Shell Games
Twice
“Open the door, Kaylie,” came my brother’s muffled voice through the door.
“Go away, Gavin,” I yelled back in frustration.
“Well it’s nice of you to actually answer this time. Good to know you’re still alive,” he went on loudly. “I’m gonna get in there. Are you naked? You better not be naked!”
Without responding, I rolled onto my side and pulled the duvet up to my forehead. It was the day after Luke’s party and I had spent almost all of my Saturday lying in bed. The last ten minutes had involved Gavin knocking on my bedroom door and requesting that I let him in. I guess the news had broken and he knew how much of a jerk his best friend was. And also how stupid his little sister was.
Kris had followed me for one more block the night before when I said I was leaving. I didn’t respond when he said he would drive me home or when he offered to leave the party instead, so that I wouldn’t. I gave him the silent treatment. He tried to get on the streetcar with me but the only form of payment accepted was ticket, token, or cash. His platinum card was no good.
I didn’t take pity on him when the car operator turned him away. I could tell he felt awful about the shitty thing he’d done, but I was stuck on how it seemed like he didn’t even realize what a shitty thing it was until he actually said it out loud. If Gavin knew what had happened, then Kris would have to have been the one that told him. I was no 7-year-old girl anymore—as angry as I was—I certainly didn’t tattle on Kris.
The banging on the door had stopped when I yelled at Gavin to go away. I assumed that my sentence for proof of life was enough for him to leave me be. But I knew I was wrong as soon as I felt the added weight to my bed.
“Leave me alone.”
“Kaylie—”
“Leave. Me. Alone.” I enunciated each word and did so loudly.
Gavin’s response was to pull the duvet away from my face. He sat on the edge of the bed.
Automatically, I glowered at him. “How did you even get in here? I locked that door.”
My brother gave me a cheeky grin and held up a bobby pin between his thumb and index finger. “I took this from your bathroom.”
I sighed. “You’re not supposed to use my own tools against me.”
True to the silver screen, with the right skill and enough luck, a bobby pin was a sufficient lock pick. My life as a bunhead, with the constant need for having hair in perfect place, had worked against me again. It was a good thing my dance bag was in the room with me. There was plenty in there that could substitute as a weapon. Gavin could have used the toe boxes of my pointe shoes to hammer down the door.
“Here,” my brother ignored my rude gawk and dropped my purse in front of me. “Luke brought this over for you.”
“Not Carolina?” I raised an eyebrow. I was so done asking Luke for help. “Luke gave you this?”
“Yes, he was here,” Gavin nodded.
Luke. I didn’t even know what to think about him. It didn’t help that I had about a million texts and a thousand missed calls from him, all of which I refused to return. I’d really felt like he was my friend and he was helping me get closer to my goal. I believed him when he said that guys were nuts, and that Kris was jealous. Kris didn’t know how I’d been working with Luke. But according to Kris, I wouldn’t have even been working with Luke if not for him.
If Kris was the reason Luke had even given me the time of day, did that mean Luke was lying to me all along? Was all the time I spent with him actually to keep me out of Kris’ way? Luke had never brought up his ex-girlfriend with me, not since the evening I met him when we agreed to work together. If Kris was the reason we’d gotten so close, then was Luke being honest when he told Kris that he really liked me (even though he was in love with someone else)? Was that why he’d almost let the drunk version of myself sleep with him?
I couldn’t believe what a mess I was because of Kris and Luke. Lying in bed for the better part of 24 hours, leaving my room only to eat and use the restroom (timed perfectly so I wouldn’t run into my brother, of course), didn’t mean that I’d gotten the chance to go to bed. I’d only tossed and turned. My mind was spinning faster than a triple pirouette and I didn’t have time to spot. No good had come of the game. I was just hurt and confused.
When I went to dump my purse on the ground, Gavin spoke again. “Kris told me what happened, you know.”
His words were met with silence from me, my suspicion about Gavin’s source of information confirmed.
“I told him I was going to kick his ass, MHSOC or not.”
The Mesh Hats Sleeves Optional Crew was the dumbest ‘crew’ name ever, and, naturally, it was what my brother and his friends from back home referred to themselves as. Gavin and Kris were proud of that absurdity. I finally had to crack a smile. “Really?”
