Chapter 35
Kai, That Afternoon
I left the studio early today, unsure of whether I needed to be closer to or farther away from Jonah. He didn’t demand we go get a coffee like he had the past two days, but this one was voluntary. The band was hardly doing anything anyway. The work was done.
I spent extra time getting ready, an hour poking around the store for alcohol we didn’t need, and even more time taking public transportation instead of calling a car, just because I’m a little sadistic. When I arrived at Briggs’ house, he, Thalia, and Aaron were already there setting up. The grassy yard was surprisingly spacious with a wooden fence around three sides and the house at the fourth. Two long tables sat off to the left, and there were scattered chairs and fallen balloons around the rest of it.
Aaron made various stacks of red cups on one of the snack tables. I helped by inspecting them closely, moving around bunches of one, two, three cups to make sure each stack was exactly even.
“One more on the back corner,” Aaron said, staring at the towers with as much intensity as I was.
I did as he said. “Ah. No. Doesn’t feel right.” I lifted the cup off the stack and placed it back down in its spot. Still not right. I moved the cup in my hand to another stack, stealing the top cup of that stack to put on the stack in the back corner.
“No,” Aaron said. “Take this one.” He pointed to the stack in the front. I took the cup off the front stack and the cup off the back stack and switched them.
All the cups and all the stacks were indistinguishable, but that felt better. It felt right.
“Can we get the weirdos off cup duty?” Thalia asked. “They’re switching around identical plastic cups.”
“Be nice,” Briggs said in passing, releasing a hug full of chips onto the table. He began opening the plastic bags and dumping the chips into bowls as Thalia joined him.
“Must be hard being so serious all the time, T,” I mumbled, observing the cups still to ensure there were no other stacks to be switched around. She threw a vengeful cheese puff my way. I watched it boink off my shoulder and caught it before it fell to the ground, popping it into my mouth. I crunched loudly in her face, and she stuck her tongue out at me.
But her expression suddenly dropped, and her line of vision shifted from my face to above my head. She stared over me with a look of confusion, then thought, then…a smile.
“Kai, are those your friends?” she asked, nudging her chin in the direction of her gaze.
I didn’t turn around. Not yet. I needed more time to gather myself before I was once again placed in front of Jonah. “Is it a beast, a pretty girl, and a long-haired nerd?”
“No.” She crossed her arms, and her grin grew impossibly wide as she sank into one hip. “It’s a beast, a pretty girl, and someone I think you might like to see.”
I gave her a stink face to let her know I wasn’t interested, and she rolled her eyes. She placed two hands on my shoulders and turned me around, urging me to look at the new arrivals.
Beast? Check.
Pretty girl? Check.
Long-haired ne— What the fuck is that?
Beside my two normal friends stood the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, beaming with bright light which exploded from behind him in rays. His black jeans and T-shirt of the same color hugged him perfectly as they always did. He wore the same beat-up sneakers he’d been wearing for years. But his hair…
His hair was gone.
I wanted to weep. Golden emotion flooded my chest, wrapping around me as the wings of imaginary butterflies sent my senses flying. This was not just a physical thing. It wasn’t just a crush or a possible hook up. I was staring at the love of my life.
I marched right up to Jonah to get a closer look. His hair, which had reached past his shoulders since the day I met him, was gone. It now hardly hit his ears, short all over with front pieces that fell perfectly above his face which I was now realizing could fully see the light of day. His cheekbones glinted in the sun and his eyes shimmered without the shadow of raven curtains surrounding them. He looked stunning.
“What the fuck did you do?” I asked as if I were pissed. It was my only defense, to keep being snippy with him.
Jonah tilted his head, hardly looking enthused by my reaction. “I take it you don’t like it.”
“Like it?” Like it? I loved it. As if the asshole wasn’t beautiful enough, as if it weren’t hard enough for me to accept that he wanted to keep distance from me, he went and got even more attractive?
God, do you exist? And do you hate me? What is the meaning of life and why did you make my best friend so you-damn perfect?
My mind was definitely not screwed into my head correctly, and I was likely producing the most ridiculous, gaping facial expression known to man. I wouldn’t have known. I wasn’t paying attention to that. But Jonah was. He stared at me for a few long moments but said nothing. This interaction had been nothing short of detrimental thus far.
