Page 10 of Spark

“Lovely,” Kai says. “It’s great to know you’ve been pretending to like me for twelve fucking years.”

“Only for two, at the very beginning. I started genuinely liking you after that, against my will.”

Both men can’t help but smile at that, along with the rest of the band.

“I still don’t like you for my sister, to be clear,” Titus says. “Fuck no. You’re an emotionally stunted, fuckboy menace. You’re no better for her than Cooper.”

In a flash, the entire band starts grumbling about Cooper and how annoying it was to have him on the tour and how frustrating it was to watch all our public displays of affection.

“Okay, I get it, guys,” I say, cutting everyone off. “I have a defective picker. I admit that. Sorry he was so annoying.”

“So annoying,” Savage grumbles.

“Ugh, I hated him,” Titus adds.

“Seriously, though, what was up with all that PDA?” Kai says with a grimace. “Every time I turned around, that fucker was swallowing your face, dude.” He pulls a face like he’s smelling rancid milk.

“You don’t get to join in on this hate-fest,” I hiss at Kai. “ You’re not my brother, like everyone else, so you’ve lost the privilege of scolding me for my bad taste in men.”

“Just saying.”

“Well, don’t.” The group is looking at me, pointedly, so I add, “Yes, I admit the PDA was over the top. Trust me, I felt smothered and icked out, too, okay? Hence, he’s now gone.”

Everyone applauds and cheers.

“Cooper felt insecure, so he was, you know, ‘claiming’ me in front of the world. I was stupid to go along with it as long as I did.” I sigh.

“Listen, I didn’t call an emergency band meeting to talk about my icky relationship with Cooper.

He was a mistake, and I should have said no when he asked to travel with me on tour.

Now, back to Kai and his bald-faced, inexcusable lies. ”

“I didn’t lie,” Kai insists. “At least, not about the stairwell.”

“Are you done telling your side of that story?” Kendrick asks me.

“No. There’s more. Kai was brazenly flirting with me, like I said, and because I was an inexperienced moron whose defective picker had already started forming, I felt stupidly excited about that. And that’s when Kai asked me if I had a boyfriend at school.”

Everyone collectively gasps and looks at Kai accusingly, and I know that little nugget has instantly swayed them. Because, seriously, what nineteen-year-old boy asks a sixteen-year-old girl in a stairwell if she has a boyfriend, unless he’s flirting with her?

“I told him, no, I didn’t have a boyfriend. And, no, I’d never had a boyfriend at all, actually. And he goes, ‘Do you have a crush on someone, though? Maybe at school . . . or from somewhere . . . else?’”

Everyone gasps again and glares with even more gusto at Kai. Once again, they’re reading through the lines, every bit as much as I did all those years ago .

“She’s making me sound like a creeper,” Kai mutters. “But I was just making small talk.”

Everyone pounces on him, letting him know he’s full of shit. But it’s Kendrick who defends my honor the most vehemently, telling his big brother to shut the fuck up till it’s his turn to speak.

“Thank you, sir,” I say primly to Kendrick.

To the group, I continue my story. “So, silly girl that I was, I mustered the courage to tell Kai I didn’t have a crush on anyone at school .

Winky winky. But, yes, there might have been someone outside of school I’d been crushing on.

Winky winky.” I look around at the group.

“And Kai lit up, you guys. Obviously, he understood what I meant, even though I didn’t have the courage to say the rest explicitly. ”

“Most human communication is nonverbal,” Laila offers, her index finger raised.

“It sure is. And trust me, the nonverbal communication in that moment was crystal clear: I tacitly admitted my little crush on Kai, and he was super stoked to hear it.”

Kai mumbles something under his breath that ends with the phrase “such bullshit,” and everyone tells him to shut the fuck up, once again.

“What did Kai say when you revealed you had a crush on someone ?” Laila asks, leaning forward. And I swear, I can practically see a big ol’ tub of buttered popcorn in her lap.

Performing my best Kai Cook impression, I reply, “‘Wow, Ruby. Whoever he is, he’s a lucky guy. If, by some chance, he’s someone in our band, however, now wouldn’t be the right time for either of you to act on those feelings. Not with you being sixteen and the band just now getting off the ground.’”

“That’s not what I said!” Kai shouts.

“Yes, it is!” I shout back. “Word for word.”

“You’re delusional. ”

“No, you are. Not to mention, an egomaniac.” I address the faces staring at me.

“But guess what Kai didn’t say to me. ‘Hey, Ruby, if your crush happens to be me , I’m sorry, but I’m not into you as more than a friend.

