5. Amy
CHAPTER 5
AMY
G oing through a drive-through in the passenger seat of a six-figure sports car was a surprisingly entertaining experience. The guy at the window had practically drooled over Kai’s sleek black vehicle as they’d been handed their food. Then they’d driven off into an empty parking lot to enjoy their midnight meal. They were just killing time until everybody else had left the reunion and they could swing back to the school and pick up Amy’s catering van. But leaving together in Kai’s sports car, arm in arm, letting everybody look and gossip and glow green with envy, had been way too good of an opportunity to pass up. The second the doors had shut, they’d been doubled over in hysterics, unable to keep it in a second longer. Now Amy’s chest ached from laughing and her cheeks hurt from smiling. Getting burgers, just the two of them, was the cherry on top of the evening.
They’d used to do this all the time during high school and the early years of college — before their lives had started to turn in significantly different directions. If either of them had had even a slightly inconvenient day, they would use it as an excuse to head out at ungodly hours of the night in Amy’s beat-up sedan, go to the cheapest fast-food place that happened to be open, and drown their sorrows in burgers and fries. It was a little different now, with the glow of a streetlight above them in Kai’s sports car and no class to rush off to tomorrow morning. Amy was trying not to get burger juice on her seat. She didn’t want to ruin Kai’s nice things, even though Kai was eating as if he didn’t seem to care what splattered where, but still… this was nice. Just the two of them doing something that had been such a regular thing at one point but now was something special.
Out of nowhere, Kai laughed quietly to himself.
“What’s so funny?” Amy asked.
“I keep seeing Kirsty’s face on repeat in my head,” he said with a smile. “I can’t believe they were still like that, like exactly the same.”
“You knew who they were the second they started walking over,” Amy accused. “Mister, ‘sorry, do I know you?’”
Kai laughed around his mouthful of burger before he was able to swallow it without choking. “I knew the second I heard that voice. It sent me back in time, I swear,” he said, shaking his head. “Felt my whole spine turn cold, like I was sixteen again.”
“So you mean you weren’t interested in making any of them the future Mrs. Nichols?”
Kai gave her such a filthy look that she nearly choked.
“I date to have fun,” he said. “I don’t date to get married. Those are two entirely different sorts of dating, thank you very much.”
“Noted. Marriage, no good.”
“No good,” he said emphatically. “I’m glad we agree on the topic.”
Amy didn’t really agree on the topic at all. In fact, she thought Kai had a general phobia of commitment that spanned from the topic of marriage to what he wanted to eat for dinner. Amy had always seen herself getting married one day and having kids, so she didn’t think the idea of it was “no good” at all.
But this wasn’t the time, place, or mood to push on those particular buttons. Instead, she let it go and ate her fries, content. That was until Kai reached over, took her fry from her fingertips and shoved it into his own mouth.
“Hey!”
“It was too good to resist,” he said, chewing and swallowing.
“You have your own fries.”
“I wanted one of yours. Here, have one of mine.”
“I don’t want one of yours. I want mine back.”
“The only way you’re getting it back is licking the residue off my teeth, sorry.”
“I’m not sticking my tongue in your mouth. Don’t be so disgusting, Kai.”
“Oh, stop with the goody-two-shoes act,” he said, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Acting like that wouldn’t be so different from a kiss. I’ve seen you making out with people. It always looked like an invasive procedure.”
Amy felt herself blush so hard and fast that she thought her blood vessels were going to explode. Thank God it was dark, and thank God Kai was more interested in his food than noticing how red her skin had flushed. Amy shoved her hand into his fries and took whatever she could grab.
“Mine now,” she said.
“Nope,” he countered, grabbing her wrist with ease so she couldn’t steal his food. Then she was stuck there, leaning over the center console so close that their noses were almost touching. She could feel his breath on her cheek, warm in the cool night air, his fingers around her wrist in a loose grip, skin against skin. Then Kai caught her eye, and they stared at each other. He wasn’t blinking and neither was she, neither of them saying a word. A moment — just stealing some fries — that should have only lasted a second felt like it had trapped them for hours.
It was a physical effort for Amy to kick-start the muscles in her body, to get them moving, but somehow she did and dropped Kai’s fries.
“Fine,” she said. “You win.”
With that the spell was broken, his fingers around her wrist loosened and she pulled away back to her own seat, which was so close but felt miles away now.
The fun atmosphere disappeared, the teasing and poking and stealing food, the frivolous feeling that had been in the air… all of it had vanished. Now Amy just felt awkward, her skin still burning, and she hoped and prayed that Kai couldn’t tell. It didn’t help that he was watching her across the now-vast distance of the center console, his food momentarily forgotten and an unreadable expression on his face. Amy had gotten very good at reading him over the years, but right now she didn’t have a single clue about what was going through his mind.
