Page 80 of Catching Kyle

“Right about what?” she asks. “Michael, I just asked why Kyle wanted to play this last season.”

“Yeah, but you were insinuating that maybe Kyle has something to hide.”

She shakes her head. “I wasn’t insinuating anything. You’ve said yourself how Kyle is so much better than your ex. How he’s honest. I was just curious, anyways, not suspicious. Playing to keep a promise to his dad makes sense.”

“But should I be suspicious? He was closeted for so long. What if there’s something else here?”

“Okay,” she says, pulling me out of the gathering people. “Let’s talk about this.”

She pulls me toward a quiet corner of the bookstore. She’s rubbing my arms, and she tells me to take a deep breath. Once I do, I feel a little better. Enough to talk without panicking.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“I’m just worried,” I say. “Your question—it got me thinking. What if there’s some other reason Kyle has to play? Or what if there’s some other secret that he’s kept hidden?”

“Have there been any secrets that Kyle has kept from you so far?”

I pause for a beat. “Just that he was gay. And why he was in book club.”

“And he eventually told you, didn’t he?”

I nod.

She sighs. “Then it sounds like he is honest. It just might take him some time. I think you’re letting your fear from your last relationship get in the way of this one.”

Her words echo off of something similar my sponsor told me a while back. “Yeah,” I say. “I tend to have a tendency to self-sabotage. Kyle is nothing like David.”

Skye chuckles. “Well don’t do that to yourself! It sounds like Kyle really likes you, and he’s been honest with you so far. And if you’re worried, talk with him. I think the truth comes out regardless, anyways. You don’t need to stress about it beforehand.”

By now, my heartrate has gone back to normal, and I feel that exhausted, soothing feeling of having my exerted myself but now being able to rest.

“I’m seeing him tonight too,” I say. “I think I’d like to ask him more details about this promise. But you’re right. I don’t think I have anything to worry about. Thanks for this.”

She pats me on the arm. “Anytime.” She eyes the circle of women. The discussion is about to start. “Come on,” she says. “I can’t wait to discuss this werewolf smut.”

The discussion gets heated faster than any other book club session I’ve ever been to. Skye gets into a polite, yet bordering on aggressive, argument with someone else about the nature of ‘knotting’ and whether it was accurately described in this book. I manage to chime in how now that I’m unemployed, I’ll have time to binge the whole series. When Kelley asks the question about whether or not this book is a good representation of the Omegaverse, I swear more hands are raised than are possible to answer. And with how long some of the explanations are, Kelley has to cut some people off. And when we talk about the scene where the vampire has to feed off the werewolf to survive, the room just about loses it.

In short, this is my favorite book club session yet.

Quickly, the anxiety I had to toward Kyle and whether or not he’s lying to me about something dissipates. Like Skye and my sponsor have said, this is just a lingering fear that I have from my previous relationship. Nevertheless, I do want to know more about this promise Kyle made to his father. I’m just sure, though, that Kyle will be honest. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

When the session wraps up, various threads of topics are still being vigorously debated by several others, including Skye. I put my chair away, and I’m about to pull out my phone when Kelley approaches me.

“Hey, can we talk a minute?”

My stomach clenches just like it did on the first day when she pulled me aside. But then I steel myself. I doubt I’ve done anything wrong.

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I’m sorry to hear you lost your job,” she says. “But we may have an opportunity for you.”

My stomach flutters, but in the good kind of what. “Opportunity?”

“We’ve been hiring for a while,” she says. “Specifically looking for more booksellers who would be willing to host more book clubs. As you can see, this one gets pretty big.”

I gaze over at the dozens of women perusing the aisles, many of them joining the checkout line that stretches all the way to the front door. “No kidding.”

“In this club, we’ve been reading all sorts of romance subgenres, but these other book clubs would exclusively focus on some of these subgenres. For example, a romance fantasy book club.” She gestures to me. “An LGBTQ+ romance book club.”