That Bubbling Feeling: A Feel Good Roommate Romance Novel

Chapter 8

Jonah, Ten Months Later

Kai had gone quieter than usual over the last few months, and I can’t say I was a fan. Don’t get me wrong, we spoke every day, but I suddenly found myself sorting our relationship into good days and bad days, which was something I’d never had to do before. By bad days, of course, I mean either the days she was perfectly nice to me but not quite as present, or the days my negativity got the best of me and I ended up being rude to her by accident. And when those bad days lined up with the days I really needed someone, they were downright unbearable.

It was late afternoon in LA, though it made no difference. My room was dark anyway. Oli, June, and I moved into this apartment sometime after we got home from Spain, and my room became my own personal music hole. I hardly ever left it, spending days on end writing and musing, creating sounds and sequences on my computer that may or may not ever be heard.

As I played around with the pitch on a sample I’d just recorded, my phone rang. I answered Kai’s video call and stacked her against the giant speaker on my desk, one hand still on my mouse and my gaze on the computer screen. But the call opened up to a white bedroom ceiling I recognized by now, and my attention was ripped away from my work immediately. Her heavy, distressed breathing sounded through the line.

Shit.

For the umpteenth time in the last few years, my heart broke. I was going to fucking kill that guy.

I could only imagine what she was doing. Probably lying across her bed with a teddy bear pressed into her chest, unable to move and unable to discern if she was indeed breathing or not. Just opening up her phone to press Call was difficult for her in these moments, so I knew she’d already been like that for a while, working up the strength to reach out to me.

I reacted without thought. “I’m pulling up our new song so you can listen to it, okay?” I tried to keep my voice as calm as I could, scattering to pull up the correct folder on my computer. “Listen, these are the isolated vocals. Can you hear me all right?”

I clicked play on the most recent demo I had saved on my desktop. It was about her. All the songs I wrote were about her, really, but she didn’t need to know that. I just knew she liked listening to me sing, and when she was stuck in one of her scares, listening usually helped.

I dragged my hands heavily over my face, pressing into each divot and crevice with my fingers as they slid. By the end of the song, the camera still hadn’t turned to her. Fuck. I had to do something else, and driving over to her house to be with her wasn’t a fucking option. God, how that frustrated me.

“Hey,” I said, picking up a pen from my desk and standing in front of the camera. “Can you see me from where you are? Are you able to look this way?”

She didn’t answer. I just had to assume she was or would be soon. I had no other options.

“Watch this.” I pushed up the sleeve of my sweatshirt, brandishing my tattooed forearm. “Okay. I’m at the starting point,” I said, pressing the pen to my wrist bone. “I’m in the trees behind the tracks. Where should I go?”

She only wheezed.

Shit. Keep going.

“I think I’ll go this way.” I traced the pen up around the design on my skin, leaving behind an inky trail that I desperately hoped she was following. “Can you follow the pen?”

“Uh-huh,” she whined through her squall.

Okay, that’s progress.

“I don’t see where to go next. Maybe I should just cross through this black space…”

“No!” The word was followed by a round of choppy breaths. There she is.

“Where?” I asked.

“Left.”

“Mine or yours?”

“Toward your body,” she said in a staccato rhythm. Three whole words.

“Okay. Now where?”

“Over the train tracks.” Four.

“This way?” I asked, going the opposite way to see if she’d react to a joke.

“No! Where we used to sit.”

I smiled and dragged the pen toward the inside of my elbow, drawing a little star. “We made it.” I lifted the pen from my skin. “Now we can sit here together in the sun and listen to music while we wait for the train to come. Remember what it was like?”

“Oh, Jonah.” She sobbed heavily as she regained her full ability to speak. “I can’t do it. I really can’t do it.”

“I take it you’re not having fun anymore?” I leaned back in my chair and ripped my hand through my hair. Kai had been on the brink of a breakdown for so long that I was starting to forget what she was like before Javi. Not really, obviously, but almost. Six out of the seven days a week, she told exciting stories of time with her girlfriends or funny patrons from the bar, and on the seventh day, she told the truth. Today must’ve been the seventh day.

