The Revelation (47 page)

“I’m sorry. I was just... ” I don’t finish my
sentence. There’s really no adequate way to explain why I didn’t
tell her. I’m suddenly realizing I’m a complete idiot.

She sniffles. “I get it. Sarah told me to listen to
your actions and not your words. Well, I guess I just heard you
loud and clear. From here on out, I’ll expect nothing from you.
We’ll continue to have
fun
with no expectations and no
promise of a future. We can date other people, whatever. We’ll
start from scratch. Get to know each other outside all the
excitement and fantasy.”

“You wanna date other people?” I blurt, my heart
exploding with panic.

“No,” she says quickly. “Not at all. I don’t want
anyone but you.” Tears flood her eyes. “That’s what I’ve been
trying to tell you.”

“Well, I don’t want anyone but you, either,” I say.
I clutch her to me, relief flooding me. If she’d said she wanted
anyone but me, I would have lost my shit. “Kat, we both feel
exactly the same way.” I kiss her temple. “Please don’t read into
me not telling you. It doesn’t mean anything—we feel the same
way.”

“I don’t think we do, Josh. I don’t think you
realize how much... ” Her words catch in her throat. Tears spill
out of her eyes. “If I’d bought a house in L.A.,” she says, “I
would have been
thrilled
to tell you about it. I would have
talked your ear off about it.”

“Kat,” I choke out. “You’re breaking my heart. I
feel the way you do. I’m just not good at... saying certain things.
I’m not good at committing to certain things. But that doesn’t mean
I don’t
feel.
Please, Kat. I just need time, that’s
all.”

Kat wipes her eyes again. “I get it. Take as much
time as you need. You’re not ready for a commitment of any kind.
Good for me to know—better I learned it now than later.” She wipes
her eyes and sets her jaw. “Obviously, I can’t take you home to
meet my family tomorrow. I’m sure you understand.”

“No, I don’t understand. I really wanna meet your
family—I’m
dying
to meet your family.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not possible—not when my heart is
on the line like this.”

A little voice inside my head is screaming at me to
tell her my heart is on the line, too, but the words don’t come. I
swallow hard, forcing down the lump in my throat again.

There’s an awkward silence.

Her eyes are glistening with obvious hurt.

“Kat,” I finally say. “Maybe I should have mentioned
it. I just... Please believe me—you’re my fantasy sprung to
life.”

Her jaw tightens. “Yeah, I’m the fantasy you don’t
want ‘tainting’ your real life when you move back home.”

Shit
. That was a not-so-subtle reference to
my application to The Club, wasn’t it? Yeah, it was.
Because I
don’t want this shit to taint my real life,
I wrote in my
application. Oh, God, this is a complete disaster.

“Kat, no,” I say. “You’re not a Mickey Mouse
Rollercoaster. Now you’re just being crazy. Please don’t do this.
You’re spinning out of control.”

“I’m not doing anything but agreeing with you. From
here on out, we’re gonna do things Josh-Faraday-style. The future
doesn’t exist. There are no expectations, no commitments. All we
have is right now.
YOLO
.” Her lip is trembling. “If I wanna
stay, I’ll stay. If I wanna go, I’ll go. There’ll be nothing to
keep us tied to each other but however the wind blows on any given
day.
Just the way you like it
.”

Josh

I flip on the TV in my hotel room and quickly turn
it off again.

What’s wrong with me? Am I really
this
fucked
up?

I told Emma the magic words, didn’t I? Which means
I’m capable of saying them. But Emma gave me a lot more time than
this—ten times more time than this.

But what am I thinking? There’s no comparison
between Kat and Emma. I never felt this white-hot passion with
Emma—this
electricity
. How the hell does Kat expect me not
to fuck up when I constantly feel like I’m gripping a goddamned
electric fence around her?

I get up and look out the window of my hotel room, a
glass of Jack Daniels from the mini-bar in my hand. I’ve got a
perfect view of the Space Needle from my room. It’s lit up like a
Roman candle at night.

I could have stayed at Jonas’ house tonight, of
course, but I was too embarrassed not to be staying with Kat to ask
him. Plus, Jonas looked so happy tonight, I didn’t have the heart
to bring him down with my pathetic sob story. Jonas is the one
who’s supposed to cry like a big fat baby to
me
—our
relationship doesn’t work the other way around.

