Friends vs. Family

by C. L. Stone

  “I didn’t know she was interested in dating,” Kota said in a quiet voice. Where was Kota, the confident leader of an elite Academy crew that barked orders?

  “Of course she’s interested,” Erica said. “She’s your age. You guys should be dating.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant,” Kota replied.

  Gabriel combed the hair in my face, raising the scissors to my cheeks, shaving off the start of bangs that hung over my eyes. He started layering my hair from my cheeks to an inch from the start of my shoulder.

  “Well what do you mean? She’s a nice girl and it is obvious she likes you and would date you.”

  “How do you know?” Kota asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  “A girl doesn’t sit in your lap unless she’s interested in dating you,” Erica said in a happy tone.

  My eyes widened and my lips parted. Was that true? Is that what the guys meant? Is that what happened when I sat on their laps? Were they all thinking the same thing?

  Gabriel combed my hair away from my eyes and winked down at me. When he moved aside to comb my hair, Silas was sitting up on the concrete of the garage, his dark eyes sought out mine, intense.

  What have I done? I’ve sat in most of their laps, and in front of the others. Dating wasn’t what I was thinking about at all. I had no idea if that was what they were thinking.

  Kota made a guttural grumbling with his throat. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it now.”

  “All I’m saying is, if you’re going to do it, you should ask her outright. If you wait, someone else might and then you’ll lose your chance. She’s a pretty girl and she’s a sweetheart. I’m surprised she’s not dating one of the football players.”

  Silas half beamed at me, his eyes brightening. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Since he played football and I sat in his lap that I should be almost expected to date him?

  Did I want to?

  Kota’s fingers loosened and then regripped at my waist repeatedly, “Well, I’ll have to take her out sometime.”

  “You should take her tonight. She’s got that new outfit and now a new haircut.”

  “We’ve got school tomorrow,” Kota said quietly.

  “I think my straight-A son can handle being a little tired Monday morning after going out with a girl.”

  “Fine,” Kota relented. “I’ll take her out.”

  “Well don’t make me pull your arm or anything,” Erica said. There was movement just outside of my vision, the sound of footsteps and the side door opened. “You guys come in and have pancakes. North is making them.”

  The door closed.

  Awkward pause. I released the breath I’d been holding since she first started asking so many questions. Dating! Was she serious? My face radiated. My core shook. I was ready to run home and hide for a few hours to figure this out. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say or feel.

  “Holy shit,” Gabriel said. “The first time Sang gets asked out and it’s by Kota’s mother.”

  “Shut up,” Kota said.

  Gabriel laughed. He curled one of the locks of hair beside my face in his fingers. “Well if you don’t want to, I’ll take her.”

  “Sang has to go home,” Kota said, the command returning to his voice. “We’ve already taken enough risks this weekend and we’ve got enough to worry about before Monday.”

  I knew Kota was right. A last minute date probably wasn’t in the plans for the day. Still, the way he said it made me cringe. It felt like he didn’t want to and he would stuff work and school in as an excuse to get out of it. It wasn’t fair of me to think of it this way. After all, his mother started it. The slight of the almost-rejection still stung.

  At least Gabriel wanted to. I held on to that thought.

  “Okay, I think this is done,” Gabriel said. He put down the scissors and chewed on his comb. He picked out a big brush from his bag and started brushing through my hair smoothly. “I should take her back upstairs to do it up nice.”

  “We should get out of here,” Silas said. “Give Erica a break.”

  “And you have other things to do, Gabe,” Kota said.

  Gabriel twisted his lips. He beeped my nose and reached for the towel, freeing it from my shoulders. With a free hand, he took mine. “Stand up, Trouble, so they can see.”

  I stood. My hair felt cool and lighter against my head and the freshly cut bangs tickled my face. I lifted a hand to check the length around the back. It was shorter than I expected, maybe an inch below the top of my shoulders.

