Disclaimer: I don't own Big Time Rush or anything recognizable in this.
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A/N: I know! It's a miracle! This is probably the fastest I've ever updated anything! But you guys reviewed really fast, and since I had this chapter already written I decided to go ahead and post it :)
Those of you who have read "Hot Water" and "Break the Ice" will recognize a character who enters the scene in this chapter. For those of you who haven't read either of those stories, his name is Kyle Margolis, and he's my version of the Kyle from the episode "Big Time Crush", who Katie tried to go out with, only to have her date all but sabotaged by James.
Anyway, I think that's about it for the A/N :)
Enjoy the chapter!
Chapter Six – Never Say Never
Katie's POV
Since it had snowed while I had been in the rink, I had to brush the snow off my car before I could even climb into it. And then it took about ten minutes just to warm up.
Needless to say, by the time I pulled out onto the road I was not in a good mood. I drove home, grinding my teeth the entire way, but I brightened up when I saw a familiar car parked in my parents' driveway.
I pulled into the garage, shut off the ignition, and went through the whole ordeal with closing the garage door behind me before walking inside and stripping down to my regular clothes. I hurried into the living room, where none other than Kyle Margolis was sitting on the couch with my mom, eating the gluten free chocolate chip cookies she had no doubt offered him.
"K!" I hollered the second I stepped into the living room.
His head snapped up and he grinned, dropping the cookie on the plate my mom was still holding. "K-Squared!" he hollered back, and I dashed over to him, hugging him so tightly I quite possibly squeezed all the air out of him. He hugged me back and picked me up, swinging me around, so I figured he didn't mind me almost suffocating him.
I heard Mom laugh and say, "I'll just leave these here for you two."
"Wait." I pulled back and looked at her. "Could you make me something to eat? Pleeeeaaasse? I'm hungry, I haven't eaten since this morning and it's – " I checked the grandfather clock hanging on the wall. "After one."
She nodded. "I'll make you some soup and a sandwich, okay?"
"Thanks." I dropped down onto the couch and looked at Kyle expectantly as he sat down beside me. "Well? How have you been? How's it going? How's Paulson? How's school? I didn't know you were coming back for the weekend!"
Kyle and I grew up together and were really close for most of our lives. But his parents divorced a couple of years ago and he moved down south to Paulson, not too away from Minneapolis and St. Paul, to live with his mom. His dad remained in Bear Lake, and he came up most weekends to visit, but he usually texted or called to let me know.
He laughed. "I'm good, it's going well, Paulson is the usual, nothing too spectacular about it, school's school, so I don't know why you're asking me about it, and I got really distracted so I completely blanked on letting you know, I'm sorry."
I giggled, grabbing a cookie and taking a hungry bite. "It's cool, don't worry about it. And I'm glad everything's going well for you."
"Yeah, same. How's everything going for you? Your mom said you were at the rink, something about hockey practice…?"
I groaned, before launching into the story, making sure he knew what a huge jerk James was and how this was totally his fault and how I was going to strangle him one of these days.
Kyle may or may not have laughed through most of the story. I was too busy tuning him out to pay much attention.
"…And then they showed up at the rink this morning. They said their rink was under construction." I rolled my eyes. "Can you believe it?"
"Uh…yes. Because when I played for them for that one semester, both rinks would be under maintenance on the weekends. They'd bring out the Zamboni and do a thorough cleaning of the rink, probably to get rid of any blood stains on the ice or something."
I made a face. "Lovely."
"My point is, they were probably telling you the truth."
"Which is wonderful and everything, I'm sure. Anyway, James almost went bat shit crazy on me at one point," I continued on. "I thought he was going to hit me."
"What'd you say?"
I winced. "I told him that…well…that his brother is better looking than him…"
Kyle winced too. "You didn't! Katie!"
"I know, I know, it was a low blow, but, I mean, was it really that bad?"
