Alchemy and Algebra

Chapter 23

Kennedy had fallen asleep when she'd gotten into bed. She let herself indulge in a rare bout of crying, the salt of her tears mixing oddly with the sweet taste still on her lips. When she woke, she shuffled groggily to the shower. Sleeping late in the afternoon and waking when the sun was going down was always disorienting. Standing under the spray of warm water, she started to situate herself again. Sleep was the great re-set button for the human brain, and she found herself able to contain her anger and disappointment, to sweep it up into a neat pile to be sorted through when she was ready.

She dressed and wandered to the kitchen, thirsty from crying and the heat of the shower. Chandra was nowhere to be seen, but when Kennedy opened the fridge, she saw a bowl covered with plastic wrap, topped with a sticky note. "Thought you might want something to balance out all those sweets. I've study group till eight. Can talk then if you feel up to it," read the note, written in Chandra's tidy but large handwriting. Inside the bowl was a salad of fresh greens, chopped veggies, and a tiny container filled with dressing.

"Chandra, you're awesome," Kennedy said aloud. She plunked herself down at the kitchen table and munched on the salad, which was the perfect thing to settle her stomach and right the karmic wrong she'd done to her body today.

If only there was such an easy fix for the wrong done to her by Charlie. The thought of him made her gut clench. She put down her fork. Why was chocolate so much easier to stomach than salad? Why were the unhealthy things the most attractive? At least junk food was honest about what it was. It came with a label and everything you wanted to know was right there if you looked with your eyes open.

Had she been so blind with Charlie? Fooled by a pretty package and an appealing product, ignoring the fine print? Maybe her heavy workload was doing a number on her. Most of her fellow students complained about how hard it was to keep up at school. She'd never been bothered by it. Maybe she was paying for it now and was experiencing burnout. It would explain her trouble with her thesis, as well as the other recent lapses in judgment.

She wondered what people did to treat burnout, and picked up her phone, thinking she'd look it up. When she turned on the screen, she saw five missed calls and eight new texts. Without looking, she knew they'd likely all be from Charlie. She never got that many messages in one day.

She didn't want to call him back. There was no point in hearing what he had to say. The evidence on his shop door spoke for itself. She deleted his texts without reading them. She'd meant to delete them without reading them, but the most recent one was impossible not to see as she deleted the thread of messages. "Please, Kennedy," was all it said.

She couldn't help but wonder what the previous seven texts had said. What happened, call me, I'm worried? Or did he ask her to stay away, to give him time to think? Or maybe, 'If you're that quick to damn me, and you won't even talk about it, don't bother calling me back. Delete my number please, Kennedy.'

Kennedy was pulled from the weight of her thoughts by a knock at the door. She was in no state to make small talk with one of Chandra's friends and considered ignoring it, but there was a second insistent knock. She surveyed her clothing to make sure she'd remembered to put everything on after her shower, then answered the door.

Charlie stood in her hallway, his eyes intense but the precise emotion in them unreadable.

"What the hell happened? Why did you run off? And why aren't you answering your phone?" he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest as he spoke.

Kennedy's mouth flapped open and closed a few times as her mind tried to catch up with what her eyes were seeing, which was confounded by the words she'd heard. Charlie was here. He wasn't going to quietly disappear like she'd deceived herself into thinking he would.

"What are you doing here, Charlie?" she finally managed to ask.

"I was hoping you had a few minutes to talk about your electricity provider," he said, his voice flat but his dark eyes flashing. He ran his hand backwards through his hair, making the dark blue streak lie a little higher than the rest of his hair. "What the hell do you think I'm here for? I was worried sick about you. I closed up early just to come here."

Kennedy straightened her spine and crossed her arms over her own chest. "I'm fine, as you can see. And I don't appreciate pop-in visitors. I'd like you to leave."

Charlie put his hands on either side of her door frame, leaning towards her, the muscles of his chest straining against his shirt. "Don't give me that. You walked past my store window all smiles, then before you came in the door, something happened and you freaked out and ran off. Talk to me."

"Fine," Kennedy huffed. "You want me to drag this out? Humiliate both of us? Alright, but then I want you to go."

She stood, her body stiff with anger, waiting for him to reply.

"I'm listening," he said at last.

"You lied to me," she blurted.

"About what? I never--"

"My turn to talk," Kennedy interrupted. "I asked you point-blank whether you were taking advantage of people or just selling harmless stuff. You told me you weren't pushing, and you weren't doing anything immoral in your shop. Today, I found out that's not true, not at all. I can forgive a soft understanding of the way the world works, but preying on grieving widows? That's repugnant. I thought you were a nice guy, Charlie, I really did, but now that I know the truth about you, I don't want to see you anymore. Like, ever."

Wow, it felt good to get that all out there, to tell him exactly what she thought of his underhanded, manipulative business practices. Using a person's grief for your own financial gain was about as low a thing as she could imagine, short of actual physical harm.

Charlie dropped his hands. His face was so still it might as well have been a mask. "That's what this is about, the grief group? And that's really what you think of me?"

Kennedy nodded stiffly.

"That's my cue to leave, I think. Goodbye, Kennedy," he said.

Without waiting for a reply, he turned from her and walked away. Kennedy stood at the door until she could no longer hear the echo of his footsteps on the hard linoleum of the hallway, then quietly closed the door.