Too Sweet Pt. 03

"Told Foz I needed to take care of something important," he said and shrugged. He wasn't grinning or smirking. I felt a little cold grip of anxiety and breathed through it. Ira noticed. Of course he noticed. He put one hand on the small of my back and gently pulled me closer.

"This doesn't have to be hard," he said quietly. "I'm not going to hate you if I don't get my way. I'm not here to bully you into something."

"I don't want to lose my best friend." I couldn't look him in the eye when I said that. I pulled away from him and led the way to my apartment.

Ira shut the door behind him and leaned back on it. He looked around my living room like he hadn't been there before. I didn't want to start the conversation, so I went to the kitchen and dug out beers for both of us. That didn't take long enough, so I started looking for food to go with them. I had nothing but a box of Ritz crackers and slices of American cheese.

"I don't either," he said quietly.

"What?" I asked as I set the paltry offerings on the coffee table. Ira sank down on the couch and took one of the beers.

"I don't want to lose my best friend, either," he explained. "But I can't do this anymore."

"Ah, shit," I sighed.

"Is it that bad?" Ira laughed dismally.

"It's exactly what we were trying to avoid," I pointed out.

"Maybe that's a good place to start," Ira said carefully. "What were we trying to avoid?"

"This? Us sitting here talking about a relationship we know we can't have because we both already know it doesn't work?" I picked at a cracker, crumbling it into pieces on the coffee table and crushing the oddly greasy crumbs into dust.

"Do we know it doesn't work? That was years ago. We were, what, 19 or 20?," Ira said. "Look, cards on the table, Benji, I want to try again. We spend most of our time together, anyway, and it's been better than any other relationship I've had over the past years."

"It has been good," I agreed shakily. The cracker I had been working on was oily powder now. I took another one and snapped it in half. "Why change it?"

"Well, we'll have to at some point," Ira said with a dull chuckle. "You'll find your Bentley and I'll go fuck Mike or something."

"Ugh, don't even joke about that," I shuddered. "Fucking Mike."

"You really hate him, huh? Did you ever fuck him?" Ira asked. He was really laughing then. God, I loved that sound.

"I hate him because he brought out the worst in you and then he fucked around on Teddy," I answered. "And no, I never fucked him. How would that even work? You two hooked up for ages. He has to be a bottom. You know I only top for you."

"Mike? He's whatever he needs to be to get lucky," Ira rolled his eyes. "I bet he's not half as good at topping as you are."

"How did he compare to me as a bottom?" I challenged Ira. Dumb. Why was I flirting? Wasn't the point I wanted to make right now the exact opposite of what we were doing?"

"No one compares to you, Benji," Ira answered softly. I risked looking from my disassembled crackers to his face. Those odd, pale eyes were locked on me with the most crushing look of longing. "Absolutely no one in any way."

"Shit," I muttered.

"Yeah," Ira chuckled dryly. "I have it bad."

"Ira, if we try this again, and it ends as bad as last time, we could lose everything," I said.

"If it works, if we really work hard and make it better this time, we could have so much more," he countered. "Look, I don't want to talk you into something you don't want-"

"I do," I interrupted him. "I do want it. But I don't want to lose you entirely."

There was a long pause between us. I turned my attention back to the mess I was making on the table. Ira sipped the beer that had been untouched and leaking condensation over his fist the entire conversation.

"What were the things we fought about most?" Ira said suddenly.

"Um, you smoking, my partying, and your flirting," I listed the things I remembered most.

"Ok, well, I don't smoke anymore, so that's one down," he said thoughtfully. "I'm still kind of a flirt, but I reigned a lot of that in. I can be more vigilant on that."

"I'm also not nearly as jealous or insecure as I was then," I admitted. "And I don't party without you there these days. I don't like going alone anymore."

"So top three already down," Ira grinned. "And top three all symptomatic of our age."

"Hm," I sighed. "We're going to lose each other anyway if we don't try again, aren't we?"

"Yeah, probably. I don't see how it can last," Ira said grimly. "It's really hard watching you date other guys. That's why I disappear when you're not single. I can't just be your best friend and watch you go back to Darius."

"I'm not going back to Darius," I scoffed. "So, we can back off and be distant acquaintances again, we can try dating and end up bitter enemies, or we can maybe be the next Kit and Teddy making everyone feel sick at parties."

