Chapter One
Kelly
“Are you excited about your father returning?” Mom asks, aiming her question over the kitchen partition at my best – let’s face it, only – friend Natalie.
Natalie and I sit side by side at the kitchen bar.
She rests her elbows against it, leaning down to take a sip from her soda. She’s tall, with dainty features and long flowing black hair down to her waist, hippie-style, and about a dozen bracelets tinkle on her wrists every time she moves.
I would never have the courage to wear all those bracelets, mostly because I wouldn’t want the noise of them to draw attention to myself. If there’s anything I really dislike, it’s making people notice me.
I don’t think it comes from not wanting to be seen, exactly.
It’s more like I’m scared of what will happen when I’m seen. If I could find somebody who liked what they saw, I might not mind so much.
I push the thoughts away, annoyed at them for arising as they always do, at seemingly random intervals, firing into me like little bullets of self-consciousness.
“I’ve seen him a few times.” Natalie sits up. “I visited him in Thailand.”
Mom nods. She’s wearing one of her billowing summer dresses, seeming to take possession of her natural curviness as she chops onions. She’s built similar to me, but she has a way of holding herself that isn’t awkward, shy, always on-edge about what others are going to think.
I envy it, watching her with love blooming in my chest.
Mom has always been a great role model.
I’m probably just a bad student.
“I know,” Mom says. “But visiting him for a few days, and having him return to the States are two very different things.”
Natalie shrugs. “True. He had important stuff to do over there though.”
“The charity?” I murmur, trying not to let my voice waver when I think about Kaleb Keller.
When I was a girl, I used to sink into childish fantasies of me and Kaleb, imagining I’d grow up and he’d make me his one day. He was a mixed martial arts fighter in his youth – fighting shirtless in a cage – and shamefully I used to watch every single one of his fights online, salivating over his hulking body and his steel-blue eyes.
Now his jet-black hair has turned silver and his eyes are even more feral, glinting with the gaze of an experienced predator.
“He built those gyms from the ground up,” Natalie says with a note of pride in her voice. “We discussed it before he went, and he asked me. He said he’d stay stateside if I wanted him to. But why? I’m busy with college, with life. I don’t need my dad hanging around all the time.”
“Still,” Mom says, chopping the onions efficiently.
Each clap-clap-clap of the knife is causing unfair and unwanted emotion to thud into my chest, as though the knife strikes are fueling my heartbeat, as I think about Kaleb’s bulging chest muscles and the way sweat would slide down between his rock hard abs in his cage fights.
I thought I was over my childhood crush when he left the States – when Natalie was eighteen and I was a few months shy of my birthday, still in braces – but the thought of him returning has set my body ablaze.
My only hope is I don’t make a fool of myself if I ever run into him, which isn’t likely since I hardly said two words to him growing up. I’m Natalie’s friend. Kaleb was always busy with his fighting career and then growing his real estate business and his martial arts charities.
“It’s exciting,” Mom goes on. “You’ll be able to see more of him now.”
I almost scream at Mom to shut up, even if that would be the most unfair thing I could do. She has no idea how badly the desire for my best friend’s dad burns inside of me, scorching through me, setting me alight in ways I should know better than to indulge.
If Natalie could reach inside my mind and pluck at these thoughts, she’d leap from the stool and scowl at me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she’d scream. “This is my dad, the only family I have, and you’re fantasizing over him?”
And she’d be right. I wouldn’t have any defense. I shouldn’t let myself think like this about him.
But I can’t seem to stop.
Even last night, I found myself on the website for his martial arts charities in Thailand, studying a photo of him standing in front of a new gym. He was wearing a tank top with his muscular arms showing, tanned with his biceps bulging, his silver hair glinting in the sun.
I felt like I was possessed as I slid my hands between my legs and started to rub myself, hotly, hungrily, as though nothing could stop me.