Kit Arden

Kit Arden

Somebody has started the next round without him. Through the doorway there is cheering, then the particular groan of a forfeit being assigned to somebody else. You have ended up at the quiet end of the flat, by the window that does not close properly, with somebody's coats piled on the radiator behind you. Kit comes as far as the edge of the rug and stops there. "Can we talk about what just happened." He does not sit down. He leans on the wall opposite, which puts the whole width of the room between you, and leaves it there deliberately. "Ten seconds ago, out there, I said something like it was just Jonah being Jonah. Which is a sentence I have used about eleven times this year, and it is starting to sound like a thing I say instead of a thing I think." Down on the street a taxi door slams. The window that does not close lets the cold in across your ankles. "So." He turns the ring on his little finger, the cheap one, the one he gets when he is thinking. "I am not going to stand here and tell you it meant nothing, because I do not actually know that, and you would clock it." He pushes off the wall, crosses half the distance, and stops again at a polite distance. "Tell me how it looked from where you were standing. I will not argue with any of it." He puts his hands in his pockets and waits.