Only One Kiss (Only One 1)

“Do I want to know what else he did?” I ask, and he smirks and sits down beside me.

“Um, let’s just say Nico got the picture also,” Ralph says. When I look over at him, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as settled as I do when I’m next to him.Chapter 8RalphShe looks over at me smiling, and all I can do is look at her and then down at Ari, who is kicking her feet at her. She bends over and tickles her stomach and then picks her up. “You are such a happy baby,” she says, and then Ari puts her hands in her mouth as she chews on her fingers.

“So what do you think is going to happen?” I ask her about Miller’s situation.

“Well,” she says, and I look at her now. “I’m going to go home and change all his passwords so I can fuck with him.” She smirks now. “Then I’m going to post a picture of him covering his face and admitting he’s not sure what happened, but he’s sorry.”

“What else do you do for him?” I ask, and she looks at me with a weird look on her face. I look down at the grass, trying to wonder why I was so jealous of them. Why did it bother me so much that they were together? They are both two single, consenting adults, so why should it bother me? I don’t know any of the answers, but what I do know is that I fucking hate it.

“I don’t even know what you mean with that question?” She laughs at me.

“I didn’t mean that,” I say, holding up my hands and my stomach sinks thinking about her like that with him. “I mean not that I judge you or anything like that.”

“Good to know.” She sounds annoyed with me now.

“I just mean what other services do you perform?” I ask, and her eyebrow shoots up. “Oh, Jesus, I don’t mean that. I mean professionally.”

“Wow, I didn’t think it could get worse,” she says, throwing her head back and laughing, and if I could, I would grab her hair in my hand and pull her to me to kiss the laughter off her face. But I can’t ever be the one who does that. She shakes her head and then looks at Ari. “Your dad can dig a deep hole.” Then she looks at me as she bounces Ari on her legs. “I take care of all his social media platforms except his Snapchat, obviously.” She shakes her head. “I go onto his page every single day and keep it active for the fans. I usually only take care of Twitter and Facebook and their websites.”

“What about Instagram?” I ask her.

“I usually recommend that they do their own, but if they don’t want to, I do it. Most of my clients take care of Instagram because they can post stories and whatnot.” She mentions Evan and the Stone family members. “The only one who refuses to do anything with social media is Matthew and Max.” I laugh. “Evan says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” She laughs now. “But they just have no interest in it.”

“How do you decide what to post?” I ask. Suddenly, I want to ask all the questions and think of a way to beg her to work for me.

“Well, I go over their account with them, and we pick five topics that they want to be known for or want to post,” she says.

“What would you do if it was me?” I ask. She leans forward now when Ari squeals and kisses her.

“I don’t usually do this on the spot,” she says, “but since I get to play with Ariella while I talk, I’ll make an exception.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. Getting up, I look around and wonder how I’m going to take Ari away from her without being an asshole. She looks up at me. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I don’t want you bending your rules to do me a favor,” I say, my tone tighter than it should be. She looks at me, not sure if she heard me right. She then looks back at Ari and smiles at her, then gets up with her, and she hands Ari to me.

“I wasn’t doing you any favors,” she says, staring daggers at me. “I was being genuine.” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. Instead, she turns and walks away from me. Ari and I just watch her go.

Ari just looks at me and then back again, and I’m sure she’s saying dude what the fuck did you do? I watch her walk around everyone and go to her purse and picks it up. She walks over to Miller and tells him something. He smiles at her, nods, then kisses her on the cheek, and a pit forms in my stomach again as she quietly walks out of the backyard with no one the wiser. I don’t know how long I stand here, but when I finally do walk back to the covered awning, I spot Nico walking out of his house. “Hey, are you good?”