“You want to call her now?”
She thinks. “Yeah, maybe I can…” She shakes off her wet hand and touches the phone screen. “I figure she hasn’t heard anything yet or else she’d be blowing up my inbox too.”
Winona Meadows is more of a mystery to me than some of her cousins. Can’t predict whether or not she’d love the idea of Sulli dating Akara and me. Like everyone else, I expect her to be firmly on Team Akara, and I understand that loyalty. He’s the one with long-lasting memories protecting the Meadows family.
I’m just a guy that showed up in Sulli’s life. Late to the party.
Sulli dials a number, phone pressed to her ear. “Nona?”
I watch Sulli’s face drop again.
“Oh no, I can call back later—no, you go ahead. You’re busy…fuck.” She adjusts her grip, and I can’t hear anything her fifteen-year-old sister replies.
I stand back up, giving Sulli some privacy. I twirl the net gun again, eyeing the sky.
“No, no, no, it’s totally fine—go finish your defensive driving class. We can talk another time. Alright…okay. Kick ass, squirt.” And then the phone slips from her palm like butter.
She tries to course-correct, hot-potato-ing the cell, but the phone plops into the water. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Sulli dives down as I rush over.
She comes back up, swims over, and I toss her a towel while she climbs out of the pool in a panic. “I can’t believe I fucking did that.” She tries to dry off the cell, then smacks it against her palm. “Turn on, turn fucking on.”
“Were you done talking to her?”
“Sort of—the last thing she said was, I love you a waffle lot, and now I feel like shit for not saying it back.” Sulli shifts her weight from side to side, in distress. “Fuck, ugh, I’m already a shit sister for not telling her about you and Akara.”
“Hey, hey, hey, look at me.”
She looks pained.
I hold her shoulders. “We’re gonna figure this out.”
“How?”
What would Kitsuwon do? As she squints, I block the sun from her eyes with my hand. Alright, that’s what I would do. He’d fix shit.
“I have a working phone. We can call her back.”
Sulli hesitates. “I don’t want to bother her anymore than I did. She gets her license in March, and she’s taking some driving classes before then…what if I text her off your phone?”
I pass her my cell. “Go ahead.”
Sulli composes a text really fast and hits send. “I just told her that it’s me, and I dropped my phone in the pool.” She adds fast, “And that I love her, I put that in there too.” She tries to relax. “I know you don’t care who takes sides, but I fucking care. I think I’m stalling on telling Nona because I know she’s going to want me to be with only Akara.” She wipes nonexistent sweat off her brow. “Fuck.”
I wouldn’t know how to win her sister over.
And that’s where Sulli and Akara are more alike. Winning isn’t really my forte.
That’s their strength.
A faint buzzing sound cuts into the short quiet, and I eye the sky. “There it is.” I shoot the net gun at the drone. Capturing the device as it thuds down to the patio. After I shut off the thing, the terrace doors open.
Akara saunters outside, coming towards us in gym pants and a red muscle shirt. He spots Sulli’s tension. “What are you two doing?”
I toss the net gun on a lounge chair. “Missing you.”
Sulli tells him the full story about her wet phone and short call with her sister. He takes the cell from her, and somehow, he dries the thing off with the towel like he’s the Cell Phone Whisperer.
Jesus fucking Christ.
It couldn’t have been that easy.
Akara shakes his head at me and her. “I leave you two for three seconds.”
“Three hours,” Sulli refutes.
“She almost drowned from lovesickness.” I smack his chest. “I had to give her CPR. It was a fuckin’ ordeal.”
“The biggest,” Sulli adds. “Like the size of Banks’ dick kind of big.”
I start to smile.
Akara gives her a teasing look. “The kind of size you can’t take.”
“I can take him,” she refutes, shoving his arm.
“Like you can take me.” He holds both of her arms and walks her backwards towards the edge of the pool. Until he walks right into the water with her. They go down, and I’m laughing when they pop back up. Sulli splashes him.
Akara wipes off the water, then reaches back towards me, capturing my ankle.
I shake him off and just jump in, fully-clothed.
When I come up, we’re all closer together. Treading water in a huddle. Akara pushes his wet hair back, his eyes drifting from me to her, and our smiles slowly fade.
He tells us, “I’m shutting down Studio 9 indefinitely.”
“Kits—”
“It’s okay, Sulli. It’s just until I find someone to take Alexis’ place.” Alexis—his manager, or rather, ex-manager.