“Mmhmm,” my brother returned with a smirk. “But I figured you might want to do that yourself.”
I let out a laugh for the first time that day. “Thanks. You’re a good brother.”
“But let him live, okay?” Gavin sighed. “He didn’t mean to hurt you. I know what he did was really shitty. But…Kris didn’t mean to be such a Grade A asshole.”
“Yeah, he just is one,” I scoffed.
“You need to hear his side of the story,” was Gavin’s rebuttal.
“Unbelievable,” I seethed. “You would choose him over me, wouldn’t you?”
How predictable of Gavin. I was his only sister but he would take bromance over blood.
“I wouldn’t choose any of my friends over you, Kay. Not even my best friend,” he argued. “Kris knows that, too.”
Gavin stood up and continued, “You can’t hide in your room forever. Not in Lethbridge and certainly not now when he lives across the hall.”
With a groan, I threw my head back against the pillow and brought the blanket back up to my neck. That was what sucked most about finding out Kris knew I liked him. I had that hanging over my head. I still had to face him. He was still my neighbour and still my brother’s best friend.
Maybe the worst part of all was that I still liked him. I wanted to be completely over him. For treating me like a consolation prize for one of his teammates, I wanted to hate him. But I didn’t. Seven years of crushing on the same guy wasn’t something I could just forget or turn off. Even when I’d been in relationships through high school and into apprenticeship, in the back of my mind, he was my ultimate crush. All the work I’d put in since September had only augmented the way I felt about him.
“Why’d you have to end up liking my best friend?” Gavin asked after another lapse of silence. “You’ve known him since he was chasing you down the block with worms in his fists.”
Glaring at my brother, I withdrew an arm from under the covers. He had to duck when a roll of athletic tape—the first hard object I could grab off the top of the nightstand—went hurtling towards his head. It hit the wall and bounced to the carpet.
I pointed at the open door. “Get out.”
It wasn’t until after midnight that I left my room again. Because of my stubbornness, I had nearly gone through the supply of Luna bars that I kept in the side pocket of my dance bag. They were only for emergencies, and the aftermath of Luke’s party was definitely an emergency. I figured that after midnight was the best time to get out of my room if I wanted to avoid Gavin. It was late Saturday night (and technically early Sunday morning) so I thought he wouldn’t be home yet.
Much to my dismay, as soon as I was in the hallway outside my bedroom, I could see the kitchen light on and the large flat screen TV tuned to TSN’s That’s Hockey 2Nite. Gavin hadn’t gone out. After a short trip to the bathroom, just across from my room, I sighed, standing in between thresholds. Did I want to avoid my brother so badly that I was willing to live off Luna bars for another 24 hours?
No. White chocolate macadamia nut was a bitchin’ flavour, but my stomach was begging for real food. My body was used to a high protein, high calorie diet. I couldn’t deny myself just because I didn’t want to hear what my brother had to say about a stupid guy.
Before I could change my mind, I darted straight to the kitchen without looking up. Our condo was open concept. The table, pushed up against the wall like a peninsula, was the only thing that separated the kitchen and the living room. Surely Gavin saw me as soon as I was out from the hallway. But he didn’t say anything to me, with my back turned, as I opened the refrigerator door.
My eyes were immediately drawn to a stack of hummus containers. If my brother had gotten hummus, then there had to be pita chips somewhere in the kitchen as well. I picked up the first container from the stack—sundried tomato—and grabbed the carton of orange juice from the door rack. The pita chips weren’t on top of the refrigerator and I didn’t see them on the counter next to the stove. We didn’t have a pantry, and the cupboards housed only plates and nonperishables, so I figured they must be buried in the basket of fruit on the table.
Shrugging to myself, I shut the refrigerator with my hip as I turned to walk to the table and face the living room. My reflexes failed me and the hummus fell to the ground as I froze in my tracks and my eyes widened. There he was. Kris. Sitting on the couch and staring back at me.
I blinked once as the panic alarm went off in my head. Shit. I slid the orange juice onto the table and ducked to the floor to retrieve the hummus. The fallen container was the least of my problems. With the lid put on properly, the dip was completely intact. Nothing to wipe up off the floor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wipe Kris away and out of the living room either.
