Deal-Breaker

by Siri Caldwell

  “Want to help paint the ladder?” Sierra asked Baylee when Jori dropped her off for a few hours of babysitting.

  Baylee was off like a shot to find a paintbrush with Sierra, leaving Jori shaking her head in amazement as she stood next to Melanie watching them go. During the day she had access to daycare at the college, but it was unavailable for evening classes. Those were the hours when having friends like Sierra and Melanie to help out was a lifesaver.

  Too bad she couldn’t count on Axel to watch his own daughter once in a while. Sometimes she wondered if she should pressure him to be more of a dad, but then again, most of their classes overlapped. And she herself had grown up without a father and turned out just fine. Baylee would, too. The kid didn’t even seem to notice she was missing a father figure.

  Jori couldn’t imagine what that would be like, to not even notice, but her situation had been different. Her mother had been confined to a wheelchair, and not in an I‌-‌can‌-‌still‌-‌play‌-‌basketball kind of way, and part of Jori’s desire for a dad had really been a desire for an adult‌—‌any adult‌—‌who could help her mom.

  Baylee didn’t have that problem. When she got older she wasn’t going to have to make dinner for a physically incapacitated mother and an older brother who not only made her do all the cooking but also the laundry, the housecleaning, and all the other little things their mother couldn’t manage. She wasn’t going to learn that all a boy had to do was whine that his sister was trying to turn him into a girl by making him do girl stuff and he was off the hook.

  Maybe if her mother had been stronger…‌

  But her mother couldn’t handle the stress of hearing them fight, so Jori had learned to be cheerful and upbeat in her presence and to pretend nothing was wrong. It was easier to just do what needed to be done and escape to friends’ houses, charming her way into their parents’ hearts so they’d let her stay as long as possible.

  “So,” Melanie said, filling the silence. “Rae Peters. I saw the way you looked at her at the party.”

  Had she looked at her? Jori shrugged it off. “I didn’t look at her.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Jori glanced at the time. She should get going. Baylee was settled and she didn’t want to be late to class. But if she ran across campus when she reached the school parking lot, rather than walked‌—‌which she’d done many times for less important reasons than not blowing off a friend‌—‌she’d make it.

  “Weird that she’s dating that rock star,” Melanie said.

  “Yeah, I don’t get it, either.” If Melanie was trying to warn her off by reminding her that Rae was already taken, she was wasting her time, because she was in no danger of forgetting that salient fact.

  “Not that you’re bitter or anything,” Melanie said.

  “What? I’m not bitter. It’s none of my business if Rae wants to settle for someone like that.”

  “What makes you think she’s settling? I mean, we’re talking Kaoli Morgenroth. Dream crush of women everywhere.”

  “I don’t think she’s good for her.” She left it at that, because if she told her the dream crush of women everywhere was about to marry some guy named Griffin and that Rae deserved better than to be someone’s rebound, or worse, someone’s mistress…‌ If she told her all that, Melanie would think less of Rae, and something inside her didn’t want that to happen.

  Melanie said nothing and Jori looked at her more closely. A hint of a smile lurked at the corners of her mouth, making her look as smug as if she were about to win a bet with her girlfriend, as soon as her girlfriend had some time alone with her.

  “You like her.” The way Melanie said it, it wasn’t a question‌—‌it was a statement of fact.

  “She’s dating Kaoli Morgenroth.” Which meant it made no difference whether Jori liked her or not. As in like liked her.

  “And you’re dating what’s‌-‌his‌-‌name,” Melanie said.

  Axel. Right. Her ex‌-‌turned‌-‌pretend‌-‌boyfriend. How could she forget?

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Hmm. If you say so.” Melanie was grinning, though, like she couldn’t help herself.

  “Why are you smiling like that? Do you know something I don’t know? Did she tell you something?”

  “I have eyes.”

  “No, really, you can tell me.” This was no time to keep a secret, especially if it involved Rae and who she was or was not interested in. And Melanie definitely didn’t have to look so amused.

  “How often does she talk about her girlfriend? Never.”

