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His eyes are closed, his lips are pressed against another’s, and there’s a ding before the sound of doors sliding open—
“Kendall?!”
Kendall pulls away; realizes that he was kissing Lucy, and they’re in the elevator, and Jo is looking at them like it’s the first time. Kendall rapidly looks from her to Lucy and back again.
Worst case of deja vu ever.
It’s all the same.
He’s hiding in the locker while they knock on his door. His friends cover for him. He’s left with Logan when Camille comes bursting in. She realizes his predicament and offers to help. Camille and Logan both say that Kendall needs to confront his problem. Kendall doesn’t—last time because he wasn’t ready, now because he’s freaking out. Lucy and Jo both say they’ll leave the Palm Woods if they don’t get picked by Kendall, and—
“Okay, there’s really only one way to solve this problem. And I didn’t wanna go here because it’s a little extreme, but you are gonna have to do everything I say, because I’m the only one who knows how it works.”
And that. “No! No love science.” In fact, he can skip the walk from Rocque Records to the Palm Woods in order to figure out what to do, as well. “I... am picking Jo,” Kendall says, after taking a deep breath.
Both Logan and Camille blink.
“Oh,” says Logan. “Really?”
“You sound surprised,” Kendall notes, a tad defensively. It can’t be that surprising, though. Jo was Kendall’s first love, after all.
Logan was there for all of it: Kendall’s initial pining (which Logan was present for due to his own pining, but that’s besides the point); Kendall and Jo’s first date at the party they’d thrown and then tried to hide from Bitters; every time Kendall ran after Jo to tell her things with Jordan Sparks weren’t what it looked like... Kendall’s own jealousy regarding Jett and how Jo almost broke up with him over it, followed by the moment she’d shown up at Rocktober Fest with her own handmade sign.
And the actual break-up. Watching her plane take off into the sky through the giant glass window, his fingers moving to be on that window as though he could touch her that way, leaving smudges in their wake. Logan had been right there waiting for him along with Carlos and James, walking out that airport with him. Lips still tingling from that final goodbye kiss.
“I just thought that you’d take some more time to think about it.”
Right. Right, from Logan’s perspective, this must seem odd. In the original version of this day, Kendall had taken more time to think about it, after all. Logan doesn’t know that Kendall is reliving maybe the worst day of his life. Seriously. Getting kidnapped by a rival record producer? That’s nothing. His friends packing up their suitcases and moving out? Pshh, he handled it. In fact, he thinks he only ever felt as bad as this when Jo left. Further proof that he’s made the right choice, isn’t it?
Logan signals Camille with his eyes and she abruptly goes, “I should go! See if Jo or Lucy want to talk.” She offers Kendall a sympathetic smile and a squeeze to his shoulder before she goes, though—and it’s nice, he thinks, Camille’s affirmation that she’s still his friend, too, even as she’s Jo’s and Lucy’s. He likes Camille. Especially now that she’s no longer randomly slapping him on a regular basis.
“Alright, talk to me,” Logan says, moving to sit next to Kendall on the couch. “What are you thinking? Why Jo?”
Kendall takes a breath, sorts out his thoughts. “Jo and I had a whole relationship together,” he starts.
“And you and Lucy don’t,” Logan surmises.
“Exactly. It wouldn’t be fair to what Jo and I had not to give us a chance...now that we have another chance. I mean, neither of us actually wanted to break up,” Kendall points out. “Life just.... happened.”
He hadn’t said this out loud yesterday—last time—whatever, he’d just walked a couple miles while thinking it through in the privacy of his own mind and then knocked on Jo’s door. It had all been such a whirlwind. Earlier that day, Kendall felt crushed that Beau had driven all the way from Georgia to win Lucy back. Then he saw Beau once again cheating, and there was scheming, and then asking Lucy out, followed by Jo’s immediate return...
“That makes it sound like you’re choosing Jo out of obligation,” Logan says carefully, his grimace not without sympathy.