When I was back to my feet, he had crossed the space from his spot on the couch to the other side of the table, across from me. He had his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He was wearing a game day suit; the Maple Leafs had played at the ACC earlier in the night. Kris must’ve gone home immediately after his media availability and then made his way across the hall to stake me out.
“It’s about time,” he mumbled.
I rolled my eyes before I went to poke through the fruit basket. Okay, so he had me cornered. It didn’t mean I had to make it easy on him.
“Kaylie, please talk to me,” he begged. “I can’t stand the silent treatment.”
Well, you can’t stand me liking you either, can you?
The pita chips were buried under an un-ripe stalk of bananas. I made a mental note to mix them with the strawberries I’d just seen in the refrigerator for a smoothie the next morning. From the corner of my eye, I could see Kris pouting. I left the table momentarily to grab a clean glass from the dishwasher before I was back to the spot across from him.
“Kaylie,” he whined desperately.
Not until after I’d sat down and poured a glass of Tropicana did I meet his gaze.
“You should go, Kris,” I said coldly. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I refuse to just leave this alone,” he responded. “I want to apologize and—”
With a scoff, I interrupted, “This is your idea of an apology? Goading me when I clearly don’t want to talk? You’re off to a terrible start.”
I undid the twist tie on the bag of pita chips and fanned out the plastic that had been clamped shut. Kris sighed and grabbed the chair in front of him as I pulled the top off of the hummus, the aroma of sundried tomatoes hitting the air.
“Okay…what if you don’t have to talk?” Kris suggested, leaning some of his weight onto the chair, as I dipped and took my first bite. “If I talk, will you at least listen to what I have to say?”
For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was my chewing as he waited for me to say something. I was so mad at him, and even madder at myself because I thought he was so damn cute standing there. He looked scared. He’d taken to a nervous tick, drumming his fingers on the top of the chair. I had the power, as if I was a man-eater and he hadn’t been the one that had toyed with my heart.
I gulped down all of the orange juice in my glass and shrugged.
“Okay…okay…” he looked away from me and to the table’s surface. I almost smiled. He’d put all his energy into making sure that I would just listen to him and when I insinuated that I would, he didn’t even know what to say. He wouldn’t find any answers written on the tabletop, but he kept his eyes fixed there anyway.
Kris stumbled with his words. “I am…I just…it—it’s not like I didn’t notice you, okay?” I stopped chewing as the last grain went down my throat. He looked up, at me, long curly eyelashes and all. “I did.”
My throat felt dry. I needed another glass of orange juice. But I didn’t dare reach for anything in front of me when Kris was looking at me with such honest eyes. The way he spoke, I didn’t think he meant that he was disgusted by how much I liked him. Quite the opposite, actually.
“I do…” his sentence was incomplete again. It was Kris, who was loud and rambunctious all the time, and all of a sudden he was tripping all over himself. All of a sudden he was the one who had lost his confidence around me. “I really do care about you.”
He bit his lip. I frowned. No way was I letting him off that easy. I couldn’t just fall to pieces because he said two nice things to me, one of which I’d already heard before. In fact, we’d been sitting at the same table the first time he told me he cared. So I gave him attitude instead. “Is that why you told Luke to go after me as a rebound? Because you care about me?”
“That’s so not what I meant to do,” Kris shook his head and shifted his weight, knees a little bent, so that he was leaning against the chair using his forearms. “When I first got into town, on the way over here, I told Luke about you. I asked for his help. There was a plan. But he didn’t stick to it once he met you and hung out with you…because he liked you so much. Then everything just worked out between the two of you. That’s not what I thought it was going to be like.”
My head was just about ready to explode with the information Kris enlightened me with. Kris and Luke had a plan together? I had played the game and I’d done it because Luke had convinced me to. But Kris? He hadn’t just played the game. He had run the fucking table. He was the one pulling all the strings from the very beginning.
“What did you think it was going to be like?” I demanded furiously.
I’d been played.
“You weren’t supposed to end up liking Luke,” Kris said, pouting again. “It’s me you were supposed to like.”
