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“I’m gonna miss you.”
Neither an answer nor a visible reaction.
“Jo, are you listening to me?”
“No.”
“Don’t be a dick.” I bumped his shoulder again. “If I wanted to talk to the wall, I’d turn my head to the right.”
“Are you okay here?” he asked, only allowing himself to speak if it was to deflect the conversation to me. I sighed but tried to refrain from rolling my eyes. I knew it came from a place of love, but it was the fourth time he’d asked me this week, and I knew exactly where he was going with it. I didn’t really mind, I just wished there was more I could do to help him.
“Of course. I have my parents and the girls. It’s fun,” I said.
“Really? Truly? Please don’t lie to me.”
I looked into his eyes with a half-smile meant to reassure him. “I mean, things are different. We’re growing up, you know, trying new things, meeting new people. It’s okay to feel out of place sometimes, right? That means things are changing.” At least, that’s what I’d been telling myself.
“I guess.” Truthfully, he wasn’t one to talk. At least I was making an effort, unlike him. Though he had made one new friend. Her name was June. He was reportedly being nicer to Noah, too, so…one and a half. “I just wish we could skip this part.”
“What part?” I pulled my arms into my chest to pick at my cuticles.
“The part where we’re figuring it out.” He tapped his knuckles on the bone of his ankle, his jaw rolling as he swallowed hard. While he didn’t very well express all his emotions, his twitchy nerves were much easier to see than he realized. It seemed like a painful existence, and I often wished I wasn’t so caught up with my own so that I might’ve somehow helped him. Not that I had any idea how.
“Jojo, this part is supposed to be fun.” I reached one hand out to loop under his arm, squeezing his limb into my elbow. “And I’m not sure it ever ends.” I dropped my head down on his shoulder, nuzzling into his neck.
“Kai, I—” He stopped for a few moments, and I waited for the end of his sentence, but he just sighed and rubbed his chin into my hair. “I just want you to come home.”
“I know you do. But I think I have to do this first. You do too.”
“You haven’t talked to Javi since our first day, have you?”
I blinked back a sting as I thought about the messages I’d received from Javi over the last week. Some of them were angry, others apologetic. His attitude always depended on whether or not I decided to talk back that day. If I apologized, he only got meaner. If I told him I didn’t care, he got nicer, and sometimes even begged me to stay. It was a weird power that was thrust upon me, and one I honestly didn’t want to possess. I just wanted to date him without all that extra stuff. “Not really.”
“You need to know where to draw the line when someone isn’t treating you well.”
He wouldn’t stop tapping those damn knuckles on his bone. The sound clicked in my ears, and his shoulder bounced under my head with the movement. I slid my palm down to cushion his foot. He paused mid-air before dropping his hand softly over mine, running his fingers along the back of it.
I laced our fingers together. “He’s not so bad, Jo. Just a little emotional.”
He covered our twisted digits with his free hand, squeezing for a silent moment. “He’s a clown.”
I giggled grimly. “We’re only human, Jojo. I’m sure I have a lot to learn, but I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m finding it kind of complicated.”
He didn’t answer me. I didn’t really expect him to. I was saying things he didn’t want to hear.
“I’m just a kid. You are too. Can we please just be stupid a little while longer?”
He puffed out a small breath and shook his head. “Sure.”
Chapter 8
Jonah, Ten Months Later
Kai had gone quieter than usual over the last few months, and I can’t say I was a fan. Don’t get me wrong, we spoke every day, but I suddenly found myself sorting our relationship into good days and bad days, which was something I’d never had to do before. By bad days, of course, I mean either the days she was perfectly nice to me but not quite as present, or the days my negativity got the best of me and I ended up being rude to her by accident. And when those bad days lined up with the days I really needed someone, they were downright unbearable.
It was late afternoon in LA, though it made no difference. My room was dark anyway. Oli, June, and I moved into this apartment sometime after we got home from Spain, and my room became my own personal music hole. I hardly ever left it, spending days on end writing and musing, creating sounds and sequences on my computer that may or may not ever be heard.
As I played around with the pitch on a sample I’d just recorded, my phone rang. I answered Kai’s video call and stacked her against the giant speaker on my desk, one hand still on my mouse and my gaze on the computer screen. But the call opened up to a white bedroom ceiling I recognized by now, and my attention was ripped away from my work immediately. Her heavy, distressed breathing sounded through the line.