  Gabriel popped my hand with a palm. “Stop. You’ll mess it up.”

  I turned around. Kota scrutinized from his chair, smiling. His cheeks tinted red. “Looks good.”

  Victor was standing against the back wall, his arms crossed over his chest. He’d been so quiet the entire time that I had thought he had slipped into the house again. His fire eyes simmered when he caught my gaze, almost sad. Was it because of the conversation? Is that what the bracelet meant? That he wanted to date?

  Victor shook his head, as if shaking away deep thoughts. His eyes flickered as he examined the new haircut. The corner of his mouth lifted. “Gabriel, you’re such a bastard.”

  Gabriel smirked. “Oy, why?”

  “You made sure she couldn’t use her clip.”

  “She can use it,” Gabriel said. He smoothed his hands through my hair, pulling most of it back into a pony tail that he held between his fingers at the back of my head. A few locks of hair fell across my face. With a free hand, he pushed the locks behind my ears but they wouldn’t hold. The edges tickled my cheeks. “But check it out, even if she does, her bangs frame her face. In a sexy way.”

  “Is that how we want her to look at school?” Victor asked. He rubbed at a spot against his chin. “We have enough problems already.”

  “Fuck those guys,” Gabriel said. “I don’t care what they think. I’ll beat the shit out of them if they touch her.”

  “Me, too,” Silas said. He lifted himself to standing, stepped over and swept fingers through the shorter strands of my face. “I like it.”

  I smiled, simply happy my hair wasn’t in spikes or something weird.

  “We’ve got a lot to do today, guys.” Kota said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel said, groaning, and crossing to put his things back into his duffle bag.

  “Thank you, Meanie,” I said quietly.

  Gabriel rolled his eyes, a grin popping onto his face. “Trouble, I swear, if you weren’t so damn cute…”

  The Academy, Capable

  Erica refrained from talking about dating at breakfast, which was both a relief to me and made me sad, too. I almost wanted her to pry more into Kota’s thoughts about me. I wanted to understand his meaning when he dismissed her request so easily with excuses about work. Did I want to know the truth? Maybe we were just friends. Perhaps he didn’t see me as someone he wanted to date.

  I didn’t want to think like that. It was too soon. Last night was the first time we’d hung out together, outside of school, in a very long time. At least not at my house where we expected my mother or someone else to pop in at any moment. Dating probably didn’t even occur to him, like it hadn’t occurred to me at all.

  Now I was thinking about it, though. It was like Erica had woken up something inside of me. It was the first time I realized that dating was something I could do, and there were guys around me I could possibly do it with. It was an overwhelming thought that I wasn’t sure how to take.

  Maybe he, too, needed time to register this. Or was I hoping for thoughts that might not exist at all? Was I wanting to date Kota? What about the others?

  My lips were glued together during and after breakfast. I helped Silas collect pillows and Victor with folding blankets to put away in the downstairs closet. North helped Erica clean up dishes and the kitchen. Gabriel, Nathan and Luke disappeared to Nathan’s house. Kota said it was for work but they all looked exhausted. I hoped they were going to take a nap.

&n
bsp; Silas and North left after the house was clean. When Erica wasn’t looking, they both hugged me.

  North brushed his fingers through my hair when he stepped back. “Call me,” he said, his intense dark eyes cutting through mine. That was a silent demand. He wanted me to call him for a reason. He had something to say. Why he didn’t say it here?

  I promised I would and they both left. Erica escaped to go to the grocery store. Kota went outside to walk Max. I helped Victor drag the new bean chairs back upstairs.

  “Ugh.” Victor huffed as we tossed the last bag chair on the floor inside Kota’s room. He stood back, his hands on his hips. “I like them, but we should’ve gotten more, some for upstairs and some for downstairs. We wouldn’t have to drag them all over. They’re hard to navigate up those stairs.”

  “That’d be a lot of chairs.”

  He sank into the chair, and stretched. “I told Kota we should just go to my house.”