“No! That’s not it at all,” Kendall protests with a sinking feeling. He loves Jo. A ten according to love science, Kendall thinks a little spitefully, though knowing he can’t tell Logan that now. And Lucy had gotten a ten as well.
Kendall sighs, gaze catching the dome hockey table. When Kendall still had his leg in a cast, Lucy and Logan played there once. Lucy glanced over at Kendall on the couch when Logan was mid-victory dance after scoring a goal. She’d called out and teased him, you know, when you and Camille had your sordid skating affair, you never came back with injuries before. I seem to recall something about smooth moves. Which Logan had promptly ridiculed. As they continued to play, Lucy gently mocked, did our presence make you self-conscious?
Honestly, it had, but he hadn’t been about to admit it. Dryly, Kendall said, it was the hideous outfit’s fault and I’m sticking with that, to which Lucy had laughed, distracting her sufficiently enough for Logan to get another goal.
Odd thing to think about now.
“I think you should do what makes you happy,” Logan says.
“Jo made me happy,” Kendall says quietly.
“You’re speaking in the past tense there, buddy,” Logan says, eyes so full of pity that it makes Kendall feel itchy.
“She can make me happy again,” Kendall says, frustrated. “In fact, I’m gonna go over there right now and tell her my decision.” He made his decision before this weird time nonsense and he’s sticking with it.
Logan stares at him, before he shrugs. “Alright.”
He psychs himself up on his way to Jo’s apartment, remembering all the fun times they had together. When they distracted Bitters from the party James and Carlos refused to stop... When they schemed together to spend the day at the zoo, setting Jet up with a llama....
Things were the best between them when there were shenanigans involved. When they weren’t trying so hard to do romance, in the conventions that television and magazines shoved down their throats. Getting them his and hers smoothies that one time, because it seemed like the thing to do, but he prefers pink smoothies and she was annoyed taking the blue one. They tended to get pink smoothies together afterwards, but stuff like that kept happening.
He only realized it after they’d already broken up. He wants things to be different this time.
Through the uncomfortable silences and halting sentences he falls back on what was familiar, suggesting they go on a picnic together because they used to love doing that. She agrees to meet him at the park in an hour.
“Goodbye kiss?” As he goes for it, Jo angles her face so that he’s kissing her cheek instead.
He pulls back, watching the uncomfortable press of her lips together as she avoids his gaze, heading back into her apartment.
The picnic itself is not much better.
“Okay,” Kendall says after finishing his sandwich, “is it just me, or do things feel a little awkward?” He says it jokingly, with a wry smile, trying to cut away said awkwardness while two joggers pass their blanket.
“You think this is awkward?” Jo says, unimpressed. “Try seeing the boy you never forgot about kiss another girl in an elevator, then wait around while he takes hours to decide wether he wants you back or not.”
There’s unmistakable hurt in her eyes, and he winces; soft spiky grass prickling at his hand from the edge of the blanket.
Looking away, his gaze settles on a couple sitting on a park bench. Smiling at each other like they’re in a dating website ad. It’s the same bench, he notes with a dropping heart, where Lucy was sitting when he tried to ask her out the first time—only to get interrupted by James and Carlos playing rugby.
“Right, that’s—fair.”
“I just didn’t think it would be like this,” Jo admits, blowing out a frustrated breath, and—
—he pictured Jo coming back so many times. After she’d just left, he couldn’t stop thinking about every picnic, every smoothie they shared, and most of all, that last kiss in the airport. Earbuds in, he played his own band’s song over and over. We’ll pick up right where we left off...
“Yeah, me neither,” Kendall says softly.
He looks down at the well-tended bright green grass, presses his lips together; wonders how to make this right. Birds are pecking at the grass. The scent of corndogs lingers in the air from the vendor cart. Mashed hard rock notes leak out a jogger’s ipod.
“Look, Lucy—”
”What?”
He abruptly looks up, realizes his mistake. ”Jo,” he says quickly, his eyes wide.
“Yeah,” she says, pissed off, “Jo. Not Lucy.”