What the fuck? “You already knew that I did.”
“I wasn’t sure, Kaylie.”
“What?!” I screeched.
He let out a long sigh and looked to the ceiling. “I wasn’t sure that you liked me.”
I was ready to tear out my hair. In chunks. “You told me that it was apparent.”
“I lied.”
“But what about the plan? With Luke? You just said that—”
“I lied,” Kris repeated. “I didn’t know until last night…when you told me.”
My jaw threatened to drop to the floor. Oh, I’d been played. Twice.
“Oh my God,” my voice was a harsh whisper.
Gavin hadn’t been joking earlier when he told me that I had to hear Kris’ side of the story. It was all too much all at once. I should have been ecstatic but I was just so overwhelmed more than anything else. Kris had given me the moment I’d been waiting for. The moment I’d worked so hard to get. He liked me. He wanted me to like him. Holy shit.
“Look, Kaylie, I—” he stopped himself. Vulnerable, he switched his gaze back to the table.
“The thing is…I’ve known you since I was 10. You’re Gavin’s little sister.” Kris was unraveling in front of me, because of me, for me. “It would have to be different. I can’t mess up with you.”
I tilted my head to the side. “How do you mean…different?”
“The girls who just show up along the way, it’s never anything amazing or special. Even if I wanted it to be—even when I’ve tried to make it more—it’s only fun temporarily,” he explained. “That’s how it was with Rissa.”
“I am just like her,” I sighed, remembering the realization I’d come to on the night I’d gotten drunk at my company’s season-opening party.
“No,” Kris disagreed. “That never even got on the level of seriousness that a relationship would have. It wasn’t special.”
“So?”
He finally took a step back from the chair, standing up straight and looking at me again. A hint of a smile glimmered on his lips. “Well, with you, I’d want it to be.”
“Go away, Gavin,” I yelled back in frustration.
“Well it’s nice of you to actually answer this time. Good to know you’re still alive,” he went on loudly. “I’m gonna get in there. Are you naked? You better not be naked!”
Without responding, I rolled onto my side and pulled the duvet up to my forehead. It was the day after Luke’s party and I had spent almost all of my Saturday lying in bed. The last ten minutes had involved Gavin knocking on my bedroom door and requesting that I let him in. I guess the news had broken and he knew how much of a jerk his best friend was. And also how stupid his little sister was.
Kris had followed me for one more block the night before when I said I was leaving. I didn’t respond when he said he would drive me home or when he offered to leave the party instead, so that I wouldn’t. I gave him the silent treatment. He tried to get on the streetcar with me but the only form of payment accepted was ticket, token, or cash. His platinum card was no good.
I didn’t take pity on him when the car operator turned him away. I could tell he felt awful about the shitty thing he’d done, but I was stuck on how it seemed like he didn’t even realize what a shitty thing it was until he actually said it out loud. If Gavin knew what had happened, then Kris would have to have been the one that told him. I was no 7-year-old girl anymore—as angry as I was—I certainly didn’t tattle on Kris.
The banging on the door had stopped when I yelled at Gavin to go away. I assumed that my sentence for proof of life was enough for him to leave me be. But I knew I was wrong as soon as I felt the added weight to my bed.
“Leave me alone.”
“Kaylie—”
“Leave. Me. Alone.” I enunciated each word and did so loudly.
Gavin’s response was to pull the duvet away from my face. He sat on the edge of the bed.
Automatically, I glowered at him. “How did you even get in here? I locked that door.”
My brother gave me a cheeky grin and held up a bobby pin between his thumb and index finger. “I took this from your bathroom.”
I sighed. “You’re not supposed to use my own tools against me.”
True to the silver screen, with the right skill and enough luck, a bobby pin was a sufficient lock pick. My life as a bunhead, with the constant need for having hair in perfect place, had worked against me again. It was a good thing my dance bag was in the room with me. There was plenty in there that could substitute as a weapon. Gavin could have used the toe boxes of my pointe shoes to hammer down the door.
“Here,” my brother ignored my rude gawk and dropped my purse in front of me. “Luke brought this over for you.”
“Not Carolina?” I raised an eyebrow. I was so done asking Luke for help. “Luke gave you this?”
