around under his arm and over his shoulder. He temporarily tightens his hold on me, and, for the second time tonight, I think we’re hugging.

“See?” he says lightly into my hair. “Don’t ever think that I don’t know what’s best for you.”

I can’t tell if he’s joking, and for some reason I find that that doesn’t matter. I now have complete evidence that I’m all kinds of fucked up, because somehow, that sentiment honestly comforts me.

Of course, he’s gone in the morning. He doesn’t leave a note or a little bouquet of wildflowers, or coffee and a muffin on my bedside table like (just maybe) a part of my brain half-wishes he would—not because I crave flowers or muffins, but because I do crave reassurance. He does, however, change my laptop desktop to a Paint document: his mouse-messy scrawl (and that’s pretty messy), saying, “AT WORK EARNING FUNDS FOR A VANCOUVER TRIP NEXT WEEKEND, YEAH? CALL YOU SOON.” And a picture of what might be a heart. Or a penis. It’s hard to tell.

Rylan works at a pet store, Nook, except that’s it’s not like, cats and dogs and bunnies, so it doesn’t stink. The only pets Nook sells are aquarium dwellers, mostly tropical fish. Rylan is mainly a very, like, stereotypically cool guy: he’s like the kind of guy who leans against walls and railings and smokes and looks aloof (except that he doesn’t actually smoke), and everyone around just looks at him and goes, “Fuck, that is one cool guy.” But all the coolness Rylan projects is utterly undone by one simple fact: he’s a fish geek. An intense one. Like…if he could not come home from work, sometimes I think he might sleep there. Yeah. He really likes those fish.

* * *

He does call later and of course, we don’t talk, not about anything relating to anything, at any rate. He tells me about Mr. Murdoch, the Swiss guy who comes in to watch the lobsters shed their shells. I tell him about my morning. Getting up, showering, eating. I have nothing exciting to report, but hey, he asked. He tells me his break is over and he’s gotta run. He says he’ll come over after his shift.

And that’s our week. He spends the night. He holds me while we sleep and in the morning he leaves for work. He phones me on his break, heads over after dinner. We don’t talk. Well, we talk, but we don’t, you know,
talk
. I think about it and I can tell he thinks about it but neither of us says anything, me because I’m back to square one (namely: being terrified of losing him, possibly even more so than I was before, because now I’ve seen him like this—how he’s been all week) and him because, maybe, I’m not too sure, but because maybe he’s worried I’m too fragile or something. Maybe I’m worried about that, too.

* * *

We don’t go to Vancouver that weekend because I have a sociology essay I can’t get any more extensions on and Rylan has to cover a shift at Nook. I sit around my parents’ mostly empty house all day, procrastinating on my essay, watching bad TV and eating Corn Pops.

I hate Corn Pops. Kya and Rylan love them.

* * *

Another week and I actually get assignments done and stuff so that Rylan and I can go visit Kya for sure. I miss her, which doesn’t make sense because I never came home much to see her since I moved out. Feeling pretty guilty about that now, actually. Dad and Matilda ended up going last weekend, and they said Kya’s as wilful as ever, and every time I’ve talked to her on the phone, she sounds that way, but it will be good to see her and Mom with my own eyes or whatever.

Rylan shows up around seven-thirty Saturday morning. He passes me a double-double, while he sucks back his English toffee cappuccino. Which is totally not at all a cappuccino and one of the many reasons I hate that drink. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like the way it tastes when he leans in and kisses me. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that I’m getting used to this: him kissing me without it leading anywhere intense. We’ve been doing more of it in the last two weeks than we have in the last three years. I mean, before, we kissed a lot, but we also had
a lot
of sex, so chances are the kissing would lead up to it.

We still haven’t actually had sex, not since before the misery-inducing Condom Incident. I sometimes catch myself wondering if we ever will again. I mean, the kissing leads me to believe that we probably will, that we’re just waiting out the worrying over Kya first, but sometimes I wonder that maybe if Kya gets better then Rylan will take off. Which, Shona informs me, is one fuck of a stupid attitude. And it’s not like I don’t know I’m being paranoid and irrational, but strangely knowing I’m being paranoid and irrational does not actually stop me from being paranoid and irrational.

