by Alisha Rai
It did, however, turn you into a space cadet.
She’d been delayed taking Doodle out for her potty break this morning and had to clean up the consequences, all because she had dawdled in the shower, soaping up her aching body and watching Jas brush his teeth through the steamed-up glass of her shower. She’d burned their quiche at breakfast because Jas had had the nerve to wear a pair of snug cotton joggers with a white T-shirt French-tucked into the front waistband. She’d almost knocked her cup of coffee over onto her laptop because Jas had had the further nerve to bend over in the aforementioned sweatpants.
He was so lean, but tightly put together. Like a very sleek sports car. A manual one.
Katrina rested her chin in her hand and stared out the window. Jas had left to go do something outside a few hours ago, and she’d been grateful. Out of sight, out of mind, and she could give her poor brain a reprieve from thinking about his butt and cotton and his butt in cotton, but alas, her focus seemed to be shot even when he wasn’t sashaying in front of her.
“Katrina?”
Katrina’s gaze cut guiltily away from the window and back to the open laptop on the breakfast table. “Yes?” she asked, and pushed her hair behind her ear. She pointedly shifted her chair so she wouldn’t be able to see out the window.
Rhiannon peered at her. She and Lakshmi were sitting side by side on a couch, a tiny bit of their luxurious hotel room in India visible. On the split screen was Jia, who was, thankfully, painting her nails and hadn’t seemed to notice Katrina’s distraction. “I said, I’m glad you’re ready to go on the offensive,” Rhiannon repeated.
Katrina sobered. The single cloud hovering over her sex-induced happiness was the bane of her existence. Well, one of them.
Up until now, she’d avoided looking at Becca, Alan, or Ross’s Instagram accounts, but Ross had done a live video for his “fans” last night. She and Jas had obviously been otherwise occupied, but once she’d come out of her haze enough to check her phone this morning, she’d found texts from Rhiannon and Jia.
Katrina had scrolled through Ross’s Instagram before watching the video and had been disturbed by his recent posts with their vague as hell captions. A shirtless shot of him contemplating the ocean: Sunsets are better with your sweetheart. #CafeBae #CuteCafeGirl #nofiltersrequired #theLordismyfilter. A photo of him, again shirtless, holding his mom’s dog: Sandy’s kisses can’t compare to hers. #CafeBae #CuteCafeGirl #PuppyLove #CantWaitToSeeHer #weddingbells.
Barf.
None of that had compared to the video, though. She’d watched it with Jas next to her, but even his presence hadn’t prevented the cold ball forming in the pit of her stomach.
Over the course of twenty minutes, Ross fielded questions from people about his new nutrition company, his past as an athlete, and his exercise regimen. Then the questions about her had started. Where was she, why wasn’t she coming forward, were they really seeing each other, what was her real name?
Ross had spouted some cutesy non-answers, but for the last one, the bastard had looked straight into her camera and winked. I’m sure one of you super-sleuths can find out who CuteCafeGirl is. No one’s truly impossible to find.
A shiver ran down Katrina’s back. The man had practically invited the internet to dox her.
Unacceptable. It was time to do what she’d decided on yesterday with such passionate fervor. Take up space. Use her resources, damn it.
She’d called her lawyer, who had been aghast and sympathetic. There were some legal options, but they’d have to be approached in a way that didn’t end up calling more attention to the story and her. Her lawyer wanted to consult with some of her colleagues who had experience with cases like Katrina’s. In the meantime, they would compose takedown notices, though Katrina was aware that was kind of like trying to stuff a hundred thousand cats back into a sack.
After that conversation, she’d called this meeting of their brain trust.
Lakshmi rubbed her hands together. Rhiannon’s assistant was stylish as usual, in a black-and-gold front-slit kurta, her hair slicked back, her blood-red lips a slash of crimson suited to her dramatic personality. “By the time I’m done with these people, they won’t think it’s so great to go viral.”
That sounded vaguely ominous to Katrina. “You’re not putting out a hit on them or anything, are you?”
