Kit Kat & Katie Did

by Lauren T. Hart

  Ryan nodded and headed for my car. He put my gift in the trunk and I mumble asked him if he wanted to drive. He took the keys from me and scooped me up into a hug. It was a long hug, it was a good hug, but it didn’t make me feel any better about anything. Then we climbed in my car and drove all the way to 1590 Clementine Drive without saying a word to each other.

  Chapter 29

  I stared at the address on the side of the Emerson’s mailbox, while my insides slowly turned to sludge. I was stuck on two thoughts: first, the idea that Ryan wasn’t completely horrified by the completely grotesque demon girl I’d unleashed. I mean, how was that possible? Is that because he also harbored a demon side? Was he just used to evil because of his horrible parents? Or maybe he was completely appalled, but didn’t dare say anything so as not to taunt the shrew sitting next to him. And second, why Clementine? It was way too cold here to grow citrus.

  The only musing worth merit was that I should have gone with option one and left. Even the shoulder angel and the shoulder demon agreed — the angel, because I was now overflowing with regrets, and the demon because tormenting is what demons do best.

  “That wasn’t me, Ryan,” my voice came out low and raspy.

  He reached across the center console and took my hand in his. “I know.”

  “I mean, it was evil me.” I sucked in a sob, and pushed back the urge to start bawling.

  Ryan’s knuckles brushed against my cheek. “Evil you is pretty kick-ass.”

  I shook my head.

  “Kat, I really am so sorry for what happened. I never should have put you in that situation. I should have told them about you. I knew they’d be rude if they didn’t know you had money, but I had no idea it was going to get that bad.”

  “It wasn’t just them, it was me. I don’t want to think about it,” I closed my eyes and put my head back. “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to burn everything I’m wearing and take a bath in lava.” And maybe that seems a bit over the top, but I was being over the top dramatic, so it’s the perfect punishment if you think about it.

  Ryan let go of my hand and got out of the car. Half a second later he opened my door and pulled me into his arms.

  Two seconds after that Kayley was standing beside us asking. “What happened?”

  I turned toward her and shook my head. We could talk about it never.

  “Aww, Kit-Kat,” she sounded worried.

  “My parents were rude to her,” Ryan offered.

  “No, that’s not it.” Kayley shook her head, puzzling. “She wouldn’t care about something like that.”

  Ryan pulled my head to his chest, covering my ear with his hand like he didn’t want me to hear what he was about to say. I could still hear perfectly. I stumbled closer to him and thought about putting my arms around his middle, but didn’t. Still, it was nice being close to him; he was warm, and he smelled good. “It was really bad,” Ryan explained, “and she was rude back,” he tattled.

  “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” Kayley frowned and pulled Ryan’s hand away from my head and set her hand on my shoulder. “You’re a good person, Kat,” she said firmly.

  It was sweet what she was trying to do, but I just wasn’t feeling it.

  “She’s right,” Ryan added, “You’re the best person I know. The way you stood up to my parents, was awesome. Epically awesome.”

  I blinked at the extra moisture in my eyes. Wishing the two of them would just shut up and stop trying to make me feel better by excusing my bad, wretched, horrible, behavior.

  “You should kiss,” Kayley said softly.

  “Kayley,” I moaned.

  Ryan took her advice that wasn’t advice and kissed me. It reminded me of a kiss we’d shared months earlier. A kiss that hadn’t been for show because there’d been no one around to see it. So, completely not like this one that Kayley was greedily watching. We’d been in his room, just talking, about books, and music, and football’s many rules and play options when, out of the blue, he’d kissed me and said, ‘I like just being with you.’

  Kayley squealed with excitement, breaking the moment, and ending our kiss.

  I scowled at the two of them.

  “Okay, that was super hot,” Kayley beamed. “But it’s cold A F out here. We should go inside.” And then she turned and stiff-legged ran into the house.

  Ryan followed her, with me in tow. We stopped in the entryway, and both just stood there, Ryan staring at me like he was worried about me instead of because of me.

  “Kims!” Kayley yelled up the stairs. “Got a package for you.”

