Page 2 of Second First Kiss

Kat unwound the chain, letting the heavy metal clank against the steel gate and pushed it open. Hopping in Bette, she drove over the storm grate and pulled around the bend, where she found a parking lot full of cars. Enough to account for Sierra Vista High’s entire football, basketball, and cheerleading teams.

She was going to kill Tessa.

With an exhausted breath, she drove off the pavement and onto the gravel shoulder, inching up as far as she could get to the base of the trail, blocking any and all exits. She wasn’t about to miss her sister’s escape.

Turning off the engine, she pulled out her phone.

Kat: How’s studying going? You understand E=MC squared yet?

Tessa: . . .

The dots disappeared while her sister was likely concocting yet another lie.

Tessa: No, but I’m learning how to conjugate “My sister’s annoying” in French.

Kat: You’ll have to teach me that one. I imagine it will come in handy. What time will you be home?

Tessa: Don’t worry DAD. I’ll be home by curfew.

Most kids would have said Mom, but since Tina Rhodes bailed when Tessa was only seven, the only parent her sister really knew was Abe Rhodes. A shame since he was a frequent flyer on the dead-beat dad plane.

Kat: Good. I got off early so we should get home around the same time.

Which was in twenty minutes. More than enough time to get home from the library. Booking it all the way from Sunrise Falls? Never going to happen. It would take her ten minutes alone just to hike through the dense forest after dark—if she were sober.

Kat hoped to God her sister was sober.

Tessa: You don’t have to do that. I have my key.

Kat: And I have a headache. See you in twenty.

Kat waited a whole three minutes for a response—not even a single blinking dot. She didn’t like playing the heavy or pulling on the Hall Monitor hat, but if she was going to prove to the court that she could provide a safe and loving environment for Tessa, then she’d wear however many hats as it took.

Kat rolled down the window and let the fresh spring air wash over her. She smelled of curly fries and malt beer. She felt like she’d been run through a woodchipper. Moonlighting as a bartender was going to kill her. After pulling her nine-to-five at the county as an IT specialist—which was more of a glorified DMV clerk—she worked the closing shift at Bigfoot’s Brews at least four nights a week. She wouldn’t say she was living the dream, but it kept her on good terms with the electric company.

Man, would her peers at MIT laugh their asses off if they could see her now. Their resident hacker now working for the Man. At least working at the bar allowed for her to showcase her badassery, with her shredded jeans, Doc Martens, black nails, and blood-red lipstick. Not to mention an attitude and wicked right hook that kept the natives from getting too rowdy.

Bigfoot’s Brews was a bar and grill located at the base of the largest family-owned ski lodge in the area and a hot gathering spot for tourists and locals alike. It was the stunning combo of rustic-luxe and cabin chic with vaulted wood ceilings, pounded copper tabletops, and floor-to-ceiling windows that showed off the mountain views—which in the early spring showcased the evergreen ridges with white-capped peaks dusted in residual snow from the long winter.

Kat felt like she’d had a long winter as well—one that had started three years and a few abandoned dreams ago when her dad lost his job as a lumberjack and had to reinvent himself as a cross-country truck driver. But family meant everything to Kat, so she’d do whatever it took to keep her small family together.

Abe wasn’t an abusive father, he was just unavailable. Literally. As in gone for months on end while on long hauls. To make matters worse, he didn’t excel in the parenting department. Never had. He was more interested in being the “cool” dad rather than being a “solid” dad his daughters could count on. When Kat was Tessa’s age, she’d had no curfew, no boundaries, no guiding hand, and absolutely no rules. She’d run wild and made mistakes—big mistakes that almost cost her MIT.

Big mistakes that had big consequences. Painful consequences.

One year, she reminded herself.

That was all she had left and then she could reapply to MIT and finish her degree. If they’d let her back in. And, after the misunderstanding that had been blown out of proportion, that was a big if. Misunderstanding was an understatement. She’d been accused of cheating in a group project—which was horseshit. She’d done her part, fair and square, but didn’t have time to double check her partner’s work because she was pulling a triple shift that weekend. Even worse, her partner had been her boyfriend.

Had she not come home for family reasons, she was pretty sure she’d have been expelled.

But she was done with mistakes. For Tessa, Kat was going to turn in her Bad Girl rep for a PTA tiara. On the outside, working at a bar might look like an irresponsible job, but she made more money in four nights of tips than she did with forty hours a week at the county.

A rational person would quit the daily grind for a few more nights a week at the bar, but the bar didn’t provide benefits—like health insurance. And if Kat was going to gain custody of Tessa, she needed to at least appear as if she had this whole adulting thing down. Adulting wasn’t really her MO, but she was trying.

Good thing she was a master of deception.

Kat had been pretending since she was a kid. Pretending to be happy, pretending her home life wasn’t unstable, pretending people’s judgments didn’t hurt. Especially pretending that she had her shit together.

---