Best Served Fake

thirty // you know, platonically

"Well," said Kai, changing the subject. "I'm glad that you're a good driver. I would hate to die in a fiery car crash before I had the chance to make out in the Horny Corny."

I didn't respond, but I couldn't deny the thrill that raced through my body at the sound of Kai Delaney forming the words make out and knowing that he meant with me.

I pulled into the car park of school, turning immediately toward the coveted spot in the Horny Corny. We'd taken this route every day, only to find it tragically filled with other couples, and I'd been forced to make the loop around the car park to seek a regular, Valerie-doesn't-get-some spot. It was deeply tragic.

When I pulled Kai's car around the corner, into the woods just a little bit, I felt the flutter of my heart when I realised the spot was unoccupied. The garage/gazebo stood silver and rundown, the entrance partly obscured by flexible branches that had survived the many cars pressing against them to get to the spot. The air vent in the corner was blasting it's cold heat. My stomach flipped.

"Well," said Kai on an exhale. He didn't seem to have anything to add.

I wordlessly pulled the car beneath the gazebo, and the cool air from the vent mingling with the warm air inside the car fogged the windows. Kai didn't speak as he reached forward to turn up the heating in the car, just a tad, and I couldn't see out of the window anymore, just faint, shadowy shapes of tree branches and metal poles.

"So," I said awkwardly. "The weather is nice."

Kai grinned from beside me. He had one elbow propped up on the window frame, holding his head up, and he perused me with what was almost laziness. "I'm sensing another ramble."

"Why?"

"You always ramble when you're nervous."

"Nervous?" I squeaked. "I'm not nervous. I've kissed you before. This isn't the kind of thing I'd be nervous about. You know, once I went cliff jumping, and Sydney totally shoved me off, but that made me nervous because, you know, cliff. And remember that guy in Isabelle's year who paralysed himself when he went cliff jumping? Anyway, my point is, cliff jumping makes me nervous, but this definitely does not. Because I don't want to be paralysed."

"Oh, I love it when you talk dirty," Kai said in a low voice that suggested he was making fun of me. I poked him in the arm. Hard. And he batted my hand away. "But I get it. You're not nervous. Why don't we talk for a little bit first though? There's still 40 minutes until school starts, and people will probably start walking past soon, but there will be stragglers until the bell. Let's give it some time."

That was Kai. Considerate, mocking and yet never willing to make me uncomfortable, despite the fact that we were entering into a fake relationship. He was so fucking nice. And I looked at him, his hair black against the foggy window, and his features so elegant and sharp. He was beautiful, too beautiful by far to be in this car with me, and I wanted him.

"I know this was your idea, but we don't have to go through with it if you don't want to," said Kai, and his eyes were kind and he was running his fingers through his hair and he looked like he might even be a little bit nervous himself and wow he was so fucking hot I didn't even know what to do with myself. "Valerie, it's oka—"

Except that I guess I did, because I kissed him.

The kiss was open-mouthed, because he was talking, and I was shutting him up and oh.

The first kiss had been calculated and careful and had started slow before igniting. This was a hot, desperate tangle of lips and tongue and hands, and his fingers were cupping my jaw and tangling in my hair and he was moving fast and yet practised, and it was the single hottest moment of my whole life.