A/N: I AM SO SORRY THIS UPDATE TOOK SO LONG! I started school like right after posting the last chapter and I should have warned y'all it'd be a while before the next one most likely.
But junior year kicking my ass is not the only reason for the late update; I also just had a really hard time with this chapter. I HOPE IT'S NOT SHITTY. Writer's block or whatever. But I really do enjoy writing this, and I will keep writing it as long as y'all keep reading it!
And I know y'all are reading it because you're telling me you are! Thanks for the reviews! They mean sooo much. And I love hearing your opinions on the story—where it's going, how it's going—and I see that basically all of y'all sided with Jack! That makes sense to me—Kim's being really weird after all. ;)
To the reviewer lukeismine68: I am SO glad you like this so much! But you shouldn't be worried about posting your own! Go ahead and do it. No one on here is a perfect writer; we're all learning. I would love to read it and I bet other people would too.
All right I'm done talking… onto chapter 7!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Kickin' It.
Chapter 7
After Kim left I went straight to the dojo, to work, and tried my best not to think about her—where she had been and where she was going—all day. I did okay with that. When Rudy asked where she was I just lied and said she went back to New York. He believed me because he believed her.
Once Rudy was back and it was time for me to leave, I texted Ella. I hadn't seen her in what felt like forever, even though it was only a couple days. Things seemed so different after Kim came back that it felt like a decade had passed.
I picked her up at her house and she hopped in my truck and kissed me and that felt great. She was dressed differently too, not like what I had seen her wear before. She usually dressed in whites and greys and blacks, but that night she wore a pink v-neck and white (very short) shorts. Nothing particularly special, but I liked seeing her in color.
"You're so pretty," I complimented almost absent-mindedly at a red light, one hand placed on her thigh.
She turned to me and smiled sweetly. She put her hand on top of mine, then intertwined our fingers.
Ella was soft and gentle in a beautiful way that made me want to fall in love with her. She never spoke too loudly or came on too strong, but sometimes when she was really happy her laugh would bounce off the walls and if we made out she started slow but knew when to get rough. She was balanced, unlike someone else I knew.
We went to the mall because Ella needed a new dress for some wedding she was going to. She quickly found her way to one of the most expensive stores, probably with her father's credit card in her wallet. Ella didn't have a job or anything, but she was obviously pretty well-off—or, her Dad was. I knew that when I first saw her house.
A tall blonde woman asked Ella if she needed any help, and Ella shyly told her no thank you. When she walked away, Ella turned to me.
"Everyone in here's really… pretty," she commented insecurely, looking around the store.
"True," I said, looking right into her eyes and smiling.
Ella blushed and turned away from me, tucking her hair behind her ear. She walked to a grey dress and touched it, feeling the material. She furrowed her eyebrows.
"I don't like shopping," she stated simply, her eyes still on the dress. "Unless it's shopping for groceries. I like doing that."
I laughed lightly. "That's… a little weird."
She shrugged. "There's too many dresses in here. Too many options."
I looked around too, trying to spot something she might like. My eyes landed on a yellow dress—not too yellow. Not like the color of her annoying walls. A pale yellow. When I got closer to it I noticed a floral pattern, which seemed like Ella to me. It wasn't too 'in your face'. Sleeveless, flaring out at the bottom in an elegant way. Simple, though.
"What about this?" I asked her, pointing to it.
She looked up from a different grey dress that she was considering and walked over to me. She examined the yellow dress.
"I don't know," she said casually.
"It's yellow. You love yellow," I pointed out.
"Yellow's okay."
"Okay? Literally everything in your room is yellow."
"My Mom liked yellow," she told me flatly. "She picked out a lot of the stuff in my room. I went with it 'cause… I liked the idea of liking yellow."
"Why?" I asked curiously, wanting to know more about everything about her.
"I don't know," she said, smiling. "My Mom liking it so much? She was very… optimistic. I liked the idea of being optimistic. I just never really was. I'm a little too anxious."
I smiled at her. "You're very interesting," I told her, not thinking much about it. It was just true. I thought it the moment I first saw her. I knew I had to get to know about her. I knew there was something to her I didn't want to miss out on.
Her cheeks turned pink again and she looked back at the dress. It was silent for a moment before she decided. "I think I might try it on."
She did try it on and she looked at herself in the mirror with a smile on her face. That's when I realized how big of a deal it was. A dress. A yellow dress. Not miraculous or anything, but it made her happy, and that made me feel good because I knew if I hadn't been there she would have just bought something that allowed her to fade into the background, just like she always tried to do.
She was beaming the rest of the night, in a great mood, and at the end of our date when I walked her to her front door, she didn't want me to go.
I kissed her a long kiss goodbye before saying, "I'll see you later."
I took a step away from her, but as I started turning toward my truck, I felt her hand on my arm. She was looking at me almost confused, half-smiling and furrowing her eyebrows. She tilted her head at me.
"Wait," she said. "Don't you want to come in?"
"Oh," I said. "Yeah. Okay."