  “That’s all you’ve got?” That wasn’t proof. That was nothing. She’d been hoping for more. For someone whose girlfriend was supposedly a childhood friend of Rae’s, Melanie didn’t have a lot of insider information. “All that means is she’s private. Or modest. She doesn’t want us to think she’s bragging about dating someone famous.”

  “Her girlfriend visits and doesn’t spend the night?”

  How did she know that? Melanie lived here in her cabin with Sierra; she didn’t live down the hall from Rae in the lodge the way Jori did. “You keep track of Rae’s visitors?”

  “One of the staff noticed. She mentioned it to me.”

  Was everyone keeping an eye on Rae’s love life? Or was it Kaoli Morgenroth’s love life they were so interested in? “I’m sure rock stars keep a tight schedule.”

  Melanie laughed and shook her head. “Gotta sleep sometime. Might as well be in the loving, bony arms of her supposed girlfriend.”

  “Rae is not bony,” Jori protested. “She can bench press as much as I can.” Probably. Or at least look good trying.

  Melanie laughed again.

  Yeah, she’d walked right into that one, coming to Rae’s defense. But so what? So she liked her. Quite a bit.

  And Melanie, however far off‌-‌base her reasoning was, was right about another thing: Rae didn’t act like a person who had a girlfriend. It was possible that what Jori had witnessed at the pool between Kaoli and Rae had been the awkward interaction of a struggling relationship‌—‌and how could it not be struggling if one of them was about to marry someone else?‌—‌but she didn’t think so. There’d been something about it, some lack of closeness, some absence of the little signs that two people coexisted in intense proximity, that made her think they were not a couple. But the fact was, Rae said they were dating, so the only respectful thing to do was to take her at her word. Melanie could speculate all she wanted, but in Jori’s case, speculating would only make her want something she couldn’t have.

  “She’s taken,” Jori said.

  “If you’re going to lie to yourself,” Melanie said, “far be it from me to stop you.”

  Jori glared. People who were right could be highly annoying.

  But Melanie wasn’t completely right. The truth was, Jori wasn’t really lying to herself. She was just trying to stay sane.

  Chapter Nine

  “I think everyone’s bi,” Kaoli said.

  She hadn’t been supposed to return until Rae had her choreography ready, but when she showed up in the hallway outside the room in the lodge that was Rae’s temporary home, her bodyguard nowhere in sight, Rae didn’t turn her away. If she’d knocked twenty minutes later, Rae would have been asleep, but hey, who needed sleep? They were all night owls on the road, and Rae wasn’t about to draw attention to the fact that her sleep schedule had changed.

  When Kaoli learned that Rae didn’t keep wine in her mini‌-‌fridge, they’d gone to the first‌-‌floor restaurant bar, and instead of sharing a drink there in public like boundary‌-‌respecting coworkers, Kaoli had ordered two glasses and carried them upstairs as Rae led the way on her crutches, all the way back to the privacy of her suite.

  And then barely waited for the door to swing shut behind her to drop her bombshell.

  I think everyone’s bi.

  Rae swallowed. Now Kaoli decides to venture into dangerous territory? Now, when she was about to get married?


  Of course now. Late at night when she’d told her fiancé she had a business meeting to deal with the latest rumors‌—‌Rae really wished Kaoli hadn’t shared that detail‌—‌was the perfect time to bring up dangerous topics with the woman who’d once had a crush on her.

  Whose bright idea was it, anyway, to tell Kaoli she was welcome to crash in her suite anytime? Come on up and take a bow, Rae. When she’d made the offer, she hadn’t believed Kaoli would take her up on it, showing up unannounced for no apparent reason, booking her bodyguard his own room and not bothering to get one for herself.

  Rae gestured for her to sit at her small table, even though her leg was throbbing with exhaustion and she longed to stretch it out on the sofa. It needed to be elevated. But the table provided a barrier between them. The sofa didn’t.

  “Have you heard the word bicurious?” Kaoli said. “Such a great word.”

  “Have you heard the words cold feet?” If Kaoli was so bi, why hadn’t she ever slept with her back in high school, back when it would have made a difference?

  Kaoli didn’t even blink. She’d always been good at not hearing what she didn’t want to hear. “It’s all a continuum. Most people aren’t in touch with their deepest, truest desires so they deny they could fall a little bit in the middle, but not me.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Everyone’s more bi than they’ll admit. Don’t you think?”

