{Kadee}

She woke up with a thousand second thoughts about the way she had thrown herself at Cary yesterday. God, she was stupid. He probably had way more important things to think about than flirting with her. It didn't help that she kept flashing on the way his lips felt against hers, soft and open. Like under his hard exterior, there was a whole other Cary he kept a secret. She could hardly resist a secret.

Her father was visibly surprised to find her sipping tea and checking her phone at the kitchen island so early when he came in. "Good morning, Kamiko," he said. He always sounded so dignified, like one of the men in the samurai movies he watched with her brother sometimes.

"Morning, Papa." Kadee made her phone dark and stuck it in the fruit bowl to grab if she needed later. With her friend list reduced to, like, one person who wasn't even on social media, there was nothing much she cared to look at anyways.

"How was your youth group last night?" He was meticulously peeling an orange, one unbroken curl falling from his knife.

"I didn't go." She tucked her hair behind her ear, checking his face sideways to see if this displeased him. "I spent the evening at Pastor Pete's."

"Is not Jon—absent at this time?" he asked.

"Yes. Cary was there."

"Ah," he said quietly. He carefully wiped the knife clean and dry, then opened each segment of the orange like a lotus blossom on his breakfast plate. The citrus smell burst in the air between them, bright and sweet. "Can I ask, Kamiko—how is Cary?"

She took an orange of her own, running her fingertips over the waxy bumps of its skin. It was so rare that her father would ask a question about emotions that she thought she must have misunderstood him. "He's different—than he used to be. Like the things he used to get in trouble for..." The whole neighbourhood had been politely horrified by his string of juvenile charges, and probably expected to see Cary to come out in cuffs the last time the cops pulled up at his house—instead of his father. "He's changed. I think it's better for him at the Whites'."

"I'm sure it is," her father said gravely. "It's a terrible thing for a child to suffer at the hands of their caregiver. There are marks we bear always even when it is over." She drew a breath, searching his smooth face. He had never spoken of his childhood with her before. His eyes met hers, turning up in a smile that was almost invisible. "You've done something new with your hair."

"Papa..." she hesitated, and then found she couldn't ask.

"Yes, Kamiko?"

She got down from her stool and went around the granite island, putting her arms around his slim, upright form. "Just—I love you."

This close, she heard his little noise of surprise. He put his arm around her and patted her back, saying it back to her in Japanese. She understood perfectly.

///

The text arrived after lunch. She had opened and closed the app a dozen times that day, and when the distinctive little bell chimed, she snatched the phone out of the fruit bowl to check it.

<want to come over?>

She gave a little jump, biting her lips to keep from screaming like a little girl.

<yes> she texted back. <in 20>

Her mother watched, bemused, as she did a little dance of joy around the kitchen island.

"You have received good news?" she said.

"I'm going to Cary's—Pastor Pete's I mean." She ran up the stairs to change.

Oh god, she should have asked for 30 minutes. And why hadn't she spent any time on her hair this morning? She stood in the middle of her closet, frozen with indecision. Who was she going to be today? Who was the Kadee Cary would like?

She didn't know. She didn't know him well enough to tell—she'd never been with a person like him. A person who wasn't one clear type—a jock, or a youth leader or whatever. She knew how to be the girl who matched those categories. How would you even sum Cary up in one word?

She looked her own reflection up and down—she was in the old T-shirt she'd worn to bed and her grey leggings. She was a blank canvas—a girl who could be anything to anyone. What if Cary didn't want any of the things she knew how to be? What if he didn't want her flirty, or polished, or sexy? What if he saw through whatever she was wearing, and thought she was just—shallow?

What if that's what she was?

She started to cry and turned from the reflection of her own red, crumpled face, humiliated by her inability to control her feelings. Everything in her closet had been purchased to make a look for someone else—for her girlfriends, or her string of boyfriends, or even her parents. She was so ordinary it was embarrassing.

Her phone chimed again, and she curled in the middle of her bed to check it.