“Of course not. I’m going to make them see the error of their ways.”
That sounded even more like Lakshmi was going to put a hit on them. Katrina shifted. “Rhiannon.”
Rhiannon placed her hand on Lakshmi’s shoulder. “No one is going to hurt anyone. This will be a purely online information campaign.”
“Purely online.” Lakshmi’s voice dropped. “Until it’s not.”
Katrina’s eyes widened. “Rhiannon.”
Jia looked up from her nails. The blue of her fingernails matched her hijab and the flowers on her embroidered shirt. “Guys. Wait.” They all hushed.
Jia took a deep breath. “Do you like my eyebrows? I got them threaded at this new place.”
Lakshmi turned to Rhiannon. “Is it necessary for her to be on the call?”
“Yes, Lakshmi, it is, and I can hear you.” Jia’s nostrils flared. They’d only met a few months prior, but there wasn’t much love lost between uber-efficient Lakshmi and dreamy Jia. “I was asking because I want to make sure my eyebrows are camera-ready when I go live shortly. BeccaTheNose wishes she had my following.” Jia straightened, and her voice went up an octave. “You all can’t for serious think this is an okay way to behave. Clearly CuteCafeGirl doesn’t want to be found. Imagine if this was you, if you were, like, a busy professional and someone plastered your face all over the internet without your permission. This is a privacy issue, and it’s also a feminist issue, a humanity issue.” Jia subsided and gave the thumbs-up. “And so on for five minutes. I’ll get my biggest influencer buds on board to spread that message.”
Lakshmi sniffed, mollified. “It’s not bad. I can help with the script, if you like.”
“You’ll make me sound old.”
Lakshmi no longer looked mollified. “I am five years older than you, you little—”
“Jia, thanks,” Katrina interrupted, eager to head off this fight.
“No thanks necessary. I mean every word I’ll say. I’m terrified of going viral for all the wrong reasons.”
“Are there right reasons to go viral?” Katrina murmured. If she could, she’d continue to avoid social media for the rest of her life on the off chance that this was ever repeated.
“Oh, you know, going viral for showing people how to eat a pineapple is a way different situation.” Jia thought for a second. “Though I went viral for, like, an eyeliner hack once, and got death threats within two hours. So I guess, no. There’s no right way to go viral on ye olde internet anymore. Not for some of us, at least.”
Lakshmi produced a pad of paper, getting the meeting back on track. “We can start amplifying and flooding every possible Twitter thread with basically the same message Jia’s going to spread. Use bots for good instead of evil. Turn the narrative so it’s no longer about who you are, but how wrong this is.”
“I don’t want to sic a mob on these three, though.” Ross might have the power to urge the world to dox her by virtue of the current spotlight on him, but she had her money, Jia’s reach, Rhiannon’s ruthlessness, and Lakshmi’s . . .
Well. She had Lakshmi.
Becca, Ross, and Alan were outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, and outplanned, but they’d never know it until it was too late.
“Define mob,” Lakshmi said.
“I don’t want them run off the internet or hurt.” Katrina twisted her fingers together. “They’re people, too.”
Lakshmi turned her head, but her whisper to Rhiannon was picked up by the computer’s excellent mic. “How is she so nice?”
“It’s not about being nice. I’ve seen them in person, they aren’t some nameless faceless usernames.”
&
nbsp; “Look,” Rhiannon said, with her typical matter-of-factness. “Sometimes to disarm people and keep them from hurting you, to keep them from doing the wrong thing, you gotta put pressure on them.”
Lakshmi perked up. “Physical pressure? ’Cause I know a guy—”
Even Jia looked alarmed at that offer. “No!” Katrina yelped.
“Okay.” Lakshmi rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
“Katrina?”
She glanced up at Jas’s raised voice from outside, and Jia let out a singsong Ooooh. “How’s things going with you and Captain Chesticles?”