  Kimber appeared at the top of the stairs. She took one look at me and asked, “What happened?”

  All I was doing was standing, how was it so damned obvious? Did I have the word ‘bitch’ written on my forehead or something? I glanced toward the entryway mirror and caught the mascara fail that was streaking across my face. I reached to wipe it off, but that only had the effect of smearing the black and making my eyes red.

  Kayley moved my hands away from my face to keep me from making it worse and explained: “She was queen B-ing it with Ryan’s parent’s, she’s just coming down now.”

  Kimber sighed, “Come on,” she motioned for me to join her upstairs. When I didn’t immediately follow, Ryan escorted me. We went into our get ready room, and Kimber directed me to a seat at our make-up station and handed me a face wipe. “Do you want me to call Julian?” she asked.

  “Absolutely not!” I blurted and sucked in a sob.

  “Okay,” she put her arms around me and rubbed my back and my arms. “You’re okay. It’s okay.” Then she turned to Ryan and explained. “Kat— uh, Katie, isn’t good with confrontation. I mean, she’s good at it, but it comes at a price. She’ll be okay though.” She turned back to me. “Wont you, Kitter-Katter McKibblesby? Because we’re going out tonight, and we’re gonna have fun, and the show must go on, and you’re a beautiful person no matter what, right?”

  I frowned up at her.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she comforted. “Wash your face,” she pointed at the wipe in my hand.

  “Kims! Door!” Kayley yelled up the stairs a second before the doorbell rang.

  Kimber threw her arms wide and half growled half sighed. “Of course all the things that could be happening are happening right now.” She mushed her ruby red lips into my cheek, marking them with a huge smudgy lip print. “You’re a champion, Kat. You know this. Come on now, wash up,” she encouraged then left to answer the door.

  “Champion bitch,” I mumbled.

  Ryan kneeled down next to me as I scrubbed lipstick from my cheek.

  “Look at me, Beautiful.”

  I frowned at his image in the mirror. “You can see the mirror, yeah?” I sniffed back a sob, then sniffed again, because most of my internalized tears were now running into my nose.

  Ryan nodded. “Look, things got ugly, no doubt, and you played the game their way, dark and dirty, and I know that’s not you, and not who you want to be. That’s one of the things I love about you.”

  I rolled my eyes at him.

  “Shut up,” he put his hand on my cheek, turning my head toward him. “I can love whoever I want.”

  I chuckled against my will. “That’s sort of like progress, I suppose.”

  He smiled. Ugh, those dimples, killing me with adorableness.

  “Kat, you have no idea the miracle you are to me — the second chance you’ve given me, the hope.” His eyes grew teary. “You’re my knight in shining armor. You even fight dragons for me. And now I’m going to reward your gallantry with a kiss. And I’m going to keep kissing you until you forget that you’re sad and remember that doing the wrong thing for the right reason, doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

  “That’s some seriously fuzzy logic, Ryan.”

  “Logic is fuzzy.” His hand slipped to my neck and he pulled my lips to his and breathed me in. His kisses were soft but eager as he traced his tongue across my lips.

  Just in case I h
aven’t mentioned it a thousand times already, Ryan is an amazing kisser. Even so, it felt wrong to be kissing him, and not just because I totally didn’t deserve amazing soft sexy kisses right now. He’d also just declared his love for me — in a closet. That’s super ironic, right?

  Ryan twisted me toward him, set himself between my legs and pulled me close, deepening the kiss as he slipped a hand around my waist and up the back of my shirt. And now I was full on making out with my gay boyfriend — in the closet.

  “Ryan,” I managed to pull away from his kiss. “Can we not make out in the closet?”

  Ryan laughed, and laughed. “You got it,” he stood, pulled me to my feet, and hauled me out of our get ready room and proceeded to make out with me in the hallway.

  “Kat?” Kimber scolded from the top of the stairs, breaking our kiss. “You’re going to make us late, and we’re gonna lose our reservation, and we’re going to have to have our romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at some greasy fast food joint. Is that what you want?” she put her hand on her hip.

  “I see, this is a family trait,” Ryan pointed at her, amused.

