Pretty Thing (Naughty Things 1)

“I know but… I just figured you were just being nice.”

“I get to hold your hand all the way home, are you kidding me? I’ve been wanting to walk you home from somewhere for decades.”

She leans up and kisses me, then blushes and smiles at her hostess friend and we walk out holding hands.

“What’s for dinner? Please tell me not pasta or steak.”

“French,” I say. “And not the weird kind of French, either.”

“Is there any other kind?” she jokes.

“You’ll see.”

“You know what the best part about working in a kitchen is?” she asks.

“What’s that?”

“It’s pretty much the law that you have to take a shower when you get home.”

“Is it?” I laugh.

“Yes.” She waggles her eyebrows at me. “Wanna join me?”

“Have you been thinking about our shower sex all day?”

“Haven’t you?” she quips.

“I have,” I lie. Because if I don’t say that she’ll wonder what I did think about and that’s off the table tonight. No Kyle. Nothing that has anything to do with him for one night. “But I’m gonna decline the shower sex and hold out for the after-first-date sex.”

“Oh.” She laughs. “Well, I might be a little disappointed but I suppose I’ll live if I have to wait.”

I stretch out on her couch as she showers and gets ready. Breaking my own rule the second she disappears behind her bathroom door because I start thinking about Kyle.

I stare at my phone. Call that number sixteen times, at least, hanging up every time it gets to the part where he says, “… crushed by the Jeep because…”

Because I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.

My phone rings as I’m staring at it. But then I realize it’s not my phone, it’s Kali’s, sitting on the coffee table where she put it down when we got here.

“Is that my phone?” she calls from the bedroom.

“Yeah,” I say, looking down at her screen. “It’s your parents.”

“Answer it for me, will you?”

“Sure,” I say, picking up her phone and tabbing accept, then putting it on speaker. “Kali’s phone, this is Aiden.”

“Aiden,” her father says. “I’m so glad you two are together. Kali’s nearby, right?”

“What’s he need?” Kali calls.

“Yeah, she’s here. Why?”

“We have something we want to share with you two,” Kali’s mother says. I must be on speaker phone too. “Kali, can you hear me?”

Kali comes out of her bedroom calling, “Yeah, I can hear you, Mom. What’s up?”

“We want you to hear Kyle’s message to us. We thought you’d love it as much as we did.”

Kali and I look at each other with the same amount of dread. This is not how we wanted to start our date. In fact, we’re both playing head-in-the-sand about this whole Kyle thing.

But of course we both say, “Yes,” and “Great,” because her parents need this moment from us and there’s no way to back out now.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – KALI

“Where are you two?” my dad asks.

“Are you at the garage?” my mom follows up.

Aiden and I look at each other and shrug. “No,” I say. “Aiden’s with me at my place.”

“Oh, that’s good,” my mom says. “I’m glad you two are together. Did you listen to your messages yet?”

“No,” Aiden and I say at the same time. And then we’re silent. Everyone is silent. And that makes the whole thing awkward.

“Oh, OK,” my mom says. “Are you ready?”

I can say with one hundred percent certainty that we are not ready. But again, we both say, “Yes.”

“Here we go,” my dad says.

And then Kyle’s voice is coming through the phone.

“Heeeeeey,” he says. “Mom and Dad. I know this is a sad occasion for you but for me, you know, it’s just another day. I saw this app online a couple months ago. Dead Notes. Kinda morbid. But you know, also, kinda nice. I don’t know what happened to me. I do hope I died doing something cool, for sure. But I’m sorry I’m gone and you’ve got to deal with all that. Except I’m not gone, you guys. I’m right down the street at work. Aiden is downstairs. I can hear him and Clyde messing around and laughing. And I called up Kali the other day just to hear her voice because she’s so busy living her life now, ya know. I have to record Aiden’s message next and I know exactly what to say to him, but Kali. I had to think on that for a few days. Needed to hear her voice.”

I try to think back to when he might’ve recorded this. When I talked to him on some random occasion that turns out wasn’t really random.

I remember now. It was almost two years ago, just after I got hired at my current job. Kyle called me just as I was leaving for work and we talked as I walked. About what? I don’t remember. Normal stuff. I was thinking about normal stuff and he was thinking about dying. He showed up at my apartment a few days later for no reason at all. No reason. Just wanted to take his sister out to lunch.