Chapter 31
Kai
June, Tiff and I sat around a black patio table, each with a coffee in front of us. The caffeine was doing nothing to help the waves of emotion crashing inside of me, swishing around as if to push my body into action against my will.
The girls had done their very best not to say anything until we were all seated and comfortable, though they made a handful of suspicious faces on our way around the corner to the cafe. Now that we were all settled, they both placed their elbows on the metal table, staring at me without a word.
“What?” I asked, flicking my chin to avert my gaze.
“Wow, Kai,” Tiff said. “Seems like there’s a lot of pent-up energy over there.” She circled her hands in my direction and pulled her cheeks back.
“That’s what happens when you don’t fuck for two years.” June lifted her eyebrows at me with a little grin.
I clicked my tongue. “Gross, June.”
“Sorry. But you can’t really tell me you’re still avoiding it. I know a pair of flushed cheeks when I see one.” She flicked her long, brown hair behind her shoulder and lifted her eyebrows even higher, as if that were possible.
I took a pause to think about how I was going to tell the girls what happened, but immediately got lost in a vision of what had fucking happened. Suddenly, I saw the image of myself sitting on top of Jonah, his stupid tattoos diving between my legs, his eyes watching my face, roaming my skin the entire fucking time. I wanted to kiss his neck again, hug him, press myself into him with no restraint. He was so obnoxiously hot, it made me want to fucking lose it.
“Kai!” Tiff snapped her fingers in front of me, and I came back to reality. “Jeez.”
“Oh, fuck, guys,” I whined. I crushed my face behind my hands as my brain flooded with the severity of the situation and my center filled with sensations of him. It was a horrible mix of hopelessness and horniness. My mumbles hit my palms, my fingers unable to reveal my shameful eyes. “It’s so bad, guys. Jonah made me… Oh god. We…”
The sound of chairs scraping on the pavement below caused me to jerk my hands away from my face. When I adjusted to the view in front of me, I found both girls standing, leaning over the table. To say they were on the edge of their seats to hear my story would’ve been a gross understatement.
I bit down on my thumbnail.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I stood to meet them with an aggressive push of my chair.
“He made me come,” I whisper-yelled. “He didn’t kiss me. We didn’t even hook up. I mean, I don’t even know what to call that. It was just his fingers. And I guess he… Nothing. Oh god. I have been raging all fucking day.”
Both girls stood still for a moment, making me question what their reaction would be, before simultaneously breaking out into loud, embarrassing squeals that caught the attention of the other patrons seated around us.
“Shh!” I begged them to sit back down with me, gesturing frantically with my arms.
“Oh my god, oh my god!” June giggled as she took her seat.
“I cannot fucking believe this,” Tiff said, covering her grin with a tattooed hand as she, too, lowered herself into her chair. “Oliver owes me twenty dollars.”
“Oh, me too!” June smacked a palm to her forehead. “Thanks for reminding me.”
I shook my head back and forth quickly to reset and clear my brain. What the fuck did Oliver’s debts have to do with my vagina?
June quickly noticed my confusion and kindly clarified. “We made a bet.”
“Yeah. June, Oli, Noah and I.”
My mouth fell open. Some fucking friends I had.
“Jonah went out one day to pick up some stuff for the apartment before you moved. You know, the sheets, the coffee mug, all that,” Tiff said. I hadn’t known the baby blue coffee mug he’d been giving me every day without fail was my mug. From him. My heart leaked into my chest.
“The four of us were at the house hanging out,” June continued. “Noah said you two wouldn’t last a week in the same room without fucking. Tiff and I disagreed, but we didn’t think you’d make it until the end of the year. Oli bet it would be at least a full year. So, we challenged him on it.”
I smacked a hand on the table. “We did not fuck!”
“You will,” Tiff said casually. “He’s been waiting his entire life for it.”
“Excuse you?” I revved up to get defensive as I had with Aaron and Briggs this morning.