Katrina stabbed at the volume button on her laptop, her cheeks on fire, though Jas wouldn’t be able to hear the girl. She didn’t want a repeat of the text about his hotness! “I have to go now, good talk, I’ll call you later, bye-bye.”
Jia howled, Rhiannon snorted, and Lakshmi cracked a grin before the screen went dark. Katrina pressed her palms over her cheeks, hoping she hadn’t given herself away. She didn’t want her friends to know about her and Jas yet. One, because it was too new, and two, because . . . well, she was a little worried it wasn’t real. Like this was a simulation, an illusion that would vanish when they returned to Santa Barbara.
Jia and Rhiannon, and to a lesser extent Lakshmi, didn’t need to get emotionally entangled with her and Jas being a thing if it wasn’t going to happen.
“Katrina?” Jas yelled again.
She came to her feet in a rush. “Yes?” she called out, and made it to the door just as he bounded up the porch stairs.
His jeans had lost their city creases, and the sleeves of his flannel shirt were rolled up. His hair was disheveled, and he hadn’t trimmed his beard. He wasn’t her perfectly groomed bodyguard today. “What’s up?” she asked, trying not to think of Jia’s new nickname for him.
Her gaze flicked to his chest, then back up to his eyes.
Jas beamed at her, sensing nothing amiss. “Come with me.”
She checked her watch. “It’s almost three. I have to check in on the pizza dough if we want it ready in time for dinner.”
“I’ll help you with that later. There’s something I want to show you. Grab your sweater.”
“It’s warm out today, though.”
“Trust me, grab it.”
She arched an eyebrow at him but complied, pulling her big comfy sweater from the hall closet before returning to the door.
He stopped before they rounded the house. “Close your eyes.”
She gave him a quizzical look, but shut them. “This better not be a prank of some kind,” she warned. “I don’t want to stick my hand into something gross.”
“No prank. Who would ever prank you like that?” He took hold of her arm and led her about a dozen steps. “Okay, look.”
She opened her eyes. “Oh.”
“Well?”
She walked forward a few feet and stopped. “It’s, um . . . hay?” She ended it with a question, because she had honestly only ever seen hay in movies. But this looked like the movie hay, tightly bundled in small bales. Piles upon piles of hay.
“You said you wanted a snowball fight. Well, I tried to get a snow machine, but I guess it’s not cold enough for fake snow and also we’re not a ski resort.”
“So you got . . . hay?”
“Yeah. I mean, I know it’s not the same as snow, but I figured it was really the only thing you can bunch up and toss at someone. And not injure them. So . . .” He spread his arms wide. “I thought, why not a hay fight?”
Oh my. If she could see what her heart looked like right now, she imagined it would be aglow, throbbing in her chest. “You went through all this trouble because I said I wanted a snowball fight?” She gazed at the brown straw that was piled everywhere, overwhelmed.
Engineering a hay fight was one of the weirdest and nicest things anyone had ever done for her.
“It wasn’t trouble. I had to call my brother to ask if he had a lot of hay.”
A phone call wasn’t too bad.
“He’s running low. So I had to find out where to get the hay, go to the big house, get a truck, go pick up the hay, and then . . . do that like three more times to have enough hay. Not that big of a deal.”
“Right, that sounds like not a big deal at all.”
He didn’t seem to pick up on her dry humor, because he shrugged. “Nope.”
She leaned over and touched the hay in the bale closest to her. It was scratchy and dry, and would be hell on her delicate skin.
The idea of this was so sweet and also something she had no interest in doing. “Um, Jas—” She yelped when something wet hit her shoulder and exploded. Outraged and confused, she whipped her head around to glare at him.
His delighted grin took her breath away. He tossed a bright red water balloon in his hand, and that was when she noticed the pail at his feet. The pail filled with more water balloons. “Unfortunately, after I paid for all that hay and got it all here, I realized no one actually wants hay thrown at them. And there’s this thing called farmer’s lung?”
She wrung out the chunk of her hair that had gotten wet. “Sounds like something we don’t want to contract.”