  “Go get ready,” Kimber frowned.

  ・❀・❀・❀・

  We all went in Zack’s car. Ryan’s sort of insisted, just before he made some crack about making out in the back seat. This prompted a game of 20 thousand questions from Kimber about how Ryan had managed to persuade me — “Miss Nobody Needs A Man” —into going out with him. Ryan tossed out a thousand different answers, each one more outrageous than the last: He bought me at a charity dating auction. I’d bought him at a charity auction on accident, but wanted to get my money’s worth. I’d taken pity on him because he had hair cancer and would be completely bald one day. He was paying me to date him so he could be more popular. And my very favorite: He was a closeted homosexual, and I was dating him to help him keep his cover because I had a particular soft spot for gay dudes. This was Kimber’s favorite too. She didn’t believe anything he was saying but did say that one was the most believable.

  The restaurant we went to was packed to capacity and running on a clockwork schedule. We were shown to our table and given a limited options menu. It had two choices of appetizer that said: pick one; three choices of entree, that said: pick two; and three choices of dessert that said: pick one to share.

  “Wow,” Ryan laughed at the menu, then set it on the table. “Guys, we need to go.”

  “What do you mean ‘go’?” Kimber laughed. “Go where? Why?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Someplace with options, some place romantic. There’s like, a thousand people in this restaurant. It’s ridiculous.”

  Kimber looked at me. “Help me explain this,” she frowned.

  Instead of doing that, I stood. “Nah, come on. Ryan knows all the best places.”

  “I do, right?” Ryan beamed. “Come on, let’s do this. My treat,” he stood and offered his hands to Zack and Kimber. “Unless sardine night with paper hearts and three choices of chicken in 20 minutes or less is really how you want to spend your evening.”

  “Not my first pick,” Zack stood and offered his hand to Kimber. Reluctantly, and with a little nudge from me, she took it.

  Ryan spent a few minutes making arrangements on his phone as we drove into the city. Then he directed Zack to one of the nicest hotels in the city, where we checked into a penthouse suite. It was all the extra posh, extra plush, and extra deluxe things you’d expect plus a few you probably wouldn’t from a ginormous rooftop apartment with all the amenities; which included a fireplace, a party-sized entertainment center, and a rooftop balcony with city-wide views, and its own pool and hot tub.

  Kimber took Zack on a self-guided tour of the place, which involved a lot of her gasping and exclaiming, “No way!” Eventually they joined up with us in the living room and Kimber admitted, “Okay, this is way better than a cramped restaurant.”

  Ryan ordered way more than any of us could eat from room service and then he handed the phone to Zack and said, “Get whatever you guys want.” Then he started a fire, dimmed the lights and put on some romantic mood music.

  While all that was happening, Kimber was slowly starting to freak out. “You guys know there’s like no way we can eat all the food we just ordered, right? And, you know it’s a school night, so there’s like no way we can stay here, right? And you know none of us have swimming suits, right? And there’s like no way I’m going skinny dipping, or even getting wet tonight, right? I mean, especially not after I spent like an hour on my hair and whatever.”

  “Breathe Kims,” I encouraged.

  “This is just dinner, Kims,” Ryan assured. “Chill. Enjoy. We’ve still got that Valentine’s Day Cabaret thing to go to, unless you’d rather stay in and get a movie or something,” he waved toward the monster sized big screen on the wall. “And if you want, we could go buy suits and probably even a swim cap,” he waved toward the hot tub. “Tonight, is whatever we want it to be, and I want it to be opulence and good company.” He blew Kims a kiss, then he turned to Zack. “We have Auto-shop together, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s not exactly my most attended class,” Zack admitted. “But Mr. Riggs is pretty lax since he knows I’ve been working on cars since forever.”

  “Have you?” Ryan lifted his brows.

  “Cool, cool, you guys talk,” Kims said as she pulled me into one of the suite’s bedrooms. “Is this for real?” she asked.

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean, we’re standing in a super nice penthouse suite apartment thing, that has its own freaking roof top pool, Great Katsby.”