“Kai, come on,” June said. “He’s been in love with you since day one. It’s literally the only thing I’ve ever kept from you. That and the size of Oliver’s—”
“Yep!” I cut her off, holding a hand up in her direction as Tiff mouthed “It’s big” to me. I tried not to gag as I said my next sentence. “I know it might seem that way, but Jonah and I have always been close. That’s just how we are.”
“No, it isn’t, Kai.” Tiff crossed her arms over her chest, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
“If our feelings were anything other than platonic, we would’ve been together by now.” I’d been thinking about it since leaving the gym, convincing myself that it was the truth. Besides, this was just a sex thing, right? A physical thing.
“False,” said June.
“Hey, I know!” I lifted a finger in the air. “Why don’t we have a conversation that doesn’t revolve around boys?!” We were perfectly smart, capable, adult women and we were sitting here talking about sex bets. Which, honestly, would’ve been really fucking funny to talk about, had it not been my sex life that was being bet on.
Tiff huffed a laugh. “Way to be subtle, Kai.”
I snarled in her direction. “Tell me about your studies. Both of you.” I snapped my fingers twice.
June sighed and propped her chin on the heel of her hand. “Not nearly as riveting as you fucking your best friend.”
“June!”
Tiff snorted. “Same here. Learning how to slice properly isn’t half as interesting as the way Jonah sliced up that puss—”
“Tiff!” I clamped my hands over my beet-red cheeks. Both girls laughed, falling deeper into their amusement as they thought up different culinary puns for what Jonah had done to me, leaning into each other like deflated sex dolls.
Fucking bitches.
◆◆◆
Jonah
I closed the door on Kai for the third time, forcing myself to shut my eyes and breathe as I was at serious risk of throwing her against the fucking wall.
The first time I opened it after she’d stepped out, I was hoping the faint stomps I heard outside meant she’d made her way around the corner so I could sneak off to the bathroom and relieve myself from her stunt on my neck. Instead, I was met with the last millisecond of her feet smashing on the floor like a child.
When I shut the door on her then, I just fucking knew what she was doing on the other side. Of course, I had to open it. I had to tell her to fuck off. I had to see that beautiful fucking face again.
I leaned my back on the door for a few silent moments, regaining my composure. When I opened my eyes, all three guys in front of me were staring. Vehemently.
Enzo didn’t seem to have the slightest clue what was going on. Noah grinned at me like a pretty little kid in a candy shop. Oli was already reprimanding me with his eyes, his head slightly tilted and his arms crossed.
Ah, shit.
He knew something was up and he already assumed—concluded—that I was doing anything but handling it correctly.
“Excuse me, guys,” Oli said to the two cousins to his left as he turned away toward the back of the room. The glare he sent me as he spun off was a command to follow. I dragged my feet as I did so, landing in front of him and shoving my hands into my pockets. “What did you do, Jonah?”
I refused to look at him. Instead, I studied the spot where the wall became the ceiling. It was really very interesting, much more interesting than whatever Oli had to say to me right now. He’d wanted to see Kai and me together since the day I told him I liked her. We were thirteen, Kai was twelve. So, a long fucking time. But he also warned me on many occasions not to fuck it up, as if I didn’t already know that. Rude of him to assume that I would. Ruder of him to be fucking right.
“I’m not sure I could explain it to you,” I mumbled.
“Well, you have to. What do you think the girls are going to do right now? Pick their noses? They’re going to talk about whatever so obviously happened here, so I’m going to need you to fill me in.”
I lifted my hands to my face and stretched them long, covering me from chin to hairline, placing myself in perfect darkness in which I longed to stay forever. My body bent forward, and I groaned loudly into my palms before leaning up to explain in a rather frantic way. I did my best to tell him everything in as PG a manner as possible. He wouldn’t want to hear about the way Kai squirmed under my touch or just how loud and squeaky she was when she came.