His eyes flicked up to look over my head as I felt someone arrive behind me. I recognized that cologne and that energy. Aaron. Jonah surveyed him as he introduced himself first to Oliver, then to June. Finally, he reached my beautiful man.
“Kai,” Aaron said, taking Jonah’s hand for a shake. “You didn’t tell me he got even hotter since I saw him. Stiff competition.” He turned back to smirk at me as Jonah’s lips pressed flat. My face boiled, the fiery glare I sent Aaron’s way not nearly enough to capture what I was feeling inside. The last thing I needed on top of all this shit was Aaron and his stupid games. “June. Oliver. Come meet Briggs and Thalia.” Aaron flicked the side of my head as he walked away. “Jonah can stay here.”
A bit to my surprise, Jonah didn’t go with them. He stood in front of me, staring at me as I did him, rage tightening his jaw. I could see in his eyes exactly what he wanted to communicate. He did not like Aaron. At all.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, each word a forceful push as he attempted to hold back what he actually wanted to say, clinging to this morning’s truce though the outside world caved in on it.
“Is that really what’s on your mind right now?”
“If you…” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “If you continue to answer my questions with questions…”
I looked down at my feet. “You don’t want to hear my answer, Jo.”
“We are friends, Kai.” He stared at the ground as well, both of us facing our crowns to each other. “We are friends and for as long as I can remember we have told each other everything. I do not want to be the one you talk about with your friends. I want to be the one you talk to.”
I glanced up. “I told you yesterday. I haven’t told them a thing.”
“I want to be the one you talk to,” he repeated with a bit more fervor, catching my eye. He was so on edge I was worried he’d slip and fall right off. “How are you feeling? Are you feeling better since this morning?”
I shook my head. “No. Why did you cut your hair?”
“I understand you don’t like it, Kai. It’ll grow back. We’re talking about you right now.”
“I like it,” I said quickly. “I love it. I love it so much I want to rip your face clean off because if I don’t, I will sit on it. Why the fuck did you cut your hair?”
He froze. “Do not speak to me like that.”
“Now you want to enforce rules about how we interact?” I leaned into my hip and crossed my arms, swiveling my head on my neck. “And what if I said, ‘Do not tie me to any furniture and threaten to torture me with a vibrator?’ Would that be along the same lines?”
“Are you really going to give me no choice, Kai?!” He kept his voice low enough that our conversation remained private, but his tone was sharp. I reared my head back at the intensity of his question. “Is every conversation we have for the rest of our lives going to be like this, or do I need to suck it up and fuck you once so you can get it out of your system and leave me alone?”
Did he really just say that to me?
My shoulder twitched. My hand was suddenly hungry to make stinging contact with his fucking face. But I didn’t. I could never. The line between my anger and my heartbreak was so very thin, the thread fraying before my eyes.
So that was all I was to him. His obnoxious friend who wouldn’t leave him alone, who begged him for a fuck he didn’t even want.
“Suck it up and fuck me once?” I parroted. I hoped my eyes were shooting red lasers at his head, though they might’ve just been red with sadness. “Do you not remember who I am?”
“Do you not remember who I am? I’m a dick, Kai. It’s not my fault you’re the last of them to figure it out.” He blew past me and joined the rest of the group without another word.
Fucking. Asshole.
I stood there for a moment breathing deeply, unsure of who the hell I’d just been speaking to, before following in his path and joining the others. Aaron immediately received me with a sigh of happiness and a huge hug. Fake. He was faking it. He turned me around to face the rest of the circle of friends and held me in his embrace from behind. While I couldn’t see him, I had a feeling he was looking Jonah directly in the eye.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Helping,” Aaron murmured.
Not helping. Jonah stared at us very intensely. I couldn’t decide if I cared or not. Maybe he deserved it after what he’d just said. I’d never stoop so low as to use jealousy against him, but he’d made it pretty clear he didn’t give a shit about me, so perhaps this was fitting.
More guests began to flood into the party, occupying the empty space surrounding the chairs and balloons. It was a large group, and despite being in the company of six of my closest friends, I was entirely alone, dropped in the middle of this occasion with no defenses.
Except one.
If Jonah thought I was so fucking pesky, I’d be the peskiest bitch he ever met.