“You OK?” Rylan asks, lips too close to mine for us to have a real conversation.

“Yeah,” I reply, barely actually making any noise.

He kisses me again once we climb in the car. He doesn’t actually have his licence but he drives anyway, even if it is my parents’ car and if we’re in an accident the insurance and legal shit will be a veritable nightmare. But I’m not up to it and he somehow knows it.

“Do you wanna stop and grab something for The Monster?” he asks. He means Kya. Sometimes he calls her Kya-Monster and she loves it, mainly by pretending to hate it.

“Let’s get her something when we get there.”

“We?” Rylan asks, his voice teasing. “
I
already got her something.” He motions to his duffel bag in the backseat. I twist awkwardly to reach behind us and finally manage to get the zipper open. On top of everything is what feels like a book. I tug it loose. He flicks on the overhead light because it’s not actually light out yet.

“It’s dangerous to drive like that,” I inform him, inanely.

“Well, what do you think?” he asks, gesturing towards the book, and ignoring my statement.

It’s a book on sharks. As I leaf through I realize it’s not your typical shark book, like migratory patterns or something like that. No, this is about shark attacks. It’s full of bloody photographs and diagrams of toothy jaws and survivors’ stories and grotesque pictures of recently mauled bodies. In most kids, I’d say it would definitely cause nightmares. But not Kya.

“She’ll love it,” I tell him, turning to a page inventorying items found in dead sharks’ stomachs.

“I know,” he agrees smugly.

And of course he’s right.

* * *

That afternoon when she sees it, she practically hoots with joy.

“DID YOU SEE THIS?” she demands, revealing a particularly bloody photograph to us in her small, bright hospital room. Quite frankly, it’s making the teddy bear I bought at the gift shop look seriously lame.

Rylan grins. “Tell you what, Kya. How do you wanna see a shark in real life?”

She looks at him suspiciously. “Like on TV, you mean?”

“No…” he says, his voice conspiratorial. “Like at the aquarium…”

I see what he’s doing: feeding his own fish addiction under the façade of entertaining my younger sister. He catches me rolling my eyes and keeps on grinning.

“Seriously?” Kya asks, still looking for the trick ending.

“Seriously. Even ask Niles.”

“Seriously, Niles? Can we?”

I shrug. “If it’s alright with Mom.”

“HELL, YEAH!” Kya shrieks and rushes out the door in search of permission.

Of course, Mom is more than happy to let us take Kya off of her hands for the day. She looks tired, and I suspect she is. Kya, even when hospitalized (it turns out), is a pit of crackling energy, and I know by the end of today I’m going to be exhausted, at the very least. Before we even get to the car, I stop Kya and search her eyes: her surgery is scheduled the day after tomorrow and it’s weird knowing that after this weekend I won’t ever look her in both eyes again.

“Stop it!” Kya squirms away. “All anyone ever does is look at my stupid eye. I wish they’d just cut it out already!”

We load her into the car. I feel a bit more up to driving so I play chauffeur: Rylan sits in the backseat changing the words of generic kids’ songs into run-on poop jokes and sending Kya into convulsions of laughter.

At the aquarium I get side-tracked by the brain sponges. I’ve liked them ever since I was a kid and there’s not a crowd around the glass like there is elsewhere.

“What are you looking at
plants
for?” Kya demands.

Before I can answer, Rylan cuts in, “Believe me, Kya-Monster, you’ll never understand him.”

Kya rolls her eyes. “You mean he’s a giant weirdo. Let’s go!”

She drags him on ahead to the stingray tank. Is it odd that I feel like a third wheel when hanging out with my boyfriend and my seven-year-old sister? Probably. But I don’t really mind it. I’m just kinda glad they have each other.

Eventually we end up outside the beluga tank. It’s a school day and too early in the year for too-too many tourists. Rylan and I sit down, our thighs touching with just enough pressure to be more than accidental, and allow Kya to climb around on the stone bleachers. This apparently grows boring, because soon she’s climbing up Rylan’s back, perching on his shoulders like a bird that doesn’t know it’s too big for the power line.