<r u lost?>

She laughed through her tears and thumbed the dial symbol.

"Yeah?" Cary said.

"Hey." She sounded a little wobbly and tried to say the next thing like it was a joke. "What do you want me to wear?"

There was a moment of silence. "Uh—clothes?" he said. "Whatever makes you happy—I don't care."

She scooped tears out of her eyes and tried to laugh. "What if baggy, ugly clothes make me happy?"

"We're just hanging in the backyard with the girls." He sounded confused. "Everything I'm wearing is hand me downs, so—you do you, Kadee."

"It's weird that I called you to ask, isn't it."

He made his dry laugh. "A little weird, yeah."

"Still okay that I come over?"

"Yuh," he said. "I was hopin' you would be here already."

He ended the call and she stared at her phone, her mouth open and speechless. It wasn't just her, was it? Cary was looking for her, hoping she would come, and even telling her so in that uncomplicated way of his. She scrambled off her bed, tossing her pyjama shirt on the floor and grabbing a T-shirt off the top of her folded pile. Getting to Cary's house was suddenly way more important than what she was wearing when she arrived.

///

She didn't bother with ringing the bell, instead going around the house to knock on the gate and then unlatching it to let herself into the yard. Jon's sisters were playing in the shade of the garage, with a brightly coloured plastic kitchen set and a tea party spread out on a blanket.

Cary was at the patio table, his hat shading his face, papers spread in front of him like he was doing homework. He wasn't even wearing a shirt, just an undershirt and board shorts. The abrupt line of his shirt-sleeve tan was plain across his bicep. Kadee's stomach fluttered and she took a breath. She'd arrived with no makeup, fuzzy, product-less hair, a plain T-shirt and grey leggings—just her. She'd never felt so naked in front of a guy: even when she'd actually been naked, she'd known how to perform the Kadee that the person she was with would enjoy and approve of.

He looked up and noticed her before she got up the guts to say anything, and his eyebrows lifted, the corners of his mouth curving slowly. "Hey. You made it. With clothes."

She laughed a little, stepping onto the deck to join him. "I don't know what I was so worried about." She could see some of his papers—not homework, but drawings. "Are those more of your graphic novel?"

He had his hand spread over one of the drawings, and he hesitated, then lifted it away. "Just something on my mind."

She pulled up a chair next to him to look at it more closely. It was a woman and a boy on a park bench, ice cream cones in their hands. The details of the setting were sketchy, but the boy seemed to be laughing. The woman's face was barely there, but the waves of her hair were darkly lined, as if his pencil had gone over and over them.

"You look happy," Kadee said. She looked quick at his face. "The boy is you, right?"

Cary nodded, eyes on the picture. "With my aunt, I think. I'm trying to remember."

"You don't remember your aunt?" Kadee had a complex web of aunts, uncles and cousins that were interlinked all the way over the ocean to Japan, and she could have named every one.

"We didn't exactly chat about our family tree over dinner," Cary said drily. He sat back, folding his hands behind his head and frowning at the yard. The strip of hair under his arms was dark against the pale skin there, and Kadee tried not to imagine running her fingers along the lines his muscles made connecting to his shoulder. "A ton of shit from then is missing—for a reason, probably. But she's from a time I remember feeling safe. I'm trying to—put it all in order." He stretched his elbows back a little, like his chest was tight.

Bea climbed onto the deck and his face changed, smiling as he turned it toward her. "What's up, Honey Bee?"

"Whatcha doing?" Bea asked, leaning over him to look at his drawing. "Ooo, ice cream! Can we go for ice cream today, Cary? Please, please?"

"Your mom and dad don't have money for that, sweetheart."

"I have money for that," Kadee said quickly, flashing her dimple at him.

It was worth every penny to have an excuse to walk to the neighbourhood convenience store with Cary and Jon's sisters. Bea held their hands between them and Cary smiled often, listening to Bea's chatter. He looked different than he did at school—more like the person who had kissed her back so softly the day before.

