Kiss Me, Kate
By: Riley
Summary- Kissing was never supposed to be this complicated. Katie/OC.
A/N: Just a random idea I had recently. I like working with Katie's insecure side.
"So what are you doing tonight? Do you want to come over and watch a movie or something?" Katie rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. With the ankle of her left leg resting on her upraise right knee, she bobbed her foot back and forth.
"I thought you were going out with Patrick," Lizzie Zevon commented. From the sounds in the background, Katie could bet she was shuffling around her expansive room, trying on different clothes. Then all sounds stopped. "Don't tell me he cancelled again."
"Yep." Katie nodded even though Lizzie couldn't see her. "Didn't say why but he was quick to get off the phone. Boys are so stupid, if they want to make plans they should just say so instead of coming up with an excuse later." She tried not to pout; remembering how annoyed and hurt she had been when she realized she wasn't going out with her boyfriend that night after all. "So, do you want to come over?"
"Sorry girlie, I'm going to the movies with Noah."
"Figures." It seemed no matter where she looked everyone else as having a better relationship with their boyfriends and girlfriends than she was having with her own. "What movie are you going to see? I mean, if you're actually going to watch it." She smiled as Lizzie laughed.
"It's not my fault that you got the lame twin out of this whole deal," Lizzie pointed out. "I mean, it's not like he's—"Lizzie immediately cut herself off and Katie could imagine the look of horror that splashed over her face. "Never mind. I'm sure everything's fine."
Katie froze. 'Everything's fine'. That's the same lie that parents used when they wanted to keep their kids from worrying about things that weren't, in fact, fine. Everything was fine when she asked her mother what was wrong when she walked in on her crying quietly. Now Katie knew it was only a little bit after her father had walked out on them. Everything was fine when Kendall had been sent to the hospital for torn ligaments in his knee after a brutal hockey game. He was on crutches for a long time, growing increasingly angry that he couldn't play. Everything was fine when they were tight on money shortly after Kevin left.
Everything was fine.
Nothing was fine when 'everything's fine'.
"What do you mean?" Katie asked.
"Nothing."
"I mean it, Lizzie, what were you going to say."
"Nothing important."
"Elizabeth!"
"Katherine." Then Lizzie sighed. "Fine. But I promise I really didn't mean anything by it. I was just going to say 'it's not like he's going to dump you or anything'." Then she started to speak quickly. "Because he's not. As far as I know. Not that I know anything. Or Noah for that matter because if he did I'm sure he would tell you instead of telling me or leaving everyone in the dark."
Now Katie sat straight up, heart hammering against the bail that was her ribcage. "Wait, what? You think he's going to break up with me?"
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't not say it either, Lizz." Katie held her breath, pressing her lips together. "You think he's going to break up with me."
"No." And Katie could hear the honesty in her voice. That reassured her. A little. Not very much. Not at all. "But boys do weird things. Nothing weird has been going on between you two has there? I mean, you had fun on your last date?"
Katie smiled as she thought about it. She wasn't as good at golf as Kendall, that was sure, but mini-golf was definitely her thing. She spent enough time there at the pee wee hockey team's pizza parties at Chuck-E-Cheese and other likewise establishment to have gotten bored after emptying every machine of tickets. So mini-golf was her thing and she became very good at it. The good thing was Patrick was just as good—not completely as good as her—to make the game interesting. More fun. And they laughed a lot. And…kissed a lot. Enough so that if James or Kendall were there they would've hoisted him to the top of the Windmill within a matter of seconds if not drowning him in the little pool.
"Yeah, we had fun. We always have fun."
"Okay, so it wasn't the date," Lizzie mused. Now Katie could a low thudding sound and Lizzie mutter 'ouch' before adding 'stupid dresser'. "And it's obvious the guy is crazy about you. So what else could it be?"
"I don't know." Katie shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Maybe he thinks I'm a lousy kisser."
"Has he kissed you since then?"
"Lizz, I was kidding."
"I was just asking."
Katie nearly felt her head explode. No, Lizzie never 'just asked' anyone anything as much as she never brought up something 'as a question' because she was very obviously wondering. The last time she'd seen that had been when she asked her brother and his friends what sort of underwear they wore because she wanted her fans to stop asking her that on her Flitter account. Katie would've been suspicious if it weren't for the fact that she had been asked those questions, too.
Fans were weird sometimes.
Pressing her lips together, Katie briefly closed her eyes, scratching her forehead. Was that really it, though? It's not like she was very experienced in that area, not having a boyfriend before her boyfriend. And he had continued to say he had never had a girlfriend before her, but did that mean he hadn't been kissed before? Maybe he was lying about it. But then why would he lie? To spare her feelings. Spare them from what?
"Oh God, he has a disease," Katie blurted out before she could stop herself. "That has to be it. You said it yourself…you asked…we haven't kissed since then. He's been avoiding me."
"Katie, calm down, you went out last week."
