Documentary (36 page)

“How
?”

“
Well, she pulled me into the bathroom at one point at the deejay battle. I guess she wanted to fool around, and I just wasn’t
into it
, if you know what I mean.” Kai cocked his chin toward the lower half of his body. “Before you get any ideas, it wasn’t because I
can’t;
my mind just wasn’t there
.
And then I called her the wrong name while I was asking if she wanted to come to the small after-party at my house. I kept calling her the wrong name pretty much all night after that at the party. Douche move, but it wasn’t on purpose.” Kai smiled with embarrassment. “She was intent on not going home, and I’m not great at kicking people out, so I gave her something to sleep in. There were pants, too, I swear. I slept in my bed alone, and she took one of the guest rooms. Ask Micah, Lek or Ribs. Ask anybody who was there. She put on that show for you the next day. That morning was really awkward. I kissed her on the cheek, but your back was turned already. She probably blabbed about her night to some celebrity gossip site. She might have gotten pictures of the inside of my house, but she didn’t have any with me in there. We try to manage people who aren’t close friends taking pictures in the house. I don’t have time to go through all my Google Alerts about myself. I can’t worry about it too much.”

“
Wait, you called her the wrong name? Seriously? That sucks but it’s hilarious. This whole story is hilarious.” And she meant it, even though she didn’t like having to think about the two of them together.

“It gets funnier. It was your name.”

“How romantic,” she said sarcastically with a smile. “You were thinking about me? Even after I got mad at you that night?”

“I’m always thinking about you, Dyl. I want…I really want us like before ‘cause I really, really missed the shit out of you.” Kai inched toward her and she didn’t flinch or pull away. “I know I said that already, but I mean it. It’s been hard not talking to you.”

“I’ve missed you too.” She moved closer, dropping her head on his shoulder, and he swiveled his chin to rest it against her forehead. “You really think you’re nothing to me, Kai? ‘Cause that’s bull. And you know me plenty.”

“Felt like I was losing you, Dyl…
losing
us.
Worst thing I’ve felt in a while.” Kai’s warm hand fell on the part of her stomach revealed by her slightly raised pajama top. She curled her fingers into a closed fist against his side with her arm stretched across his stomach. There was no internal lecture about why it was wrong. She had missed being like this with him.

Dylan’s cheeks pumped heat when she looked up at Kai as he shifted. She got
goose bumps when she saw that he was already looking at her. She couldn’t believe how quickly they had gone from where they were the last few days, the last few hours, to here. It came easy, being with him. Even after everything. It was that funny thing with feelings where you know the hate you feel is never actually hate. It’s the shield you put on after you find out that caring about someone else can hurt you.

“As mad as I’ve been, I was still wondering how I would get through Christmas without you here.” Kai ran his hand through her hair.
“Just having you around.”

“Well, I’m not going home. It’s our first Christmas without Mac. I don’t know how it’s going to be. I want everything to be the same, but we’re not the same family
, so how can it be? I just…I just need a break, but then I think about my sister…” All of it just started coming out too fast. She hadn’t even talked to her friends about this.

When she got quiet, Kai
moved to a sitting position. “What? What’s wrong with your sister?”

“It started when Mac got sick again. It’s
, like, she’s completely forgotten the line between relatively harmless fun and being completely fucking stupid. Not that
I
can question anyone else changing after something like this necessarily. But it took my parents months to get a video of her dancing with just her bra and unbuttoned jeans on while drunk, down off some website. And who knows where else it ended up. Her grades have dropped. She’s smoking at school. It’s like she’s constantly competing with me for our parents’ attention all of a sudden. And I don’t know how to talk to her about what she’s feeling because I don’t know how to talk about what I’m feeling.” Dylan sat up, suddenly anxious about what she was about to share. “Did you ever do anything weird, like, really weird, after your mom died?”

Kai’s eyebrows jumped for his hairline as he chuckled. “You’re going to have to settle for the abridged version because it’s late…but the list is
really
long.”

Dylan laughed quietly, humorlessly. “Well, I’m still emailing him. Mac. Sort of. Obviously, he’s never going to respond, but we used to text so much that I needed to keep doing it somehow. Probably sounds stupid, right? Or really fucking crazy? I got a tattoo. That should’ve been enough, right?” Even now as she was saying it, she felt the impulse to start a message to Mac. Her heart
was pounding as she searched Kai’s eyes, awaiting some sign of judgment, but his expression was reassuring and soothing. It made her eyes fill with tears pretty easily.

“How long has it been again?”

“Seven months.”

Kai kissed her hairline. “You’re far from crazy. Is it any different from writing a letter or talking to a headstone? I don’t think so. But habits like that are hard to break even at
death.
I kept a voicemail from my mom for years, and I would listen to it just to hear her talking to me. It wasn’t even about her voice. I think it was about our relationship and our connection. Sometimes I hate that I deleted it when I did.” He kissed her forehead. “The weird stuff, it happens. Sometimes, you gotta let it.” He brushed the tears off her face with the backs of his hands.

“I’m way too much of a cry baby when you’re around,” she joked, but Dylan knew it meant she trusted him, that she felt safe enough. She hadn’t even cried at Mac’s funeral, too afraid of all those people seeing her that way. “No more tears.” She squeezed his hand. “Tell me what you’re doing for Christmas.”

“We usually do a huge dinner with all the other orphans,” Kai said. “I was hoping you were going to miss my cooking. Let’s just say, I’m better off going to work in thermodynamics tomorrow because I know more about it than I do cooking. Ribs does it all.” He eased back down to the mattress, and once he got settled, she put her head down on his shoulder again.