“Yes, he was here,” Gavin nodded.
Luke. I didn’t even know what to think about him. It didn’t help that I had about a million texts and a thousand missed calls from him, all of which I refused to return. I’d really felt like he was my friend and he was helping me get closer to my goal. I believed him when he said that guys were nuts, and that Kris was jealous. Kris didn’t know how I’d been working with Luke. But according to Kris, I wouldn’t have even been working with Luke if not for him.
If Kris was the reason Luke had even given me the time of day, did that mean Luke was lying to me all along? Was all the time I spent with him actually to keep me out of Kris’ way? Luke had never brought up his ex-girlfriend with me, not since the evening I met him when we agreed to work together. If Kris was the reason we’d gotten so close, then was Luke being honest when he told Kris that he really liked me (even though he was in love with someone else)? Was that why he’d almost let the drunk version of myself sleep with him?
I couldn’t believe what a mess I was because of Kris and Luke. Lying in bed for the better part of 24 hours, leaving my room only to eat and use the restroom (timed perfectly so I wouldn’t run into my brother, of course), didn’t mean that I’d gotten the chance to go to bed. I’d only tossed and turned. My mind was spinning faster than a triple pirouette and I didn’t have time to spot. No good had come of the game. I was just hurt and confused.
When I went to dump my purse on the ground, Gavin spoke again. “Kris told me what happened, you know.”
His words were met with silence from me, my suspicion about Gavin’s source of information confirmed.
“I told him I was going to kick his ass, MHSOC or not.”
The Mesh Hats Sleeves Optional Crew was the dumbest ‘crew’ name ever, and, naturally, it was what my brother and his friends from back home referred to themselves as. Gavin and Kris were proud of that absurdity. I finally had to crack a smile. “Really?”
“Mmhmm,” my brother returned with a smirk. “But I figured you might want to do that yourself.”
I let out a laugh for the first time that day. “Thanks. You’re a good brother.”
“But let him live, okay?” Gavin sighed. “He didn’t mean to hurt you. I know what he did was really shitty. But…Kris didn’t mean to be such a Grade A asshole.”
“Yeah, he just is one,” I scoffed.
“You need to hear his side of the story,” was Gavin’s rebuttal.
“Unbelievable,” I seethed. “You would choose him over me, wouldn’t you?”
How predictable of Gavin. I was his only sister but he would take bromance over blood.
“I wouldn’t choose any of my friends over you, Kay. Not even my best friend,” he argued. “Kris knows that, too.”
Gavin stood up and continued, “You can’t hide in your room forever. Not in Lethbridge and certainly not now when he lives across the hall.”
With a groan, I threw my head back against the pillow and brought the blanket back up to my neck. That was what sucked most about finding out Kris knew I liked him. I had that hanging over my head. I still had to face him. He was still my neighbour and still my brother’s best friend.
Maybe the worst part of all was that I still liked him. I wanted to be completely over him. For treating me like a consolation prize for one of his teammates, I wanted to hate him. But I didn’t. Seven years of crushing on the same guy wasn’t something I could just forget or turn off. Even when I’d been in relationships through high school and into apprenticeship, in the back of my mind, he was my ultimate crush. All the work I’d put in since September had only augmented the way I felt about him.
“Why’d you have to end up liking my best friend?” Gavin asked after another lapse of silence. “You’ve known him since he was chasing you down the block with worms in his fists.”
Glaring at my brother, I withdrew an arm from under the covers. He had to duck when a roll of athletic tape—the first hard object I could grab off the top of the nightstand—went hurtling towards his head. It hit the wall and bounced to the carpet.
I pointed at the open door. “Get out.”
It wasn’t until after midnight that I left my room again. Because of my stubbornness, I had nearly gone through the supply of Luna bars that I kept in the side pocket of my dance bag. They were only for emergencies, and the aftermath of Luke’s party was definitely an emergency. I figured that after midnight was the best time to get out of my room if I wanted to avoid Gavin. It was late Saturday night (and technically early Sunday morning) so I thought he wouldn’t be home yet.