  “What’s your house like?” I slipped into another chair next to him, curling up to put my cheek against the back of it. From my angle, I could gaze over at him. I admired his long fingers, the lean muscles of his body and the way his jeans framed around his legs.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “A little bigger. More room for all of them. Us.” He rocked his head back and flashed a smile at me. “I mean you, too.”

  I knew what he meant, but I was happy he felt he needed to make sure to include me. “So I’ll see it one day?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Whenever you want.”

  A smile touched my face as I honestly wouldn’t have minded going right in that moment. “Where is it?”

  “Downtown.”

  “In Summerville?”

  “In Charleston. On the peninsula.”

  I blinked at him, tilting my head. “I haven’t been there yet. Not that I’ve really been anywhere but you know.”

  “The next time we get a chance, we should go. There’s a lot to see.”

  Something caught on in my brain about what he just said. “You drive in from the city every day for school?”

  “I pick up Gabriel on the way, too.”

  “Isn’t it a long drive?”

  “Depends on traffic. Sometimes forty minutes, sometimes an hour.”

  My lips popped open. “You drive that far every morning?”

  “Every morning.”

  I traced the edge of the bean chair, feeling the smooth softness, the coolness of the material against my skin. “That’s a long way to go for a school that doesn’t want us there in the first place.”

  “I can’t think of it that way,” he said. “We could all quit when we want, but the school would be no better off and we’d feel awkward knowing all we had to do was stick it out for a few months.”

  “You only have the one year,” I said, swinging my head back around to look up at him. “I’ve got a couple more years left to go after this one.”

  The fire in his eyes faded a little. “You’ve got us now.”

  “You’ll still hang out with me after school is over, right?”

  He grinned. “Of course. If you’re not tired of us by then.” He lifted a foot to nudge me with his toe at my leg.

  “I think I’m supposed to chop you now,” I said, lifting my own leg and nudging him in the thigh.

  “You wouldn’t do that to me,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t do what?” Kota’s voice echoed to us as he thumped his way up the stairs. He grinned when he spotted the two of us. “I’m going to forget these are here and trip over them in the night.” He fell into another one across from where Victor and I were sitting. Kota tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling. “Or I could just sleep like this.”

  “I like them,” I said, curling up tighter, hanging my feet off the edge.

  “We can’t get too comfortable,” Kota said, picking his head up.

  I rolled my eyes. “We’ve got work to do, right?”

  He smirked. “You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “Then what’s my job? What am I doing today?”

  Kota opened his mouth to answer but his face changed and he leaned in the chair, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. He poked at it, scanning the screen. “Well, I, unfortunately, have to go.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  He typed something into his phone. “Academy.”

  Should have known. Did it mean there was something about the school? Other Academy business? Was one of the other guys in trouble? I pressed my lips together to hold back the questions. If he could have told me, he probably would have said so.

  Kota released a small grunt, stood up, looking at Victor. “Can you make sure she gets inside?”

  “Of course.” Victor hauled himself up until he was standing, dropping a hand down close to me, palm up and open and waiting. “I get to take you home.”

  I twisted my lips. I knew I should go home. I’d been gone for so long that it felt awkward to be going back. Has it only been for a day? It felt much longer and yet it all happened so fast.

  I put my hand in Victor’s. “So my job is to go home?” I didn’t want to sound disappointed but for some reason I thought there was something else I needed to do. I didn’t want to go back yet. I wanted to be with them.

  Victor laughed, gripping my hand and tugging me to my feet. “I’ll take you anywhere you’d like to go. Name it.”

  “Take her home, Vic,” Kota said, utilizing his command tone. “No detours.”

  Victor rolled his eyes. “But first, we should get you back.”

  I caught the feeling that this was the plan in the first place, except perhaps Kota had meant to come along and now he couldn’t.