She cleared her throat.
“I don’t think I actually said thank you,” she said.
That seemed to snap him out of it, and he tilted his head, confused. “For what?”
“For coming to my rescue. I was about ready to either cry or start throwing fists. Or both.”
“Yeah, I could tell when I got there,” he said with a grin, picking up his burger up. “I’m glad I could help protect you from committing some sort of felony.”
“We should hang out more regularly again,” Amy said, instantly hating how pathetic and sad she sounded when she said it. “You know, so there’s less chances for me to get thrown in jail.”
Kai grinned. “Yeah. We do need to hang out more than we have been.” He sounded sad at the thought of it too. At least Amy wasn’t alone in that.
“Though,” he said firmly, brightening his voice. “I don’t regret any of that for a second. It was far too entertaining.”
“It was,” Amy admitted, unable to keep a smile from crawling back onto her face. “I mean the audacity of them all, though. They were all over you. Kirsty was practically drooling over you. It’s like they forgot how they treated you, as if it didn’t matter.”
“I doubt they’ll forget tonight, not for a good while yet.”
“If they ever do forget, there’s photographic evidence to rub in their faces.”
“Does this mean we’ll be going to the next reunion in however many decades?” Kai asked with a waggle of his eyebrows.
“Oh, my God, please, can we?”
“Only if we keep up the joke.”
“I mean, obviously we’re going to keep up the joke. And we’ve got like a decade to plan the most ridiculous thing ever. It’s going to be great.”
“I’ll set up a mood board first thing in the morning, you know, to get inspired.”
“And we have to get burgers after,” Amy insisted.
“It’s a tradition now.”
The conversation petered off and the mood within the confines of the sports car stabilized again, the victorious atmosphere making a return. They lapsed into silence, Kai finishing off his meal with slow and steady precision, the quiet between them now content rather than awkward.
Amy went back to eating too, mostly to try and focus on something else, anything other than the man beside her and all of the talk about kissing, of how close their noses had been to touching. But her brain wasn’t so easily put to rights, her thoughts running a million miles an hour without her permission.
In the dark, it was easier to admit that she had a crush on Kai, that she’d had a crush for a long, long time, and no matter how hard she tried, it just wouldn’t fade away. She had gotten very good at ignoring it over the years, but every now and then it would rear its ugly head and roar, rattling the bars of its cage and trying to escape. Amy never let it. She’d thought about letting it, absolutely she had. But every time she ran the possible outcomes through her head, they all ended in disaster, one way or another. If her gut instinct was to bury the annoying little crush deep, deep down, then she was going to trust her instincts on this one.
And that’s all it was. A crush. Nothing more. She didn’t even like referring to it as feelings because that might mean it was all more serious than she could deal with. And it wasn’t serious at all; it was a crush . Just an annoying little crush that she’d kept to herself for over a decade.
Unfortunately, the comment about making out had flipped a switch in her unprepared brain and sent her spiraling into emotions that should have stayed long buried, locked in their respective cages. Then being that close in the car, in the dim light, reminiscing on old times…
She took a bite of her burger because it was the only thing at hand to distract herself with, even if it wasn’t doing a very good job. Because the other thoughts that were confronting her right now were how happy she had been when Kai said he only dated for fun, and he had no intention of pursuing anything permanent with these women. Kai’s lack of interest in long-term relationships shouldn’t make her happy. It really shouldn’t. It had nothing to do with her whatsoever.
In order to keep that line between “friend” and “something else” nice and crisp and firm, there was a degree of separateness that she needed to keep up. Being glad that he was just dating random people for fun, that couldn’t go on, because that would mean that she was glad that in some universe she still had a chance.
And Kai promoting her business to all of his connections was out of the question for a whole host of reasons. That was a step in that direction, just a little too involved, a little too close. Still just something a friend would do, but it was the first step in a slippery slope towards… something else.
His friendship meant too much to her. It had saved her so many times, from the pep talks he’d give her when her confidence was on the floor to literally staying at his house half the time during high school because it was easier for her to get to her part-time job when her parents weren’t willing to give her a lift… She’d seen people take their friendship to the next level only for it to crash and burn so spectacularly that they couldn’t remain friends afterward. They were gone from each other’s lives like a puff of smoke in the wind, all of the good times tainted with the scorch marks of how it ended.
If she ever actually acted on her feelings for Kai, the ones she had hidden away deep, deep down, and it ended like that… it would break her. Not just break her heart; it would shatter everything in her.
So that was why that line existed, the line between friendship and everything else . That was why she didn’t cross it and didn’t plan to ever cross it. The risk was just too great. And if it meant a few moments here and there of unrequited pining, of awkwardness and reminding herself not to wish for something different… so be it.
She was happy with this, with what they had. It was more than enough.