◆◆◆
Jonah
He was touching her. My beautiful Kai who had hidden from closeness and rejected intimacy was folded between the arms of an obnoxiously attractive mountain of a man. What if she didn’t want to be touched? What if I didn’t want her to be touched? Shit.
“Would you mind getting her away from him? I can’t watch that right now,” I whispered to June, who stood next to me. I couldn’t do it myself without exploding, without worsening this situation between us.
According to their little phone conversation last night, Kai and Aaron knew everything about each other. But not even that notion could scrape away the thoughts from my mind. Javi, Justin, and all the assholes in between. This wasn’t a game to be played. Aaron couldn’t push me with his stupid competitiveness. All he could do was stir up heartbreaking feelings from the past and douse my hatred for him in gasoline.
June turned to Thalia for a bit of small talk and waved Kai over. Kai broke free and approached them, and the three girls walked to a far corner, drinks in hand. My tense shoulders eased only the slightest bit as I watched them put distance between themselves and the rest of us.
A few minutes later, I dropped my bones into a plastic lawn chair beside Oli, hoping I could at least brood in peace without having to force conversation with the other guests. Every single person at the party was fucking gorgeous.
All of them.
There wasn’t a single one who appeared to neglect their physical health, not a single one who took to hiding in their room instead of going to the gym, or who wore the same few shirts instead of rotating through a real wardrobe. I turned to Oli, who’d hardly worked out a day in his life and wore the same red flannel he wore all throughout college. For some reason, it didn’t make me feel any better.
My new haircut had been a promise between us. Between Oli and me. More like a celebration. One day, we said years ago, when I was feeling better, I’d mark the new, happy phase of my life with some physical changes to match the mental ones. I’d cut away all the sadness and start fresh.
And I was feeling better.
I made the appointment the day after we went to the nightclub. Something about finally confiding in Kai about everything that had happened with Caroline made me realize how far I’d come, and I wanted to commemorate it with a surprise for my friends. To show them that I was growing.
It was stupid.
Then everything happened with Kai, and my haircut earlier today after finishing at the studio became not a physical representation of my success but a desperate change. Anything to distract me from what was happening in my life. Anything to drive the conversation away from the problems I’d created. Anything to make me feel a little bit less like myself, because myself was acting like a real dick.
But then Kai said she loved it. I thought she might hate it. She loved my long hair so much. But the way she looked at me, the way she spoke to me… It was the same way I felt when I saw her new body, her new confidence, on display for the first time. As if the most beautiful creature on the planet somehow went and got even more beautiful, inside and out.
She was across the yard, chatting with the girls in the corner. I was glad to see her enjoying her time. In the past, when she and Javi were fighting, it would ruin her whole day. That didn’t happen today. Not that I in any way compared myself to him. She loved him, not me. But the fact that she wasn’t letting our tiff drag her down, as I was, made me proud of her. The way she’d been treating me lately with such confidence, telling me when she was angry with me, not worrying about making me upset as she expressed herself, let me know that, while it would never be me, her future partner wouldn’t walk all over her.
A figure blurred in the corner of my eye, and my shoulders fell as I realized a pair of humans were approaching us. I registered a large, dark figure and a smaller, lighter one. They came into view and occupied two of the plastic seats in front of us. I sent Oli a telepathic message with my eyes, attempting to hide just how disappointed I was by Briggs’ and Aaron’s arrival.
“Jonah. We need your help,” Aaron said. My gaze shifted to the sitting giant. He looked at me with no trace of hesitation or intimidation. Not that I expected someone like him to ever feel either of those things.
Thankfully, the seemingly polite Briggs cut in before I was pressed to supply an answer, sticking his hand out across his friend’s chest. “We do not, thanks. Aaron, give it a rest. Jonah. Oliver. How are you guys?”
“Yes, we do,” Aaron said, smacking Briggs’ hand out of the way. “Briggs here likes our friend, Thalia. See her over there? The muscular one in pink.” He pointed to the corner in which the girls were huddled. I saw her. She was standing next to Kai and June, giggling and dunking a solo cup into the bowl of cheese puffs.
My returned line of vision to the men in front of me was answer enough to his question.
“But the problem,” Aaron continued, “is that he’s totally stuck in the friend zone. So, we wanted to get your advice. How do you get out of the friend zone?”
