I whip my hand out from her grasp. This is humiliating.
“You aren’t supposed to look at me,” I mutter, oddly shaken as I glance down at my knees. “You’ve never looked at me.”
With a pause, she considers her words carefully. “Out of everyone, you were the one I—” She shrugs, as though choosing to be honest. “—liked the most. It was intimidating.”
With effort, I ignore the cartwheels taking place in my stomach. “And now?”
“Somehow, you’re not as intimidating anymore.” She pauses, as though still measuring her words. “I feel a bit sorry for you, if you’re having to play mind games to get what you want.”
“You don’t know what I want!”
Her smile is indulgent. “When you get to my age—” I roll my eyes. She’s, what, a few months older than me? “Little boys just don’t hold much appeal.”
“And Leon does?”
I can’t believe I’ve been beaten by him when I’m the one who punched him.
She looks surprised. “No. You’re all ridiculous.”
What? In my head, she had to choose one of us. She had to like one of us best.
And if she had any sense, as she apparently used to before she met us, it’d have been me.
“I’m going to tell you something,” she says, drawing circles on the table with her finger. “When I was shooting a wildlife documentary in Alaska, there were these caribou. They’d fight one another almost to the death over some female they wanted to mate with. One of the smallest wanted a taste of this female for himself but was too nervous to do anything. He was young and proud. If that female wanted to be mated with, she would damn well come to him.”
The symbolism is heavy-handed as hell, but she has a way of telling it that entertains me. “And then what?” I ask, surprisingly breathy. It must be Kat saying the word “mate” all the time.
“And then... well, I dunno, I guess it died.”
Startled, I blink at her. “What?”
“I was only there for two days. Didn’t see what happened next.”
“That’s not an ending!”
Her lips twist into a half-smile. “But it’s true.”
“Who cares about truth? I want a story!”
She laughs. “Documentary filmmakers care. We’re obsessive about the truth.”
There’s something melodic about the way she laughs. There’s a kindness there that I didn’t anticipate. The fact she’s giving me the time of day at all after making Leon hit me is surprising, too.
She feels sorry for you.
Am I a lonely little caribou, desperate for a fuck? I hadn’t considered myself like that. I thought I was the biggest, ballsiest caribou on the block, with antlers the size of a Redwood pine. The lonely little caribou was more like Leon, but now he’s one-upped me with a foursome that went viral and doing... something... with Kat. Enough so that Kat smiles almost every time I say his name.
Slowly, I say, “How about the caribou returned to the tundra and saw the female caribou? And then — boom.”
“Boom? They exploded?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I say with a grin.
She shakes her head. “You’re so young,” she says to me, that same pitying smile on her face. It makes me antsy.
“I’m the same age as Tarek! Seth and Conor are younger than me! Leon’s only two years older!”
“And you measure everything in number of years. Maybe that’s the problem.”
I hold back a growl, frustrated. What have I got to do to get into this chick’s pants? She’ll fuck the rest of them — including Leon — but not me? Me? I’m the one everyone wants!
“How’s your face?” she asks gently.
I glare at her, mashing the wrapped bundle of ice cubes into my skin. “Fine.”
With a quick stroke of my hand, she says, “You’ll probably have a giant bruise there for a couple of days. What are people going to say?”
“Makeup’s a thing,” I snap.
She sighs and then nods, as though making her mind up about me.
I don’t want to be with her, anyway.
“What did Leon do to you?” I ask her. “You weren’t anywhere near as confident when I first met you.”
She doesn’t answer, only smiles softly.
Tarek returns to the kitchen with a long black cashmere scarf. It’s what he gave me for Christmas last year, claiming it was a D&G exclusive worth five thousand dollars. He said that, but he also once divulged when high that it had been knitted by his mom. Whatever its origins, it might be my favorite item of clothing — I’ve worn it in at least a dozen photoshoots.
I miss getting high with him.
Almost.
He hands it to Kat, and my body twitches, as though to stop her from touching it.
Neither of them notice. Kat stands and begins to wind the scarf around my head, securing the bag of ice cubes beside my skin in a makeshift sling. The pink tip of her tongue peeps out of her mouth as she concentrates on getting a fixed angle and fastens the two ends together. She has no qualms about pulling the scarf as tightly as possible around my head, so that it digs into my skull.
When she steps back to check her handiwork, she looks quite pleased with herself. “There you go. Florence Nightingale, eat your heart out.” She tucks a stray end into a pocket beside my cheek, stroking my warm skin with her cool fingers.
Meanwhile, Tarek laughs.
I must resemble a mummy, strapped and surrounded by thick cloth. The heavy scarf covers the top of my head, my jawline, and stretches straight across my mouth. I wonder if Kat designed it deliberately so that I can’t speak.
“This is stupid,” I say, voice muffled.
“Then it’s perfect for you,” Tarek says, quick as a shot.
Kat tries to hide her smile, probably thinking it’s some kind of lightning-quick wit Tarek’s been hiding all this time.
But I stare at him, wondering what hurts more: rejection from Kat, the girl who’ll sleep with anyone, or rejection from my favorite person in the world?
He’s joking, I tell myself.
I didn’t want to be with Kat — not really. She’s plain and boring, with an uninspiring uniform of hoodies and scruffy jeans. I wouldn’t be surprised if her body was as lumpy as her thick tops. The most exciting thing about her would have been her imaginary dabbles in espionage.
So yeah, I’m not interested.
But I’ve never been rejected in my life. I sailed through the TV talent show that put Royal Element together, winning the public vote week after week. I’m the one on the covers of the magazines, the one even your grandmother has heard of.
I don’t get rejected. I get everything I want.
And now that I’ve been rejected...
I want her.
12. KAT
IF THERE’S ANYTHING I’ve learned from my short time on the road, it’s that it’s common not to know which country you’re currently in. On a day-to-day basis, it seems like the tourbus is our only reality, a country unto itself, with its own laws and customs and unusually attractive citizens. In every country, I’m always the tourist with the camera.