She gets up with a scoff, walking away. Kendall watches her pass the bench with the couple. There’s still some food left on his blanket. Like that time she had to leave a picnic because she had too busy a schedule—but Katie and Bitters aren’t here this time to eat the leftovers and distract Kendall with their company, and, somehow, Kendall doesn’t think one-minute-dates are the solution this time.
Kendall knocks on Jo’s door.
When she sees him, she sighs. “Kendall—”
“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “I know this is not at all how either of pictured reuniting, but maybe we should just forget about the ‘reuniting’ part. Maybe we should just start over.”
The line in the song is we’ll pick up right where we left off, not.... we’ll never get back together because I’ll choose another girl. But it’s also I’ll tuck you in every night on the phone, and they never did that, either. No long-distance relationship. In fact, they barely talked. It was a clean break. Grieving period. And at the end of every grief cycle... There’s acceptance.
What they had is over now, but maybe they can have something new.
“How do we do that?” Her voice sounds thick.
He takes a deep breath. “I... noticed that you just moved into the Palm Woods,” he says.
Surprise flickers in her eyes; her lips curve upwards.
“Would you...” He smiles hesitantly. ”...like to go out sometime? Like to—tomorrow?” He stumbles over ‘tonight’, changes it at the last second.
He asked Lucy out to have their first date tonight—a date that is now never going to happen. He just needs a little longer to get over it, that’s all. A little longer to acclimate to Jo’s return, as well.
“That sounds really nice,” Jo tells him, eyes shining.
She puts her hand on his arm, pulls him against her. Places her lips, closed, against his. He smells her shampoo. It’s sweet. Vanilla and roses.
His eyes are closed, his lips are pressed against another’s, and there’s a ding before the sound of doors sliding open—
Wait.
“Kendall?!”
His nose brushes Lucy’s as he pulls away, looking at Jo. Staring at Kendall and Lucy like it’s the first time.
“Oh, come on!” The words escape him without quite meaning for them to. How is he supposed to get their relationship back on track if he can’t get more than a half a day?
He was trying really hard not to freak out too badly before, hoping that it was only just one repeat, but now that he’s back here again... What if he’s gonna be stuck here forever?
The very thought has him trying to stave off panic, and he almost misses what Jo is saying; explaining about the movie falling through and everything. His ears are ringing. His lips still tingle from the kiss. Lucy steps forward,
“Jo!” The cheerful quality of her voice sounds painfully fake. “Hi, I’m Lucy. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Lucy has heard about Jo. Camille was probably the first to mention her; Logan or Carlos might have too. By the time Jo was brought up in front of Kendall and Lucy both, Lucy had already seemed to know the basics: Jo was Kendall’s girlfriend and they broke up when she left. Eyes swiveled to him at the mention of Jo’s name, like they expected him to find the nearest couch to groan into—except Lucy. Sporting a simple sympathetic grimace of solidarity. And other than the slight twinge of his heart, Kendall felt fine. He moved the conversation along, and that was that.
“Hi.” Jo looks at Kendall and Lucy, brow furrowed. For the third time, she asks, “So... Are you guys...dating?”
And for the third time, Lucy struggles to answer, finally turning back to the elevator. “Kendall?” With an uncertain smile and hopeful eyes. Kendall’s heart just drops.
He doesn’t want to do this again. He doesn’t want to hurt Lucy over and over.
“I... don’t know,” Kendall says slowly, feeling like everything is too surreal. Last time—both times—he’d already rapidly pressed the elevator button at this point, screwing his eyes shut as the door closed so he didn’t have to answer. Now, his eyes are open, watching several expressions cross Lucy’s face. Before she settles on a diplomatic smile.
“Why don’t I let you two talk?” Lucy says, and Kendall watches her walk away. His head hurts and his chest feels tight.
“She seems nice,” Jo says, snapping him out of his thoughts. He looks at her as she joins him in the elevator, pressing the button.
