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“I don’t think it’s cool of him to touch you if you aren’t comfortable with it.”
“Oh, Jojo, don’t be such a dad. I am comfortable around him. I’m just used to keeping some distance.” She wrapped her arms around my elbow, pulling me to her side and hugging me tightly as she spoke.
I don’t like him. “The other one seems nice.” I turned us back on our path, in the direction of the apartment.
She nodded, watching her own feet step one in front of the other before glancing up at me. “They both are. The big one is Aaron. The small one is Briggs.”
I looked at her, at that glint in her eye that seemed so far away, at that smile she wore that was so incredibly beautiful though lacking something terribly. How desperately I wanted her to open up to me about that missing piece.
???
Kai’s damp waves swung over her lower back as she walked into the studio in front of me, just behind Oli, June, Noah and Tiff. Her damn shampoo was practically sweeter than she was, and the gusts of it left behind as she moved had me thinking like a total fucking weirdo. I wanted to glue my fucking hand to the gap of tan skin between her baggy jeans and her baby blue crop top.
A hard palm landed on my back with a thump, and I groaned. Justin’s smack was nothing more than a brutal reminder of his presence, a jolting shift of energy that brought my mood down to the negatives.
Things used to be easier when I could just sit in my room at my desk setup, writing and musing without any distractions, collaborating with the guys at the set times we agreed upon, and remaining comfortably in my cave. We did just fine as such, but eventually, we needed something bigger. I often longed for how things were then.
I’d wanted to be a musician for as long as I could remember. To be one of those cool, confident guys who sang in front of crowds and got the girl. And it wasn’t just that, obviously. Music was one of the few things I could get lost in, one of the few things that took away the noise of the outside world. I could put my head down to work on a melody and lift it the next day as if no time had passed. Even things like eating, showering, and interacting were completely missed because my brain was so engulfed. I liked being inside my craft like that, but it really sucked when such a craft was also the cause of so many other stressors.
I still got to work a lot at home, which I appreciated. I could tinker with my sounds and write lyrics anytime and anywhere. But it was mostly stuff for the future, personal projects, and little titbits that would eventually end up in this studio, overseen by fucking Justin. I could do it for the sake of the music, but I can’t lie…I wondered how I’d fare in certain situations. I was pretty certain that if we ever got really huge, I was going to have a very hard time.
Luckily for me, my bandmates were my two best friends, and I was fairly confident that wouldn’t change. Especially Oli. He’d pulled me out of so many holes before, and I trusted he’d do it again if he had to. If we were ever overrun by fans, or exhausted from a never-ending tour, or portrayed poorly in the media, I knew he’d stick me up on his shoulders and carry me there until I was ready to come down again. I hoped that one day I’d be strong enough to do the same for him.
We’d been recording this album for weeks, and we still had a few more to go. I told myself I could relax then, but I knew it was a lie. Promotion, touring, radio shows and interviews. That’s what Justin’s back smack reminded me of, and it made me feel as if I were being crushed by a vise.
The only thing that made coming into the studio better was that Kai refused to miss a day. She said if I were into sports, she’d come to my games. If I were into acting, she’d come to my plays. But since I was a “depressed musician,” she came to listen to me “whine behind a piece of glass.”
And thank god for that.
Despite my complaints, I was the luckiest fucking guy on the planet. I had the career I always wanted, the few friends I needed, and she—god, that incredible fucking girl—was home. It was honestly a mystery to me why I still felt the need to mope. My kid self would’ve been disappointed to see that nothing had changed.
Sometimes I longed for those years I spent holed up in my room, leaving only to use the bathroom. Though, I knew full well that I was even sadder back then. So why did I want to go back? Why did I just want to shut the door to our bedroom and never come out? Why was the protective shield of time around my depressive past so comforting to me?
Kai turned around to look at me from where she stood between our friends, Oli and June to her right, and Tiff and Noah to her left. Light beamed around her the same way it did when the sun rose behind my childhood home, emitting the same warmth that illuminated downtown when we sat under the awning at the train tracks, just like when my phone lit up with her calls and irradiated my dark bedroom during those years I had no will to leave it.
Justin spun off, and Kai approached me, smiling. She stood just in front of me with her hands on her hips, and I stared down into those brown eyes, letting my gaze trail over her cheeks and memorize every inch of her this way. She’d been gone for so long, and now here she was, somehow both an entirely new person yet exactly the same. I wanted to roll up the image of her on a filmstrip and shelve it in my ear.
“What are you thinking so intensely about, little rain cloud?” she asked.
“Little? I’m bigger than you, you tiny coffee bean.” Only by mere inches, really.
She looked at me through her lashes. “Is that a jab at my background or a compliment on my delicious taste?”
Actually, it was a jab at her size. “I’m afraid choosing either of those answers wouldn’t paint me in a very good light, now, would it?”
A sinful grin, the one that took her face. Of course, it wouldn’t. That’s exactly why she’d phrased it as such. Evil thing.
She looped her arm through mine and began walking me toward the rest of our friends who had congregated in the corner, but business quickly pulled us apart. Oli, Noah and I were instructed to get set up in the live room at once under the ruse that we were behind schedule with recording.
Arbitrary, scheduling, isn’t it?
I was very bothered to see Justin take Kai to the couch at the back of the control room to speak with her. He’d mentioned having a proposition for her a couple of times in the last week but hadn’t actually sat down with her to talk about it. He was like that. Always talking and making promises and plans. None of his words ever came true until, suddenly, they did. That was the only reason we kept him around, but he gave me a queasy feeling.
I decided I’d ask Kai about their conversation immediately. As soon as I was out of here.
Chapter 18
Kai