  “Yes we are, Kimbernator.”

  Kimber put her fingertips on her forehead and took a deep breath. “And I can just go down to the lobby and get a swim suit in the gift shop, put it on the room tab, and go swimming on a roof? Just like that?”

  “You probably don’t even have to go anywhere,” I shrugged. “You can probably just call them up and tell them what you want.”

  “For reals?” Kimber grinned. “I’mma try it,” she raced over to the phone.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled my phone out of my pocket and pulled up my text convo with Dominic.

  KF: I did something awful today. The worst part of it all is that I can justify it, make it seem like the bad things were good things — maybe even the right thing. But none of that makes me feel any less horrible.

  For some reason, I didn’t send the text.

  ・❀・❀・❀・

  The next few hours were some kind of wonderful. Somehow Ryan knew the best thing for my soul was to just lose myself in dance. He even tried to maneuver a few moves he’d seen while me and Julian practiced. Ryan was nowhere near as limber and graceful as Julian, but he was strong enough. The swimsuits Kimber ordered for everyone arrived just before the food, so we ate dinner in our new — phone ordered — hotel gift shop bikinis and trunks.

  We skipped the cabaret show, and spent the evening dancing, eating yummy food as slow as we wanted, and swimming in a rooftop pool in temperatures so cold it even started snowing at one point, which was actually super cool and kind of amazing. —But only because the pool was super warm, I’m not a complete crazy person.

  It had to end at some point, though, it was a school night. We made it back home by 11:30 and Kimber called first dibs on the shower. Fine by me, I still had to take Ryan home. He drove. We made it to his place just before midnight. Ryan held the door for me while I hopped out of the car and hurried around to the drivers side. Then he caught me in a huge hug, lifted me off the ground and smothered my face with kisses until I was giggling.

  The moment was demolished with a croaky, “Miss Franks, may I have a word?” from the dread mother, Mrs. Mathers, standing at the front door.

  I looked to Ryan.

  He looked confused. “It’s totally up to you,” he said, as he lowered me to the ground.

  I nodded, took a breath and started for the house. Ryan slipped his hand into mine as we wa
lked, and kept hold of it as we stood in the entryway in front of Mrs. Mathers.

  There was something off about her. Something stiff. Like all the confidence had been drained out of her. She held her arms across her middle and she wasn’t facing us directly. Her right side was turned away and her right leg was tucked behind her left. She was barefoot now, in a robe and wearing glasses, so maybe she just didn’t like to be seen undone for the day, except it totally looked like she was wearing lipstick. The whole situation was uncomfortably weird, but it’s not like the woman didn’t have issues.

  “I owe you an apology,” she started, even her speech was oddly rigid, almost like she was speaking through her teeth. “You don’t have to accept it, but I do, sincerely, mean it. Who you are and who your parents are, is irrelevant. I had no right to treat you so disrespectfully. Your outfit was — and is — perfectly lovely, and you have a beautiful name, and you’re quick-witted, and smart, and you care about my son, and that’s all that matters, and I truly hope you can find it in you heart to forgive and forget, and that we can even become friends one day.”

  Ryan swallowed hard. His face was flush.

  “Uhm. Yeah. Sure. That sounds…” I was flailing, this was all just too bizarre. “That would be lovely.”

  “Thank you,” She turned her head toward us and gave a small nod, and a smile that looked more like a wince. “You can go now,” she said, her eyes on the floor.

  And then time stopped as my brain clicked together the horror puzzle of the aftermath of violence hobbling on one leg before me. The swollen ankle tucked behind the one she had her weight on. Arms clutched against her middle. Her face turned away to hide the worst of it that she’d tried to cover with so so so much make-up.

  It felt like an absolutely natural and absolutely wrong response to ask her what had happened or if she was all right. She was definitely not all right. Nothing that was happening in this moment was all right. The weird panicky numb sensation I was feeling was a little bit similar to the shock of seeing Dominic in handcuff, but about 1000 times sharper, pointier, and scarier. Because this wasn’t a system with checks and balances, this was chaos and madness and terror. What the fuck was I supposed to do with that?