A laugh exploded from Oli, and I whipped my head to glare at him. The asshole was supposed to be on my side. He quickly covered his lips with a strong hand. I did not look back at Kai’s friends. Instead, I stared at the spot of grass in front of my feet. “Why would you ask me that?” My voice was probably a bit too grating for a skinny kid sitting in front of a behemoth and his sinewy sidekick.
Aaron bit back immediately. “Not gonna play that game with you, dude. How did you do it?” He crossed those giant arms over his chest, his gaze burning into me. I had no choice but to lift my head under his compulsion. Even sitting, he was twice my size.
“Aaron!” Briggs again held out his forearm in front of Aaron’s obnoxious position. “Sorry about him. He’s an idiot.”
“No, come on.” Aaron unfolded his arms and put his hand over his heart, unraveling himself for his next sentence. “Jonah, man, with full respect. What the fuck did you do to Kai? Because she’s been freaking for the last forty-eight hours, and Briggs needs to do that to Thalia.”
I rubbed my eyebrows between my thumb and middle finger. As if the whole thing weren’t hard enough, she had to go tell these guys about it? And they were taking it up with me? I couldn’t fucking believe it. Apart from losing one of my friends in some kind of freak accident, this was my worst nightmare.
Aaron continued to speak, and I wondered if anyone would notice if I simply got up and walked out of the party. “Look, I get the sense you’re a little reserved.” Great observation. Smart guy. A rock would’ve had enough sense to gather that. “Don’t worry. You know she’s respectful. She hasn’t given us a single detail. I promise. But we can see it and we know you did it.”
My chest rose and fell. There was no way I was getting out of this one. I pressed my fingers into my eyes and stared at the shapes made on the insides of my lids by my vigorous rubbing. “Kai and I have been friends since we were kids. I’m not sure it applies to what you’re talking about.”
“Humor me,” Aaron said. Truthfully, he was hard to say no to. There was something about that intense stare. It made me worry. A lot. Kai had been feeling…frisky lately. And she sure did spend a lot of time at the gym with these guys.
“I don’t have any advice to offer.” I uncovered my eyes and immediately locked my gaze to an inconsequential spot on the fence.
“Oh, come on, you old grump,” Aaron whined. Another chuckle from Oli and another moment filed away in my mental Oli Sucks Folder. “We’re buzzed at a cookout and B needs to pull out the moves. Plus, we want to pry, but I assume you already know that.” Obviously, I knew that. “It’ll be fun. This is called having a conversation.”
Aaron pronounced the last three words slowly to ensure I understood them. As if I were fucking two years old. I turned to Oli once again and saw that his lips were fully folded back between his teeth to stop his cheeks from bursting with laughter.
“I’m sorry. He’s probably not going to leave you alone,” Briggs said.
“Details, friend, details,” Aaron insisted. Friend.
They didn’t know the truth. They didn’t know that this was all just a major fuck up that was quickly leading me to a world without my favorite person. It was almost offensive how entertaining they found it, meanwhile I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that my life as I knew it was over forever. And just when I was starting to come around to it.
“I guess just go for it.” It was all I could offer. Vague. Avoidant. Just like me when it came to anything of value.
“No way, man.” Aaron shook his head and leaned forward in his seat. “We’ve asked Kai this question too, and she says the friend zone is way more complicated than that. That it takes thought. Plus, I said we wanted to pry.”
My ears rang red, producing a hot burn down the sides of my neck. “You asked her?”
“Mhm.” Aaron’s lips stretched into a complacent smirk. “Let me pry, man, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Oh, that was tempting. Too tempting. I had to know what the fuck she said, and I had to know if there was anything I could do to bring us back to normal. Maybe I could offer them just a little bit of information. “I, uhm… I accidentally crossed a line that I shouldn’t have crossed. And she liked it.”
Aaron’s weight shifted forward. Briggs’ did too. Even Oli leaned in, though likely not for the same interest as Kai’s friends, but in shock that I was actually about to open up even the smallest crack of my mind.
“How?” Aaron furrowed his thick eyebrows, staring straight into me.
What the fuck was I doing? Was I seriously about to sit here and talk about this shit? No, this was stupid. I clamped right back up. “It’s not about me. Or you, Briggs. It’s about her. Either she likes you or she doesn’t.”
