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As soon as it was over, Kiara regretted it. He smacked her ass and left her alone in the bathroom without so much as another word, and that was that. She blinked blearily at herself in the mirror, the effects of the copious amount of alcohol in her system slowly starting to wear off. Shit , the hickey he’d left on her chest would be a hard one to cover up. Her mom would kill her, and Sarah would ask questions - oh god, Sarah would totally ask questions. She could hear her now, Ooh, Kiara! What’s that all about? Tell me all about him!
Kiara swallowed thickly. How could she face her best friend and say, “ Yeah, I just had the worst sex of my life… with your brother. I chose him because I know if I told you how I really feel, you’d run away from me. He was the next best thing to you - so, of course, it sucked.”
Her hands shook as she readjusted her panties and smoothed her party dress down over her ass. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, but the scant amount of eyeliner Sarah had convinced her to put on was now smeared around her eyes. Her hair stuck to her sweaty neck and the lipgloss Rafe’s sloppy, open-mouthed kisses had spread across her cheeks. She splashed some cool water on her face, hoping to shake herself out of whatever drunken stupor had led her to believe hooking up with Rafe had been a good idea. Because taking out your repressed feelings for your best friend on her brother was a solid course of action.
She barely made it to the toilet before her lunch made a reappearance. She choked on the bile for a moment, mentally cursing herself for not eating more that day. The alcohol she’d consumed tasted more bitter on the way back up.
Kiara’s ankle turned as she opened the bathroom door, the strap of her high heel slipping down as the shoe slid out from underneath her. “Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered. Why had she let Sarah convince her to wear these stupid things?
“Kiara!” Sarah slurred, stumbling up to her, her own heels long abandoned. She draped an arm around Kiara’s shoulders, knocking them both off balance and into the wall. The music was overbearingly loud. “Where were you?”
“Had to pee,” Kiara yelled over the music. She needed water. The taste of vomit still permeated her mouth.
“I missed you,” Sarah giggled. She was well past tipsy. “Let’s dance, ’kay?”
Kiara tried to shrug off Sarah’s oppressive embrace. It was too hot, her dress was still twisted in all the wrong places, her stomach still churned, her turned ankle ached, the music was too loud. “No,” she said. “No, Sarah, I’m gonna go. I gotta go home.”
“No, you were gonna spend the night!” the blonde pouted.
“Change of plans, my mom wants me home.”
“Fine. You owe me a sleepover. And an explanation about who gave you that! ” She emphasized her last word by poking the massive hickey on Kiara’s chest. How was it already so purple? “Love you, bitch.” Sarah hugged her sloppily, and stumbled off, already linking arms with another Kook Princess and reaching for another drink.
“I love you, too,” Kiara whispered, unable to tell if her throat was raw from vomiting or from unshed tears suddenly filling her eyes.
The night air was oddly cold for April, and goosebumps sprang up on Kiara’s skin as she stepped outside. She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to stop herself from shivering. She would have to walk home. No one inside was in a state to drive and she didn’t even have her license yet, let alone a car to drive. The stars that should have been out were obscured by swathes of dark clouds. It would probably rain. Great, just great. She fished her phone out of her bra, where she had shoved it before she and Rafe… anyway, she checked the time: 10:37. Walking home alone at this time of night might not be her best idea, but it certainly wasn’t worse than hooking up with Rafe, so she set off, heels clicking on the asphalt. She made it to the end of the street before a clap of thunder rolled above her head and bottom dropped out.
Within a few minutes, Kiara was soaked to the bone, hair sticking to her neck, back, and face, rivulets of water running into her eyes. Her ankle turned again, and this time her heel actually broke. She stumbled off the road onto the soft grass of the shoulder, trying to regain her balance. A single beam of light broke through the darkness, an engine roaring behind it. She fell to the ground, her head pounding from the alcohol and her heart pounding from fear. The beam of light approached and came to a stop, the engine cutting shortly after. “Kie?” a familiar voice called.
“JJ?” She could have sobbed in relief. She was so close to becoming one of those statistics her mother had warned her about.
“Kie, what are you doing out here?” JJ asked, rushing to her and helping her back to her feet. She slipped her heels off, letting her toes sink into the mud on the side of the road. “You’re dressed like a fucking Kook,” he said with a smirk.
“I was at fucking Kook party,” she muttered, ashamed to even admit it. “Got too drunk and no one was around to drive me home.”