Much to my dismay, as soon as I was in the hallway outside my bedroom, I could see the kitchen light on and the large flat screen TV tuned to TSN’s That’s Hockey 2Nite. Gavin hadn’t gone out. After a short trip to the bathroom, just across from my room, I sighed, standing in between thresholds. Did I want to avoid my brother so badly that I was willing to live off Luna bars for another 24 hours?
No. White chocolate macadamia nut was a bitchin’ flavour, but my stomach was begging for real food. My body was used to a high protein, high calorie diet. I couldn’t deny myself just because I didn’t want to hear what my brother had to say about a stupid guy.
Before I could change my mind, I darted straight to the kitchen without looking up. Our condo was open concept. The table, pushed up against the wall like a peninsula, was the only thing that separated the kitchen and the living room. Surely Gavin saw me as soon as I was out from the hallway. But he didn’t say anything to me, with my back turned, as I opened the refrigerator door.
My eyes were immediately drawn to a stack of hummus containers. If my brother had gotten hummus, then there had to be pita chips somewhere in the kitchen as well. I picked up the first container from the stack—sundried tomato—and grabbed the carton of orange juice from the door rack. The pita chips weren’t on top of the refrigerator and I didn’t see them on the counter next to the stove. We didn’t have a pantry, and the cupboards housed only plates and nonperishables, so I figured they must be buried in the basket of fruit on the table.
Shrugging to myself, I shut the refrigerator with my hip as I turned to walk to the table and face the living room. My reflexes failed me and the hummus fell to the ground as I froze in my tracks and my eyes widened. There he was. Kris. Sitting on the couch and staring back at me.
I blinked once as the panic alarm went off in my head. Shit. I slid the orange juice onto the table and ducked to the floor to retrieve the hummus. The fallen container was the least of my problems. With the lid put on properly, the dip was completely intact. Nothing to wipe up off the floor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t wipe Kris away and out of the living room either.
When I was back to my feet, he had crossed the space from his spot on the couch to the other side of the table, across from me. He had his hands in the pockets of his slacks. He was wearing a game day suit; the Maple Leafs had played at the ACC earlier in the night. Kris must’ve gone home immediately after his media availability and then made his way across the hall to stake me out.
“It’s about time,” he mumbled.
I rolled my eyes before I went to poke through the fruit basket. Okay, so he had me cornered. It didn’t mean I had to make it easy on him.
“Kaylie, please talk to me,” he begged. “I can’t stand the silent treatment.”
Well, you can’t stand me liking you either, can you?
The pita chips were buried under an un-ripe stalk of bananas. I made a mental note to mix them with the strawberries I’d just seen in the refrigerator for a smoothie the next morning. From the corner of my eye, I could see Kris pouting. I left the table momentarily to grab a clean glass from the dishwasher before I was back to the spot across from him.
“Kaylie,” he whined desperately.
Not until after I’d sat down and poured a glass of Tropicana did I meet his gaze.
“You should go, Kris,” I said coldly. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I refuse to just leave this alone,” he responded. “I want to apologize and—”
With a scoff, I interrupted, “This is your idea of an apology? Goading me when I clearly don’t want to talk? You’re off to a terrible start.”
I undid the twist tie on the bag of pita chips and fanned out the plastic that had been clamped shut. Kris sighed and grabbed the chair in front of him as I pulled the top off of the hummus, the aroma of sundried tomatoes hitting the air.
“Okay…what if you don’t have to talk?” Kris suggested, leaning some of his weight onto the chair, as I dipped and took my first bite. “If I talk, will you at least listen to what I have to say?”
For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was my chewing as he waited for me to say something. I was so mad at him, and even madder at myself because I thought he was so damn cute standing there. He looked scared. He’d taken to a nervous tick, drumming his fingers on the top of the chair. I had the power, as if I was a man-eater and he hadn’t been the one that had toyed with my heart.
I gulped down all of the orange juice in my glass and shrugged.
“Okay…okay…” he looked away from me and to the table’s surface. I almost smiled. He’d put all his energy into making sure that I would just listen to him and when I insinuated that I would, he didn’t even know what to say. He wouldn’t find any answers written on the tabletop, but he kept his eyes fixed there anyway.
Kris stumbled with his words. “I am…I just…it—it’s not like I didn’t notice you, okay?” I stopped chewing as the last grain went down my throat. He looked up, at me, long curly eyelashes and all. “I did.”
