The waiter finally approaches our table with a look of trepidation on his face. He probably thinks we’re about to blow up again.
I force a grin, to show him we’re safe. “Can we get a bottle of champagne?” I ask.
“We have several vegan options to choose from,” he says.
I hoist an eyebrow in Kat’s direction. Seriously, wine is vegan now? But she lists the one she wants, and he disappears to fetch the bottle. I rap the table with a fist.
“On me tonight,” I say.
“It’s supposed to be my turn to treat.” She pouts.
“Yeah, but I ruined your big surprise, so you’ll just have to suck it up. Okay? Now.” I eyeball the ring on her finger. It’s pretty sizable, actually. I knew Raul made good money at . . . whatever indecipherable financial-type job he performed back home in Newcastle, but I had no idea the money was that good. “Tell me how he asked.”
Just like that, any remaining anger melts from Kat’s expression, and she launches into the full story.
Two courses of tastier-than-I-expected vegan food later (and a couple bottles of vegan champagne, too), we’ve finished catching up on everything from the proposal (he took her out to eat at a nice restaurant in town—nothing special if you ask me, but hey, no one is) and their subsequent apartment hunt to Dad’s health, which Mum is freaking out about at the moment (“her usual overreaction,” Kat assures me). We rounded the list out with some bitching about Dean Pierson and Kat’s boss at the elementary school where she teaches, who sounds like a real piece of work.
Finally, we settle into that pleasant, buzz-drunk state where I almost feel brave and/or stupid enough to ask her advice on how to handle this whole Harper situation. I mean, not that I would name Harper. Or mention the oops-I-pulled-a-student bit. But I could ask, in a roundabout way, how Kat would fairly handle having to pick a research assistant from a pool of people that included someone you absolutely could not work with one-on-one. For unnamable reasons.
Before I can work the thoughts into order in my head, however, Kat hiccups thoughtfully. “Whatever did happen, though, with Hannah?” she says.
Just like that, the pleasant buzz melts away. My stomach churns with a mixture of guilt and annoyance. A sensation I’m way too accustomed to when it comes to this topic.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “It just . . . She wasn’t right.”
To my relief, Kat doesn’t take the opportunity for another Kingston family eye roll. But she does lift her fist. “Let’s review.” She sticks up one finger. “The lady is hot.”
I nod. There’s no denying that. It’s the reason I first asked her out two years ago, if I’m honest.
Kat extends a second finger. “She’s totally in love with you, for some indecipherable reason.”
“Oi,” I protest, but she’s on a roll now.
“She just as big a nerd as you are. She works in the same profession.”
“I wouldn’t exactly equate teaching medieval history with teaching poetry,” I say.
“Case in point about the nerd bit.” Kat raises a fifth finger, her whole hand in my face now. “Mum adores her, I like her plenty, you guys have all the same friends here, everyone wants you to just get on with it already.”
“Yes, thank you Kat, I’m well aware—”
“So then what’s the big bloody problem already?” Now she’s the one raising her voice, although luckily the patchouli couple have departed by now, replaced by a hard-of-hearing senior who doesn’t even seem to notice we exist.
“The big bloody problem is I don’t love her,” I hiss. My fists clench and unclench under the table.
There. I said it.
I’ve never actually admitted that out loud before.
It’s stupid. I know that. We dated for a year, and it was on-again, off-again the whole time. Always me putting on the brakes, and her somehow sliding back into my life. Because she makes sense. Too much sense. We watch the same movies. Love the same books. Hang out with the same colleagues. Have absorbed one another’s friend groups, from that year of dating. She’s gorgeous. My family still ask me about her to this day, that’s how much they adore her. She loves me. Forgives me for all the shit I put her through, again and again, by turning her down.
But when I’m with her, there are no sparks. No sense of the world clicking into place. No sudden awareness that it’s all right, that this is where I’m meant to be.
Kat is watching me with something akin to pity in her eyes.
My turn to push my chair back. I don’t need or want my sister’s pity.
But she stops me with a hand resting on my forearm. “Sometimes real love isn’t all fireworks and butterflies.”