“Bullshit.” My eyes shot back to Aaron as he shook his head. “She likes him, we know that. What he needs is to be seen. To cross that finish line.”
“He’s an adult.” I pinned Aaron with a glare before looking back at his blonde counterpart. “Excuse me, Briggs, but you’re an adult.”
Briggs hunched over. Guilt poured into me as I caught the look on his face; his droopy eyes, that soft, sad frown that I’d seen so many times in the mirror. “She just makes me so nervous.”
I took a pause, attempting to melt away my general distaste as I realized he was just a fellow nervous boy trying to show himself to the girl he loved. “I’m sorry. I know what it feels like. I shouldn’t have said that.” He nodded in understanding. “I just figured out what Kai likes and the way she likes it, and that’s how I crossed the line.”
“That sounds sexy,” Aaron said, his amusement growing as he leaned up in his seat.
I ignored him with full intention, keeping my focus on Briggs. “What does Thalia like?”
He shrugged. His hazel eyes grew round in the same way Kai’s did when she was utterly confused. “Working out, surfing…”
I shook my head. “No.” I stole a deep, awkward breath from the air around me. “What does she…like? Don’t tell me, please, but think about it.” Briggs stared at me for a moment. He had no idea what I was referring to, and I had no desire to speak of something so private in such a public setting. Much less with strangers.
“Hey boys!” June interrupted us, wandering over to our seats. Thank god. It was a stupid conversation anyway. “What are we talking about?”
“How Jonah managed to—”
“Oli!” I cut him off right there. The asshole was about to win yet another file in my Oli Sucks Folder. “Nothing, June. Come hang.” June sat down happily to join us in meaningless conversation.
“So how did you two meet?” Briggs asked June and Oli.
I figured he was too nervous to keep talking about Thalia in front of June, because June would probably tell Kai, and while I was sure Kai knew of Briggs’ affections, she probably would’ve used the environment to scheme. Just as Aaron was doing. They were far too similar for my liking, but I pushed that thought aside for the time being. Finally, the conversation had been drawn away from me, and I could listen aimlessly or zone out completely.
“Oh, that’s a fun one,” June said. She looked at Oli with one of those smiles she always gave him right before he would insist they had some business in the bedroom to take care of.
“She said something wildly incorrect in history class, and I corrected her,” he said, flicking his eyes to her chest and back to her face.
June pointed a finger in the air and turned to look at the rest of the group. “No. I gave my opinion, which many people also share, and Oli got so mad about it he fucked me in the library.”
“Incorrect. I fucked you in the study of the Blue House.”
June visibly shifted in her seat as her eyes trailed to him once again.
Gross.
“I take it you two didn’t always get along,” Aaron said. Another intelligent observation from the world’s most astute man.
As I judged the giant from my seat, I felt a sharp tug on the back of my head. Someone had pulled my fucking hair. I turned around to find Kai standing right behind me, smiling at the rest of the group, pretending it hadn’t been her. She had meandered over quietly with Thalia, it seemed, and apparently, her goal was to act like a fucking child.
I humphed and turned back to the circle, and she placed her fingers softly on my neck, trailing her nails over my skin. Oh, fuck, that felt good. This was only the beginning of her revenge for the way I spoke earlier. I just knew it. A delicious shudder passed through my body before another sharp tug jerked the back of my head.
Once again, I spun around sharply. “Kai, stop.”
She looked into my eyes without a word, reached around to the back of my head, and tugged it again.
I launched up from my seat and stood face-to-face with her. “Pull it one more time.”
She lifted her eyebrows and looked at me sweetly. I was dangerously close to dragging her somewhere private by way of her wrists. She leaned into me slowly, taking a few extra seconds to wrap her fingers around the short pieces of my hair. A smile spread across her face as she waited, one…two…three.
In almost the same second she tugged my hair, she turned to run away. Typical. I quickly caught her, lifting her back toward the circle where all were seated. We smacked and pulled at each other for several seconds until I finally had her wrists clasped in my right hand behind her back. She giggled with the girls about my irritation, and I pondered a punishment much worse than bringing her somewhere private.
