Kya & Xavier: It's Always Been You (Life As We Know It Book 1)

by Mills, Charelle

  “How about you tell that lie to somebody who might believe it. I know you better than you know yourself most of the time and what I know for certain is that you and Zay are more than just friends no matter how many times you say it. You can’t go through all the stuff that you’ve been through and walk away just friends. So stop pretending it’s that easy. If we’re being real, since our freshman year he has literally been the only guy in your life. Well aside from a few failed attempts at moving on. So basically your life is on hold because you’re always there when he needs you and yet he has a so called ‘girlfriend’ it’s not fair Ky. I love Zay but you can’t keep letting him do that to you. He holds on just enough to keep you around but never enough to be what you need. It’s getting old Ky. It really is.”

  I sat there silently processing what Toni had just said. The way it all just came flowing out made me think that it had been sitting on her mind for a while now. The words cut deep because I knew that she was right. I just didn’t know how to break free and to be perfectly honest I didn’t know if I really wanted to. Xavier had been a permanent fixture in my life since our freshman year of high school and now that I was a sophomore in college not much had changed. He floated in and out of my life whenever he wanted to and I couldn’t blame anybody but myself because I let him.

  “Ky you there?” Toni asked softly. I think she must have realized that she had probably hurt my feelings with her rant. I was used to it though because she always spoke her mind. With her, what came up came out and I had to respect that even if I didn’t always like it.

  “Yeah, I’m here but I have to go. I’ll see you when you get home tomorrow.” I ended the call and stared at my phone.

  “Who was that?”

  Xavier had finished his shower and was standing next to my bed.

  “Toni.” Was all I said.

  “You okay?” He asked.

  “Yeah why?”

  “I don't know you just have a strange look on your face.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Ky, really? What's up?”

  I thought about it for a second and then decided to keep my thoughts to myself. I wasn't really in the mood to have another one of our heart to hearts that ended in an argument and weeks of us not speaking.

  “I'm good.” I smiled but I knew him well enough to know that he didn’t believe me so I changed the subject. “You have a game tomorrow, don’t you have curfew? Your coach is going to kill you if you're not back in time.”

  “So now you're worried about me? When I got here you were being all shady and trying put me out.”

  “I,” I paused briefly for dramatic effects and then pointed at myself, “am definitely not shady and unlike you I'm a good friend so I'm always worried about you.”

  “So I'm not good to you?” He gently tugged on my hair before he pulled the towel he was using from around his shoulders and dropped it and his t-shirt into laundry bag that was hanging on my closet door. Xavier folded his jeans across the back of my computer chair before he picked up his phone and checked few notifications with his back to me. I watched as every motion he made no matter how small caused the muscles in his arms and back to flex showing off years of conditioning and discipline.

  “All I'm saying is that I'm a better friend than you.” I said.

  He laid his phone back on my desk and then said, “Nah but I'll let you keep thinking that.” His basketball shorts hung low around his waist exposing the waist band of his boxer briefs and the perfect V sculpted out of muscles that started at his abs and disappeared under his shorts. Too darn sexy for your own good.

  “Because you know it's true.” I said looking away so that he didn’t see me focusing on his body.

  Xavier walked out of my bedroom and entered into our shared area or what you could call our mini living room/kitchen. Our dorm was a two bedroom suite so Toni and I had our own bedrooms and bathrooms. We shared a common area which housed a mini kitchen, two small sofas, a flat screen TV purchased by my family, two stools and table. He pulled open the refrigerator which was on my side of the dorm so his back was to me. He stood there for a minute before grabbed a soda, shut the door and walked back into my room.

  “You need a bigger bed.” He said before he twisted the cap off the soda he was holding, turned it up and then closed it again.

  “Don’t you have a full sized bed? How about you just stay in your own dorm.” I said sarcastically.

  “How about you would miss me too much if I did.”

  He flipped the switch on my wall to turn on my ceiling fan before he laid down next to me with his back against my body pillow that was currently shoved up against the wall and then reached over me to pick up the remote.

  “It’s 60 degrees outside and you’re turning on a fan.” I said asked and then rolled my eyes.

  “It’s hot in here.” I knew he was going to say that.

  “So what about your curfew?” I asked.

  I remembered a few weeks ago when Xavier told me that he didn't get to start in a rival home game because he missed curfew after several warnings from his coach. Xavier didn't function well with rules. His coach made him sit out the entire first half and of course he didn't take it very well. His bad attitude emerged which lead to several personal fouls including a technical for arguing with the referees. The only reason why the coach allowed him to finish the game was because he didn't want to lose to their rival and he needed Xavier on the court in order to win. He was allowed to finish the game but paid for it at the next practice with an hour of running sprints.

  “Johnny’s in town and he thinks I’m with him.”

  “He believed that?” I asked eyebrows raised and straight faced.

  “Yeah because he came by the school today. So coach thinks we're bonding.” His words were sarcastic and lacking emotion.

