Page 22 of Spark

“I did not.”

“You sure as fuck did. Honestly, you were my only reservation when we agreed to join the band. But I knew how excited Ruby was, and also that she’d kill me if I tried to ruin things for her by telling her to watch out for you. So, I kept my mouth shut while vowing to keep an eagle eye on you.”

“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 wassuperstoked 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 onsomeone?” 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.’”

---