“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 grumbling 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 half beamed at me, his eyes brightening. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. Since he played football and I sat in his lap that I should be almost expected to date him?
Did I want to?
Kota’s fingers loosened and then regripped 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 radiated. 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 risks 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. The slight of the almost-rejection still stung.
At least Gabriel wanted to. I held on to 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 a 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 a spot against 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 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 his meaning when 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? Was I wanting 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.
&n
bsp; 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. That was 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.”