  “How is he? Did he have deliveries in town?” I asked figuring that his job would be the only reason why Johnny would take the time to show up and try to see him. He was a truck driver and mostly did long haul but occasionally did short distances that brought him near us from time to time. Their relationship was complicated to say the least so I knew that he would never come in town just to see Xavier.

  “Still a drunk and still and asshole.”

  “Oh.” I said softly.

  “I'm good Ky. Don't worry about me and you darn sure don't need to waste any energy worrying about him.”

  “I’m not.”

  I thought about all the nights that I had risked my life and more so his knowing that my parents would have killed us both if they had known that our house was his refuge. I couldn’t even count the number of nights long after they had gone to bed that Xavier had climbed through my window because of Johnny. Sneaking him in my room after he had shown up angry and bruised both physically and mentally from being at war with Johnny probably wasn’t the most responsible thing to do but it was what he needed and that’s all that really mattered. We would stay up all night talking about anything but what he was trying to escape until it was safe for him to sneak back into the war zone he called home. I had never really hated any one in my life before but I was sure that hated Johnny for how he treated Xavier.

  “Are you coming tomorrow?” He asked I’m sure in an effort to change the subject.

  “Not sure, I have a paper due and I need to study for my Chem test.” Xavier had really been pressing the issue about me coming to his games lately but I wasn’t really interested in seeing him with another girl so I always found an excuse not to go.

  I pulled the covers back and stood up so that I could remove my fleece pants leaving me in a pair of cardinal red yoga shorts. I flipped the switch to turn off the lights over my desk which left the dim glow coming from the Christmas lights that lined my ceiling and what little light my flat screen provided. I walked over to my bedroom door, shut and locked it before I placed my foot on my step stool and climbed back into my bed.

  “Sit this over there.” Xavier said and handed me the ha
lf empty soda bottle that he was holding.

  “Toni is going to be pissed that you're drinking her Dr. Pepper.”

  “I can handle Toni.”

  “You sure about that?” I said and laughed. “That’s a whole lot of handling.” The two of them had a sort of love hate relationship and always had going all the way back to middle school. Partly due to the fact that she had to be my shoulder to cry on every time he had let me down, which had been plentiful over the years but mostly because they were so much alike. Stubborn and arrogant.

  “100 percent sure. She can’t get with me. Is she coming back tonight?”

  “I doubt it, she’s with Ant.” I stretched my body completely out, turned on my side and then tugged on the covers because Xavier was laying on top of them. He lifted his body enough for me to pull my comforter from under him up over me and then rested his weight on his side again. I backed into him so he placed his arm over my side and rested his forearm on my hip with his hand on my thigh.

  A few minutes later he shook his head having a delayed reaction to my comment about where Toni was, “She still with that punk?”

  He shook his head again but this time he didn’t say anything else, he didn’t have to. I already knew how he felt about Ant. Xavier wouldn’t even acknowledge him when he was around. He was funny like that. If he didn’t care for you trust me you would definitely know it.

  “I've got class at eight.” He knew my schedule better than I did. That was just my way of letting him know that he was on his own for the rest of the night although I was sure he already knew anyway. Lately I had a bad habit of falling asleep early. College was kicking my butt ten times over so unlike him, I rarely ever pulled all-nighters. I just didn’t have it in me.

  “You going to sleep on me?”

  “Unfortunately I don't have a coach to fix my schedule for me.” I gently elbowed Xavier in the ribs and then snuggled closer to him.

  “Everybody can't have that baller’s life.”

  “Exactly! Which is why I'm going to sleep.”

  “Well I guess it's just you and me old friend.” He said referring to the fact that I was leaving him up alone with the TV as his only entertainment.

  “Night Zay.”

  He leaned over and kissed the side of my face, “Night Ky.”

  Xavier Lee

  As usual Kya went to sleep on me so I was up by myself watching TV. I was used to it though because she rarely ever stayed up late unless I made her so it was all good. I had been spending a lot of time with her lately. Partly because I was hiding from Tori which was easier than just telling her I was done but mostly because I missed being around Ky. Things were just easy with us and I could just chill and be myself around her.

  Most of the girls I dealt with were more interested in number twenty two. I could be the biggest asshole to them and they would accept it as long as on game day they felt like they could be seen with or place some kind of claim to number twenty two. Xavier didn’t exist at that point, it was all about the hype for them. Ky didn’t care about any of that and in fact she hated the attention. All she ever wanted or cared about was me.

  Ky was always there for me even when I wasn’t really there for her. Well not the way she needed me to be. She had been there through the worst parts of my life and never once judged me. And when I say my worst I mean absolute worst. She knew all my demons and somehow still managed to care about me despite them. I suppose knowing that made it too easy for me do what I wanted whenever I wanted because she was always there. That was something that I could always count on so I took advantage of it. Not really because I wanted to hurt her but basically because it was easy to do.

  Girl after girl, mistake after mistake she always let me back in and as terrible as it sounded her loyalty is what gave me a free pass to not be the guy that I knew she deserved. I hated myself for that sometimes because it made me realize that I was more like Johnny than I cared to admit. Well in some ways that is, because there were lines that I refused to cross. I had never disrespected Ky the way that Johnny disrespected women by putting his hands on them. That is one promise that I made to myself and I would never break it, ever!