"That sums it up. I want to roll the dice on that last option. That's a 'two yeses, one no' situation," Ira said.

"I'm in," I said quietly.

Ira grinned broadly and reached for my hand.

"Benji, I won't let you down this time," he promised.

...

Kit

It had been such a long time since my last unprovoked panic attack that I almost didn't recognize it. Sure, I felt the unnamed dread leaking into my chest. I ignored it as best I could and focused on pulling perfect shots and pouring art into the to go lattes that no one would even see.

The racing thoughts started sometime in the middle of the morning rush. That tipped me off. I felt that cyclone of illogical surety twisting in my mind with a detachment born of too many years of poor coping.

Oh, shit.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, no.

Ben had my elbow in his hand, pulling off my headset and saying something that didn't reach past the roaring in my ears. I smiled at him and pushed the headset back on. He stared at me like I was unhinged, but we were slammed so he let me go back to coffee zen autopilot while my heart thundered.

Rush over. Stock room. I was slamming coffee bags onto the shelves with that desperate mania I hadn't felt in so long. Everything was too fast. Too loud. I would be crushed by the chaos soon.

The relief of the boxcutter on my skin was immediate. The shame of the blood dripping down my elbow followed. It wasn't going to be enough. I cut again, a little deeper, a little slower. Shame and relief and guilt and the feeling you get when your ears finally pop on an airplane mixed with the blood and the scent of coffee.

I wiped blood off the boxcutter and put it back on the shelf. I dug through the shop's little first aid kit for alcohol wipes and bandages. I used the wipes to clean myself up, hissing at the burn, but I repeated the movement a few times when that creaky voice in my head purred at the pain. Yes. Let that alcohol burn. You deserve it. You owe the pain as penance. Do it.

Ah, shit.

I was clear enough. The pressure was off. I could cruise through the rest of my shift. Ben eyed me warily when I returned and began my cleaning tasks as though the morning had been completely normal.

"Should I, um, should I call Teddy?" he asked me quietly. I pushed a confused look to my face before I answered.

"Why?"

"You're not, um, are you ok?"

"Yeah, just got a bit frazzled during rush. It's fine," I said and forced a dismissive laugh. Ben didn't know how good I was at hiding this. He seemed to accept that I'd had a weird morning and just let it go.

...

Teddy

Kit wasn't talking about the bandages on her arm. She brushed me off when I asked what happened. Now she was cooking in my kitchen, telling me a story about the chicken pot pie she was making, and acting like I couldn't see the wires of anxiety twisting her from the inside.

"Kit," I said softly, interrupting her story. She winced at my tone and kept her eyes on the crust she was rolling out. "What happened to your arm?"

She sighed and lifted her eyes to the ceiling as though she was looking for an answer in the perpetually spinning blades of the ceiling fan.

"Just some bullshit. It's fine," she mumbled.

"Can I see it, then?" I pressed. She glared at me.

"It's exactly what you think it is," she said sharply. I'm not sure I had ever seen her angry with me before. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pulled back in a snarl. "Just leave it alone."

"Ok," I answered and put my head down on the table. "I'm sorry. I'm here if you want to talk about it."

She softened a bit at my apology, but she shook her head. "There's nothing to talk about. I had a tough morning. I'm fine now."

"Are you?" I asked. "You seem really tense."

"Teddy, I'll be fine. Even with the meds, I'm going to have days like this," she said warily. "It's part of being with me. I warned you. I'm exhausting."

"I'm not asking you to never have a bad day," I told her gently. "I'm not exhausted. I'm worried. Wouldn't you worry if I came home like that?"

"Well, you're stable and I'm insane," she said dryly. "I can expect better from you."

"You're not insane, Kit," I argued.

"I slashed my arm with a boxcutter in the closet at work to let some thoughts out of my head," Kit countered. "Does that sound like a sane decision? It sounds like something a crazy, dramatic bitch does to me."

I winced. That cold, weird joking tone was back. She also never used that word, not even in jest. I very vividly remembered her telling me to never call her that when she took the sub role in our games. She had her arms behind her back as she glared at me. I could guess why that was.

"Kit," I heard a whimper in my voice and swallowed hard to clear it, "Can I see your hands?"

She gritted her teeth and held her hands up in front of her. Her wrists and palms were covered in the little half moon marks from her fingernails, but it looked like she hadn't managed to break the skin yet.