“No, Jo. I hate it!” The sounds of her cries tore me in two, though an evil part of me was just a little bit satisfied to hear she wasn’t enjoying Spain. Every time she said anything negative about it, my heart convinced me a move was on the horizon. “My life is full of things I don’t even like. People I don’t even like. I hate it!”

“What happened?”

She whimpered as she picked the phone up and sat herself in a criss-crossed position. A teddy bear was smushed into her chest, wrapped in a black sweatshirt I’d left behind for her when I left Spain. That made me smile. I didn’t take the situation lightly at all, but it was nice to know someone needed me.

She answered my question, telling me the events of the day. The further into the story she got, the closer I came to overturning every damn piece of furniture in my apartment like some kind of mindless barbarian. If only I had the strength and capabilities.

I sat there and gritted my teeth as she described what I was almost positive were actual crimes committed by Javi. And I’m not talking about the drugs sold out of the bar or hiring people without proper contracts. I’m talking about him hacking into her bank account, and then taking a switchblade to her belongings earlier today when she called him out for it. I’m talking about her description of how they were sitting together on the couch in her apartment when she noticed his phone was dinging at all the same times hers was, because he had literally synced up their shit without her knowledge.

She finally gathered the strength to get up from bed and walk me around her apartment, but I almost wished she hadn’t. I could’ve done without seeing the broken light switch, the shattered plate on the ground, or the sliced teddy bear beneath the sweatshirt which I now realized she’d used as a bandage. It was the bear that sent her straight back into a fit, and my chest collapsed at the sight. She stood there crying in front of the camera with the little brown animal dangling from her fingers, its white guts fluffing out of it in chunks. Her connection with her stuffed animals was a special one, and I suddenly no longer wanted to die, but kill.

How the hell could anyone treat another human as such? Where the fuck did this Javi guy get off? While I wished there was more I could do to help, I selfishly refused to let myself dwell on it too much for the sake of my own sanity. I buried my face in my hands which were propped up over one scribbled forearm and another covered in sweatshirt, elbows digging into the desk in front of me.

“Are you okay, Jojo?” she asked, ending a small silence between us as she sniffled and sat back down on her bed with her mutilated bear.

I hated that she asked me that. The answer was no, but it wasn’t about me. That girl could have been dragging her own beaten body across the ground with one hand and a split eye and she would still ask if I was all right. Kai was like that.

“Of course.” I heaved a breath, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes as deeply as I could.

“Are you mad at me?”

Air whooshed from my throat as if I’d been punched in the gut. Is it possible for a heart to break twice in one sitting?

“Am I ma—?” I began to repeat her question back to her, but it came out angrier than I’d intended. After another deep breath, I tried again. “No, Kai. I’m not mad at you. You couldn’t have known it would go that far.”

“There were signs.” Her cries returned as she smushed her nose into the bear’s head, weakly looping one sweatshirt arm around it.

“Kai.” Her name sounded much more like a beg. And it was. A beg for her to be okay. For all of this to finally end. I had nothing helpful to say, nothing I could do to take away her pain. So, I stuck to the facts. “Kai, that’s not your fault. Leaving is easier said than done, and you are not responsible for his actions. I’m glad that you’re safe and he’s gone. I never liked him.”

She wiped a hand across her red cheek and sniffled loudly. “Yeah, well, you weren’t his favorite either.” Good. That was a snarky joke. More progress.

“Do your parents know about any of this?”

She scoffed. “Fuck no. We’ve broken up fuck knows how many times during this relationship. I stopped telling them about it after the first time. My mom had said, ‘That’s a shame. I really liked him.’”

My eyes gaped at that. “How could they like him? He is fucking abusive!” I wanted to explode in a fiery mess of red heat. Anger really wasn’t a frequent thing for me. Annoyance, disgust, judgment…sure. But anger was tougher to deal with, and I didn’t have so much experience with it.

“Don’t.” She cringed, wringing her neck tensely. “Don’t say that word.”

“Kai, don’t downplay this.”