Besides the brain sponges, the belugas are my favourite. Even though I’m sure, compared to, you know, the ocean, the tank they are in is pathetically small, for some reason they seem so satisfied with life, like swimming in endless circles is a perfectly decent way to spend a lifetime. Maybe they’re right.

“The belugas in Washington did tricks,” Kya tells us—the last zoo she went to was with my parents in Seattle and Tacoma.

“Well, maybe these belugas aren’t into that sort of thing,” Rylan offers.

“There were walruses there, too,” she continues, leaning over the top of Rylan’s head and using her fingers to mush up his face. She grabs onto his lips, pressing them together and pulling them outwards, effectively inhibiting his capability for speech. I can’t think of much to say either, but Kya feels the need to continue. “Ever seen a walrus’ thingy?”

I almost choke, and I’m not even eating anything.

“KYA!” I exclaim, but Rylan, now that Kya’s moved on to prodding at his cheeks, interrupts, obviously entertained.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Ginormous,” Kya informs us, matter-of-factly.

“Jesus, Kya. Can we please talk about something else?” I say firmly, and I can feel myself blushing. It’s not like I’m a prude, but I’m trying not to actively encourage her, for my poor mother’s sake. Rylan’s imploding with withheld laughter.

“Why?” she asks.

“Because one day you’ll be in company where bringing up the size, or even the existence, of walrus’ ‘thingies’ just won’t be appropriate.”

She sighs discontentedly.

“Hey, why don’t you tell us about how things are at the hospital?” I encourage.

She drapes her arms around Rylan’s neck and presses her cheek against the top of his head, looking at me.

“They’re OK.”

“OK. How?”

“Jeez! I don’t know? Just OK!”

“Well, what do you do? Are there other kids?”

“Niles. It’s a
children’s
hospital,” Kya tells me, irritably.

“Right.” I’m an idiot. “Well, do you like them?”

“Most of them.”

“Do you guys…play?”

“I guess.”

I’m done. I’ve got nothing. I look at Rylan.

“Any crush-worthy kids?” he asks, and of course Kya looks delighted.

“Maaaaaybe.”

“Ooooh, really, Miss Monster? Do tell.”

“Well,” Kya says, and her voice goes kind of hushed. This is absurd. She’s seven. She’s in, what? The second grade? Kids don’t get crushes in the second grade. Do they? Did I have a crush in the second grade? I don’t know if I ever had crushes. I don’t remember liking girls. Or anyone, really. Like there was a vague feeling of supposed to be feeling things for girls and then there was kind of thinking about sex, and a general sense and mostly having that do it for me, and then there was Rylan. So I’m pretty much positive that I didn’t know who or what I wanted when I was in the second grade. But fuck it, Rylan probably did. He’s probably known his entire life that he’s wanted a submissive…cum slut. Fuck. I am so not thinking about this right now.

“Well what!” Rylan prods.

“Welllll.” Kya looks thoughtful, which is weird, because I think I’ve only seen Kya look thoughtful about once in her life, and that was when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she was trying to choose between a Transformers piñata and an electric blue cover for her iPod. “He’s really sick.”

That gets me.

“What do you mean?” Rylan’s voice has softened.

“Well, we don’t hang out much, because he gets tired a lot…but he’s high-lar-ious. He’s really cool, too. He takes Post-Its and he draws stickmen on them, and then when you flip through them, it looks like the stickmen are moving and they are so funny, and on one he even had a guy water-ski into a cliff.” She giggles uproariously. “And this other guy went hot-air-ballooning into a stealth bomber.”

“Sounds…morbid,” Rylan says. I’m still trying to figure out how Kya knows what a stealth bomber is.

“He says he’s probably going to die.”

Well…shit, son. Kya tells us so calmly, and I don’t get it. How can she just accept that, when the very thought freaks me the fuck out?

“He told you that?” Rylan asks quietly.

“Yeah. One day. He was really tired. And he had to have chemo, but now he doesn’t anymore.”

“What do you say to that?” I ask, not really meaning to say it out loud.