Page 8 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

CHAPTER 4

KAI

Kai had insisted on helping his “beloved fiancée” get the final round of food from the cafeteria kitchens. He’d followed Amy out of the gym with a stack of empty trays in hand, both of them running through the buildings and giggling like they were five years old and had gotten away with the heist of a lifetime.

“That was ridiculous,” Amy said when they’d reached the safety of the kitchen. But her eyes were bright, and the cloud of despair that had been hanging over her when he’d arrived had vanished.

“Yes,” Kai agreed. “It was. But it was very funny.”

“Yes, it was,” she agreed, tucking her hair behind her ears. Then she started getting the next round of delicious-looking finger food out of the fridge and plated up. “Ridiculous and funny and awesome, just to see the looks on their faces.”

It was funny. That’s why he’d done it on the spur of the moment, even though a part of Kai was worried that it was a Freudian slip, a part of his subconscious imagining a reality where he could propose to Amy, that things could be romantic between them. But to have that reality, he’d have to sacrifice this one where she was his best friend. He’d have to risk losing her altogether, and he wasn’t prepared to do that. So, yes, it was just a joke. That’s all it was.

“Do you need help?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“No, it’s fine,” Amy said, fingers moving at the speed of light. “Can you help me carry these back, though?”

“Sure,” Kai said, leaning on a counter and watching, surprised that she was even letting him help with that much. She was too independent for her own good sometimes.

“Sorry I was late,” Kai said, meaning it. The way she’d looked when he’d walked in, so downtrodden after just a few hours back in this place… he was sorry that he’d ever even entertained the idea of leaving her to do it on her own.

But Amy just shook her head, her grin still wide. “It was perfect timing. And like I said before, it’s not like you were late. You said you weren’t able to come at all. But what happened to that meeting at the last minute? Wasn’t it super important?”

Kai shrugged, knowing Amy would never forgive him if he said he’d blown it off just to come to her rescue. That would’ve been too much like helping her out for her own comfort.

“We wrapped things up quickly and rescheduled,” he said, and only the last part of that sentence was a lie. If she knew he actually bailed on the meeting just for her, she’d lose her mind and then probably accuse him of losing his mind. Which maybe he had, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

“Oh, okay,” she said with a shrug, thinking nothing more of it. “It worked out well, at least. And this is the last of it that needs to go out.”

“Then do we get to keep torturing everyone with how perfect our engagement has been?” he said with a grin, looking forward to it with a slightly maniacal glee. Amy stopped in her tracks to think about it.

“Oh. Before you got here, I was just going to clean up the kitchen and then hide in my van until I could pack up. But yeah, actually, your plan sounds a lot more fun.”

“Uh, yes,” said Kai with a roll of his eyes. “I think that’s the understatement of the century. But leave your little apron thing here. You got invited to this reunion as much as anyone else did.”

Amy, not even questioning him, took off her catering apron, which had gotten splattered and stained over the course of the night, and presented herself in front of him. “How do I look?” she asked.

She looked beautiful as always. A chaotic, messy sort of beautiful with her ear-length hair always sticking up in different directions, her tan skin managing to glow even under the fluorescent lights, and her almond eyes looking up at him with nothing but trust in them. She looked radiant and diabolical all rolled into one Amy-sized package, and Kai thought she was the best thing he’d ever laid eyes on. But he kept all of that to himself.

“You look great,” he said and smoothed a cowlick down on the top of her head, knowing that it would just bounce back eventually anyway. “Now give me some of those trays.”

“Here, rich, famous, future husband,” she said, doing just that. “Let’s go show you off.”

“Oh, the ring? It’s getting resized to fit a little more snug. I should have it back soon.”

Kai felt drunk with power. He also felt very immature. But that was the lesser of all his feelings, and he shoved it aside in favor of the more fun ones. Frankly, he thought that he’d gotten over how he and Amy had been treated in high school, Amy especially. He’d been so sure that he’d left all that resentment and hurt behind in the dust where it belonged. Kai was beyond successful now, more than his wildest dreams could have ever predicted. He’d been catapulted to a different stratosphere than his classmates, away from this second-rate school on a random block in San Diego.

But he had to admit… seeing them stare as he and Amy mingled, arm in arm, seeing them whisper and gape and then pretend that they weren’t doing anything of the sort… it was the most satisfying thing that had ever happened. If canceling the meeting with Jason Torres at the last minute had resulted in this, then so be it. He’d happily watch that bridge burn.

And Amy, it turned out, was feeling much the same way.

Yeah, they might not have been in each other’s pockets as of late, not like they used to be, so their shared knowledge of more current events in their lives was a little fuzzy. But that didn’t matter when they knew everything else about one another. They just filled in the rest with straight-up lies.

“He proposed on the beach. It was so romantic.”

“We were thinking of Italy for the wedding. There are some beautiful little churches there that would be perfect.”

“Oh no, no plans for kids just yet. We want to travel the world more before we settle down to have a family.”

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