“Hey, is everything alright?” she asks, worried.
“Yeah, I just wanted to hear your voice. Is that okay?” I wonder, laying my head back against the pillow.
“Of course,” there’s a short pause then… “Can I tell you something without you getting angry?”
“It depends,” I qualify, wondering what the hell she was about to say.
“Kai,” she demands more forcefully.
“Fine, I’ll do my best not to get angry,” I relent. As if everything when it came to her these days didn’t make me irrationally pissed off.
“It hurts to hear your voice and know you’re so far away. I missed that…hearing your voice,” she admits. The way she ends her sentence tells me there's more she wants to say. More she's holding back. And I want to ask her to say it. All of it. But I don't.
“I know what you mean,” I agree after a long pause.
"When I left, I was so broken. I hated myself for what I did to us and I grieved for our relationship for so long…" She pauses. "I never stopped, actually. Losing you broke me entirely.”
I built my entire life around Kendall, knew her before I even knew myself. And then I lost her. Just like that. And here she is, talking abouthergrief. I drowned in my fucking grief with no answers and no lifeline. Nothing. I find myself getting angrier.
“I spent a lot of my time infuriated with you. Pretending I hated you even though all I wanted was to make things work. I held out hope for a long time thinking you’d come back, that we’d figure it out. I thought if I could just talk to you, we could work it out. I even…” I begin.
“You even what?” she probes.
“Never mind. It’s not important. Anyways... Here we are.” I decide it best if I don’t shareallmy feelings in one night. In one call.
“Here we are,” she repeats. “What do we do now?”
God, what a loaded fucking question.
“Honestly. I have no idea,” I admit. “Can I ask you something though?”
“Sure, fire away.”
“Why the name Akio?”
“I knew you wanted your first son to be named after your uncle. I thought it would be nice. I’m sor—"
“No, it is,” I interrupt. “I just don’t understand. If you thought we were never going to see each other again, why would you do that?”
“Maybe part of me hoped we would,” she answers.
“I love the name, Ken. I just wish I had been there for it. For all of it.” The wounds start aching again.
I hear Akio crying in the background and I’m made acutely aware that our time on the phone is up.
“I have to go, Kai. Akio is stirring,” Kendall explains.
“Okay. No problem. It was good to talk to you.”
“You too. Goodnight, Kai.”
"Night, Kendall.” But for some reason, I hesitate to hang up the phone and so does she.
“Kai?” she asks.
“Yeah?”
"You can call me again if you want. If you want to talk while you’re on the road. I mean, you don’t have to…”