"To him? Yes. Yes, it was."
"Well, next time I'll remember that."
He shook his head. "You just don't know when to stop sometimes, do you?"
"What're you talking about?" I demanded, a little offended.
He opened his mouth, but closed it when Mom walked into the living room, carrying a tray laden with a bowl of split pea soup, a plate with a turkey and cheese sandwich resting on it, and a mug of steaming tea. She set the tray gracefully down on the coffee table and I thanked her. Normally she would have called me into the kitchen to eat like "a normal human being" at the table, but since Kyle was here I knew she was letting it slide this one time.
"Can I get you anything?" she asked Kyle. "How about a glass of milk to go with the cookies?" she added indulgently, and I fought back a grin. Both of my parents loved Kyle. He was a sweetheart, always kept an eye on me, and was gay. He was the perfect guy friend, as far as my dad was concerned, because he wasn't going to try to get in my pants. A father's dream come true for sure.
"Sure," Kyle agreed, already knowing that she wouldn't give up until she was able to mother him into the next century. "A glass of milk would be amazing."
She beamed at him and swished back into the kitchen to get him that milk. She brought it out, topped with a swirly straw, and I choked on a laugh. Have I mentioned how much my parents love Kyle? Because they do, they really do. They'd probably adopt him if they could.
Once he had thanked her and assured her, seriously, that he didn't need anything else, she headed off to her office, most likely to work on her blog. She ran a health and fitness website, complete with a blog – which she updated pretty much every day – tips and tricks, recipes, and exercise recommendations. She had been a cheerleader in high school and in college, and had majored in nutrition and minored in fitness. I was pretty sure I got a lot of my health consciousness from her, because while I definitely loved junk food, I made a point of eating pretty healthy ninety-five percent of the time. The soup was homemade, the bread was whole grain, and the turkey and cheese were…well, I was pretty sure my mom had handpicked the turkey from the local deli, and she had eyed every single package of cheese at the natural food store in the nearest city.
She also taught Pilates, yoga, and Zumba classes at the local gym. That was one of the reasons why Kendall and I both had memberships there – our mother was an instructor. Our dad wasn't quite as health conscious as our mom, but he was a top architectural engineer, one of the best for the company, and his job could get stressful at times. So he liked to wind down with weight lifting, running on the treadmill, and yes, even yoga. It had been hilarious to see my huge, six foot tall, muscular father bent over in our living room, trying to figure out if he was doing Downward Facing Dog right, but since then I had (kind of) gotten used to the sight.
I turned back to Kyle as I took a bite of my sandwich. "Okay, talk."
He sighed, pushing his bangs out of his eyes. "You and Kendall compete over stuff sometimes, right?"
"Yeah, like constantly."
"Okay. So what if someone outright told you that you weren't good enough compared to him? How would you feel?"
I frowned. "What is it that we're talking about?"
"Something important to you. Like hockey."
I snorted. "Please. I'm just as good at hockey as he is."
"But what if someone told you that you're not? What if someone told you that he was the better player? How would you feel?"
I shrugged. "Angry. Hurt. Frustrated. Irritated."
"What if someone told you that you weren't as good looking as he is?"
"Kyle, we look nothing alike. Also, the last time I checked, he's a boy and I'm a girl. One thing has nothing to do with the other."
He groaned. "Okay, fine. Imagine you have a sister who's a year or so younger than you, and she's pretty much always done the same things as you, and you've always been compared to her. What if someone taunted you, saying that you're not as good as she is? What if you were already upset, and that person just threw that out to rub salt in the wound? You'd probably be pretty upset, wouldn't you?"
"I – yeah – I guess so."
"You would. Because while I don't know Shane that well, I do know that he and James were constantly fighting, constantly competing when they were younger. And that's probably still going on, I'm sure that hasn't changed. You can't compare a sibling to another sibling, especially if it's a brother to a brother or a sister to a sister. You should know that. You're the girl – aren't you supposed to be the sensitive one?"
