Smirking, I line my back against the door so I’m out of his reach then quickly scroll through his songs.
“Isa,” he warns, his gaze dancing back and forth between the road and me as he drives down the busy street. “I’m being serious. I have issues with music.”
“Clearly.” I snicker as I note some of the songs he has on the device. “Dude, your music taste sucks. What happened to that obsession with 80s punk music? There aren’t any songs that are even close to punk.”
“I go through music phases.” His fingers tighten around the steering wheel as his expression darkens. “And I’m super touchy about people insulting my current music taste.” He suddenly relaxes, shaking and rolling out his shoulders. “You know what? I’m going to let that one slide just as long as you put the iPod down.”
I quickly tap the folder labeled ‘For Your Eyes Only’, click the first song, and set the iPod down. A song by Violent Soho flows through the speakers and I smile. “Okay, this one’s not too bad.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. You turned on one of my private songs,” he says then grins and twists up the volume of the radio, singing along.
Private songs? God, I don’t even want to know what he does when he listens to those.
I laugh at my own thoughts and end up doing an awesome snort.
“What’s so funny?” Kai asks, giving me a curious, sidelong glance.
I swiftly shake my head. “It’s nothing.”
A grin creeps up his face. “You were thinking something dirty, weren’t you?”
“No, I was just thinking about . . . something.”
“About something dirty with my private playlist.”
I stick out my tongue at him, and he just laughs. Then I relax back in my seat and cross my legs, moving carefully, since I’m wearing a skirt and don’t want to flash him. I matched the skirt with a long-sleeved black shirt, clunky black boots, and a studded leather jacket I bought in one of the shops on Oxford Street in London. I hope I look good enough for a party, but since I’ve never been to one, I’m unsure.
I run my fingers through my wavy hair, trying to add volume, being careful not to snag any of the braids.
“You look fine,” Kai says, misreading my primping.
My hands fall to my lap. “I was just trying to make my hair bounce more.”
He taps on the brake to slow for a stoplight then twists in the seat, looking at me with his brow cocked. “Bounce? I didn’t know hair bounced.”
“Tell that to my cousin Indigo, because she seems to think hair needs to bounce all the time.”
“I’ll never understand girls sometimes.”
“And I’ll never understand guys sometimes. It’s like one minute, you’re sweet, and then the next, you’re all like,” I drop my voice to a low baritone, “‘Whatever, I don’t care about anything anymore.’”
“I always care about stuff,” he says, driving forward as the light turns green. “Sometimes I just can’t show it.”
“That’s really silly.”
“About as silly as pretending we were wizards.”
“Hey, I was a witch.” I smile as I remember how during our walks home, we’d sometimes stop at the park and pretend we were awesome enough to possess the power of magic. “Not a wizard.”
“Whatever. It was still silly. I mean, we were almost thirteen years old for god’s sake. We were too old to be playing make-believe.” Even though his eyes are glued to the road, I can sense the tension flowing off him.
“Well, I didn’t. And I still don’t think it’s silly.” I focus on the shops, the local bank, and the small grocery store lining the street, trying to ignore the pain over how he thinks our time together was silly—that I’m silly.
“You’re still the same,” he remarks, and I can feel his eyes on me.
“I’m a little different,” I reply without looking at him. “But yeah, I’m kind of the same too.”
“That’s not a bad thing, Isa.” His fingers brush right above my injured knee.
I jolt in the seat as his touch ripples across my body and zaps my heart like a defibrillator. What in the wild, wild, crazyland was that?
“I know it’s not a bad thing. I know I’m weird, but I’ve always been pretty okay with that. I just wish I knew why.” An unsteady breath eases from my lips as I peek down at Kai’s hand on my leg and then over to him.
He quickly withdraws his hand and places it on the steering wheel. “Why what?”
“Why I am the way that I am. I’ve never fit in with anyone, especially my family. And then I found out that Lynn isn’t my mom and I kind of, I don’t know, felt relieved, which probably makes me a bad person, but that’s how I feel.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad person at all. I’ve heard some of Hannah’s stories, about the stuff they’ve done to you. You should hate her.”
“She’s told people about the things she’s done to me?” Nausea sets in as I think about all the incriminating pictures she snapped of me doing embarrassing, dorky things. What if she’s shown them to everyone?
He offers me a look of empathy. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
“No, but I’m not surprised.” I scrape at the black nail polish on my fingernails. “Sometimes I wonder if Hannah’s always known that we don’t have the same mom, and that’s why she treats me bad.”
“Hannah treats you bad, because she’s a spoiled princess.” Kai downshifts the car. “She’s basically gotten everything she’s wanted since we were kids.”
“I know . . . I don’t get why people even like her.”
“Because they’re afraid of her. They’d rather be her friend than her enemy.”
“So, you were afraid of her then?” I ask. “Because you liked her once.”
“I’ve never liked her.” He grinds his teeth. “I told you I just hit on her, because I knew Kyler had a thing for her and it would piss him off. There was never anything more to it.”
“If Kyler had a thing for her, then why isn’t he dating her anymore?” I attempt not to sound bitter, but fail epically.
“He liked her when he was younger, but grew out of it,” he explains, making a right down a side road that weaves between the rolling foothills. “It’s probably the one smart thing he’s ever done in his life. The whole date thing at the beginning of the summer pretty much happened only because Hannah’s pushy as fuck when she wants something.”
“I completely agree.” I restrain a smile, but it’s difficult when I just found out Kyler never really wanted to go out with Hannah. He was probably being nice.
“So, you’re still obsessed with him, huh?” Kai asks, jostling me of my Kyler Lust Trance.
“What . . . no . . . I’m not . . .” My cheeks erupt in flames, but fortunately, it’s dark enough that there’s no way Kai can see my mortification.
“Relax, Isa.” He pats my uninjured knee, all buddy, buddy like. “It’s not really that big of a secret.”
I frown. “But it makes me sound pathetic. Obsessing over some guy for years, who I have no chance in hell of ever going out with.”
“Why don’t you have a chance?” he asks, genuinely baffled.
“Um, because I’m me.”
“Yeah, so? He asked you to his football game, didn’t he?”
“I guess he did.” I replay the two second conversation I had with Kyler in the kitchen, trying to remember if when he asked me, he was sending out date vibes. But I have zilch experience in the boyfriend department. “You think he was asking me out?”
“Probably.” Irritation creeps into his tone. “He’s shallow enough that he would.”
“Why would him asking me out make him shallow?” I ask, offended.
“Because he doesn’t know you, which means he was only asking you out based on the fact that he thinks you’re hot now.”
“That’s kind of harsh. Maybe he knows me and likes me.”
“How could he possibly know you?” Kai asks, flipping the blinker. “You two haven’t ever talked.”
“We hung out a couple of times when I taught him how to improve his free throw shots, and he used to stop Hannah from picking on me,” I tell Kai. “There was this one time when he even stopped his own friends from picking on me. A couple of his football buddies had me cornered, because Hannah basically had a choke collar on them. He came up and said something about them being late for practice so they’d have to leave.”