Eleven
Kat
Learn to Fly – Foo Fighters
“For fuck’s sake, Ryland. It’s A minor, E minor, and D,” I exclaim in frustration, pinching the bridge of my nose as I watch Ryland’s fingers fumble over the strings for the seventh time tonight.
“I know that,” he snaps back defensively, even though he very clearly does not know that.
Ryland has been hounding me for weeks to teach him guitar in our downtime—which, admittedly, isn’t often these days.
After spending the last hour teaching him the same three chord progressions and getting nowhere, I’m seriously questioning both our friendship and my teaching skills.
I’m not the best teacher, but Ryland is also not the best student.
If his teaching skills are anything like his learning skills, it’s no wonder he barely has any drum students.
I sigh and scoot my chair forward, my knees touching his. “You don’t, though. Move your ring finger. No—ring finger, Ryland. That’s your middle finger.”
He releases a frustrated breath, but lets me take his hand to adjust his fingers on the fretboard.
His skin is calloused in all the wrong places for playing the guitar.
He winces when I press his fingers down harder onto the strings.
Oh, he has so much to learn. I run my thumb over my fingertips, feeling the rough calluses there from years of playing.
“You have to commit,” I mutter, letting go of his hand and watching his face bunch up in concentration. “Half-pressing just makes it sound like shit.”
“That feels like an attack,” he grumbles, his fingers shaking with the pressure he’s putting on the strings. But to his surprise—and slightly to mine—he strums the chord, and it rings out a perfect pitch.
“See? Commit to it.”
“I feel like there’s an undertone there.” His attention drifts from the guitar, and his fingers go slack, and I can already tell that one chord is the best I’m going to get out of him tonight.
“Maybe there is,” I say as I rest my guitar against the wall and stand up. My back screams at me for sitting hunched over for so long. I press my palms against my lower spine and stretch, letting out a satisfying crack.
He strums the strings again, the chord buzzing with a metallic reverberance. Harper snorts from across the room as I wince.
“Okay, now you’re insulting the instrument.”
“I think the instrument is insulting him,” Luca says, not even looking up from his phone.
“Traitor,” Ryland mumbles as he tries again. His jaw is tight now—he hates not being good at something, especially in front of us.
“You’ll get it. You just have to practice when we’re not here to bully you,” I say, my tone softer now.
“C’mon, Kat, I’m nearly there,” he pleads, giving me a pouty look, but there’s a smile there now, his blonde hair falling over the fretboard, tangled in his fingers.
“Keep practicing,” I say with a small, sympathetic smile of my own before walking over to the mini-fridge and cracking open a cold can of Diet Coke.
“Don’t worry, Kat. Ryland doesn’t carry the finesse for a guitar. He can only hit things with sticks. He’s barely grown from caveman status,” Harper says from the other side of the room as she wraps up her mic cable.
“Well, darling, would a guitar give me guns like these?” he shoots back, pushing his chest out and tensing his biceps.
I chortle, and the eye rolls from Harper and Luca could have leveled the room.
“It would if you played properly.” I shrug, taking a long sip of my drink.
Ryland throws me the middle finger and returns to the guitar, failing yet again at the chord progression.
“I’m going to get us some pizza,” Luca announces, rising from the couch.
“Fuck it, I’ll go with you. I could do with a break,” Ryland replies, carefully placing the guitar on the stand.
The protests of how much work Ryland has actually done die on my tongue, and I opt to shake my head instead.
They bundle up in their jackets and walk out the door, and the cold air from the outside curls around my ankles before they close the door behind them, but not before Ryland casts a quick glance back towards Harper.
After the boys leave, I slump on the couch next to Harper. Our bodies get pushed together in the crater of the couch that’s missing a support beam. We don’t care. I rest my head on her shoulder anyway.
“He likes you, you know,” I say with a playful shove.
“Who, Ryland?” Harper asks with a genuine question in her voice, to which I nod. “No, he doesn’t. We’re like brother and sister. Besides, he has a new person in his bed every week. If he does like me, it’s just to add another notch to the bedpost.”
“Brother and sister?” I repeat, raising a brow.
“Yes.”
“You don’t look at your brother like that.”
“Like what?” she replies, rolling her eyes.
“Like you’re trying not to look at him.”
Her jaw tightens just slightly before she laughs it off. But I’ve seen it. The way she watches him when he’s not looking. The way he hands her things first without thinking. The way they always choose to sit next to each other, just close enough that their knees touch, but neither of them moves.
“You’re imagining things,” she says.
“Am I?”
She doesn’t answer for a moment. Just reaches for her water bottle, avoiding my eyes. “I used to like him a few years ago. But that ship has long since sailed,” she says gently, toying with the water bottle in her lap. I can see memories swirling around her eyes as a smile touches her mouth.
“Then why does he look at you differently?” I push.
She waves her hand in dismissal, shaking her head and breathing a gentle laugh.