"Probably," I admitted as I polished off my sandwich and started on my soup. "But then again, I'm not very tactful – " I broke off as the garage door opened. A moment later, it closed, and the connecting door squeaked, letting me know that someone had just walked inside. I could hear Kendall and James talking, and not thirty seconds later they padded into the living room, wearing simple jeans and sweatshirts.
"Hey, Kyle," Kendall greeted him, and they fist bumped.
"How's it going?" James added, also fist bumping him.
"Not bad," Kyle shrugged. "How about you two? I heard about the bet you guys made with the girls' hockey team…"
James smirked. "Did she tell you about today? How we kicked her team's ass?"
"You did not kick my team's ass," I informed him, turning around on the couch so that I could glare up at him a little more easily. "You only won by a couple of points."
"We kicked your ass. Just admit it."
"Whatever. We weren't on form. When we are, we'll crush you guys," I said with a hell of a lot more determination than I felt.
"Sure."
"I'm going to go see if there's food," Kendall told James.
"I think there's still split pea soup in the fridge," I called after him as he headed into the kitchen. "And sandwich fixings!"
"Thanks, baby sister!" he called back.
"And don't call me that! I'm only five minutes younger than you!"
"Six, but who's counting?"
James batted his lashes at me. "Aren't you two adoe-able together?"
I blinked up at him. "Me and Kendall? Sure, when we're not trying to kill each other."
"I was talking about you and Kyle." He pointed back and forth between us.
We both gaped at him blankly. Was he serious? Was he actually insinuating that Kyle and I were going out? I mean, okay, it wasn't exactly an uncalled-for assumption. Most of the world had no clue that Kyle was gay. For one thing, he hid it well. For another thing, he kept his mouth shut. It wasn't that he wasn't ready to come out of the closet, but Bear Lake and Paulson were both known for being straight laced, uptight, and traditional. Considering the fact that girls' sports teams weren't even given any actual credit, the whole uptight and traditional thing seemed pretty self-evident to me.
Anyway, even though my parents and brother knew that Kyle was gay, he had asked us not to say anything to anyone else, and that included James.
"I hate to break this to you," I said to James once I managed to regain some of the feeling in my mouth, "but Kyle and I are not dating. Not even close."
"We're really not," Kyle added.
James rolled his eyes. "Uh huh. Suuurre. I get it. You don't want Kendall or Mr. and Mrs. Knight finding out. Mum's the word."
"Mum is not the word! We're not – "
Kendall poked his head out of the kitchen. "Get your ass in here and fix yourself a sandwich. What do I look like, your damn maid?" he hollered at James.
James cackled, hissed, "Later, love birds," and sprinted into the kitchen at full speed.
"Tell me that did not just happen," I said to Kyle, who's jaw was still hanging down somewhere around his shoulders.
"That just happened."
I shoved him. "I told you not to tell me that!"
"Fine, so I just failed you as a friend. You'll get over it."
I shook my head and slurped up the rest of my soup, before collapsing back against the couch. "I feel gross."
"Gee, I wonder why. That couldn't have something to do with the fact that you spent four and a half hours trying to beat James up, could it?"
I rolled my eyes. "I'm going to go take a shower and change clothes. I'll be back down in a little while."
"Hang on, can I just hang out in your room? I'm a little worried James might come back out and decide to question me about our so-called 'relationship'." He held his fingers up in quotation marks.
"Go for it."
I downed my tea and brought the mug, plate, bowl, spoon, and tray back into the kitchen, where I placed everything in the dishwasher and headed back out. Kyle and I made a beeline for the stairs. Kyle headed into my room, while I dashed into the bathroom, locking myself in. I stripped and jumped into the shower, letting out a sigh of relief as the hot water hit my sore muscles. This was exactly what I needed.