“Let’s take a break for a couple days—see how we’re
feeling then,” Kat said when I walked her to her door earlier
tonight. “Maybe I’ll realize I’m overreacting; maybe not. I’m just
too hurt to think straight right now. I think I need some time to
regroup and figure out what I’m feeling.”

I take a swig of my whiskey, shaking my head. How
did things go so wrong? I was on top of the world when I picked Kat
up tonight. I couldn’t wait to see her—the same way I always feel
when I’m away from her. I couldn’t wait to take her to the fish
market tomorrow morning to sing the “Fish Heads” song with her like
a couple of dorks. And I was losing my mind about meeting her
family tomorrow night, too. And, most of all, I was chomping at the
bit to fuck her on her Hello Kitty sheets.

And now it’s all gone.
Poof
. And here I am,
yet again, where I always am, sitting in yet another hotel room,
another drink in my hand, looking out at yet another lonely
cityscape.

I turn on the TV and flip the channels. Sports.
Local news. I flip around and around and finally land on a music
station. Lenny Kravitz is singing “Fly Away.” Hey, at least
something’s going right for me tonight.

I sit down in an armchair in the corner, lean back
with my whiskey, and listen to the song. Yeah, Lenny, I agree:
let’s fly away to anywhere but here—you and me, bro—to a place
without stress and responsibility and worry. A place where I won’t
have this thousand-pound weight on my chest at all times—a place
where I won’t feel so fucking
lonely
all the time. And so
fucking
guilty
. To a place where I’m not constantly being
crushed by shit I can’t control and feelings I can’t express and
memories that haunt me.

I run my hands through my hair. I’ve never thought
of this song as sad before, but, motherfucker, it’s making me wanna
cry. Fuck this shit. I turn the channel to the next music station,
only to run smack into “Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons.
They’re in the midst of singing the chorus and it’s like they’ve
written the words for me. Kat told me her heart is on the line
tonight, didn’t she?—and I really,
really
fucked it up.

Jesus.

I take another huge guzzle of my whiskey and stare
at the Space Needle.

The torturous song ends, thank God—but there ain’t
no rest for the wicked: the next song is Adele. She’s wailing her
heart out in “Someone Like You.” And kicking me square in the
balls.

I take a gigantic gulp of my whiskey.

No, Adele, I’ll never find another woman like Kat.
Fuck you. She’s a fucking unicorn, Adele. One of a kind.

I rub my forehead and look out the window with
burning eyes.

Goddammit, I fucked up—maybe even irreversibly. I
didn’t realize it at the time, but tonight was a fork in the road
for Kat and me and I took the wrong path. I should have told Kat
about my move to Seattle in the first place, for sure, but even
more than that, I should have handled things differently tonight
when the shit hit the fan. I should have said all the right
things—the things Kat was dying to hear.

But I didn’t.

I imagine myself saying, “My heart’s on the line,
too, Kat.” Damn, I should have said that to her. Or, at the very
least, “Mine, too.”

But who am I kidding? Kat didn’t want to hear me say
my heart’s on the line—she wanted more than that. She wanted the
magic words—the whole nine yards. And I let her down.

I drain the rest of my drink and pour myself another
tall one.

Jesus. Adele’s voice is cutting me like a thousand
razors dragged across my heart.

Kat wanted a promise of forever from me tonight. It
was written all over her face. But what she doesn’t understand is
there’s no such thing as forever—I mean, shit, there’s no such
thing as
next week
. Anything could happen. Nothing’s
guaranteed. A guys’ life can change in a single afternoon. I mean,
hell, a guy might go out to a football game with his dad in the
morning and come back later that day to find out no one will ever
sing “You Are My Sunshine” to him again. Or call him Little Fishy.
Or, worst of all, say the words, “I love you.”

I take a long swig of my drink.

“No, son, they don’t let kids go to the morgue,” my
father said. “You’ll just have to say goodbye to her in your
prayers, son.”

“But I wanna say goodbye to her face and kiss her
lips and tell her I love her. Not like in a prayer. For real.”

“You can’t do it to her face—you have to do it in a
prayer.”