"What do you need?" I asked her. "Can I help?"

"You can't help. I'm fine," she said far too quickly. "Just, let me work through it."

"Your doctor can help you develop better coping skills," I tried. Kit sighed.

"Right, snap a rubber band on my wrist or hold ice or whatever the fuck else. I know all those things," she said with a note of derision. She went back to building the pot pie. "I've been doing this for a long time, querido. I'll be fine. I know how to come back down."

"Santa Kit, patrona de los baristas deprimidos," I said. She smirked at that and looked up at me. "No tienes que sufrir por tus pecados."

"¿Qué significa 'pecados'?" she asked after taking a second to sort through the words.

"Sins," I supplied. "You don't have to suffer for your sins, whatever you think they are."

"Hm," Kit made a noncommittal sound. "So I've been demoted to saint? Thought I was a goddess?" she teased me. I felt like I had made my point, so I let her change the subject.

"Plenty of goddesses were changed to saints at some point. That's why Santa Maria is called on for revenge in Mexico," I told her. "You can be my goddess and my saint."

"Or I can just be human, you sweet himbo," Kit scoffed.

"Nah, I already built an altar to you. You want a lamb or a rooster as a sacrifice? I'm Mexican, so I'd go rooster, but you're, what, Irish? That feels more like lamb," I said thoughtfully.

"I'm just a white American," she chuckled. "No cultural roots for me. So maybe a can of Coke and a Hot Pocket? Wonderbread? A Natty Light? Can you fit colonialism on an altar?"

"Right, cheap beer and white bread it is, then," I nodded and grinned at her.

"What's the other side of your family?" she asked.

"Same as you. Wonderbread and Hot Pockets," I answered. "Distantly German, I guess. My dad named be fucking Behr."

"I love your name," she told me with a little smile. "It's a famous kind of name. Like an artist or an author. Salman Rushdie, Edvard Munch, GG Allin, Hunter S Thompson, Alphons Mucha, Behr Caspers. Sounds like it belongs on that list."

"That's quite the list," I laughed. "Eclectic. What kind of list does your name fit on?"

"Katherine Clark? Basic white sorority girls," Kit said with a laugh.

"What if it was Katherine Caspers?" I asked without taking time to think about it. Talk about himbo Teddy in action. I felt my cheeks flush with warmth, but I kept looking at her. She smirked and opened her mouth to answer, then closed it with a thoughtful look.

"Hm, imagine it was," she said. "I don't think Kit Caspers would be any more stable, but maybe she would be a little more willing to think about an optimistic future."

"Unstable but optimistic works for me," I tried not to sound too thrilled. I probably failed at that because Kit bit her lip to keep her grin under control. "Kit Caspers. That sounds nice. She could join that list with Behr."

"She would need a lot more than a better name for that," Kit muttered, then winced. "Sorry, Teddy. I know that bothers you. It's been a hard day."

"I know," I said, trying to let her apology be enough. It wasn't. More than anything in that moment, I wanted her to love herself just a fraction of how much I loved her. "Maybe, um, maybe being nicer to yourself could be the first step to better coping techniques?"

Kit looked doubtfully at me as she put the pie in the oven. She rinsed her hands off and, to my surprise, climbed into my lap.

"Maybe this is too much pressure to put on you, but, until today, I had managed to not hurt myself since the first time you noticed just because I don't like to see this look on your face," she said softly. "It feels like I'm cutting you, too."

"I, um," I stammered, trying to put words to a response. "That's... good... but maybe you shouldn't hurt yourself for your own sake? Your body doesn't belong to me. You don't have to consider how I feel about how you treat it."

"It's a first step," she chuckled. "It's easier to not do something if it hurts someone I love than it is for myself. I'll figure out how to value myself after I learn good coping shit to make you happy."

I squeezed her tight because words weren't forming in my head. I hoped she understood what I meant as I stroked her back and shuddered with the overwhelming wave of hope, love, and the dread of a responsibility I wasn't sure I could live up to.

"Hey, um," Kit pulled back to look in my eyes with her little hand cupped around my jaw. "If you're serious about it, ask me about that name change again in a few more months."

"I should have brought it up better," I said, chagrined but absolutely beaming at the vague possibility. Kit had spent so long trying to convince me to leave, I never dared to consider she might actually stay with me forever. "Soy idiota."

