Love from jealousy – part 3

By Fishiexy

Kyle's thoughts in italics

Over the next few days I went to 'The Rack' with Lori and we would hang out together. She usually got a coffee of some sort and I would have a smoothie. Josh would make a different one up for me each day to see which one I liked best. So far it had been 'peach and passion fruit'. Now that Declan wasn't speaking to me and the only other person I talked to regularly was Tom Foss, it was nice to have another friend to talk to about something that didn't involve Adam's research or my next training schedule. Lori was kind and caring and funny and although I didn't always understand everything she said I loved listening to her and watching her.

When Lori and I walked into 'The Rack' today, I immediately saw Amanda alone at a table. My heart sped up. Now was my chance to talk to her, to explain and to apologize. I looked over at Lori and she must have seen my anxiety because she gave my hand a squeeze and told me to go over and talk to Amanda and that she would get a coffee and wait. I took a deep breath and walked over to where Amanda was sitting, but it didn't go very well. Amanda was still angry at me and refused to let me explain. I told that I only wanted to say one thing, but she told me that she was not yet ready to hear it. Then she told me not to talk her at all.

I walked back to Lori who was now reading the classified adverts on the wall. She could see that I was upset and told me that Amanda needed some 'real estate' which thankfully she translated to space. I thought she meant physical space as in I shouldn't approach Amanda, but I think what she meant was emotional space and time to 'process'.

'Is that what you want from Declan?' I asked her.

And she surprised me by the ferocity of her answer.

'Is what I want from Declan is an explanation! And I just can't stop thinking about it!'

Maybe 'real estate' and time to 'process' were important, but alternatively a distraction might work just as well. I suggested to Lori that perhaps she should get a hobby. She agreed and decided to take up guitar lessons.


Lori stomped into class, threw her books down on her desk and sat down heavily next to Hillary.

'It is so over between Declan and me.' She cried angrily.

'What happened?' Hillary asked shocked at her friend's outburst and the tears that sparkled in her eyes.

'I had this stupid idea that maybe we could get together and talk, I mean really talk about how I felt and maybe get him to tell me what going on with him. And I promised myself that I would be calm and rational and not scary psycho woman. So I bumped into him after my guitar lesson and told him that if he cared about me just even a little bit then he should meet me at my house at 4 o'clock. And you know what?' Lori paused and looked at Hillary.

Hillary sighed sympathetically. 'I think I know where this is going…'

'The bastard didn't show. So that's it.'

'Lor, I'm sorry.'

'Well, I'm not. Declan's history and much as I don't say this very often Hills, I think you were right about the guy.'

'I was? Which guy in particular?'

'You know, T.P.G. The Perfect Guy!'

'Oh, I see! Hillary nodded slowly in understanding.

'Revenge is a dish best served cold my friend!' She smiled wickedly at Lori.

'You want to make Declan jealous!'

'So jealous that he can't think straight. I want him to feel like crap!' She shouted standing up.

A few people in front of her turned around and stared at her.

'Well, the first point in the plan is not to draw attention to yourself and give the game away.' She hissed grabbing Lori roughly by her arm and sitting her firmly back in her seat.

'Although your enthusiasm is to be commended, remember, walls have ears!' She said quietly.

'Now do you have anyone in mind?'

'Yes I do, Kyle!'

Hillary's eyes widened in surprise and then she smirked suggestively.

'I knew you'd come to your senses and finally see the potential of all that innocent goodness wrapped in such a pretty package. Just the thought of you running your hand over all that pale, virgin skin… I almost feel a little jealous myself…'

'Hillary! The plan wasn't to get a guy for me, the plan was to get 'The Perfect Guy' to be seen with me to make Declan jealous. Come on! Get your head back in the game!'

'The two needn't be mutually exclusive!' Hillary said as though it was obvious.

'Well, in Kyle's case they are. Look! I live with him! He's my foster-brother!'

'Yes, so therefore he's not your actual brother and as for the living together… No more having to sneak out like you did with Declan. You just nip downstairs in the middle of the night for a…'

Stop! Hillary, I don't even want to go there. Kyle is sacrosanct, untouchable and off-limits! At least in that way, now, back to the plan.'

'Ok, why have you chosen Kyle if not to, well…' She waved her hand around as if trying to find the correct phrase. 'sleep with him?' She finished in a bored voice.

'Because he and Declan were best friends!' Lori was suddenly very animated.

'Look, it all comes back to Kyle. Declan and Kyle were as thick as thieves and they started doing all this stuff together like going on secret trips and they wouldn't take me along. The last time they went away together, Declan came back all different and was really angry with Kyle and then Kyle went away and Declan was the only person he left stuff for, I mean like, souvenirs, but I think it was way more than that, I think it was a secret message to Declan. And then when Kyle came back, Declan just got moodier and then broke up with Kyle and then broke up with me.'