"A week is a long time, Lizzie. Especially because he's in a band and he has fans and stuff around him all the time." Katie prided herself on not being the kind of girl that was insecure about anything, but this was getting ridiculous. She just needed to know what was going on. "Can a bad kisser really put someone off like that?"
"I don't know, I guess."
"That's really helpful."
"You asked me a question! Katie, I'm sure everything's fine. Why don't you just go over there and see what's going on. It's better to do it in person than agonize about it over the phone or the internet or some sort of a chat or something." She huffed as Katie rolled her eyes. "I know you just rolled your eyes, Miss. Knight. But I'm telling you the truth and the conversations you and I have on the phone are completely different than the one you need to have with your man."
"He's not my man," Katie ground out.
"Not with that attitude he's not. I have to get going; I still need to get dressed for my date."
"Rub it in, Lizz. Just rub it in."
"At least I'm doing something. I'll see you later."
"See ya."
Katie hung up her phone and tossed it away from her. With a low groan she flopped back onto her bed, arms splayed out, hair encircling her head like a halo. And she thought agonizing over their first kiss was ridiculous, this was torture. Up until getting into a relationship was the fun part, flirting and hanging out, getting to know each other...that was the best part. Having the first kiss that made butterflies and all of that other romance stuff fly through your stomach was fun. Wondering how you stay in a good relationship after was hard. She never knew when to hold his hand or when her jokes were going too far or if she was being a bit too much like 'Kendall's little sister' as she had been around him and the other guys for most of her life. And she had absolutely no idea of the tell-tale signs of a relationship growing stale.
From what she read in magazines things like fewer texts or phone calls were what she had to look out for. But that wasn't the problem. Why couldn't life every work out like they did in the magazines and the movies and the way you daydreamed it? If life were like a daydream she'd probably be the richest person on the planet, a dream that wasn't too far off, honestly.
But this was killing her. And the fact that Lizzie had to bring up that she maybe was a bad kisser was really driving her up the wall.
Hearing the sound of the door to 2J open, Katie flung her feet to the ground and used the momentum of get up from bed. She hurried around the corner of the back hallway and faced Kendall, Logan, Carlos, and James. "Hey!" She blurted to them, catching their attention as they conversed about whatever it was Gustavo had done to them this time. "How do you know if you're a good kisser?" She asked.
James, being the only one who wasn't stunned by her question, immediately chuckled and spread his arms. "You're born James Diamond; you're always a good kisser. I've never had anyone turn me down."
"Except for Melissa Ackerman," Kendall pointed out. "In front of the entire school. After you asked her to Prom Freshman year."
"In my defense she was a senior and she didn't know what to do with a freshman asking her out," James said quickly.
"Or she was as horrified as she looked from where we were sitting," Carlos joked. Logan laughed along with him before turning back to Katie.
"Why?" He asked her, slowly growing suspicious.
Katie did her best to keep her face from turning red. "Oh, I was just asking. Lizzie was reading a magazine about kissing techniques and we were saying—"She noticed Kendall looking at her funny and tilted his head to the side, looking at her suspiciously. "What?"
"If this has something to do with Patrick you can just ask us," Kendall pointed out.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Katie snorted. "And not have to worry about you becoming some sort of a masked vigilante who does nothing but snoop around in my personal life to see who I am and am not dating once you somehow find a way to kill him and make it look like an accident?" Katie took a deep breath after her longwinded question. "I don't think so."
"Hey, after you and Mama Knight helped us out with realizing that Gustavo is the best manager we could ever have we agreed that we'd be more open to the idea of you dating," James said innocently. "So this is coming from a warm, inviting, and loving place—"
"—Liar," Katie interrupted.
"It's warm and inviting!" James shouted.
"Yeah, right," Carlos and Logan harmonized as Kendall laughed. Carlos pushed the other boys out of his way and moved over to Katie's side, placing his hand down on her shoulder. "Katie, as much of a bunch of psychos these two can be, you know we're here to help you with anything you need. So what's going on?"
"I was just wondering if a guy would break up with a girl because the girl is a bad kisser?" Katie asked.
"Yes," James and Logan said at the same time Kendall and Carlos said, "No," causing the four teen boys to look at each other strangely. James raised a hand into the air. "You have to breakup with a girl that's a bad kisser. It means that you don't have kissing chemistry."
"Yeah, and kissing chemistry doesn't lie," Logan added.
"Where'd you get that?" Carlos demanded. "With your voodoo love science?"
"Love science is not voodoo and it works!"
Kendall rolled his eyes and turned to Katie. "Don't listen to them, Baby Sister. Listen to me. Breaking up with a girl that's a bad kisser is just as superficial as breaking up with a girl because she has a mole or a scar or a growth coming out of the side of her face. It's not fair and it's not anything you can't get past."
"Oh yeah? What about Shannon Caplan?" Katie asked him.