Jo is speaking carefully; obviously and understandably fishing for more information. Maybe she’s wondering about how different she and Lucy seem, and what that says about Kendall’s feelings.
There’s a lump in his throat. “She is.”
You’re great! And you’re an awesome guitar player, and you speak your mind. And you’re... kinda mysterious? And you’re a great cheek kisser.
“Kendall...” Jo takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I understand. I mean, I never forgot you, but we broke up, we deliberately didn’t do long distance and I—I wasn’t expecting it, but I understand if you—”
“I want to be with you,” Kendall blurts.
Jo blinks. Then she smiles, soft and pleased. “Really?”
“Yeah,” he says hoarsely. “I just—think I should talk to Lucy first. But I’ll meet you at your apartment later?”
“Okay,” Jo says, still smiling. It makes him smile back, just a little; in spite of the way that his heart keeps sinking.
When the elevator doors open, Kendall is out quickly.
Even when he hears Jo speak, he doesn’t turn back around, “Wait, you forgot the goodbye ki...”
He collapses against the wall of an empty hallway, gasping for air.
The panic is really setting in now. He’s back again. He’s back again.
His heart feels like it’s going to burst, now. He doesn’t want to be stuck in time like this forever. But he tries to get a handle on his breathing. He has a plan, after all. No guarantee that it’ll work, but it’s better than nothing.
He thinks maybe if he does things differently, time will resume. It’s the best idea he’s got. And he figures a conversation with Lucy is what needs to happen, what he didn’t do last times. He has to watch the look on Lucy’s face as he tells her his decision. No matter how painful. He has to own up to it, and maybe then he’ll stop being punished like this.
So he knocks on Lucy’s door.
Being in Lucy’s tiny apartment catches his heart with a painful nostalgia, knowing things aren’t gonna be the same between them after this. The memories of being crammed on her couch together with the guys and Camille, playing party games with music blaring and bowls of chips strewn about, brings a melancholy smile to his face.
“You’re getting back together with Jo, aren’t you?”
Kendall startles. Looks from Lucy’s CD collection to Lucy herself. He purses his lips and makes himself nod. He watches her try to keep her expression even, taking a measured breath.
Haltingly, he says, “I know that we—but...”
“She’s your ex and we haven’t even had a real relationship,” Lucy fills in, voice dry. “I get it. I mean, if Beau and I had broken up the way you and Jo did, and he’d shown up, wasn’t a cheating jerk, and still wanted me—I don’t know what I would have done,” she finishes, blowing out a breath.
He stares at her. Dyed hair, ripped jeans, killer boots. Part of him wishes she’d get up in his face and challenge him, like she did the rule of dibs.
“Thank you for saying that.”
When Beau had come back—and she knew he’d cheated on her in the past—she’d been unsure wether or not she wanted to get back together with him, had even laughed with him, only dumping him for good when it turned out he hadn’t changed. Because they had history. Because she and Kendall weren’t dating. Because of all the reasons that Kendall himself has cycled through. It all boils down to bad timing.
“Well, it was nice while it lasted, right?” Lucy says, with a vulnerable smile that she covers up quickly. Making her voice more teasing, “All eight seconds.” Like it’s a joke.
He understands her need to minimize whatever it was that they had in the face of his choice, but he still shakes his head. “You’re a great girl,” he starts, voice thick.
“Yeah, yeah, spare me the speech.” Her tone is still light-hearted, but he notices that her eyes are getting misty. Lucy has never been good at hiding her emotions. They’re easy to tell, from the tightness of her jaw and the way she holds herself, the curve of her brows and the dark of her eyes.
He feels himself tear up, too. “You are,” he insists stubbornly. “It’s just...”
She brushes an idle hand across the line of her jacket, watches the fall of her black-and-red hair against the leather. “Unfinished business,” she says softly.
”...Yeah,” he whispers.
“So, how’d it go?” Jo says from her doorway, smiling when she sees him. Lipgloss, soft blush, hair up in a high ponytail now.
Kendall blinks at her, feeling whiplash. “Uh, she’s...”