“I’m not downplaying anything, Jo.” She scratched her head with both hands, itching nervously with a sound that ripped at my eardrums. “I know what happened. I know how it feels. Giving it attention makes it feel worse right now.”

“Then when are you going to give it attention, Kai? I’m sorry, but when?”It quickly became obvious that anger was going to win today because that really wasn’t my answer of choice, it was just the one that came out. Kai stared at me as I succumbed to myself. “You need to stop standing by while this shit happens to you. Stop being quiet.” I shot up from my chair and began pacing, my brain switching to a setting over which I had no control. “You have been making excuses for him since day one. Or maybe day thirty since you didn’t even fucking tell us about him for the first month. Look at me and tell me you haven’t been hiding his fuck ups and making excuses for him.” I stopped in front of the camera and looked at her.

No answer. Typical.

“Why, Kai? Why do you do it?”

Her jaw tightened, and I wanted to stomp my feet on the ground like an asshole. If she wasn’t going to come home, she at least had to be fucking safe.

And Kai could handle herself. Of fucking course, she could. She was so much stronger than she appeared. But people are truly evil, and her weakness had always been her faith in the world. I never shared that creed, and while it robbed me of a lot, it honestly saved me from even more.

She still didn’t answer me, but I didn’t say anything else. I needed her to think about it. Truly. For once. She needed to think about why she protected people who didn’t deserve to be protected. About why she hurt herself just so others could use her as a flight of stairs.

“I think…” She started speaking slowly, but immediately shut herself up. “You just don’t know what it’s like on the inside, Jo.”

No, nor did I fucking want to. “Then maybe you need to get out,” I said, slicing a hand through the air. “I’m asking not for me this time, but for you. Please, Kai, please come home.”

Her face backed away from the screen, the sides of her mouth pushing down. Her sadness became tinged with something harder, something like irritation. “I don’t have enough money, Jojo. I can’t buy a—”

“I do.” I neared myself to the desk, my rage melting into desperation. “I do. Oli, Noah, and I are doing well. We’re doing so fucking well. Our music is selling. We’ll get you home. I’ll get you home.”

“No, Jonah.” Her finger began tapping from her crossed arm position one, two, three on her opposite elbow. I was pissing her off and well aware of it.

I stole an enormous breath from the thin air around me, about to land the final blow that would send her right over the edge. But what else could I do? I couldn’t tell her to stop being so passive, and then be passive myself. Someone had to put their foot down. “Just…please, Kai. I can come get you. We’ll pack up your things. We’ll get dinner with your parents and explain everything to them.”

Her eyes snapped to me. They were filled with a very specific type of rage. The rage Kai got when I invalidated all of her hard work and difficult experiences with my simple solution of just come home. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to tell them. I don’t want you to pay for me.”

I flicked my wrist in the air dismissively. “All I’m hearing is that you’d rather stay in that shithole apartment with that fucking predator lurking around than have to suffer through a little bit of healthy confrontation and a helping hand.”

She tossed her bear to the side, set her phone up on her nightstand, and stood in front of it to flail her hands angrily. “I did everything right! I fit in and made friends. I moved out on my own to this shithole apartment which I pay for with myown money! I’m getting an education. I did everything I was supposed to do and I did it all of my own accord! I will do this of my own accord as well!”

“Do whatever you want, Kai! Do everything of your own accord always but, fuck, at least do something!”

“I’ve had a very hard fucking day, Jonah. Do not test me. I called you for help, not a fucking lecture!”

I dropped down in my computer chair, finally taking note of the blaring headache ringing in my forehead. My knuckles dug into my eyes until I saw colors. I blew air from my nose and pulled myself into my desk, nearing Kai. “I’m offering my help,” I said calmly.

“You are not offering, you are demanding, and you have been for the last two and a half years.”