His sternness melted as I trudged on, word by word, detailing to him exactly how I’d managed to jumpstart the process of losing the only fucking thing that ever mattered to me. He even began to smile. The asshole thought this was funny.
“Jonah, you what?” he asked at the end of my story, his grin nothing short of explosive. The expression on his face teetered on disbelief. It was really fucking annoying.
“Oli, this is serious. If I get within two inches of that girl, I am going to absolutely destroy her.”
“Then do it,” he suggested unhelpfully. “God knows you both need it.” Whether he was happy about us hypothetically hooking up or mad about me being a dick, he was evidently not going to be on my side for this conversation. Fucking typical.
I sat down on the couch and sank my face into my hands. “Oli, I don’t know what to do. This isn’t how I wanted it.”
“After twelve years, you’re really going to get picky about what she gives you?”
“I’m not being picky, Oli. I’m trying to be smart about this. I wanted her to fall in love with me not let me fuck her, my god. Am I not allowed to need time to think about this?”
“If you need time then take it, but communicate that to her instead of acting like a fucking child.”
“She is acting like a child!” He tilted his head in a way that let me know my response was, in fact, very childish. I rolled my eyes. “Girls like Kai don’t go for guys like me. She could walk outside on any given day and get anyone she wants. I can’t get involved in that.”
“How could you even say that, Jonah? It’s Kai we’re talking about. You know she isn’t like that.”
I gripped my hair tightly between my fingers. “She has no fucking reason to stay with me, Oli. I refuse to take my medication even though I desperately need it. My social skills are slim to none, except when I’m around her, at which point they’re minimal. I’m very unenjoyable to be near, and she is one of the last people on earth who still hasn’t figured it out. If I fuck her, things will get weird, and she will leave me.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He sat down on the couch next to me and questioned the air with two open hands.
“A lot of things, Oli. That’s not really a secret.” I rubbed the skin of my forehead vigorously with six firm fingers.
“No.”
My head popped up. “No?”
“No. You’re not allowed to make stupid excuses anymore.”
“I’m allowed to do whatever I want.”
He stuck an obnoxious pointer finger my way as I once again became the enemy. “You are not allowed to hurt her.” The way he shook his head made me feel like he thought me incapable of being a functional human. He’d been doing that for as long as I could remember, and it only bothered me because he was right.
“I’m not allowed to hurt her? Are you fucking serious? You know what it would do to me if she and I ever stopped speaking, Oli. You know.”
“That girl is my sister, Jonah. You don’t fuck with her. You’re an adult, so act like one.”
“I’m not fucking with her, Oli. My god. Your sister.” I scoffed. “And what the fuck am I?” My hand flung out rudely as I caught his eye.
“My brother. And I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I have a pretty good fucking feeling it’s going to be your fault.” I crossed my arms over my chest and humphed into my seat. “I love you, man, but you’re a fucking idio—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” I cut him off right there, becoming nothing more than a grumpy puddle on the couch. “I love you too,” I mumbled.
He let me look at the floor in silence for a few moments, but it wasn’t long before his gaze began nudging at the side of my face. “Hey.” I looked up to find his tiny smile and his outstretched fist waiting for a fist bump.
“That’s not funny, man,” I said, using all my strength to hold back a smirk.
He just extended his arm even more, his hand getting closer to me.
“I’m not fist-bumping you over this.” My smile practically jumped through my words, causing my lips to twitch as I tried to hold it in.
He moved closer still. My eyes flicked between his fist and the floor three times before I unfolded only one hand from my crossed-arm position and tapped Oli’s knuckles with a single finger. That’s all he was gonna get from me.
“Yeah!” He lifted himself from his seat and cheered immediately. “Jonah touched a girl!”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t talk about your sister like that.”
Noah let out a triumphant hurrah. Both he and Oli neared each other in celebratory jumps until they locked in a hopping hug.
Fucking idiots.