He hung back from the ice cream freezer while Bea and Tabitha were picking, and Kadee looked back at him, lifting an eyebrow. "You want one?"

He shrugged, looking sheepish. "Sure."

The girls wanted to eat their ice cream right away, so Kadee made them sit on the sticky bench on the sidewalk in front of the store to finish it. She squeezed onto one end with them, and Cary stood beside her, carefully eating the chocolate coating off his ice cream bar, before he ate the ice cream in two bites. The girls bounced up, ice cream on their faces and hands, and Bea declared she would ride Tabitha's handle bars home.

Cary looked worried. "You don't have a helmet."

Tabitha rolled her eyes. "She can wear mine. Since I doubt you care as much what happens to me."

This did not seem to ease his worry, but Tabitha buckled the helmet under her sister's chin and kicked off the sidewalk before he could protest further.

Kadee leaned over to nudge his arm with her shoulder. "They'll be fine."

He watched Tabitha cruise away up the alley, her legs pumping and the white bubble of Bea's head in her helmet swaying in front of her flying blond hair. "I just don't want anything to happen—while I'm supposed to be looking after them," he said in a low voice.

She remembered abruptly that he'd had a sister too, once. "You're doing a really good job, Cary. With the girls. Most babysitters are just on their phone the whole time. You, like, actually care about them."

They walked silently down the back lane lined with lilac bushes, Kadee watching his feet kick a stone as they navigated around cracked asphalt and puddles. Tentatively, she touched the back of his hand with the back of her own and felt his steps break their rhythm. His fingers, warm and calloused, turned and clasped hers, and he checked her face quickly, colour high in his cheeks. She kept her eyes on the girls far ahead of them, trying to act casual when every inch of the skin on her hand and arm was tingling, touching him.

"How old would your sister be now?" she asked.

His face went still. "I think—11? No one told me her birthday," he said.

She tightened her hand around his, an ache in her throat. "Your childhood is all holes, Cary."

He lifted his shoulders, silent.

"You would have made a good brother."

He looked aside. "I tried. I cared about her too and I still—" He pulled his hand free and jammed it in the pocket of his shorts. "Hard not to feel like whatever I do I'll fuck it up—when I done that."

Kadee closed her empty fingers, thinking about all her own regrets. The pile had grown with every year that passed, as if one wrong decision attracted another and another. "Do you think...you can ever leave a mistake like that behind you, or—do you have to carry that your whole life?"

His mouth twisted. "You want to know what Pete thinks, or what my father thinks about that?"

Kadee crossed an arm over her body, looking in his face. "I want to know what you think."

He touched her eyes a moment. "I hope I can be different." His voice was frayed and soft. He curled his shoulders small. "He beat into my skin that I'll never."

Her stomach felt cold and she didn't think it was just the ice cream. She watched him press his lips in a tight, hard line, looking up at the clouds blowing apart in the cool blue sky. "That's still what I see when I look in the mirror half the time, Kadee. Something from a little kid's nightmare. Something that shouldn't be left alone with children. Or kissing—anyone."

She reached out her hand, sliding her fingers down the skin of his arm to curl around his wrist, just above his fist, which was jammed in his pocket. He missed a step, looking down at her hand. "I don't see that," Kadee said. "Half the time I think you're the best person I know."

He stuttered to a halt. "Jesus. Don't say that. You're going to get yourself so hurt—throwing yourself at assholes like me."

That stung, and his movement had broken the connection of her fingers with his skin. She crossed her arms over her plain T-shirt, feeling completely exposed. "So—maybe I already did. And I don't think you're one of them."

He slid his eyes back to her, watching her sideways. She lifted her chin to look at him. Cary had given her the words she'd never had—now she could come clean. "Half the time when I look in the mirror I see the slut they think I am." It felt like being sick in a puddle to say it, and she wanted to empty it all out. "Like I'm wearing all that stuff—the shit I did and what they said about me—and I'll never get rid of it. I don't know if I'll get another chance not to mess it up with someone good. And maybe I shouldn't." Her voice wobbled.