I had been invited in her house before. It was nothing new. But I knew it wasn't like usual that time because of the way she looked at me—like she was waiting on something. There was something I was supposed to do, and I knew exactly what it was.
She led me inside by my hand and we stood in front of the stairs, just looking at each other, but just for a second, because I kissed her quickly. I didn't lean in slowly, didn't take my time closing the gap between us. It was a swift motion. One hand on her cheek and the other at her waist, then my lips against her lips. There was a bit of urgency behind it, and when we broke apart, she opened her eyes and gave me a smile.
She took me upstairs. We started kissing again. Onto her bed. I was on top. She pulled my shirt off.
Evidently we were going to have sex.
Okay. That was fine with me. I'd been meaning to get that out of the way anyway.
I thought it wouldn't matter to me, though. I thought I'd just do it with her and then leave, and not feel much of anything. I definitely didn't think I would get nervous. I didn't get nervous over anything, really. But there was something about her hands, and the way she was moving underneath me, that told me she knew exactly what she was doing. She'd been there before. Plenty of times.
That surprised me. I didn't expect that. I had actually thought she was a virgin.
I had only been there once before. I hardly knew what I was doing.
It didn't matter to me, but it mattered to her, and she mattered to me, and if I didn't do it right then that could just ruin everything for her. Sometimes I forgot that for most people sex was a huge deal and no matter how I felt about it, I shouldn't have been taking it so lightly. It wasn't about me; it was about her.
She moved down to my neck, kissing it not gently, but not roughly either. I opened my eyes as she did that and looked in front of me, at her wall, only then noticing the crucifix above her bed.
I was already nervous, and she had a crucifix above her bed.
It wasn't like I was religious. I only went to church on Easter and my parents never told me much about God or anything like that. My grandparents tried when I was little, but the only thing I could still remember was John 3:16.
Still, I couldn't fuck a girl with Jesus watching. That was just wrong.
I closed my eyes tightly then, trying to forget about the cross, pretending I had never seen it in the first place and focusing on Ella.
But I must have done something wrong because as she was making her way back up to my lips she stopped suddenly.
"Are you okay?" She asked quietly, confused, and looking up at me with her dark eyes.
I opened my eyes and again, they landed on Jesus, and I knew that I couldn't go through with that.
I rolled my eyes at that crucifix, hung in a place that it should never have been hung, especially since Ella had clearly been in the same situation before with another guy, or other guys, and I couldn't imagine that no one else got creeped out by that.
"No," I answered honestly, rolling off of her and sitting up. "I think I should go."
"Why?" She asked, offended. She sat up too, raising her eyebrows at me as she waited for my reply, her way of letting my know it better be a damn good one.
I shook my head. "I just… I don't think it's the right time."
She rolled her eyes and said, "Okay."
I put on my shirt and she got on her phone like she was bored.
"I'll text you," I said.
"Okay," she said, looking up at me for just a second before going back to her Twitter.
I went back home pretty pissed at myself. I wanted to sleep with Ella. I guess I did, I mean. I don't know if I had ever really wanted to sleep with anyone, because I just didn't have those feelings, but I didn't mind it at all, and I knew it was something I had to do and I was fine with that. I wanted to sleep with her because she wanted to sleep with me and I wanted to make her happy. But it just didn't happen that night.
My first time was with Kim and it happened the night before she left for New York. She just came and sat on my bed and looked at me and I knew. It was easier with her. Almost even simple, almost came natural. I thought it was perfectly fine and she seemed happy.
I guess I just always thought that sex was a small thing, though. That night with Kim was nice, but I had so many other memories of her that meant more to me.
As I thought about that, I really missed Kim. Old Kim. The one I knew all the way through. But when I got back to my apartment and saw New Kim sitting outside my door, she seemed close enough to the girl I did know, and all the anger I had towards her earlier that day was gone.
She came back and I was okay with that. I still had a million questions, but I had a feeling that eventually they would all be answered.
She ended up answering a couple the second I walked up to her.
She looked up at me from her place on the floor. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and she seemed upset (my fault, most likely). Quickly, she told me a story.
"I went to school for one month. Then I quit. It was too hard and I couldn't do it. I hate school anyway. I never gave a fuck about learning. When I dropped out, I moved in with this guy... for almost a year. But then he moved on and so I had to too and there was this... other guy... and he was going to Chicago. And he asked if I wanted to go with him and I couldn't think of any better option so I just did but that ended up not working out either so I came back to you because I knew that—I thought that—you would be nice to me. I just wanted someone to be nice to me."
I simply said, "Come on inside." I couldn't think of any better thing to say in response, but really, I had a feeling she didn't want me to comment on any of it anyway.
A/N: HOW WAS THAT? I tried! Really really was a difficult one for me.
But anyway, how do y'all feel about Kim now? And Ella? And Jack? And Ella and Jack? And Kim and Jack?
Okay too many questions ;)
Please leave me a review if you're reading so I'll know to continue!
