“It’s not fun if you’re not going to do it right.”
“You don’t want me to beat you all the time,” he said.
I dropped the controller in his lap, folding my arms over my chest. “Kota, they said to take it easy. They didn’t say baby me.”
Kota did a tiny eye roll and picked up the controller, passing it to me. “All right. One more time.”
We did the same course again, the same race. There were five other cars besides ours. This time when we started, Kota took off right from the start. I managed to make my way into third, but ended up tailing the computer-controlled second place car.
When we got to the sharp turn again, I slipped again, crashing. Before the game corrected my car, Kota’s car zoomed over the finish line.
“You can’t take the sharp turns head-on,” he said, dropping the controller into his lap. “You have to hit the brake.”
“You can’t slow down. It’s a race,” I said, finishing the lap and ending up second to last again. “You sped through the whole thing.”
“I braked at the turns,” he said. “And I drifted when I needed to.”
“Drifted?”
Kota pushed the button on his controller, turning it off. “Here, play the next race.” He lifted his arm, tucking it around my back, leaning against me.
I stiffened, not meaning to, but his body was suddenly pressing up against mine. It made it hard to focus. I pressed the buttons and started the race, but I was thinking about his hip up against mine, and his fingertips tracing along my collarbone.
“Ignore the other racers for a moment,” he said. “When you get up to the next turn, hang on to the brake and turn your car. When you even out again, release the brake and hit the boost full on.”
This was the Kota I was familiar with. I kind of liked when he took time with me to teach me something new. I tried focusing on the race. I avoided the other cars, got up to a good turn, and slapped at the brakes. The car came to a complete dead stop in the middle of the track. “That doesn’t work.”
“You’re going in too slow on the turn,” he said. His hand dropped down on my knee. “Don’t slow down when you get there. You can keep your finger on the gas, just hit the brake and turn at the same time.”
I tried again, but while I was racing, Kota traced his knuckles along the top of my calf, sliding smoothly against my skin. It was a gentle motion, almost absentminded as his eyes stayed on the game.
But that tiny bit of movement set my heart thundering.
At the next turn in the game, my car started to drift, but as his fingers traced back up toward my knee, my thumbs slipped and my car spun around until it was facing the opposite direction.
I released a small noise, expressing a bit of pent up tension he had instilled in me from his touch and from failing again. I bit my lip, trying to get myself to focus.
At the next turn, I managed to drift, but it was cut short and my car shook a little from side to side before I managed to straighten it out.
Kota tapped at my leg with his knuckles. “You’re getting better.”
“I’m wobbly,” I said.
“It takes practice.” His fingers slid down my calf until he caught my foot hanging off the side of his leg. He picked it up, bringing it closer. He bent over my knees to inspect my toes.
“Kota...” His tug at my legs had me bending away from him. I had to sit up awkwardly, readjusting so I didn’t fall off the bean bag chair.
“Polish doesn’t last very long, does it?” He traced his fingertips over my toes, poking at the chip marks across the beautiful pink flowers Gabriel had painted for me a couple of weeks ago.
I’d known it’d been chipping, but I didn’t have the heart to take the polish off. “Gabriel said he was going to redo it sometime. He hasn’t had a day off in a while.”
He nudged my legs until my feet were on the floor and he got up. “Hang on a second,” he said. “Keep practicing.”
When he thudded up the stairs to his bedroom again, I breathed out a sigh, settling into the chair. Maybe I was making too much of being alone with him before. Now that we were doing something, it seemed easier to handle Kota by himself, and he wasn’t too bad. Why did I still feel nervous?
Or maybe I wasn’t. What I thought was nervousness. I was more anxious. Excited. Anticipating what he might do next, because as much as my pulse quickened and my hands shook, I didn’t want to run like I used to. I wanted to stay next to him, even if I wasn’t sure of what I was doing.
When Kota returned, I’d finished the race and started another. I started to lean back over to give him room, but he waved me off. “No,” he said. “Sit back.” He dropped a couple of bottles of polish on the ground, a bottle of nail polish remover, a package of cotton balls and a roll of paper towels.
“What are you doing?” I asked, releasing the controller to gingerly move on the chair, unsure of where he wanted me.
“I’ll fix your toes,” he said, as plainly as if he’d told me to do my homework. He dropped onto his knees in front of me, then stopped, tilting his head as if trying to figure out where to put himself.
I knocked my knees together seeing him kneeling in front of me. I curled up into the bean bag chair and lost focus on the game and crashed the car. I couldn’t believe he was going to redo my toenails. I should have figured. Show Kota something broken...
Max got up from his spot on the couch to stick his nose at Kota’s elbow.
Kota waved him off. “Not now, Max. Go sit on the couch.”
Max snuffed and padded back to the couch, climbing back onto it and curling up into the cushion.
“Max knows the word ‘couch’?”
“He knows a lot of things,” he said. He sat down on the floor, with his back against the beanbag chair. He picked up my calf, hung it over his shoulder. He bent his knees, and planted my foot on top of his thigh.
He started with the bottle of nail polish remover. He doused a cotton ball with the liquid. He cupped his hand under my toes and pressed the cotton to my nails.
“Like what?” I asked. I’d never seen Kota training Max to do things. “What can he do?”
“Max,” he said, using a commanding tone and without looking up from what he was doing. “Light.”
Max dropped down from the couch, and trailed over to the wall. He jumped, hitting the switch with his nose. The light flicked on overhead.
“Neat,” I said.
“Max,” Kota said. He tore a square of paper towel from the roll, crumpled it, and tossed it across the room to land on the floor. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the towel. “Throw it away.”
Max padded over to the towel. He nosed it once, clipped the very edge with his mouth and picked it up off the floor. He wandered off with it hanging from his mouth and headed toward the kitchen.
“He’ll throw it in the trash?” I asked.
“He’s pretty clever,” Kota said. “He’s also great at security. He’ll scan the house to see who is at home and will report back to me if something’s wrong. If I say the right thing, he’ll sit in front of someone and guard.”
“What if someone breaks into the house?”
“If I’m not home,” he said, “Max could probably stop an entry. He’s had the training.”
“He’d bite?”
“He may bite a bad guy if provoked, on the leg or ankle. He’d probably knock them over and bark a lot.”
Something nagged the back of my head after he said that, stirring a memory. “So if someone walked in, you could say something and he’d go jump on them?”
“Of course,” Kota said, as he scrubbed at the corners of my toenails with a fresh bit of cotton ball to get the polish off. The acetone smell was burned my nose.
I fiddled with the controller in my hand, eyeballing Kota. “So, he’d knock someone over and sit on them until you told him to get up?”
Kota’s fingers slowed, making small circles against my toenail. The edges of his cheeks tinted. “Oops.”
I dropped the controller, boosting myself to sit up slightly against the beanbag chair. “Kota? Did you tell Max to jump on me that night?”
Kota’s head ducked slightly, his shoulders hunching. “I might have said something...”
My eyes widened. I couldn’t believe it. I attempted to recall what he’d told me when I was trying to run off for the night to escape my parents and Max jumped on me. “You’d said the lead was old.”
“It was old,” he said, gently tapping the wet cotton ball to my toes.