“Right. So I figured it would have to be a water fight. Water is closer to snow, anyway.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, her outrage turning to amusement. “This isn’t fair! I don’t have any ammunition.”
“I’d never water fight an unarmed woman.” He nodded at a hay bale. “Right behind there.”
She darted around the bale and crouched down, finding her full pail right where he’d indicated. She grabbed a balloon, poked her head over her hay barricade, then retreated when a water balloon sailed at her head. “What are you going to do with all this hay now that it’s useless?” As quietly as possible, she lifted two water balloons, one in each hand, and waited for him to speak.
“Hay is never useless. My brother and grandpa will be confused and delighted by my gift to the farm.”
Using his voice as her guide, she launched to her feet and fired two balloons rapid-fire. Her brain processed every action in slow motion—the windup, the release, the trajectory of the balloons as they launched through the air, landing and bursting against his face and chest.
A helpless giggle escaped her at his disgruntled expression. He wiped the water out of his eyes. “You’ll pay for that.”
“I’d like to see you try.” She squealed and ducked when he tossed a balloon at her. They darted around and behind the hay and the air filled with their laughter and curses. Most of her shots missed. A good number of his landed. “Unfair, you’re a trained soldier and guard. You have better hand-eye coordination,” she puffed from behind cover.
“All’s fair.”
In love.
She reached into her pail and made a sound of dismay when she discovered she only had two balloons left.
She said a quick prayer and launched to her feet, hands full, and ran away from the makeshift obstacle course.
A balloon hit the back of her leg, and she sped up.
“Why are you zigzagging?” he called out as he chased her, and the asshole didn’t sound out of breath at all.
“That’s how you get away from bears.” Another wet hit on her arm. How did he still have so many?
“I think that’s a myth about alligators, and I’m neither of those things.” The laughter in his voice was evident. Something smacked the ground at her feet, and she sped up. “Quit running. Stand your ground.”
“Retreat is the better part of valor,” she managed, though she was huffing and puffing. It was warm today, and she was actually sweating a little despite her damp clothes.
She ran right into the copse of trees, darting around the big trunks. She finally stopped when she couldn’t hear his footsteps behind her any longer. She tried to control her breathing, and then carefully peered around.
She narrowed her gaze at the undisturbed, silent clearing. No way would Jas lose her. “I know you’re out there,” she yelled.<
br />
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She almost ignored it but she did hate to ignore phone calls when they could be for work or one of her friends.
It was one of her friends, but one who was pretty local.
I’m at 3 o’clock. Don’t be startled.
There went her heart, all aglow.
She turned to face Jas. He leaned against a tree, his hair glossy from the remnants of one of her hits. He spread his empty hands in front of him. “You wouldn’t hurt an unarmed man?”
She tossed a balloon in the air and caught it. “Nice try. Use camouflage balloons next time, I see the one you stuck in the branch above your head.”
His lips formed a smile, and he reached up and grabbed the water balloon. “Good eye.”
She threw one of her balloons to the ground and it burst. The water was harmless, but later, she’d come out and pick up all the balloon remnants. Though knowing Jas, he’d probably already considered the environmental impact of their little game here and had a cleanup plan in place. “Truce?”
He nodded solemnly and sacrificed his single balloon to the grass.
She lifted her other arm, considered him for a second, then let her second balloon fly, laughing when it smacked him in the stomach.
“We said truce!”
She laughed harder at his outraged expression. “You were the one who told me to use whatever tools I had at my disposal, remember?”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh right.” He took deliberate steps toward her and she eyed him with suspicion. “What are you doing?”
He walked faster, bridging the short distance between them. “Using my tools.”
She squeaked in amusement and feigned trepidation and tried to dart away, but he was so much faster than she was. He caught her by the waist and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and took a step back. In her mind, they would effortlessly make love against the tree, with her legs wrapped around his waist and absolutely no splinters in her bare ass.
In reality, she tripped on a root.