Now Jo’s smile disappears, brow furrowing with concern. “Kendall?”
”...Can we start over?” As he repeats the familiar words, he wonders if he’s made a difference. He wonders if they’ll ever be able to truly start over.
“Okay,” Jo says bemused. “How’d it go?” she asks again, slower this time; confused.
“No, I mean... You and me,” he says, mouth dry.
If he’s choosing to have a whole new relationship with Jo, where they try to pretend like they didn’t have their first, then the unfinished business doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t matter. But it does. It’s why he chose her.
Jo is already nodding in understanding, giving him an uncertain smile. “How do we do that?”
Is choosing her, he mentally corrects. He loves Jo. And he’d really like to get to tomorrow.
“We can make new memories,” he tells her, smiling back.
“I’d like that.”
His eyes are closed, his lips are pressed against Lucy’s, and—
—Kendall frantically scrambles to hit the elevator’s ‘stop’ button.
Lucy laughs, startled, as the car shudders and jerks. “What are you doing?”
Kendall exhales slowly.
Turning back to face Lucy, he hopes his nervous smile doesn’t look too deranged. ”...Giving us privacy?” he tries.
She squints. “You look... different, somehow. Are you okay?”
From her perspective, he had just done his best to prove Beau was still a cheat. She told Beau to get lost, and then James, Jett and Camille had pushed Kendall into the elevator with Lucy. The doors closed. Kendall and Lucy kept glancing at each other and smiling. She called him sweet. He finally asked her out on a date. Stumbling through it, but she’d kept smiling, and then they kissed.
Only for Jo to be back, and the girls giving him the deadline to choose before the end of the day, and choose he did. Everything happened so fast. No moment to catch his breath. And now look, irony: all he’s got are moments to catch his breath, repeating everything over and over.
“Honestly? I’m trapped in a timeloop.”
Lucy double-takes. “Huh?” As though she must have heard wrong.
He sighs, shakes his head; desperate. “Can we just—sit together for a while and not initate the next sequence of events?” he asks hopefully.
”...Sure,” she says, nodding.
Now he’s the one double-taking. “Really?”
There’s a soft, wry smile on her lips, and it’s—
It’s familiar, fond, the corners of her mouth curving upwards. It’s so very Lucy.
“Yeah, I think I’m developing some kinda immunity to the weirdness of you and your friends,” she says dryly. “In fact, I think it’s contagious.”
He huffs out a surprised laugh, while she moves to sit down against the metal wall. With a small but fond smile of his own, he joins her on the floor.
“I’d advise going to Dr. Hollywood, but he’s even weirder,” he says, and she chuckles.
“Besides,” she adds, “you just saved me from making a huge mistake with my ex, least I can do is...” Her eyes narrow as her voice becomes gently mocking, ”...save you from dealing with your timeloop.” Head shaking, lips quirking.
He laughs softly again, smiling. Gaze catching her hand, he remembers when his hand was on the restaurant table and she’d put her ow over it. Curling her fingers around his skin and gently squeezing. He’d looked at her with surprise and her smile had been so wide. It tingled his skin, made his stomach flutter. It was over in seconds, as she lifted her hand to catch the wig when her mother threw it her way. But the feeling remained.
He’s the one reaching out now. Slowly, carefully, as though her hand is made of glass. It’s not. It’s a warm weight in his own, his thumb rubbing over her skin. She holds on tighter.
After their hands have disentangled, and she quit smiling with her eyes—all lit up and melting—Jo’s return once again shudders their foundations.This time, he doesn’t make a choice at all. Knowing they’ll both leave. Wondering if they’ll be better off—if setting them free from him is what he needs to do to resume time.
Apparently not.
Back in the elevator, Kendall watches Jo and Lucy shake hands.
“Are you guys...dating?” Jo asks, and Lucy stumbles over the answer, turning to Kendall with an uncertain smile and hopeful eyes.
“I...”
Kendall’s smile is wide, wry, and down-to-earth.