“But I wanna see her face when I say it. Not like
talking on the phone.”

“Fine. Shit. I dunno. Then say it to her photo,
then.”

“But I don’t have a photo of her.”

“Well, Jesus Fucking Christ, Joshua William. Fine...
Take this one. Your mother always loved this photo of the three of
you. Say everything to her face in the photo and stop talking about
it. I’ve got my own goodbyes to say, son—we’re all hurting, not
just you. I’m sorry but I can’t talk about this anymore.”

My eyes are stinging. I rub them and take another
long gulp of my whiskey.

Kat wants me to promise her fifty-two days? Shit. I
can’t even promise her tomorrow.

Because a guy might go to school one morning and
then return home that afternoon to find out his dad had shipped his
brother off to a “treatment center” without even letting him say
goodbye. And just to add insult to injury, the guy’s dad might even
say his brother will “never come home again” because “that boy’s
fucking crazy” and “we’re better off without him” and “you need to
stop crying about him like a little fucking baby.”

Motherfucker
.

I drain the last of my drink, refill my glass, and
settle into my chair again.

What’s the point in putting anything on the calendar
at all when a guy could get called at a football game because his
dad’s brains have unexpectedly exploded all over the carpet in the
study? And not only that, his brother’s lying in a hospital bed,
not talking or responding to anyone, after driving himself off a
fucking bridge? When a guy could sit in his big, empty house in the
dark, right after the cleaning crew’s finished scraping his dad’s
brains off the ceiling, and fight tooth and nail to convince
himself that marching into his father’s bathroom and taking every
fucking pill in the medicine cabinet is a terrible idea rather than
the best fucking idea he’s ever had?

I swallow hard, keeping my emotions at bay, and take
another long sip of my whiskey.

Kat wanted to hear those three little words
tonight—I know she did. But those are words I simply can’t deliver
to her. Not yet, anyway. If only she’d give me more time. If only
she’d understand. I said those loaded words to Emma and look what
happened—the relief of saying them for the first time lulled me
into saying other things, too—things I shouldn’t have said—and only
a month after I’d first said the magic words, Emma was long gone.
I love you,
I told her.
Please don’t leave me.
Please.

But she left.

I bought myself a fucking Lamborghini after Emma
left me—so what am I gonna buy myself this time when the girl doing
the leaving is my fantasy sprung to life? A jumbo jet?

Fuck me.

I look down at the glass of whiskey in my hand and,
suddenly, a rage wells up inside me like a fucking tsunami. Fuck
overcoming
. Fuck this shit.

Fuck me.

Without a conscious thought in my head, I hurl my
glass against the wall, shattering it into a million tiny pieces
and spraying glass and whiskey all over the white fluffy bed.

My chest is heaving. My eyes are stinging. I rub
them and force down my emotion. Fuck you, Adele, you fucking bitch.
No, I won’t find someone like Kat. I’ll never find someone like her
again as long as I fucking live. I’ll be alone and lonely and
fucked up and worthless—just like I’ve always been. Just like I’ll
always be.

Forever
.

Kat

Whitney’s sitting in her private jet, a scarf
wrapped demurely around her head, looking out the airplane window
at Kevin standing out on the tarmac, his arm in a sling.

Why is Kevin’s arm in a sling? Because he took a
bullet for Whitney.
Because he loves her.
And she loves him,
too. But the horrible tragedy is that, despite their love, even
though he took a freaking bullet for her, they simply can’t be
together. And they both know it. Because they’re from different
worlds, after all. And life isn’t always fair, motherfucker. But
the injustice of it all only makes their love more intense—harder
to give up.

Whitney yells to the pilot to stop.

The jet engines abruptly stop and the airplane-steps
come down. Whitney runs out of the private plane to Kevin and
throws her arms around him. They kiss passionately.

And the most gigantic ugly cry ever released in the
history of ugly cries leaves my mouth. “Josh!” I sob, throwing my
head back onto the throw pillow on my couch.
“Jooooossssshhhhhh!”

Oh, I talked such a good game in front of the
karaoke bar, didn’t I? “From here on out,” I said, “we’re gonna do
things Josh-Faraday-style. The future doesn’t exist. There are no
expectations, no commitments.”