“Shit, you could have called.” The sincerity of his statement was surprising.
She shrugged noncommittally. She hadn’t really spoken to him since she started at the Kook Academy. When she first switched schools she had promised she would visit often, they were still her best friends, they couldn’t get rid of her that easily - she said all the right things. Then she met Sarah. Sarah fucking Cameron with her long blonde hair, her fancy Kook parties, and her penchant for saving the turtles. Kiara’s head had been turned in an instant, and she hadn’t meant to, but soon she was blowing off surfing with the Pogues for a Kook Princess hangout at the Cameron residence. Anything to be close to Sarah. Eventually, they’d stopped asking her to come along, and she stopped making an effort altogether. She was almost positive they hated her for ditching them.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked JJ, avoiding the other all-too-obvious question.
“Was going to John B’s,” was the simple response. She thought about pressing for more answers: why this late? Why take this roundabout route? But at the moment she was simply grateful to have a familiar face present. “Do you,” he paused, as if unsure about finishing the rest of his thought. Then his question came out in a rush, “Do you want me to take you home?”
“Yes,” Kiara breathed in relief. She was cold, wet, and still very much drunk. The idea of finishing her walk alone was daunting.
It took some finagling to get her settled on the back of JJ’s bike - where had he even found the money for this thing? - but in a few moments, she was clinging to his back as he sped down the road, dress hitched up around her thighs, heels in one hand. It was most likely ridiculously dangerous, but less so than walking home alone after dark. She let her eyes close against the wind and rain. JJ was impossibly warm and his shirt smelled like Old Spice, the ocean, and the rain - she shoved the implications of reveling in her former-best-friend’s smell right down into the furthest reaches of her alcohol addled brain.
JJ had dropped her off at her house a handful of times before everything, so he was able to easily find his way there. The house was dark as he pulled up. He cut the bike’s engine and helped Kie clamber off. She stumbled again, trying to regain her footing on her now twice-turned ankle. She couldn’t tell for sure in the dark, but she thought it was starting to swell. Once JJ made sure she was stable, he allowed her to walk on her own to the door, but he followed her closely. She crouched to get the spare key from under a lantern on the porch, then unlocked the door and went inside. JJ briefly contemplated just letting her go and leaving now that he was sure she had gotten home safely, but she forgot to close the door behind her, and she was wandering down the hall. He sighed and followed her inside the house.
“Are your parents asleep?” he asked in a whisper.
“No,” she called back, loudly. “They’re out of town. I was gonna stay over at Sarah’s, but…” she let her voice trail off. She dumped her heels in a corner, and made her way to the kitchen.
“But what?” JJ asked. He watched as she pulled a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer, and pulled herself up onto the counter. He realized her ankle was pretty fucked up as she stretched out her leg and placed the bag on it. “What happened to you?”
“Stupid fuckin’ high heels,” she muttered. “Being a girl sucks.” She leaned back and opened a cabinet by her head, pulling a glass out. She leaned forward to fill it with water from the sink and drank deeply.
JJ continued watching half in confusion at the state she was in and half in admiration that she had maintained any semblance of dexterity and grace while also being completely shitfaced. “Must’ve been some party.” He pulled himself up to sit on the kitchen island across from her.
Kiara rolled her eyes. She finished her glass of water and said, “You don’t have to stick around. I can take care of myself.” She set aside the bag of frozen peas, slid off the counter, and hissed in pain as her weight fell on her turned ankle. She swallowed and regained her composure before limping out of the kitchen and toward the stairs.
JJ jumped off the island to follow her. He caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs and wordlessly wrapped an arm around her waist. Kiara sighed, but threw her arm around his shoulder and allowed him to help her up the stairs and into her bedroom. JJ paused in the doorway, releasing her waist. He hadn’t been in her house before, let alone her room. If it were any other girl, he wouldn’t have cared before barging in, but this was Kiara, and he currently had no idea where he stood with her.
Kiara limped over to her dresser and began rummaging around for clothing other than her skimpy, wet party dress. “You just gonna stand there staring?” She asked. She straightened up and threw him a pair of sweatpants that he recognized as his and a t-shirt that he recognized as John B’s. “I’m going to shower. You should get out of your wet clothes.”
JJ smirked, “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble just to get me naked in your bedroom, Kie.”
“Fuck you,” she growled.