”...need to think for a while. So I’m going up to my apartment now. And I will get back to you...later.”
Lucy—whose own ex had showed up just earlier today—shrugs off the hurt, “Fair enough.”
Jo—who hadn’t expected Kendall to be with someone else upon her return—uncertainly says, “I suppose that’s understandable.”
Their faces disappear as the metal doors of the elevator close.
Kendall’s smile stays in place. He’s cool, he’s calm, he’s collected. This is all totally fine.
”And nothing even matters, whoa,” Kendall sings, his music blasting through the stereo.
With a hairbrush for a makeshift microphone, he spins as he does the choreography like he’s on stage. The door opens and his friends spill through, “Kendall, you’ll never guess who we...” They come to a halt, taking in the scene. ”...ran into?”
”Nothing even matters, hey!” He throws his hairbrush-holding arm up.
“Oh no,” Carlos despairs, “the stress has caused him to have a breakdown.”
Kendall rolls his eyes at the resulting panic, as his friends turn off the radio and sit him down on the couch. If he’s going to keep reliving this day over and over and over again, he thinks he’s entitled at least one breakdown—which this is not. Clearly.
Kendall looks up at his friends, waiting, as the silence stretches.
“Now what?” Logan wonders.
“This is usually the part where Kendall would give a speech,” James says, shrugging.
Kendall raises his brows.
“Okay,” Carlos speaks up resolutely, “you’re at a hockey game, and there are two teams, and you have to...” He falters. “Pick a team?”
“No, no, no,” James says. “He’s at a hockey game, and there are two lovely ladies in the stands—”
“That’s terrible,” Logan cuts in.
“Aren’t you gonna try?” James and Carlos ask in unison.
”No,” Logan answers firmly, brows raised, “That’s Kendall’s thing, I’m staying in my lane.”
Expectant looks are thrown Kendall’s way. He stares back at them, incredulous. ...He sighs and gets up off the couch.
“Fine! I’m at a hockey game,” he says, wide-eyed and completely exasperated, “and there aren’t many minutes left, and I have to choose who to pass the puck to. My decision will determine wether or not I win the game.”
Aggressively pointing in the air, he yells, ”That’s how you do a hockey metaphor,” before moving back to the couch, face-down this time.
“Riiight,” James says, “so the puck is like his heart, and the game is his life.”
“Yeah, that was good,” Carlos says.
“A+ as always,” Logan agrees.
Kendall’s moans of despair are muffled by the couch.
“Well, I’m getting flashbacks,” James comments as he moves to sit down, couch dipping a little.
“Right, but what we need to find out now,” Logan says, “is the reason for face-down couch time. Is it because of the very idea of letting Jo go again, or is it because breaking up with Lucy hurts just as much as breaking up with Jo did back then.”
“It’s not a break-up,” Kendall protests half-heartedly, turning his head to the side so he can talk more easily. “We haven’t even gone on a single date,” he mumbles miserably.
“Yeah, but you guys have been growing closer for months now,” Logan points out.
“And you really like her,” Carlos says earnestly.
”And I heard you two kissed,” James adds, conspiratorially.
“But,” Logan says, “he also really liked Jo.”
Abruptly, Kendall is sitting upright. “You’re speaking in the past tense,” he says, staring Logan down.
“Oh, uh—”
Kendall groans. “I’m such an idiot.”
James says, “Whoa, hey, we don’t use that kind of self-deprecating language during hockey-termed speeches.”
Kendall is already half-way out the door, but over his shoulder he yells, ”Your hockey terms sucked!”
The last thing he hears from the apartment is Logan’s bewildered voice, “You know words like self-deprecating?”
Kendall knocks on Jo’s door.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” she says, with a thick voice and a vulnerable smile.
Things with her began with infatuation; a false daydream in which she loved hockey and a lie where she pretended to have a boyfriend. Then it became a proper relationship, where they got to know each other. Even then, the idea of what romance ought to be sometimes got in the way of being able to just—enjoy each other’s company.