"No eres idiota," she said. "You're just too sweet for this awful world. You should be able to talk about a happy future with the person who loves you. I'm just not all that steady at the moment. I need time to convince myself I can have something so nice so I won't freak out and sabotage it."

...

Kit

Ok, so Teddy wanted to marry me. That shouldn't be surprising. That's usually kind of the end goal in relationships for people like him. Normal, stable people with sweet hearts and enough kindness in their souls to spare a bit for themselves.

I sat down on the couch in my therapist's office. She looked at me and opened her mouth to ask me the same things she always did, but I interrupted.

"I have something I need help with," I said tightly.

"Ok, tell me about that," she didn't seem shocked by my sudden openness. Her poker face was astounding.

"Right, so, I need, ah fuck," I gritted my teeth together and clenched one hand into a tight fist where it was obscured by the cushions. Not nearly as good as digging at the thin skin of my wrists when it came to bullying myself into acting right, but the pain always helped a little. The irony of forcing out what I was about to say with a little self harm lite occurred to me.

"I need help developing some coping skills for panic attacks and anxiety. I have a way that I, um, refocus right now, but it's really not ideal."

"Can you tell me more about what you're doing now and why it needs to change?" she pressed. Ah. Great. Of fucking course.

With a sigh, I showed her the bruised, scraped mess of my inner wrists and the half moon indents on my palms. I pushed my sleeve up to show her the new scabs in the tangle of old scars. One was minor, all things considered. Just a light scratch, really. The other was deep and bruised. It looked like something I really should be taking better care of. Oh well. Another nasty scar.

She squinted at my arms and nodded thoughtfully.

"I'm glad you're looking for less harmful ways to manage your anxiety," she said. She launched into a discussion of better strategies and I tried to listen. I wanted to check out and file this away as just another person who didn't get it because they didn't have to live in my head. I pictured that devastated look on Teddy's face to force myself to participate.

I could be better for him. I had to be.

10

Kit

Teddy and Foster were fuming. Teddy was hiding it, to some extent, but Foster was pacing the backyard of the little house he shared with his found family like a caged animal. The whole extended gang was there on the mismatched patio furniture with Ira, Maggie, and me, including Ben, Phoebe, Corrine, and a handful of Maggie's younger friends who I hadn't met before. Ira had called everyone the moment he heard that all charges against David had been dropped. I wasn't entirely sure what we were supposed to be doing, but Maggie seemed really grateful to have everyone there.

The summer heat had finally let up as November turned the trees from October fire into dreary tattered skeletons dressed in rags. Teddy dragged a battered grill out and was standing in the fragrant smoke. He stared at the burgers and hot dogs he was supposed to be cooking without that usual joy he had for food.

I went to him and wrapped my arms around his waist from behind, burying my face against his back. I felt him relax slightly and he squeezed my hand.

"Hola, hermosa," he murmured to me. "¿Puedes tocar algo de música? Lo que sea está bien."

I nodded and found my phone to play something over the bluetooth speakers in the yard. I rolled through my Spotify account doubtfully. Angry punk didn't seem right for the mood in the yard. I slid into the seat next to Ira and handed him my phone.

"Help me pick something," I told him. He looked at my playlists and rolled his eyes.

"Jesus, Kit. You and Teddy are a match made at the Warped Tour, huh?" Ira teased me. Ben dug an elbow into his ribs. Those two had been conspicuously next to each other for weeks. It was cute how much they seemed to think none of us noticed Ira's unusual kindness and Ben's fleeting glances.

Ira chose something folksy that was sure to fuck up my algorithm, but everyone in the yard perked up a bit when it started.

Maggie beamed at me from the clutch of her highschool friends and motioned me over. I swallowed the grimace I felt and tried to look happy to meet them all. Maggie was gorgeous and all of her friends were the same - tall, made up, stylish young people with easy smiles and the confidence born of years of knowing they didn't have to work to fit in. Exactly not me in every way.

"Everyone, this is Kit!" she said happily and ran through a list of names I couldn't catch fast enough. "She's going to be my sister. Teddy might not know that, but I already decided."

I choked on the beer I was sipping just to give myself something to do. The group chided Maggie for embarrassing me, but Teddy's little sister just grinned.

"Come on! Did you not see her over there with him? He never looked at anyone like that before. It's enough to make you believe in love again," Maggie batted her eyelashes at me dramatically. "She's learning Spanish for him!"