  No, actually, she didn’t.

  “I’m not bi.”

  Kaoli looked taken aback. There was a time when Rae would have fallen all over herself to agree with her every word, eager and grateful to escort her down this road.

  She wasn’t that person anymore.

  “Not even a little?”

  “The heterosexual brainwashing from my parents had me going there for a while, but no, I’m really not.”

  “I think I am. I think I’d like having sex with a woman,” Kaoli said dreamily, raising her stemmed wineglass to her lips, taking an imperceptible sip, then gesturing with her glass in Rae’s direction. Kaoli never got drunk, but she liked to keep a drink in front of her so she could claim the next day that she hadn’t been sober. That had been her style in high school, and it looked like it hadn’t changed. “I think I’d like to do it with someone like you.”

  Rae stared. She’d always wondered what it would be like to have sex with Kaoli. For years she’d wondered. But not like this. Not when Kaoli was pretending, once again, to be drunk.

  Unfortunately, Rae’s body didn’t care about her opinion. Her body had waited for this for a very long time, and it didn’t understand why she wouldn’t give it what it wanted. And her mind…‌her mind was rebelling, too. In high school she’d never been sophisticated enough to figure out what to say to make Kaoli fall into her arms, and to finally have the chance to have her…‌

  She wanted the satisfaction of knowing that after all these years she’d finally gotten what she wanted. That she’d finally won.

  Kaoli stared brazenly back.

  Rae covered Kaoli’s hand, the one that was wrapped around the stem of her wineglass. The glass trembled, the way her body used to when Kaoli would bump shoulders with her accidentally on purpose in the hallway at school between classes. The smell of alcohol wafted up, crowding her living space with memories of a teenage Kaoli. They both guided the glass down and it hit the tabletop unsteadily.

  Rae squeezed her hand. “You know you’re full of shit, right?”

  “Everyone thinks you’re my girlfriend. Why not make it real?”

  Rae released her. “I agreed to pretend to be your girlfriend. Pretend. Not for real.”

  The photo had been a slip‌-‌up. Someone with a telephoto lens had captured Kaoli kneeling alongside the swimming pool kissing Rae on the forehead and sold it to some up‌-‌and‌-‌coming gossip site instead of to Griffin, who as Celebrity Crush’s editor‌-‌in‌-‌chief could have bought exclusive rights to the photo and blocked its publication. Having long and endlessly hoped for even the smallest sign that Kaoli Morgenroth was gay, her huge lesbian fan base had gone wild. When her entire concert tour had suddenly sold out within hours of the news, Kaoli and her publicity manager discovered that the rules of popularity in the music world were not the rules that governed real life, and they decided that this‌—‌rather than a non‌-‌attention‌-‌grabbing engagement to a boring, heterosexual magazine editor‌—‌was the image she needed. Kaoli was now officially cheating on her longtime boyfriend to be with Rae, and lesbian fans were salivating, taking bets on how soon she’d dump him.

  And Rae agreed to go along with it. It would have been nice if the first she’d heard of it had been from Kaoli and not from a stranger at a party, but dealing with her boss’s diva behavior was part of the job, and if it meant not getting fired? Of course she’d gone along with it. An injured dancer was an unemployable dancer, so it was important that she hang on to the job she had. Besides, she wanted Kaoli to perform to sold‌-‌out houses almost as much as Kaoli did. It was her career, too. And it was fun to see photos of herself trending online. Yes, she was vain. Yes, she lied to the public. But it was no worse than what any other celebrity did. If they were in the hospital, they were struggling bravely and not yelling at the nurses. If they were married, their marriage was blissful, right up until the moment their agent announced they were getting divorced. And what harm did it do? She didn’t like lying, but if a little lie made people happy, who was she to tell them they were wrong? She hadn’t purposely posed for that photo, and she wasn’t kissing Kaoli on the lips for the cameras.

  In private, though…‌that would be different.

  “Don’t you want to know what it would be like, you and me?” Kaoli leaned across the table, chest‌-‌first, just the way Jori said she did.