'Oh my God! He's gay! This is going to be brilliant! Guy on guy sex is just like so totally hot! And Declan with Kyle? I'd pay good money to see that!'

'He's not gay! Neither of them are gay! God! What is with you? Now calm down and listen! I think that deep down Declan still really cares for Kyle and seeing him around all the time and with me who in his eyes has taken his place as Kyle's new best friend and confidant will be bound to make him jealous! Oh and to really mess with his mind I might leave a few conspiracy emails lying around… So what do you think?'

'Dr. Evil's got nothing on you! Go girl!


Lori sat in a physics lesson that afternoon and once again wasn't able to concentrate on anything much. It seemed to be coming a bit of a habit and her dad would be furious if she flunked maths or physics since he was such a science guy. And of course living with a genius didn't help her self esteem any. Kyle only had to look at the question to know the answer whereas she had to sit down and work out each intermediate step and it was so slow it was painful. And it wasn't even as if it was just math that he was good at. Take last night for example. The night of the afternoon that Declan failed to turn up…

There she was being depressed over Declan, lounging on her bed, minding her own business and practicing her guitar when Kyle wandered past her room. He stopped at the door and listened to her pathetic attempts at a few simple chords and then came in, his interest piqued. Lori watched him walk towards her in that oddly stiff way of his, his arms hardly moving by his sides until he stopped again.

'What song is it?' He asked her, a sense of wonderment in his voice as if it was the first and most amazing piece of music that he had ever heard.

'Song?' She replied in disbelief.

'You're too kind! It's G, D and C. Beyond that, it's the great unknown!'

He walked around her bed and then sat down on the end of it facing her.

'It sounds good so far!' He told her earnestly.

'Thanks!'

For all she knew he had never heard a guitar solo before!

'Can I try?' He asked hopefully, his forehead wrinkling as his eyebrows moved upwards.

'Knock yourself out!' She said handing over the instrument and plectrum.

He had seen her playing from the hallway so he knew how to hold a guitar and what to do with both his right and left hands. She watched him strum and twang the strings inexpertly, his head alternating back and forth between looking to find the right chord and looking where to strum the strings. He continued for several seconds playing chords that were off key by less than a semi-tone and then moving his fingers minutely over the frets to tighten up the sound, but it was still just noise like a child plucking the strings at random. She couldn't believe it. Was music something that Kyle was incapable of? Was it something that you had to be able to feel rather than to calculate?

'Finally! Something you're not amazing at! I never thought I'd see the day! She said sarcastically.

Could it be possible that she had found something that she might be better at than him?

And then his head came up and he took a breath in and launched in a perfect rendition of Pachelbel's canon. Now he wasn't looking at where his fingers were. He had memorized the position of all the notes he needed. Lori was stunned, but not surprised by his ability. He had moved his left hand over the six strings feeling all of the frets and noting what kind of sound they made. Each string vibrated at a different fundamental frequency and pressing on a fret just changed that frequency. It was all basic math and physics and with Kyle's amazing memory, he could no doubt hear any series of notes once and be able to repeat them perfectly.

But what did surprise Lori was not that he could play but how he played and what he chose to play. This was not just some random collection of notes, this was something he had heard and remembered and by the look on his face, it was a piece of music that meant something to him, deep down on some basic emotional level. She listened entranced by the beauty and feeling in his playing and shook her head in embarrassment for daring to have the audacity to think that there would be something that Kyle could not do superlatively.

He finished his song and before the last chord had even faded away…

'Get out!' She told him, her face dead-pan.

His head snapped up to look at her, eyes widening in shock and surprise, incomprehension in them at what it was he had done wrong to deserve such a harsh tone from her.

She saw the uncertainty on his anxious face and relented at once. He still didn't always understand the subtleties of her sarcastic humour but it wasn't funny to make Kyle feel unwanted, to make him feel that he was being pushed away or rejected. It brought back too many memories of his early days with them and his fear of abandonment.

'I'm just kidding!' She said smiling to reassure him.

For a moment he was unsure but then he smiled back at her with such relief in his eyes…

The physics teacher was droning on about force and momentum and acceleration due to gravity… She sighed, resting her chin in her hands, her elbows on the desk. She glanced over at the subject of her internal reflection, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Kyle was sitting straight backed with his forearms and hands flat on the desk in front of him, his body perfectly still, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth slightly open, seemingly entranced by the physics lesson. How could that be? This sort of thing, Newtonian mechanics, must be like child's play to him with his phenomenal IQ. She didn't understand him. Why did he even bother turning up to lessons like this? Wasn't he bored? Or maybe he was just going through the motions and like her, thinking about other things, his incredible brain working at speeds she couldn't even comprehend let alone ever hope to emulate; absorbing, cataloguing and memorizing everything.