Well, no, what I really needed was a hot bath with Epson salt and maybe my own personal masseuse – preferably a hot guy who could work my body like a hockey player could work the puck. That would be nice.
Once I had scrubbed all the sweat from my skin and had washed my hair as thoroughly as I could, I rinsed off, shut off the shower, and grabbed one of the huge fluffy towels hanging on the rack. I wrapped it around my body and caught my hair up in another towel. Once I was ninety-six percent sure that I wasn't going to drip all over the place, I hurried back to my room. I was just about to make my regular mad dash across the hall when James poked his head out of Kendall's room. "Oh, wrong Knight."
"I thought you were downstairs," I replied, tightening my grip on the towel. Great. I was half naked and I looked like I had a turban wrapped around my head. This was fucking perfect. "Eating."
"Jo called and Kendall banished me to his room."
I raised an eyebrow, which must have looked pretty bizarre with a huge towel piled on top of my head. "Jo called Kendall?"
"Yeah. Well, from what I gathered, she meant to call you but you two are right next to each other in her contacts list. And Kendall decided to use the opportunity to sweet talk her into possibly going out with him after this whole thing is over." His eyes wandered over my towel, and I felt my face heat up. Why did these things always happen to me? Why?!
"I like the color," he commented. "That shade of beige really brings out the gold in your eyes."
I blinked, trying to figure out when the last time was that he had actually gotten a good look at my eyes. And then I realized he was being a smartass.
I shoved him. "Get out of my way, James."
He laughed, holding his hands up. "Should you really be shoving guys around when you're only in a towel? What if it falls?"
"Then close your eyes."
"But what if I don't want to close my eyes?"
I felt my face heat up, and I pushed past him, heading towards my room.
"Where'd your buddy go?" James called after me.
"Who?" I glanced over my shoulder at him.
"Kyle. You know, the guy you say isn't your boyfriend?"
"He's not. And he's in my room."
"He's in your room and you're going in there like that?"
"I don't know what you're getting all pissy over. You're seeing me like this right now."
"Yeah, but this was accidental. And you walking into your bedroom like that is not accidental!"
I gaped at him. "What the hell is your problem? Since when do you give a damn what I do?"
"I don't."
"You sure as hell aren't acting like it."
"Whatever." He disappeared back into Kendall's room and I shook my head. Freak.
I headed into my own room and shut the door, turning to face Kyle, who was lounging on my bed.
"I heard yelling," Kyle stated, staring at me. "What was going on out there?"
"Oh, I ran into James in the hall. He's pissed because you're in here and I'm half naked." I rolled my eyes dramatically. "He's such an asshole. I don't get what his freaking problem is."
Kyle shrugged. "Maybe he likes you."
I snorted loudly. "Yeah, that'll be the day. Turn around, I'm going to get dressed."
Kyle slapped his hands over his eyes and spun around on my bed so that he was facing my wall.
I slipped into sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, before pulling the towel from my head and plugging in my blow dryer so that I could dry my hair. Once I was satisfied that my hair was fine, I brushed it out and plopped down on my bed with Kyle. He snatched up my remote and flipped the TV on.
I settled back against my pillows, grabbing my phone to text Jo to see if she was off the phone with my brother yet. She replied a couple of minutes later, and I called her.
"What's up?" she asked when she answered.
"Apparently you tried to call me but dialed Kendall's number?"
"Oh yeah."
"So, why'd you call?" I asked testily, feeling like I was pulling teeth just to get some very basic information out of her. Clearly her talk with my brother had fuddled her brain. Clearly.
"Oh, to see if you wanted to go to Burger Mill tonight," she said, naming the local burger joint. All the middle school and high school kids hung out there, mostly because it was cheap, clean, and the food was actually pretty good. The place was always packed on the weekends with eighth graders on their first dates, crowds of eleventh graders showing off their cars and drivers' licenses, and seniors proving how freaking cool they were with flasks of vodka hidden under their jackets. "Cami, Steph, and I are planning on being there. I think your brother, Carlos, Logan, and James will be there as well…" she added offhandedly.