My eyes shot up to her. As if my heart wasn’t already nothing more than a pile of shards in its cavity, it somehow ruptured once again. “I’m being assertive for your own good because you won’t be. Just like when you push me on my shit. That’s what we do because we love each other. I have been nothing but supportive since you left.” And you have no fucking idea how much I’ve been suffering for it. “I want you home so badly it hurts, Kai, but I have never demanded anything of you nor would I think to do it. But this, Kai…this? Think about what you would do if you heard I was going through the same thing. You wouldn’t even ask. You would just show up. And while you’re thinking about that, take a second to ask yourself why you don’t react the same way when it’s you who’s in trouble.”

She was silent for a moment before muttering something that sounded like the word dick.

I glared at her. “What did you just say to me?”

She leaned into the camera and articulated shamelessly. “I said you’re a dick.”

I rolled my eyes and sat back in my seat. “Shame you like me so much. Your life would be much easier if you didn’t have anyone begging you to live it.”

“Don’t get all high and mighty, you shithead. You haven’t left your room since you moved into that place, so don’t talk to me about living life.”

A low blow, perhaps, but it was true. I wasn’t being hunted by a dangerous ex, but I certainly wasn’t doing much to save me from myself. “There are 7.6 billion ways to live, and somehow we’ve both managed to fuck it up.”

“They say we’ll hit eight within the next five years. And I bet we’ll still suck.” She smirked, informing me that her demeanor was beginning to calm. That’s all it took, really. A joke. Kai was good at blowing out her frustration in one go.

I, on the other hand, had no idea how to handle it. I just bit onto it and kept talking. “So, what do you want to do?”

She paused for a moment before saying, “I want to come home.” My hands immediately shot up from the desk in front of me and slammed back down. That is exactly what I was fucking saying. “Well, I—” She clicked her tongue. “I agree with you, okay? But you can’t get all macho man on me.”

“Macho man?” I dropped my head to my palm and began tearing at my eyebrows with the pads of my fingers. “Kai, I weigh a hundred and seventy pounds. I’m not being a macho man. I am furious.”

A goofy giggle rumbled through the camera. “You’re not a skinny nerd anymore,” she said, using my own typical self-description to change the subject. Her wet eyelashes gave her new smile a sticky edge. This was some sort of trap if I’d ever seen one, set to make me love her even more against my own will. “You were really quite tall the last time I saw you.”

I dropped my hand from my brow and tapped my finger on the desk, allowing myself to shift from left to right in my spinning chair. “I know what I am, Kai.”

She stared at me for a few quiet moments as I let the energy drain out of me. I was still fuming. That would probably stay with me for a long time and would surely revive anytime I met someone named Javier for the rest of my fucking life. But I did need to calm down.

Kai was beautifully curious, explosively adventurous, and any attempts to speak against it were incredibly futile. If she had proven anything to me in these years of friendship, it’s that I would not, could not, hold her back. Not that I’d ever want to. It was just so hard to stomach sometimes.

“I love you, Jojo, and I’m so proud of you. But you need to let me be proud of myself, too.”

“How could you not be?” I asked immediately, lifting my hands in front of me as if I were catching air. “Look at everything you’ve built for yourself. The education, the life, the drive that you have, Kai…”

“And I’m so happy about it, Jo. But I have a bit further to go. You understand, right?”

I wanted to kick a cement wall with no shoes on, but I didn’t have one near me just now, so instead I groaned and let my head fall to the side. She pouted at me the same way she did back in high school when she really wanted me to get off the couch and get her a chocolate bar from the kitchen. I was helpless to her.

“Fine.” I humphed and crossed my arms.

“Now tell me about you,” she said, smoothly leading me away from all that had just happened. “How’s Caroline?”

Yeah, there was no way in hell we were going to talk about Caroline. If we did, I really would need that cement wall. Pronto. “Get some sleep for now. We can talk more tomorrow.”

With that, she was content. The tears and fear and anger she felt seemed to turn to sleepiness as she finally settled in to rest after a long day, hugging her deceased toy into her chest. I kept her stacked against my speaker and silenced myself so as not to bother her.

When I was sure she was fully asleep, I crossed the hall to Oli and June’s room where Oli sat on the edge of his bed, tackled him in a hug, and cried into his giant chest until my eyes ran dry.