  Rae felt a flash of heat, forgetting everything but the memory of how Kaoli had once gripped her by the waist and stared into her eyes and inched forward until Rae was pressed up against the wood paneling in the Morgenroths’ den, enveloping her in a haze of strawberry fragrance as the creaking of Kaoli’s mother’s footfall overhead fell silent. When she couldn’t get any closer without irrevocably venturing out of the platonic friend zone, their lips had touched. Kaoli had made a break for it and run upstairs. Rae had stood there, breathing hard, too excited to feel cheated. Of course she wanted it to go further‌—‌although she was a little vague on what “further” would be‌—‌but they were headed there, she was sure of it. Soon they’d be moving to open‌-‌mouthed kisses and losing their virginity to each other and life would be perfect.

  When Kaoli returned with melting blue popsicles clutched in her fists and bright blue stain on her lips, and it finally dawned on her that she wasn’t ever going to kiss her again, Rae had stomped home and hurled her trigonometry textbook against the wall.

  She never imagined they’d end up like this. With Kaoli begging her.

  “Give me a chance, Rae.”

  “I already gave you a chance. You ran away.”

  An emotion that might have been guilt flickered through Kaoli’s eyes. “I didn’t know what I wanted. We were so young. You’re not going to forgive me for that?”

  “I can understand being confused back then. What I can’t understand is why you’re still confused now. You’ve had plenty of time to figure it out.”

  “Everyone has their own timetable. We’re not all lucky enough to know exactly who we are when we’re a teenager, like you,” Kaoli said. “It doesn’t mean I didn’t want you. Because I did. I did want you. I always wanted you.”

  “Not enough.”

  Kaoli was quiet and intent as she rubbed a fingertip up the stem of her wineglass. “If I could go back in time and do it over again, that day you tried to kiss me‌—‌I’d kiss you back. I totally would. Sleep with you, even. I wouldn’t run away.” She was taking forever to finish that wine. “You gave me a chance, and I was too immature to realize what I was giving up. I blew it. Will you let me try
again? Please. Tell me it’s not too late.”

  She sounded so sincere. In the years since high school, Kaoli had gotten better at choosing the right words and saying them with just the right delivery. She’d always begged, but never with this kind of finesse, like she meant every self‌-‌debasing word. Like Rae was a goddess and Kaoli knew she wasn’t worthy of her but she wanted her too much not to try.

  It felt flattering.

  It was meant to.

  Rae shook her head with a tiny, sharp jerk. She was not falling for this garbage. She was not.

  Kaoli slid her hand across the table and stopped just short of Rae’s in a silent plea, her eyes simmering with a seductive heat Rae remembered all too well. Rae curled her fingers around Kaoli’s hand.

  Oh hell, she was falling for it.

  “You won’t regret this,” Kaoli said.

  It was amazing how she could look so utterly sincere and not mean any of it.

  “What about your husband‌-‌to‌-‌be?” Rae reminded her, reminded herself. It was disturbing how much part of her still wanted to sleep with her. “Don’t you care about not hurting him?”

  “He knows you were into me in high school. He won’t care.”

  “You told him?”

  “I didn’t have to.”

  Had she been that obvious? She’d tried hard not to be. Perhaps only Griffin, who’d been just as in love with Kaoli in high school as Rae had been, had had the incentive to recognize what was going on. How embarrassing, to think he’d known. And Kaoli, of course, who’d trailed her hand along Rae’s thigh, acting like there was nothing sexual about it, pretending that all she was doing was flipping through their yearbook, saying “Isn’t Griffin cute?” when it fell open to the page with his picture.

  “Hmm,” Rae had said, too worried about keeping Kaoli’s friendship to tell her what she really thought.

  “Who do you think is cuter‌—‌Griffin or Antonio?”

  “They’re both so…‌” Rae closed her eyes and sighed dramatically to hide the panic she was sure Kaoli would sense. She hated not knowing the right answer. Schoolwork was so much easier than this‌—‌the answers were all in the textbook. Figuring out which boys were supposed to be cute was so much harder. She needed a mental cheat sheet to tell her who had the best dimples, the most amazing eyes, and the sexiest unappealing physique.