your years, M.K. Use your brain, not your heart. You have to learn to take care of yourself, or you won’t make it in this fucking world. Don’t depend on me, you understand? Don’t depend on anyone.”
“I feel like I’m losing you.”
“That’s factually impossible.” He spoke gently, leaning in. She saw the kiss coming, and could have turned her face away, but she didn’t. She wanted his lips on hers, wanted the connection. “Because you never had me.”
Their lips met, and it was simultaneously the best and worst she’d ever felt.
Kenzie’s since learned that when someone you love doesn’t love you back, there are two directions you can go. Option one, you can meet someone else and try again. And again, and again, until one day, if you’re lucky, you meet the person you’re meant to be with, who does love you back, and who does want to make a life with you. But there’s no guarantee you’ll find him, and even if you do, there’s no guarantee it will last.
Option two, you never try again. You accept that love is shitty. Love hurts. Love takes away more than it gives, so what’s the point? So you stop chasing it. You spend time with whoever you want to, without expectations, understanding that the only thing you can trust is the exact moment you’re in.
Once she let go of all expectations with J.R.—for real this time, no pretending—she was able to appreciate what the relationship was. She watched friends go through painful breakups, glad that was never going to be her. Like J.R. said, you can’t lose what you never had in the first place.
For four years while she was in Boise for art school, she and J.R. kept in touch sporadically, and when they found themselves in the same place, they spent every moment together. When she moved to Seattle for graduate school, she stayed with him while she looked for an apartment. They still have sex, not always, but sometimes, if the circumstances are right. They talk about the people they’re dating, which is mostly Kenzie talking about the men she’s dating, as she’s not exactly keen on hearing about J.R.’s sexual relationships with other women. He gives her a lot of advice.
He gave her advice with Paul, for instance, and it worked out well.
The last time she saw J.R., he asked how things were going with Derek. Her married-man adventures turn him on—the greater she goes into detail, the more likely he’ll want to have sex after—but he seems particularly fascinated with Derek. Because of the missing kid.
Kenzie understands that. It’s hard to separate Derek from the story that was all over the news. Seattle is full of millionaires, thanks to the slew of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the city: Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom. Ordinarily a guy like Derek wouldn’t stand out.
Except for the missing kid.
“He give you money?” J.R. asked.
“Sometimes,” she said. “A little here, a little there, if he knows I need it.”
“He should be giving you more than a little. Dude’s loaded. The reward money for his kid’s a million dollars.” He was looking something up on his phone, and when he found it, he held it up for her to see. It was an article about PowerOrganix in a business magazine. “His company hit three hundred million in sales last year.”
“Let me see that,” she said, trying to grab the phone out of his hand. He wouldn’t let her, not that she was surprised. Men are weird about their phones.
“He should put you up in a condo,” J.R. said, and she could practically see the wheels in his head turning. “In your name. So that if this ends, down the road, at least you’d have that. It’d be a score without feeling like a score, if you get what I mean.”
“It’s really not like that with Derek,” Kenzie said. “We’re not there yet, and we might never be. He’s not Paul, who was obsessed. Derek only reaches out when it’s convenient for him, and I never know more than a day or two in advance when that will be.”
“Because you’re letting him control things. You’re too available. Guy like that, it’s only fun if it’s a challenge, if there’s a possibility he can’t have you.” J.R. was scrolling through his phone again. “How are things with his wife?”
“He doesn’t talk about her much, but it seems like they barely see each other. He mentioned once that she’s not doing great after the