getting married,” he said. “I would very much like to see the guy who talked you down a road this Moore sister swore she’d avoid.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She couldn’t help it—she looked down at her coffee, even knowing Kenneth would read into her avoiding his eyes what only he could. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe not every Moore woman gets left.” And maybe she was right. The rest of the sentence lay right there on the table between them, and after a minute, Mae slipped over it, knowing Kenneth had heard what she had not said. “Come on, how about you? How’d you drag the love of your life to the hairy armpit of the universe?”
“Armpits are cozy,” Kenneth said. “Not nearly so bad as we once thought. Where did we think we wanted to be, anyway? The nipple? The cheek? It seems like a great metaphor, but it really falls down when you try to extend it.”
Mae smiled. She’d forgotten what it was like to be with someone who knew not just the public side of you but all the crap you’d have preferred to hide and still was okay with it.
Kenneth knew she was waiting for more, so he sipped his own coffee and stared into the distance, making a big show of contemplating, before he relented. “My dad has Alzheimer’s. Your mom probably told you.” Mae nodded. “It’s hard for my mom and my sister. And it sucks for him; he knows it’s happening. For years we just—I could send money, you know, no problem. All the money they needed. Home help, that kind of thing. But you can’t—” He put down his coffee, looked straight at Mae. “Some stuff you can’t hire. You can’t pay somebody to care like you care. If you’re not here, you’re not here. You’re not really there for someone if you’re jetting in and out. You gotta be coming for dinner and picking up groceries.”
Mae nodded. Kenneth had been lucky with his parents. He’d had a hard time in high school, but not at home. Never at home. And his parents had been there for Mae, too, when she’d let them, which hadn’t been often. His mom had let Mae use their washer-dryer as if it was her own, and as if needing to borrow something like that was as normal as asking for a cup of sugar, while Kenneth’s dad used to carry her laundry basket out to her beat-up car. It was hard to imagine his dad not remembering all that, and she could see why he would want to be here, but the whole picture still didn’t add up.
“Right, but you’re not just here for—the time being. For whatever happens. You guys are here here. All in.” She gestured around. “This is not a California design lab. It’s not even a Kansas design lab. It’s a bed-and-breakfast and it’s in Merinac and I don’t get it. It’s not what you worked for, right? Is it what Patrick wanted? Are you going to do something else, later?” She knew, now, that Kenneth had been the most sought-after branding and interface creator in San Francisco, still talked about and with plenty of opportunity to go back to. For him to be here, brewing coffee on Main Street, was just a waste.
Kenneth shook his head. “No, it’s not for Patrick. Not just for Patrick. Look, we did Silicon Valley. We moved fast; we broke things. It was kind of great, and I kind of loved it, and I kind of didn’t. I’m good here.”
“For now, sure. But this isn’t what you wanted. Or what your mom wanted for you, either. Or your dad.” She watched Kenneth’s face carefully, not wanting to go too far, but he just sat there, seeming totally at ease. “This is just not where you were supposed to end up.”
He stuck a finger in his latte, pulling out some foam to lick off, then jutting out his lower lip in a very familiar gesture that meant he was reluctant to disagree, but he was going to do it anyway.
“I was different there,” he said. “I’m different here, too, but here I’m different from other people. There I was different from me.”
“Profound,” said Mae in a voice that meant she thought he was just blowing air out of his ass, and Kenneth stood, grabbing her now-empty cup.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “There’s just something about being in a place where what matters most is