by C. L. Stone
Victor followed behind her, wearing designer jeans, and a short sleeve button up white shirt. Victor’s eyes fell on us. His eyes blazed at me in a way that was confusing. I wanted to tilt my head at him to ask silently what he was thinking, but I forced my head to keep still, worried Gabriel might mess up. Victor roughed fingers through his wavy hair and rubbed at the back of his head.
Erica’s eyes fell curiously on me in Kota’s lap. “How’s it going?”
Kota didn’t flinch, didn’t move his hands from my knees. “So far, so good,” he said.
“She’s still too short,” Gabriel complained.
“I know you can do it,” Kota said. “You can’t stop now.”
Erica moved to her car at the other side of the garage, leaning against it and folding her arms over her chest to watch. “Do we need a stool?”
“No,” Silas and Gabriel said at the same time. Victor remained quiet but his eyes ignited and flared.
Erica’s head tilted, confusion slipping into her eyes. I knew why the boys refused a stool, but now I knew Erica most likely didn’t know anything about what was happening with me. They didn’t tell her.
“Or pillows for her to sit on?” she asked. “Phone books?”
“She’ll be fine,” Kota said. His legs raised up and dropped out from under me, causing me to bounce.
I gasped, gripping at his legs, half grinning and mouthing a small ouch.
“Hey, hey,” Gabriel said. “I’m gonna cut her ear if you do that.”
Erica’s eyes flickered back and forth between my face and her son’s. Gabriel continued to measure and cut but she didn’t seem as interested in this. I watched her from behind locks of hair in my face. Her lips twitched. She was eager to ask something or say something, but I thought maybe she wasn’t sure how to start. No one else was talking, either. Kota was intently watching Gabriel work. I stiffened, feeling the weight of something floating in the air, left unspoken. I wasn’t sure how to move or behave.
“All right,” Gabriel said. He nudged my arm. “Turn around so I can do the front.”
I slipped back off of Kota’s knees, turning around. Again I was facing Silas. Erica was out of view now. Kota’s hands felt for my hips again and he pulled me back until I was perched on his knees. In an effort to keep myself stable, I put my hands behind myself on his legs. Kota kept his hands at my waist to steady me.
Gabriel started combing hair in front of my face, closing off my view of nearly everything.
“What are you all going to do today?” Erica asked, finally breaking the lull.
“North and I are going to do some work at the diner,” Silas said.
“Oh,” Erica’s tone lifted, but it lingered in a peculiar way. This wasn’t who she was hoping would answer. “Is it almost done?”
“A couple more weeks,” Silas said, seeming oblivious to the inflection from Erica. “We’re trying to finish it before football games start.”
“That’ll keep you busy,” Erica said. “But football sounds fun.” Pause. Kota’s fingers tensed against my hips, gripping more than just holding me. “Are you going to take Sang to the football games, Dakota? It’d make a nice date.”
There it was. It was what Erica was waiting to hint at the entire time. I couldn’t see her face, but her voice tipped higher at the end of her last sentence. Expectation.
Kota’s leg shifted underneath me. “I didn’t know she liked football.”
What did that mean? He would have asked me if he thought I liked it? Did he want to? My mind blazed through a thousand different possibilities. Dating? I’m just trying to get through my sophomore year with my new strange group of friends and a mother insistent on punishments they told me weren’t normal. When in the world did I have time to date anyone? When did they? Jessica had been right, we were always busy.
“You didn’t ask her. Sang, do you want Kota to take you to the football games?”
I felt a silent pressure from everyone in the room. What was I supposed to say? If I said no, did it mean I didn’t like Kota? If I said yes, did it mean we’d be going on a date? What did that mean to everyone else? I couldn’t see anyone to confirm how I was supposed to answer.
Gabriel swiped at my hair with his comb, removing a lock from my eyes. His crystal blue eyes stared down at me and he inclined his head a little.
“Yes,” I said quickly to recover for the moment I had paused. If Gabriel was telling me to answer positively, I would. “I’d like to.” It wasn’t a dishonest answer. I’d never been to a football game. It was Kota’s hesitation and unease behind me that had me stumped.
“There,” Erica said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? You should ask girls about date ideas before you assume.”
“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 grumble 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 beamed at me, his eyes brightening. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Since he played football and I sat in his lap, was I expected to date him?
Did I want to?
Kota’s fingers loosened and then gripped 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 heated. 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 ri
sks 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. But the slight of his almost-rejection still stung.
At least Gabriel wanted to. I held onto 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 his 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 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 his 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 why 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? Did I want 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.
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 in 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’d 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 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 nudged my leg with his toe.
“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 t
o 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 us. He 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.
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, 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. Had 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.”