My throat felt dry. I needed another glass of orange juice. But I didn’t dare reach for anything in front of me when Kris was looking at me with such honest eyes. The way he spoke, I didn’t think he meant that he was disgusted by how much I liked him. Quite the opposite, actually.
“I do…” his sentence was incomplete again. It was Kris, who was loud and rambunctious all the time, and all of a sudden he was tripping all over himself. All of a sudden he was the one who had lost his confidence around me. “I really do care about you.”
He bit his lip. I frowned. No way was I letting him off that easy. I couldn’t just fall to pieces because he said two nice things to me, one of which I’d already heard before. In fact, we’d been sitting at the same table the first time he told me he cared. So I gave him attitude instead. “Is that why you told Luke to go after me as a rebound? Because you care about me?”
“That’s so not what I meant to do,” Kris shook his head and shifted his weight, knees a little bent, so that he was leaning against the chair using his forearms. “When I first got into town, on the way over here, I told Luke about you. I asked for his help. There was a plan. But he didn’t stick to it once he met you and hung out with you…because he liked you so much. Then everything just worked out between the two of you. That’s not what I thought it was going to be like.”
My head was just about ready to explode with the information Kris enlightened me with. Kris and Luke had a plan together? I had played the game and I’d done it because Luke had convinced me to. But Kris? He hadn’t just played the game. He had run the fucking table. He was the one pulling all the strings from the very beginning.
“What did you think it was going to be like?” I demanded furiously.
I’d been played.
“You weren’t supposed to end up liking Luke,” Kris said, pouting again. “It’s me you were supposed to like.”
What the fuck? “You already knew that I did.”
“I wasn’t sure, Kaylie.”
“What?!” I screeched.
He let out a long sigh and looked to the ceiling. “I wasn’t sure that you liked me.”
I was ready to tear out my hair. In chunks. “You told me that it was apparent.”
“I lied.”
“But what about the plan? With Luke? You just said that—”
“I lied,” Kris repeated. “I didn’t know until last night…when you told me.”
My jaw threatened to drop to the floor. Oh, I’d been played. Twice.
“Oh my God,” my voice was a harsh whisper.
Gavin hadn’t been joking earlier when he told me that I had to hear Kris’ side of the story. It was all too much all at once. I should have been ecstatic but I was just so overwhelmed more than anything else. Kris had given me the moment I’d been waiting for. The moment I’d worked so hard to get. He liked me. He wanted me to like him. Holy shit.
“Look, Kaylie, I—” he stopped himself. Vulnerable, he switched his gaze back to the table.
“The thing is…I’ve known you since I was 10. You’re Gavin’s little sister.” Kris was unraveling in front of me, because of me, for me. “It would have to be different. I can’t mess up with you.”
I tilted my head to the side. “How do you mean…different?”
“The girls who just show up along the way, it’s never anything amazing or special. Even if I wanted it to be—even when I’ve tried to make it more—it’s only fun temporarily,” he explained. “That’s how it was with Rissa.”
“I am just like her,” I sighed, remembering the realization I’d come to on the night I’d gotten drunk at my company’s season-opening party.
“No,” Kris disagreed. “That never even got on the level of seriousness that a relationship would have. It wasn’t special.”
“So?”
He finally took a step back from the chair, standing up straight and looking at me again. A hint of a smile glimmered on his lips. “Well, with you, I’d want it to be.”
Notes
Oh boy. Who is really playing whom? Who is in cahoots with whom? Basically since I started posting the story, I've had to bite to my tongue, knowing I would get to this chapter and make the biggest reveal of all. Don't worry, everyone's favorite character gets in on the revelations next time.Only a couple of chapters left. Speaking of which, would you rather get the final chapter and epilogue all at once, or final chapter, wait a while, then get the epilogue? I'll do whatever you guys want, it will just take me a bit longer than usual to get them up if you want them at the same time. So if you have an opinion on this, drop me line. Thank you for subscribing and thank you so much for your comments and ratings! I'm thrilled that so many of you like this.
Extended Chapter Notes
Omg, its sooo good.
3/15/14