“Yeah,” he muttered, cracking his knuckles. “I guess.”
“What else is going on?” I asked, knowing something else was bothering him. Cane had been jittery all night and I wasn’t sure why. If Powers was going to be locked up for the foreseeable future, he should be calm.
“This pregnancy thing is making me fucking crazy,” Cane said. “It’s the only time I can remember not knowing what to do. I want her to eat so the baby gets vitamins, but it’s a double-edged sword. She’ll just puke it up, then I have to worry about that. It’s a fucking nightmare.”
I chuckled. Seeing Cane worry about someone other than himself still caught me off guard sometimes.
“And now she has these hormones going through her and she just starts crying. And I have no idea why. I left the toilet seat up this morning. She cried.” He looked at me wide-eyed. “For fuck’s sake! I’m screwed anyway I go.”
“Has she told you to put the seat down before?”
“Yeah, but it’s hard to remember in the middle of the night.”
I laughed a little louder. “Maybe it’s not about the seat. Maybe it’s about you not listening to her.”
“This isn’t funny, Max.”
“I never said it was. I don’t envy you.”
He leaned back and then stood slowly, smirking. “Yes, you do. You’d give your right nut for Kari to be pregnant right now.”
Standing and stretching out my long legs, I spun my Saints hat around on my head. “I’m not sayin’ I wish things with Kari weren’t more serious.”
“So why not make them that way?”
“It’s not that simple.”
Cane didn’t say a word, just watched me, waiting on me to explain. I rapid-fired through memories, trying to condense everything into a few words.
“If Kari is anything, it ain’t simple,” I muttered. “I just don’t know what to do with her. If I act like I’m not paying attention, not pressuring her for anything, she relaxes. She allows herself to get into a routine with me. She’ll stay at the house, talk about things, be a normal human being. But as soon as she thinks I’m pushing, she backtracks. Reminds me we are just about sex.”
He tilted his head, chewing his bottom lip. “There was a time when I loved those words—‘we are just about sex.’ Now we’re sitting here talking about how to make things more fucking complicated. What the hell is wrong with us?”
I laughed at the appalled look on his face.
“We’re turning into women. Those women,” he said, glancing down the hallway, “are ruining us.”
“I’m not a woman. I still have my freedom. Now you, on the other hand, are fucked.”
“You’re fucked, too, asshole. It’s not like you’re out getting strange pussy. Just marry her and get it over with.”
I shook my head in frustration. “I ask her all the time. And she always says, ‘Not today.’”
“Want me to talk to her for ya?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
“I’ve always said you’d need me one day. Maybe now’s the time.” Cane’s trademark cockiness was written all over his face. “Yeah. Let the guy that knows what he’s doing help out.”
I rolled my eyes and walked to the kitchen, tossing my cup in the trash. “I don’t know what I need to fix this shit, but it’s not you.” I watch Cane toss his bottle in the trash. “She’s it for me, Alexander. She’s the one. I just need her to see it.”
Cane grabbed my shoulder as he walked towards the island. He leaned against it, crossing his arms in front of him. “She sees it or she wouldn’t still be with you. Maybe she wants you to get on one knee and all that bullshit.”
“If I go doin’ that, she’s gone. There’s no way she won’t run. I just . . .” I looked out the window at the leaves swaying with the breeze. “I need to figure out what she’s so scared of. That’s the key. And then change her perception.”
KARI
I spritzed my brush with coconut body spray and ran it through my hair. I pulled it through slowly, hoping for the calming effect the motion used to have on me as a little girl. My mom used to brush my hair and Jada’s before bed every night. She’d spritz our long locks with strawberry-scented detangling spray and tell us stories while she worked out the knots. Sometimes they would be funny stories, sometimes she’d recite poems or retell nursery rhymes, sometimes Aesop’s fables. It became one of those things that soothed a part of my soul. It was that effect I was looking for while standing in Max’s bathroom, dragging the brush down my hair.
It never came.