  Victor’s thumb drifted over the back of my hand. Kota collected his green messenger bag and dug his keys out of his pocket. “I should be back tonight. I’ll text to check in, Sang, okay?”

  “Okay,” I replied, with my free hand touching my finger to my lower lip. Did I need to be checked in with? Should I be doing something like that?

  Kota smiled, catching a lock of my hair between his fingers. He tucked it behind my ear, and it held in place. “Listen to Victor.”

  “Was I not going to?”

  They both laughed. Kota headed to the stairs. “Let’s get out of here before my mom gets home and she has to ask why I’m not taking you with me.”

  He kept secrets from his mother. What would he say later if she asked? Would he lie?

  I collected my book bag downstairs as Victor picked up his overnight bag. Now that the house was nearly empty, it felt as if the night before might have only happened in my head. How sad.

  I stood with Victor outside in Kota’s drive as Kota started his car and turned onto the street, disappearing around the bend. The sleepover was done. Back to reality.

  I walked in the back door to my house with my heart thundering and my knees shaking. Victor was climbing to the roof. We were back to this secret Academy protection. This time I had the disadvantage of being gone for a day and my nerves were on full tilt as I didn’t have a sense of location approximation on my mother. If she was at all awake and anywhere else besides inside her room, I could be in trouble.

  My father’s car wasn’t in the garage so I knew he wasn’t home yet. I stood near the back door, listening to movements in the house, trying to re-acclimate. Music from a radio drifted toward me. Was Marie home? It had to be hers since mine was broken. No television, but it could mean my mother was asleep. Or awake and roaming the house.

  I slipped up the back stairwell, tiptoeing to my room. I didn’t want to alert my mother I was there before I let Victor inside if I could help it.

  When I made it to the upstairs hallway, the sound of music drifted not from Marie’s room, but from mine. I froze in the hallway. Was Marie in my room? Was my mother? Did something happen? I strained to hear any noise, any movement to confirm the location of either my sister or my mother. The only thing that made me hesitate checking with either of them first was the risk of
getting into trouble and leaving Victor on the roof waiting.

  My door was pulled open from the inside. I took a step back, pressing myself to the wall as if that would conceal me in some way.

  Victor poked his head out. He checked the front stairs and turned to find me against the wall.

  I pressed my hand to my heart to try to calm it. “Victor,” I whispered, “you’re not supposed to...”

  “It’s okay,” he said. He held out a hand to me and winked. “Come on, princess. You were taking too long. I can’t wait to show you.”

  “Show me what?” I asked, reaching for his hand.

  His fire eyes sparked and his long fingers enveloped mine as he lured me into my room. He shut the door behind us and stepped away from me, putting his back to the door frame, his eyes expectant.

  I sensed differences in stages. The air wasn’t stale, as if left alone for a while, but electrified with warmth of recent visitors. The air smelled of cypress and vanilla and berries and spice, familiar. At first glance though, it was all the same. There was still the single bookshelf against the wall, the broken stereo on top. There was still the same bed next to the window, the bed made with the soft green comforter. Or was it?

  I tiptoed closer. It wasn’t the same comforter. The stitching was different and the color was a couple of shades off. It was slight but to me, it was noticeable.

  It wasn’t the same bed, either. It was bigger, about a foot wider and a little longer.

  I angled my head to try to get a different perspective, unsure of my own memory and my own eyes.

  A second look at the bookshelf forced me to turn my attention to it. The bookshelf was the same dark brown color, but it was definitely wider and taller. The books on the shelf had been replaced with new copies, plus additional volumes by the same authors, plus some extra titles I didn’t recognize.

  The stereo, too, was different. The music that played was a piano piece. I recognized another song by Yuko Ohigashi, who I’d mentioned was one of my favorite composers, but it was a tune I knew I hadn’t had the chance to download yet.

  With my mouth hanging open in surprise, my hand drifted to the edge of the bookshelf. My fingers hovered over the wood but stopped short. The top was intricately carved.