Now that I had resumed my training with Foss, I had started to leave the house secretly through my bedroom window at four in the morning so that I would have enough time to both train and be home before anyone knew that I had been gone. Although I could tell that Foss was pleased to have me back, he seemed to have increased the severity of the physical training to compensate for my absence to the point that it left me shattered. I was barely able to return home in time before the Tragers were up and about. I was getting increasingly worried that I sooner or later I would be found out.

Just under a week after I returned to Foss, I was so exhausted that I didn't make it back home in time. I was just about to climb in through my window when I saw Nicole in my bedroom checking my tub and calling my name. I looked at my watch and saw that I was 15 minutes later than usual. There was no way that I would be able to sneak past the family and up the stairs without being seen so I went round the back of the house and climbed up to the roof and lowered myself into the upstairs bathroom from the guttering. Foss's training was certainly paying off, but I don't think sneaking back into your parents' house was exactly what he had in mind when he was teaching me!

I turned on the shower and stripped off my sweat-drenched clothes and then stepped under the spray of hot water. It felt wonderful. I quickly washed my hair and body and then just stood there letting the water flow over my tired and sore muscles, turning up the temperature until it was almost too hot to stand. The pleasurable sensation of the warm water cascading over my head and the deep ache that seemed to originate from every muscle in my body must have dulled my senses to the approach of another mind, because when I finally pulled back the shower curtain and stepped out of the tub Lori had just entered the room. In my hurry to be clean and down to breakfast with my family before they discovered I was missing, I had forgotten to lock the door.


Nicole was getting increasingly worried about both Lori and Kyle. Lori had been rather withdrawn since she and Declan had split up and she had hardly said a word this morning. Nicole glanced surreptitiously at her daughter. She looked pale and was pushing her cereal around her bowl. Nicole didn't think she had eaten more than a mouthful. Her son on the other hand was on his third sausage…

And then there was Kyle. He seemed to be gone from the house more and more and was behaving quite secretively and it worried her that maybe he didn't want to be part of this family any more, that since he'd had a taste of his old life with his biological parents, he no longer needed or wanted her in his life. And that thought frightened her more than anything. He was getting up later and later for breakfast and often he would just stop at the fridge, noisily gulp down a glass of orange juice as though he was dying of dehydration, smile apologetically at her and rush off to school. She'd gone to his room today to try and get him to come and sit down and actually eat something but he wasn't in his tub. She figured he must be in the shower as she could hear the water on upstairs. When he hadn't come down after ten minutes she sent Lori up to tell him to get a move on.

Lori sighed and slowly walked up the stairs calling out as she did so.

'Kyle? Mom's on the warpath about you missing breakfast again so you'd better get your butt in gear and get downstairs pronto!'

She didn't get an answer from him but could hear the shower going so guessed he hadn't heard her. She pushed open the bathroom door and entered the room just as Kyle switched off the shower and pulled the curtain back.

'Kyle? Did you…'

The words died on her lips as jaw went slack and her eyes took on the dimensions of saucers as she stared at the scene in front of her.

Kyle was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and his fingers threaded in his hair having just pushed the thick, wet, now almost black strands off his face. On hearing her voice, his eyes snapped open and he froze in surprise.

For a moment she couldn't move. Her eyes raked over his body, noticing every detail about him, committing to memory each aspect of his features that made him physically perfect. And then she was staring at his groin and she felt herself blushing furiously which finally spurred her into action. She grabbed a towel from the rail and threw it at him.

'Cover up, Kyle!' She said, rolling her eyes dramatically.

He caught the towel and wrapped it around his waist then looked back at her apprehensively.

Now he was decent and her heart beat was returning to somewhere near normal she could start behaving like herself again, behaving as though seeing him naked hadn't affected her in the slightest, behaving as though his body wasn't the most spectacularly beautiful thing she had ever seen…

'You'd so better hurry up. Mom's got it into her head that you are starving to death so she's going to force feed you breakfast and she doesn't care whether you'll be late for school or not!'

'I'll be right down.' Kyle said still a little self-conscious.

'You'd better be or else she might try and feed it to me and there's no way I could eat a sausage this morning and keep a straight face!

She raised her eyebrows and then grinned at him before leaving the room.

It didn't take a genius to work out what Lori had meant by her last comment. I felt my face grow hot and looked in the mirror to see that I was blushing. Tomorrow, I would tell Foss that things were going to have to change because I couldn't afford to be late to breakfast any more. I could still hear Lori laughing all the way down the stairs…