“You know what?” I said, far past frustrated. “You want to know how I did it, guys?” I signaled for Aaron and Briggs to watch as I tugged against her squirms before jutting my free hand under her shirt to her favorite spot on the left side of her ribs.
I slid the pads of my fingers over her skin, watching over her shoulder as the smile tore from her face and registering the shock that ran through her body. Good. She keeled backward into me with a whimper before catching herself and straightening up.
“Jonah!” She ripped herself away to face me. “We’re in fucking publi—hmm.” Again, I put my hand under her top to touch her, this time with more intention, backing her up until she fell into the chair I’d been sitting in. She stared into my eyes in a way that made me want to drop to my knees for her, but I refrained.
I looked up through my eyebrows at the guys. Aaron ran both hands through his hair with a gaping grin. Briggs held his fingers over his mouth in an attempt to hide his smile. I couldn’t see Oli, June, and Thalia behind me, but I had a pretty good idea of what their faces might have looked like. I may or may not have just earned another talking-to from Oli.
“Jonah!” Kai yelled in a whisper, standing up in front of me and coming close. “We’re in public! You’re the only person who knows about that spot and now you’ve—”
“And I’m still the only person who can make you feel that way, whether I choose to or not,” I murmured. Her jaw dropped in disbelief, and I had to fight the urge not to cover her lips with my own. “If you don’t shut that mouth, Kai, I’m going to spit in it.” I really would. I wanted to devour her, not only because I wanted to taste her, but because I wanted her to have to taste me too. I wanted her to fold in half at the feel of me.
Her mouth bent into a little smile, causing my gaze to shift up to her eyes. She cocked an eyebrow.
Shit. Too sexual. She liked it. Damn me and my stupid imagination.
Instead of a response, she opened her mouth wider, sliding her tongue out of her stretched lips and crossing her eyes. I considered dropping dead in my place. My body was rock solid. “Sit down. Right. Now.”
She reeled her tongue in and smirked at me. “Maybe you should get it out of your system.”
I abandoned the conversation and offered Kai my seat as my teeth ground behind my cheeks. “Sit. June and Oli were just telling everyone how they met.”
“Oh, I love this story!” Kai clapped her hands once, her regard shifting to our friends with whom she had no qualms. Good. All I had to do was keep her attention away from me and I might survive this afternoon. “You sit,” she said before looking at June and Oli with an eager grin. I took the chair and left her to stand without protest. She was suddenly bouncing with energy, and I knew her legs would’ve hated to be trapped in a relaxed, seated position. “What part are you at?”
Aaron piped up. “Oliver fucked her in a study.”
“Oh, that’s practically the end!” Kai’s arms dropped to her sides sadly.
“What about the first time I met Jonah?” June asked.
I immediately shot her a glare that I hoped would simply kill her, our friendship be damned. The last thing Kai needed to know was that I’d been swooning over her so intently for the last decade that June’s very first impression of me was a futile affirmation that, one day, Kai and I would be together. I’d been such a pathetic fucking nerd all those years. If only I’d known the trials of adulthood and the very real consequences that come with getting what one wants.
“I’ve never heard that story,” Kai said, standing behind me now and placing her hands on the back of my chair. “Did something happen? You guys never told me.”
“I promise I’ll tell you later,” June whispered across the circle with a wink.
“You will not,” I said.
I held her gaze, but she rolled her eyes. June had been a good enough friend to me all these years not to divulge my secrets to Kai, but things were reaching a climax, and I wouldn’t have put it past her to start slipping pieces of information into Kai’s mind. June had wanted to see us together since the very first day we met. Since she saw the picture framed on my dorm room desk and uttered those words to me. “She’s beautiful.”
“Isn’t she?” I’d said, taking the frame in my hands and observing Kai’s smile as I did on so many nights throughout my stint at college.
Those days were so much easier, when the consequences of my own actions didn’t feel so close.
“It’s something embarrassing, isn’t it? Oh, I just know it,” Kai teased, rubbing my shoulders from behind and kneading out the knots at the base of my neck. She was playing nice now. I knew that, but I’d take it. I would let her drop me off the side of a cliff, quite frankly, if it meant I could be held by her as she carried me to the top. As long as I’d be dead by the time she walked away.
I tilted my head back to look up at her. She looked down at me and smiled, murmuring through her grin. “I am going to fucking kill you.”
Tempting.