Harper and Ryland have been close for as long as I’ve known them.
They went to school together, but it wasn’t until their senior year that they started to become friends.
Since I’ve been around, it’s so fucking obvious to everyone around them, except for themselves.
Luca and I have discussed many ways to get them together, from literally banging their heads together to a blind date. But nothing ever happens.
“Speaking of looking different, can we talk about you and Elias?” She draws his name out seductively.
I scoff, crossing my arms in front of me. “There’s nothing to talk about. He was just being nice,” I scoff out the last word, earning a glare from Harper.
“I notice everything, girl,” she says, squinting her eyes and tapping her temple. “You like him.”
“Even if I did, there’s no way he likes me,” I protest, a blush creeping into my cheeks, and I try to subtly place my hands on my face to cool them.
“I noticed how your mood shifted at work the other day. Speaking of, actually. Are you okay?” she asks, genuine concern lacing her voice, her brow pulled tight with worry.
A lump forms in my throat.
Am I okay?
I drop my eyes to the floor, avoiding her inquisitive stare.
It’s difficult to tell what people actually want to know.
Throughout my whole life, I’ve struggled with that question.
Do people actually want to know I’m okay, or are they trying to make themselves feel better by asking?
But when it comes to Harper, I know the latter isn’t the case.
She cares about me. Genuinely. Completely.
Even so, the response that comes out of me is almost automatic at this stage.
“I’m fine,” I say quickly. Too quickly. The weight of the smile painted on my face weighs heavily, and I have to fight to keep it up.
Harper doesn’t say anything, but I feel her assessing me. Her stare may as well be a branding iron right to my fucking cheek.
“I’m serious,” she says quietly.
My stomach twists. I don’t want to ruin this. The positive mood. The normalcy. If I say it out loud, it becomes real. I don’t want it to be real. I want it to be a stupid misunderstanding.
But it’s not.
Her hand rests over mine in my lap. I think about pulling away, but I see her shoulders fall in my periphery, and something in me cracks.
The crack is large enough that the memory creeps in slowly, like dark tendrils clawing at my consciousness.
The click of my apartment door locking. The way his breath felt on my throat. The way I was too weak to stop him.
Until I wasn’t.
I swallow. “He came into my apartment,” I say, barely above a whisper.
Harper goes still beside me.
“I think he spiked me. Not enough to make me black out, but enough to make me… compliant. I didn’t say no—I didn’t say yes either.”
Silence.
“Did he hurt you?” she asks carefully, like one wrong word will cause me to break.
I shake my head, letting my hair fall and cover my face. My shield. “No. I managed to push him off and kick him out before… you know.”
Harper exhales beside me. But it’s not relief—it’s anger. I tilt my head up to look at my best friend. War wages behind her eyes as her jaw clenches.
“Who is he?” she asks.
I don’t answer.
“Kat. Just a name.” She squeezes my hand.
I fight the urge to pull away. The vulnerability of it all threatens to crush me from the inside.
“Please, Harp. I don’t want you doing anything stupid,” I tell her.
I’ve seen that look once before, and it was right before she punched a guy in the face for trying to take our drinks from the bar one night.
“I won’t,” she says, but I know it’s a lie.
She shifts closer to me and wraps her arms around me before I can protest. She holds me firmly. Protectively. And I melt into her arms, letting her warmth and vanilla scent envelop me.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, her voice muffled by my hair.
With those three words, I crumble. Tears fall freely, wetting Harper’s hair.
My body shakes with sobs as she hugs me tighter.
Tension I didn’t even know I was holding leaves my body.
I relax in her arms. I am safe. It feels good to get it out, to share the weight of it all.
After a short while, Harper pulls away, wiping my tears with the sleeve of her hoodie.
The door swings open, and I quickly scrub at my face, hoping the shitty fluorescent lights hide the evidence of my emotional breakdown.
“I think the pizza lady liked me,” Ryland says, stuffing half a slice of pizza into his mouth.
“You think everyone likes you,” Luca replies, carefully balancing the pizza boxes in his hands as he closes the door behind them.
“I’m rarely wrong, Luca,” Ryland replies, but he’s looking at Harper, who offers a small smile in return.
Luca pauses and looks at me before setting the boxes down on his amp. He grabs a napkin and hands me a slice. He pauses, his eyes lingering on my cheeks. He can tell I’ve been crying. I swipe at my cheeks with the back of my hand, leaving a streak of black mascara on my hand.
“Extra cheese. You look like you need it,” he says with a tender smile.
I didn’t ask for extra cheese—or any pizza at all—but it is my favorite.
My stomach rumbles, and I give him a small smile as I place the slice on the table beside us.
Ryland is already halfway through a story about the pizza lady, completely oblivious to the storm that was raging through this room in his absence.
I lean back on the couch, smiling to myself even though it feels like I’m caught in a wave. But the funny thing? I think I might be riding it instead of drowning in it for once.