“It’s okay. I’ll be wi
th Jamie on the Big Island. And just so you know, my job in the kitchen at home is literally to make the holiday punch. And that’s an upgrade from just being allowed to take the ingredients out of the pantry.”

After his laughter floated into silence, he took in a deep breath. “Dyl, I need you to know I’m really sorry about everything. Tonight. Before that…everything. I’ve been such a dick and I’ve been too stubborn to tell you how good your videos are. You’re so good at this. I can’t think of anyone else I would want on this tour with me.” Kai shifted to his side and she scoot back to have a better view of him. “And I did watch your movies. I saw them before the interview, and I chose you before the interview. I had made up my mind about you from the minute I saw your
résumé
and then your work. I liked the one you did about middle school girls. That’s how I made my decision.

“Nina is wrong if she told you I somehow let my dick decide anything. Honestly, I saw your
résumé
and I had no idea you were a girl right away. I told Nina you were the person I wanted to work with, and that she should pick you. Even after she disagreed after the interview, I suggested that she go back and look at all the candidates, and she knew yours was the best.
She
actually liked you the most, too, and that’s why she didn’t fight me on it much when I told her I was going to your school to offer you the job on her behalf.

“
As beautiful as I thought you were that day I met you, I
knew
you were talented too. Trust me, I felt like a dick for being attracted to you because I didn’t want you to think that had been driving my decision. I only said I hadn’t watched your movies during the interview to mess with you, and to see how you would handle it. Other people wouldn’t have responded the way you did.

“
You showed me what I wanted the entire conversation: someone who saw past
Kai White
,
famous guy
,
and just treated me like a regular person. Even now, you yell at me, you say whatever it is you’re thinking, and you give me as much shit as I give you. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect person to be here with me
.
”

Something
budged in her chest that made her gasp, and she knew if she wasn’t careful, it was going to turn into tears. Again. This sweet boy was still finding ways to make her crazy for him. She gave him an appreciative squeeze. “Thank you.”

Dylan sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. “Are you going to be okay? You seem like you’ve got so much going on in your head. I hope I didn’t add to it. ‘Cause you
’ve been drinking so much lately…”

“I saw Butch drink himself nearly
to death. I always remember to pull back because, clearly, it’s in my family, but I do need to slow down. I’ve been relying on it a ton to work through stuff.” Kai traced the bend of her knee with his thumb. “I’ll be okay, but you really can’t dig into this Jeremy thing anymore, even if you want to help me. I’m not asking for myself. This isn’t about me at all. I’ll talk to Nina about the web series.”

“Okay
, but please don’t talk to Nina. I’ve been working so hard. I don’t want her to think that I asked you to or influenced you in any way to speak for me. I want to earn them.”

“Well, I’m gonna talk to her at some point. She’s my business partner too. Huge conflict of interest, I know, but I’ve pretty much given her control over hiring people, and transferring and licensing digital company property. I normally don’t have a problem with how she does it
, and who she gives digital property to, but I’m not okay with her making deals like that behind my back.”

“
I should’ve told you way earlier, but I was pretty angry about you leaving me at the Lava Surf party and never coming back, and then Tiffany.”

Kai sat up suddenly, looking shocked.
“Dyl, I came back that night in L.A. You were asleep. And then I punched a hole in Caroline’s million dollar wall so she made me leave. But I did come back.” Kai moved to sit in front of her.

“Why didn’t you just call me after? Or answer my texts?” she asked, noting how hurt she sounded. Being disregarded by him had gotten to her more than maybe she had even admitted to herself.

Kai transitioned to his knees and moved his face close to hers so that his chin was hovering right over her knees. “Dylan, I’m a fucking mess, okay? I saw the way you looked at me when you asked me about the fight that night in L.A., but then we got past it, and I thought,
she’s seeing me again, and she’ll treat me like how she did during the interview.
When I left to go to Erica, I knew it looked bad and I couldn’t really explain. My head was all fucked up from Erica’s situation, and when I got back, the party was dying down, but I got into it with some douchebag pushing up on one of my girl friends. Couldn’t hit him ‘cause of my probation, so I punched Caroline’s wall—with my luck, it turned out to be a hollow spot—and she kicked me out. I figured when you really thought about everything, you weren’t gonna want to deal with me anyway, so I just thought I’d wait for you to turn down the job.”

             
“I was trying to reach you though,” Dylan said with a small amount of frustration.

             
“Note the designation as ‘a fucking mess,’” he said, pointing to himself. “I thought,
she’s being nice, and as soon as I respond, she’s going to break it to me that she’s not coming.”

Dylan furrowed her brow.
“And then at the charity party when I asked you?”

“You were so pissed off. I thought that if we got into a discussion, you’d quit. I’ve be
en trying to avoid you quitting, Dyl!”

She speared his hair back with her fingers. “And you’re not a fucking mess. I’m the one emailing my dead brother,” she said sheepishly. 

“Fair enough,” he said, holding out his hand. “From one fucking mess to another.” Dylan took it and they shook.

“Okay, so
I have my own confession...about your music.” She hopped off the bed and looked back at him once from her place at her suitcase to catch a glimpse of his confused look. She hid her personal laptop behind her back until she reached the bed. “So, I did sort of like Evernight…beyond just ‘Earthquake.’” She set the laptop on the bed and opened her iTunes to show him the album downloads.

“I knew you were lying!
How could you not like Evernight? This was our best album!” Kai said, tapping the screen. He took a pen from the bedside table, scribbled his signature on a writing pad and handed it to her.

“Oh my God, Kai White
, from the boy band Evernight, just signed an autograph for me. OhmyGod! Ohmy—” she teased before Kai tackled her to the bed, hovered over her and tickled her sides mercilessly.