He lowered his eyes, giving her a chance to steady herself. "You can't listen to that shit, Kadee," he said quietly.

She fell in step beside him, her face tingling with exposure. She wished he would just tell her she was okay. "Do you?" There was an edge to her voice now. She'd been dangerously real with him, and she didn't know how it was going to end up. "It's not like there isn't any truth to it—I can't just call bullshit."

He was quiet a minute, looking up the alley like there was someone coming toward them. "Yeah, the truth in it is what makes it so hard to shake." He spoke slowly, but not like he was unsure. "You have to listen to another voice. That says you're worth something—you're more than the shit they put on you. That even the messed-up stuff you did isn't going to define you anymore. You can change."

For a second, she couldn't breathe or speak, feeling those words expand in the air between them. She smoothed her hair behind her ear, then shook it over her face, rolling her shoulder like it didn't matter. "I wish I could believe you," she said quietly. "That just sounds like super-nice bullshit. I mean—I believe it for you. I just don't...for me."

The backs of their hands bumped, and his fingers clasped around her hand so loosely that it almost felt like an accidental arrangement of their arms. She curled her palm around the ball of his thumb so they wouldn't pull apart and felt some of her tension leak away.

"I didn't either." His voice was wry. "It's taken a long time—and a hell of a lot of work—and I'm not all the way there. The thing is...the person who says that about me is the best person I know. There's no—bullshit in him. So I listen. That's as much truth as I know for sure."

She puzzled over that for a few moments. "Are you talking about Pete?"

He shook his head, looking at her from the corner of his eye. "Pete knows him. Jon—introduced me. I thought...you would know him already."

"Cary, who are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about Jesus." His voice was low, pitched just for her to hear. "Jesus says those things to me." He took a slow breath, and his fingers clasped hers more securely. "That's how I get through the day, and the shit they drummed into me doesn't break me down anymore. It's still work. I still—feel what they think about me." His face flinched as he said it, and she tightened her hand on his. "But I'm trying to listen more to Jesus' voice and walk by what I hear."

It sounded crazy. It didn't sound like anything she'd heard at church before, unless she maybe counted some of the things Pete said in his sermons that she hadn't taken literally.

"How do you hear him?" she couldn't help asking, as if this were a real thing and not a delusion Cary had cooked up out of all the shitty stuff that happened to him, and maybe one too many drug trips.

"Jon taught me." He kicked a stone hard, sending it bouncing up the alley in front of them. "When he prays, he listens like Jesus is going to answer back. He waits. He looks for where Jesus is. He used to—all the time." He knuckled his eyes and cleared his throat. "So I started to do that and then...I could hear him too. When I run—when I'm down in the ravine—it's easier to hear. But the more I do it, the more it's like hearing my heartbeat. If I just quiet down—he's there."

She looked around at the weathered fences and cracked alleyway with puddles reflecting the sky, imagining that what Cary said was real. What if she could hear Jesus' voice like she could hear the hush of traffic and the sigh of wind against her cheek? A little jolt of fear zapped her stomach. What if he was angry? Didn't he have every reason to be angry with her? Hadn't she broken almost every rule in the book?

"What's he like?" Fear made her voice sound light, like she didn't really care about the answer. "Is there smiting? Smoting? You know—lightning and wrath and all that?"

They were at the Whites' fence. As they walked, she could see Pete at the barbecue and the girls playing in the yard through the gaps.

"No," Cary said softly. "I never felt so safe. And...loved." He cleared his throat, like he wasn't used to saying that word. "Wrecked me forever and now I'm like this. Telling you about listening to someone you can't even see. And healing your insides with prayer." He laughed that almost silent laugh of his, and she smiled in return, searching his face. For real, she didn't know anyone like Cary.

*Ice cream and holding hands...what do you think, lovelies, is this a date? I just wanted Cary and Kadee to have something sweet and innocent together, after the shitty week they've had. 

Any song recommends for this scene?*