She was the only girl she was able to throw back into Kendall's face with success each time. She noticed that her big brother tended to have a type when it came to girls; either they were blonde and very pretty, looking like a model, or they were the kind of girl that challenged him. All of his girlfriends and other girls he had been interested in or had gone on a few dates with from Minnesota to LA fell under those two categories.
Shannon was the only exception. She was nice, had a cute laugh—as Kendall said—and was very smart, yet she wasn't as physically as attractive as some of the other girls he had gone out with. And she knew he had broken up with her because of the unibrow that seemed to come up every few months. She knew because she heard him talking about it with his friends. Granted he had just started high school at the time and those four years were always about what other people thought but that was low even for him.
"I didn't break up with her because she had a unibrow; I broke up with her because she was moving."
"That was a month later," Logan pointed out.
"She didn't tell me specifically when she was leaving."
"Yeah, right."
"Katie," Carlos tried once more. "A guy wouldn't break up with a girl just because she was a bad kisser." He then started to smile. "If anything he'd use it as an excuse to make her a better one. A solid foundation of a relationship does come from a good kisser."
"No, it doesn't," Kendall and Logan insisted.
"I'm actually going to have to agree with him on this one," James admitted.
Katie watched in mild fascination as the boys started to argue over what it meant to be a good kisser or a bad kisser, what it meant to have a good relationship or a bad relationship, and who out of the four of them was a better kisser. Complete with them pursing their lips to exhibit their technique which, of course, Katie took a video off for blackmail later. Then she called down to the front desk to get the Palm Woods shuttle to drive her over to the Jacksons's house.
Along the way she tried to figure out what to do when she saw him. Was she just going to kiss him to prove she knew what she was doing? Or flat out confront him and hope that he'd want to kiss her after? Or just demand to know what was going on and make him feel like she was going to break up with him? That'd be the last resort and something she didn't particularly want to do but maybe he needed to feel as freaked out about everything as she did.
And to think at the beginning of that year she was worried about whether or not he was going to kiss her at all. She thanked the driver with a $20 tip—that she stole from Kendall's pocket as he was too busy arguing with the boys—and went up to the door. She pressed and held her finger against the doorbell then took a step back, looking around and she waited.
Her eyebrows came together when she saw a car she didn't recognize in the driveway. Finally, there were thudding footsteps coming to the door and it was pulled open. Katie turned back and looked at the boy that stood in front of her.
"Hey Noah," she greeted him. "Is Patrick here? Can you get him for me?"
"Very funny, Katie. I am Patrick."
Katie peered at him for a second as he managed a lopsided smile. Yeah, that was Patrick all right. She felt bad for not recognizing him when his hair wasn't up in a fauxhawk as was his usual style. With his long hair reaching down to his shoulders he looked even more identical to his twin. "Oh. Sorry."
He rubbed at his face, briefly closing his eyes. "What's up? I'm kind of busy."
Katie felt her anxiety rise with that statement alone. Kind of busy. With someone else. He really didn't want to hang out with her. "Doing what?" She asked.
"Guests," he mumbled.
And now he couldn't take the time to simply talk to her. "Okay, great. I just came over to see what was going on with you but if you have more important things to do I can leave." Patrick looked at her in confusion, moving slowly and that bothered her even more. "Well, I just came by to say that if you want to break up with me it's fine."
"Wait. Wait, wait, wait." As if in pain, Patrick's squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers to his forehead. "Break up with you? Why would I do that?"
"Because you've been blowing me off. Because we haven't hung out with each other lately. Because you haven't been explaining anything to me." Katie stepped forward and grabbed the sides of Patrick's face, giving him a long kiss. When she stepped back, he looked a little bewildered. "And I'm not a bad kisser," she added. "I may not have a lot of experience with it but I'm not a bad kisser. And I'm really fun so you're missing out and—"
"Stop!" Patrick held up his hands then slapped them over his ears. "Okay, I know I can be slow on some things but you're really giving me an information overload, yeah?" Finally, he lowered his hands. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm not breaking up with you."
Katie arched an eyebrow. "You're not."
"No. But I wouldn't put it against you if you wanted to break up with me."
"Well…I should." She was totally bluffing. But he didn't need to have the satisfaction of knowing that.
"Considering the fact that you just made yourself sick," Patrick continued. He reached up a hand and pushed his bangs back from his forehead. "I've been sick for the past week with the flu so you're probably going to be knocked out in 2J within at least the next day."
"Oh." Katie felt her arms drop to her sides.
"And I'm sure you'd love to explain why you just attacked me with a kiss in front of my grandparents," he added, taking a step back so Katie could see further into the house. She flushed, noticing his Grandma Rose and Daddy Teak standing behind them, watching the two curiously. "Not that I'm complaining but you know how they can be."
"…yeah," Katie agreed. She couldn't help but smile when she heard Patrick chuckle at her side. "I'm going to kill Lizzie."
THE END