  I never wanted to be anything like Johnny which is one of the major reasons why I stopped smoking and drinking. I would never forget the night that Ky and I were arguing because she had showed up to a party where I wasn't expecting her to be. I had lied about going but she knew me well enough to come looking for me anyway. Of course she found me, drunk laid up in a bedroom with some girl I barely knew. The last thing I remember was her screaming at me, “You are just like the one person you claim to hate the most. Your father!” She stormed off in tears with me too high and drunk to do anything about it. That was the last time I ever got that wasted. To this day I still hear her in my head every time I get to the point where I'm anywhere near crossing that line again. I refuse to be a drunk, cheating bastard like my Johnny. So far I have the drunk part under control but the cheating, not so much. I’m a work in progress but since I’m technically single I guess I get a pass for that one.

  Johnny was also the main reason why I never got things right with Kya. I have never told her that because I could guarantee that she would feel like it was an excuse. I refused to do to her what he did to my mother so instead of so called cheating, I just kept things open with us and as stupid as it sounded it made perfect sense to me. I'm sure Kya thought I just couldn't settle down and she was partially right but honestly I just didn't want to break her the way Johnny broke my mother. What I do know is that I had hurt Ky more than enough by making promises that I couldn't or rather didn't try hard enough to keep but lately the more girls that I was with the more I realized that they weren’t Ky.

  Most of them were so desperate. They would literally throw themselves at me just because I was an athlete which was funny to me because I rarely ever claimed any of them. I didn’t have to put any effort into finding girls to kick it with because the approached me and aggressively like there was a role reversal going on. They were always calling, texting, showing up at my dorm, buying me things and for what? Bragging rights I guess because relationships were out of the question with me and they didn’t seem to care. I can’t count the number of times that I had been stuck in the middle of females hating on each other because I had been with one or both of them. The most insane thing about it was that I could have sex with just about any girl I wanted to and as arrogant as that sounded it was true but I was starting to realize that wasn't enough anymore.

  That was the main reason why I was keeping my distance from Tori. She was definitely just sex and I was over it. I laughed every time Ky got mad and brought her up because Tori was so far from being a threat to Ky that it was incredibly funny. In fact none of the girls that I ever messed with were ever really a threat to Ky but she never seemed to believe that. Honestly all she ever really had to do was threaten to remove herself from my life, actually mean it and I would probably act like I had some sense when it came to us.

  Tori on the other hand was getting clingy, building something with us that wasn't there and would never be there. A lot of it was my fault because I allowed her to mistake consistency for a relationship so sadly I had to admit my role in her delusional state. It was easier for me to let her believe that we were something that we weren’t instead of just telling her that all she would ever be to me was just sex. I wasn’t taking all the blame though because from day one I made it clear to her that I didn’t do relationships. Well not with her anyway. In fact I was straight up with her by telling her that I wasn't the dating kind of guy and that she would have to take it or leave it with how things were. The crazy thing about it though was in her mind that translated to try harder.

  That was the difference between guys and girls. Girls got emotionally connected too easily. I just didn't have it in me to tell her that she would never be to me what Kya was to me no matter how many times she opened her legs. I had kicked it with my share of females but Ky was the only one
I ever really dated and that wasn’t about to change anytime soon. I wasn’t a total ass about it but I also wasn’t a perfect gentleman either. If Tori was willing to take what I was offering then that was on her not me. My philosophy with situations like that was to keep my distance until they eventually gave up and moved on. I know that sounded harsh but it was the truth and that’s just how it was with me when it came to stuff like that. Why commit when you're not sure if you really can.

  I noticed my phone lighting up so I slid my body from behind Ky, scooted to the foot of her bed and stood up. When I picked up my phone I glanced over at her to make sure that she was still asleep before I answered. I wasn’t really stressing though because she could sleep through a small earth quake and wake up like nothing had ever happened.

  “Sup?” I whispered. It was Tamara calling me. A girl from my school that I occasionally kicked it with. She was a senior and had her own place but it had been a minute since I had seen or talked to her. She had a boyfriend now so she would disappear for months at a time and then just randomly call out to blue looking for a hook up. I was always cool with that since I was never really hurting for attention. Girls were always so eager to get with me that I always had somebody to call if I wanted chill.

  “What’s up Zay, you busy?” Translation I’m horny.

  “Yeah, I’m tied up right now.” I glanced at Kya again and then slowly twisted the door knob to her bathroom and quietly pushed it open.

  “Awe you sure you can’t come through, not even for a minute?”

  Yeah your minutes are more like hours. Not that I was complaining though because it was always worth it.

  “Nah I’m chilling tonight.” The more I thought about how she rolled I was tempted but then I thought about Ky.

  “I see how it is, you’re just gonna to leave me hanging.”

  Damn, please don’t make me chose. “You don’t need me. I know you, you’ve got ‘em lined up begging for attention.”