“Before or after your shower?” He teased, plastering an innocent look on his face. He deserved the towel she threw at his face.
A cloud of steam rolled out of her bathroom, when Kiara emerged from her shower. JJ had changed and sat awkwardly on the end of her bed, his wet clothes in a pile on top of the towel she had thrown at him. He pretended not to notice how her wet hair had dampened the back of her tank top to the point it was almost see through. He definitely pretended not to notice she wasn’t wearing a bra. “Feeling better?” He asked.
“Head hurts, ankle hurts,” she muttered in response, flinging herself face down onto the bed. “Threw up again in the shower.”
“Again?”
“Threw up at the party, too.” She rolled over, throwing an arm over her face. As she moved, JJ caught sight of the large purple mark adorning her chest.
“Shit, Kie, what’s that?” He asked, pointing.
She glanced at his pointing finger, and then down at the mark. “What does it look like?”
“A massive fucking hickey. Who gave it to you?”
She sat up and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have to answer your questions about my sex life, Maybank.”
JJ shrugged. “Okay, but it looks new. Is that why you left your fancy Kook shindig?”
Kiara set her jaw and looked JJ in the eye for exactly one second before her confidence wavered. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and setting her chin on her arms. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Yeah it’s why I left.”
A dark look passed over JJ’s face. “Did some pretentious fucking Kook asshole try something with you?”
Kie held up her hands. “No, no. I mean… I was the one who asked Rafe to have sex with me.”
“Rafe? Rafe fucking Cameron?” JJ cried, jumping to his feet. Kie clapped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to let his name slip out like that, but it was too late now, and JJ was ready to go to war. “You had sex with Rafe Cameron?”
She nodded, covering her face with her hands. This was possibly the most humiliating moment of her life. Her estranged best friend was questioning her about her most recent hook up, and they hadn’t even gotten to the awkward part: the reason why. JJ must have realized how upset Kiara was because he sat down next to her, still vibrating with rage, but it was obvious he was trying to calm down. He moved his arm as if to wrap it around her shoulders, then dropped it back at his side. “Why, Kie? Why him?” He paused to let her answer, but she didn’t move. He nudged her shoulder with his own. “I’m not judging you, Kie,” he said honestly. “I just didn’t think he was your type.”
“He’s the closest I could get to her, ” she whispered, so softly JJ almost missed it. Her.
Sarah.
“Oh,” he breathed. “Shit.” He reached out again, awkwardly placing an arm around her shoulder. He wanted to say something, to tell her he knew how she felt, but the words wouldn’t come, so he sat near her, offering silent support.
She dragged her hands down her face, slowly, and JJ thought for a moment he saw a tear in her eye - but that was impossible because Kiara Carrera didn’t cry. She took a deep breath and looked JJ in the eye. “You know you should probably get to the Chateau, if they’re expecting you to show up.”
He stood slowly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. You gonna be okay?”
She shrugged and blinked slowly, emotional and physical exhaustion settling into her bones. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
JJ gathered up his wet clothes and slipped his boots back on. When he reached her bedroom door, he turned back, “You know… we miss you.”
That lump in her throat was from dehydration she was sure of it, so she swallowed it down and said, “Yeah. I miss you guys, too.”
JJ nodded. “Next time you decide to fuck a Kook, maybe give one of us a call first? So we can talk you down.”
Kiara chuckled softly, “Yeah, okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”
JJ walked out of her room, pulling the door behind her when he heard her call softly, “JJ?”
He stuck his head back in the doorway. “Yeah?”
“Why don’t you-“ she cut herself off, questioning if she should continue. She looked up into his eyes, soft and friendly. “I don’t really want to be alone right now.” She held his gaze for a moment, then added in a rush, “And I know they’re expecting you at the Chateau, but will you stay?”
JJ looked back into Kie’s eyes, watery and pleading. She was afraid of something, being alone with her thoughts, probably. He had every right to say no. She had blown them off and was hanging out with Kooks and fucking Rafe Cameron, of all people. Now she wanted him to stay because she couldn’t handle figuring out her feelings for someone else. He had every right to turn around and walk out. “Yeah, okay, I’ll stay. John B will still be there tomorrow.”
He slipped off his boots and climbed into bed next to her. She threw the blankets across both of them and settled against his shoulder. “You’re a good friend. Thanks, JJ.”
“Anything for you, Kiara.” There was not an ounce of sarcasm in his voice.