The getting to know each other part happened first with Lucy. Okay, what happened first was his intense desire to prove his music rocks. Caring that much what she thought about it. She challenged him—and Kendall is never one to back down from that. It had felt so satisfying when she watched the evening news with them after their impromptu concert and said their music did rock, smirking at him all the while; eyes brimming with mirth. Then, they got to know each other, as they became friends.
Because they never started with the idea of romance in mind, certain ideas of what romance had to be like didn’t get in the way. And when he fell in love with Lucy... There was no crush based on the idea of her first. It’s what’s underneath your skin, as he sang on the restaurant’s stage. Playing guitar with her, unable to look away.
The battle of wills over Kendall’s music, Lucy going along with the ‘new friend code’ that Kendall had made up on the spot, holding a handmade sign and smiling at him after he came home from tour. The look in her eyes when he told her she was great—at guitar playing and cheek kissing both. The way she’d winked at him over her shoulder after just explaining that she’d simply had dust in her eye the first time—grinning.
His desperate desire to help her receive her parents’ acceptance. Holding hands on a restaurant table. The way his heart knocked in his throat when they kissed for the first time.
They’re friends. But they’ve been more than that too, all along. Not officially dating, but he doesn’t think that matters. He’s in love with her.
When he looks at Jo, he feels love, too. But it’s not the same kind of love he feels for Lucy. It’s not even the same kind of love that he felt for Jo before.
“We’re not getting back together, are we?” Jo says. Kendall realizes he’s been quiet for too long.
“I kind of hockey speeched myself,” he says sheepishly, and Jo lets out a startled, wet-sounding laugh.
“That sounds about right.” He wants her to be happy. Starting over with him is not going to do that, he thinks—not really. Just because they love each other doesn’t mean that they should be together, or that they can make each other happy.
He takes a breath. “At first... I thought that it wouldn’t be fair to our relationship if I didn’t give us another chance. It all happened so fast, and—but—I’ve had some time to think. And I think that it wouldn’t be fair to either of to try and start over when...”
He looks at her, eyes wide and imploring.
“I moved on,” he admits.
He finds Lucy sitting by the pool, guitar in her lap; half-heartedly plucking the strings. Camille is with her, but, as soon as she sees Kendall approaching, she’s got a too-wide grin and an outlandish excuse before absolutely booking it, leaving Kendall to sit down in her place.
Tank tops, lemonade, sunshine and dripping popsicles. Someone is blasting music on a stereo—one of BTR’s songs: Blow Your Speakers Out. Kids are playing volleyball in the pool, splashing water. All around them, palm trees reach skyward. Lucy smiles at Kendall; brief, fleeting, uncertain. He smiles back.
“So... I’ll meet you in the lobby at eight?”
She blinks. “What?”
He thinks about when they hung out here after the rehearsal concert for the world tour. It was dark out, fairy lights had been placed everywhere, and they sat by the crackle and pop of the fire while he regaled her with past schemes. The transformation of 2J, the band’s first music video, shooting a proper photo for Poptiger magazine...
Carlos joined them during that last story, promptly and gleefully yelled smile pretty pretty, and got out his phone to snap a surprise pic of Kendall and Lucy. The sudden callback made it so that Kendall was doubled-over laughing in the picture, with a startled Lucy grinning at the sight; sparks drifting upward from the fire. And wasn’t that a date in its own right? Just without the weight of the word. Now, it has weight when he says,
“For our date tonight. You didn’t forget, did you?”
Lucy looks at him like she can’t quite believe he’s real. Like she needs to memorize him, sitting on a deck chair with his pounding heart. “You mean...”
His gaze hangs on hers for a moment; then he flushes and looks down. “If you still want—I...”
She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. Reflexively, his hand reaches forward to keep the guitar steady, just in case, even as he’s closing his eyes and deepening the kiss. Smearing his lips with her blackberry lipbalm, tasting it. Until he’s panting, heart in his throat.
(Time marches onwards.)