"Oh. Maybe. Kyle's here and he might want to do something else, so we'll see."
Right on cue, Kyle glanced over at me curiously.
"Okay. Well, let me know."
"Will do." We hung up and I turned to Kyle. "Jo wants us to meet her and the girls at Burger Mill tonight."
"I'm up for it. You?"
"Yeah, I guess. I don't know, the guys are going to be there and I just know Jo's going to be flirting with Kendall, Stephanie's going to be flirting with Carlos, Camille's going to be flirting with Logan, and we're going to be left staring awkwardly at James. And I don't want to stare awkwardly at James. It's so…awkward."
"No shit," he deadpanned. "Anyway, if you don't want to go, we don't have to. We can just hang out here and watch a movie. You're probably dead tired after the morning you had, anyway."
"A little." I snuggled against my pillows, pulling one of my extra blankets over me. It was one of those micro fleece blankets, purple and white, and so soft and warm I just wanted to stay under it for the rest of my life.
"Take a nap," he suggested. "You can decide when you wake up."
"I never sleep in the afternoon," I protested even as I yawned widely, pressing my hand to my mouth.
"Well, you do today. I'll watch TV while you sleep. Or maybe I'll try to get a feel for James to see where he stands with you."
"Sure, you do that," I said sarcastically, closing my eyes. "But if you even try to get James to ask me out or make out with me or anything like that, I'll kick your ass from here to Egypt."
"Fair enough."
I snuggled deeper into my pillows. Normally it took me awhile to fall asleep, but this time I was out within minutes, dreaming about facing the boys' hockey team down. My arms felt too heavy to so much as lift the hockey stick, and my legs were too slow to speed towards the puck. As I tried to move forward, James whipped past me, brandishing his stick at me and throwing me a smug grin. "See?" he laughed. "I told you that girls can't beat boys at hockey. I win and you lose. Boys are better than girls!"
I woke with a gasp, sitting bolt upright. "Fucking – James – Diamond!"
Kyle glanced over at me. "Sounds hot."
I glared at him, rubbing my hand over my eyes. "It wasn't. He was kicking my ass at hockey."
"You actually dream about playing against him in hockey. You have got to be kidding me."
"No…why? Is that weird?"
"Yeah, kind of. I mean, James is hot and instead of dreaming about him taking you on the ice, you're dreaming about him kicking your ass at hockey. I guess it's because it's been on your mind today…"
"Probably," I agreed. "And I would never dream about him taking me on the ice."
Kyle raised an eyebrow at me.
"Ever again…"
"Uh huh. Considering you dream about making out with him at least once a month…" he trailed off pointedly.
"I can't control what I dream about!" I cried. "All those times were complete and total flukes!"
"Oh, so you didn't have a crush on James in middle school?"
"I was twelve years old, I didn't know any better! I was young and impressionable. He was hot and he did this thing where he flipped his bangs out of his eyes. Wait, he still does that…"
Kyle rested his chin in his hand, staring at me unblinkingly. "This is so fascinating, watching as you figure out that you're sexually attracted to James."
"I am not sexually attracted to James! Gross! That's disgusting! Don't say shit like that! Ew!"
"Me thinks thou doth protest too much."
"Oh, now you're quoting Shakespeare?"
"The situation called for it."
"The situation never calls for quoting Shakespeare. Never."
"So, does this mean we're going to Burger Mill tonight? So that you can prove to me how un-sexually attracted to James you are?"
"Damn straight it does." I reached for my phone. "I would never be into James like that. Never."
Kyle snickered. "Never say never, Katie."
Yeah, so, that was chapter six. It was more of a filler chapter, but in the next chapter things will start going down. As always, thank you for reading, and I would love to hear what you guys thought about this chapter or just this story in general, so please review :)