’ And you know why he didn’t say that? Because, like I said, he fully intended to string me along and keep me as an option for later. ”

“That tracks,” Titus says, as Kai grumbles, once again. “Considering the fucker tried to get into your pants only a few years later.”

“Oh, I’m a fucker now?” Kai retorts, shaking his head.

“Guys, even in Ruby’s self-serving, untrue version of events, I turned her down .

So, who cares what I said to her years later, when I was drunk, and she was a grown-ass woman?

By then, she wasn’t even close to a sixteen-year-old virgin anymore, so?—”

“Oh, you’re slut-shaming me now?” I shriek, as Kendrick, Titus, and Laila all shout something similar in my defense.

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Kai shouts. “Would everyone please calm the fuck down? Jesus.”

I waggle my finger at Kai, feeling like I’m physically vibrating with indignation. “If you want to slut-shame someone, then do it to yourself, you fucking dickhead. You’re the one who’s been banging randos all tour, not me.”

“I wasn’t slut-shaming you, Ruby! I meant you were an adult by then, and you’d gotten yourself plenty of experience.”

“ Plenty ? There you go again!”

“You’re being hyper-sensitive. Jesus Christ. I don’t care if you want to fuck an entire football team, okay?

I truly don’t give a shit. I just meant, in the full context of everything, me getting stupid-drunk at your birthday party, right after a bad breakup, and then suggesting we go upstairs to fuck for the fun of it wasn’t a capital offense.

Was it my proudest moment? No. But it wasn’t as fucked up as you’re making it sound. ”

“What about the sex dream you’d had about her?” Kendrick interjects. “Ruby said you told her you’d had one about her, when you hit on her.”

Kai shrugs, looking remarkably unbothered. “I’ve always had all kinds of weird sex dreams. I used to have them all the time about my geometry teacher, too, and she was a literal grandma.”

Everyone in the room, including me, cracks up at the revelation. But that’s Kai for you. He’s always been one hell of a horny motherfucker.

“Guys, I did something stupid. I admit that. But look at it from my point of view. One, Ruby’s objectively hot. That’s a fact. Two, I knew she’d always been desperately in love with me?—”

“I had a teeny-tiny crush on you for all of five weeks!”

“It’s my turn to talk now. You’ve had your chance.

” With blazing eyes, Kai returns to the group.

“From my personal point of view, I truly thought Ruby’d always been desperately in love with me, based on several nonverbal communications.

” He ticks off on his fingers. “Three, whatever girlfriend had just broken up with me, and I was feeling low about that, and Ruby being Ruby, she was probably being extra nice to me that night to make me feel better about myself.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” I murmur.

“And five, or six, or whatever number I’m on, I was shit-faced at the time, and that impaired my judgment and made me suggest something I shouldn’t have—something I would have regretted in the morning, if she’d been stupid enough to say yes to me.”

“As if.”

“And that’s it. End of story.”

Everyone looks extremely persuaded by that little speech. And that pisses me off, since I did nothing to give Kai the impression that I was in love with him, let alone desperately. And certainly not for years and years, since age motherfucking sixteen.

“Not every crush blooms into deep feelings,” I sputter.

“In fact, it’s usually the opposite. You look back and can’t believe you ever had that crush in the first place.

Look at Kendrick and his fleeting crush on Laila, for example.

I’m sure, when he looks back on that . .

.” I trail off when I realize Kendrick looks mortified. Shellshocked. Furious.

Shit. I think I’ve just done something unthinkable: I’ve thrown my best friend under the bus to save myself.

“It’s okay, Kendrick,” Laila says quickly, apparently reading his body language. “I’ve always known about your tiny crush on me.”

“I told her back then, during the tour,” Savage explains. “It’s nothing to feel embarrassed about.”

“We all knew about it,” Titus adds.

My heart is hammering. Kendrick is glaring at me in a way he’s never done before—the same way he sometimes glares at Kai, after Kai’s fucked up. Man, he’s furious with me .

Kendrick grits out, “My crush wasn’t about you, specifically, Laila. Sorry. You were a placeholder.”

“I know that, KC.”

“Everyone in the band was dating someone at the time, or at least crushing hard on someone, and I just wanted to feel that way, too.”

I pull a face. Well, that’s not true. As I recall, I was the only person even remotely involved with anyone at the time—with Finn. Everyone else was extremely single.

“You don’t need to explain,” Laila says gently. “I’ve had plenty of crushes that went nowhere and weren’t even about the actual person. Like I said, you’ve got nothing to feel embarrassed about. ”