Chapter 4

She was such a pain in the ass.

He was seventeen… And she was thirteen.

Jensen discovered that she had an annoying habit of popping up at the worst possible moment. Really embarrassing moments.

Like when he was at the back of his house drinking one of his dad’s beers. Or when he was making out with some girl behind the old well.

One time he chased her, all the way to her house. He was determined to teach a lesson… Teach her not to mess with him. But when he caught her, he just couldn’t. He let her go. Then watched as she tried to dust the sand off her clothes. Her face was red.

He smiled. “Kitty Kat,” he said.

She answered by calling him a dork.

One time she stole a pack of cigarettes from him and broke them all in two. He wasn’t even smoking them, he just carried them around to look cool. He didn’t know what to do with her.

It was hell. She wore makeup now. He told her it was ugly and she looked silly and that she was trying too hard to look older.

She told him he looked like a geek.

She pissed the hell out of him. And all her brother Jon did was laugh. That’s how Katherine was. Annoying. He had to get used to it. Jonathan said.

But annoying as she was. She baked the best cookies he had ever tasted… And cupcakes. And when she realized he liked them, she always brought him some every time she baked. She would pack them in a shoe box lined with wax paper and bring them to him.

Sometimes she brought them to school for him. As they grew older he realized she cared about him… She liked him. He knew that. And he liked her too… But just as his best friend's little sister… He told himself then. She wasn’t his friend. He wasn’t going to be friends with some kid.

Then he had lost his parents…And it had hurt like hell.

No one had ever seen him cry… But she did.

All his family members, friends and well-wishers were at his house. Everyone had some consoling words for him. Words that didn’t make him feel better one bit.

Some said ‘Let me know if there is anything I can do for you’ and then walked away before they even found out if there was anything they could do.

Some of the women brought food… Anything to make him eat something. But he wouldn’t touch anything.

His grandfather was going to take care of him and his siblings now.

He didn’t have an appetite to eat anything. He had felt sick inside. Empty. Dead.

And then he opened the door to find Katherine standing there with a box of cookies. She hadn’t said a word. No ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ or ‘Let me know if I can do anything.’ She had just stared at him with her big bright eyes and handed the box to him.

They both left the house. Went to a spot on the path leading to the river. And they sat on a rock together. She sat so close he could feel the warmth from her where their shoulders almost touched. They didn’t say anything. Just ate the cookies.

The cookies and her presence had made him feel better — for a while.

Then he remembered his parents. He was never going to see them again. Nothing was going to ever change that. Suddenly he wanted to be alone… He wanted to run and hide from everything. From everyone.

And so he told her to leave… She did.

And then he sat there and sobbed on his knees. He thought he was alone. Then he heard a movement. She was back… Or she had never left. He stared at her. He was mad at her for staying. He didn’t like that she had seen him cry. But he didn’t have the strength to yell at her, though he wanted to so badly.

She folded her hands and hung her head. She walked right up to him and sat down again.

Then she did something he had never expected.

She cried with him.

They got closer after that day. Close enough to make Jonathan a bit jealous. He often told Katherine to go hang out with her own friends. But she didn’t seem to mind.

She helped him get over his parents death. And he looked after her at school. Like he took care of his sister. Sometimes they walked to school together or took the bus together.

He remembered sitting with her on the bus one day. Her friend Eva hadn’t come to school that day. She was sitting alone, looking out the window. He didn’t like the way she looked so he had left his friends and came to sit with her. She was so happy.

She still followed him around a lot. But it didn’t annoy him as much as it used to anymore — though it did sometimes. He still called her Kitty Kat. And she told him every time not to. But he still did because he loved to tease her. She looked so funny when she got pissed.

That rock by the river became their spot. They went there together with some of her cookies. And they ate and talked and argued about almost everything. Like why the sky and the ocean was blue and how planes flew and why engines need oil. They talked about a lot of silly things too.

When he was leaving for college she was very upset. She cried. She didn’t want him to go. He was going to miss her too but he was also excited about going to college. They kept in touch for a while… But then the calls and texts became less frequent and then they stopped. Jonathan told him she left to live with one of their aunts when she got into college.

He didn’t see her for years after that.

Next time he saw her he had graduated from college and he was back home. He was supposed to join Dillon at their parents' company. But he knew deep down that he wanted something of his own. He hadn’t expected to see her. Nobody told him she was back.