bluedragonauthor

BTC 2.0: Chapter 38

Added 2024-07-22 19:00:29 +0000 UTC

-- CHAPTER 38: Past --

****

The other girls didn’t notice at first that Eva was crying. The hapa girl’s face was buried in my chest with my arms wrapped around her, so perhaps they thought Eva was just being shy and embarrassed. Belle, Sam, Mari, Holly, and Neevie were effusive with their praise, even patting her back or rubbing her shoulder, but it was Alice who first realized something was up.

“Hey, hey, hey!” she hollered, hands gesturing downwards and then pulling Naimh’s and Sam’s hands away. “Stop, stop. She’s crying.”

The other girls shut up and I slowly rocked Eva back and forth in much the same way I’d done before that night in her bedroom when she’d first told me about her history with Kai.

“Did we say something wrong?” Mari asked in concern.

“Fifty bucks it was Belle who said something wrong,” Holly muttered. “Somehow it’s always Belle.”

“Hey!”

“You saying I’m wrong?”

“I’m saying…” Belle hedged, “that I feel free to speak my mind when I’m with my friends.”

Holly snorted.

The girls went silent, waiting us out. Eva’s muffled sobs were the only sounds audible, but even they subsided and eventually all was quiet. And after one last nuzzle of her face to wipe her tears against my t-shirt, Eva pulled back and started glancing around for the tissue box.

Naimh was already prepared, holding a box in her lap with two tissues in her hand. She extended them to Eva, who accepted them with a grateful nod, wiped her eyes again, and blew her nose.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, we understand,” Naimh stated carefully. “We all respect your privacy… even Belle… and if you’re not comfortable sharing what’s going on with the rest of us, then maybe you and Matty can go upstairs to talk about it.”

Eva nodded and sniffled, and the girls all backed up a few inches to give us more space. But after grabbing two more tissues from Naimh and blowing her nose again, Eva sighed and shook her head. “It’s okay. I can talk here.”

“You sure?” Naimh asked.

“You’re my friends, right?” Eva muttered. “Friends are supposed to share this stuff with each other.”

“Do you want us to go?” Alice asked, gesturing back and forth between herself and Mari, and then Holly as well after a second.

Eva gave her a rueful smile and shook her head. “If we’re friends enough for me to let you lick my pussy, we’re friends enough for me to say these things to you.”

The girls all giggled a little at that.

Eva took a deep breath, but she kept her head bowed as she gathered herself. I scooped her sideways into my lap, holding her protectively, and she draped one arm around my shoulders while setting her forehead down against the top of my head.

“Would you like to tell us why you were crying?” I asked gently, stroking her spine.

“Music always reminds me of him,” she muttered.

“I figured.” I rubbed her leg. “You only cry whenever you think of him.”

“It was one of our ‘things’.” She took a deep breath and then shuddered. “It was one of the things I left behind. I’ve barely listened to any music since then. I’m supposed to be moving on with my life. I’m supposed to be keeping myself in the present and thinking about the future. But I’m still haunted by the past.”

I took a deep breath and looked around. Six other girls stared at us, clearly curious but equally resolute not to interfere. I knew they all had questions, but knew enough to let me and Eva work this out together and simply be happy that Eva was letting them observe.

Eva seemed to sense that they wouldn’t insert themselves into the conversation. But rather than continue talking to me, she sat up a little straighter and looked around at the rest of them. “How much has Matty told you about Kai?”

Alice, Mari, and Holly all glanced around cluelessly. Naimh, Belle, and Sam looked a little more thoughtful.

“Nothing, really,” Naimh stated first.

“Nothing?”

“Matty let us know that he’s still alive so that we wouldn’t treat you like a grieving widow or something,” Naimh explained. “But other than that, all we know are the basic things that Lily told us after her conversation with your dad: ex-boyfriend, high school sweetheart, that you… uh… well tried to hurt yourself, and that your dad thought you’d be better off going to college here instead of staying on the island.”

“But Matty hasn’t told us anything else,” Belle began a little uncertainly. “The night he went over to your room and then came back all quiet, we asked but he said that stuff was for you to share only if you wanted to.”

Eva glanced at me, looking a little surprised. “I thought you shared everything with them. They’re your girlfriends.”

“I share everything that impacts them,” I explained. “The Kai stuff… that’s personal.”

Eva pursed her lips, nodded thoughtfully, and then abruptly stood up from my lap. “I’ll be right back,” she stated with furrowed eyebrows and a sense of finality.

And then she walked out of the living room and out the front door.

****

Once it was “only” the seven of us, the six girls all turned their attention to me. Mari was quick to notice there was an empty spot on the couch beside me, and my Angel quickly moved to fill that spot by scooting her ample ass between me and Holly and then hugging herself against my side.

“Gotta get as much of this as I can before I have to go,” Mari sighed a little mournfully as she really put her muscles into squeezing me tightly. “Especially since it doesn’t seem likely we’re gonna be starting up another orgy anytime soon.”

“Ooh, good call,” Alice added as she moved to sit on the armrest and hug me from the other side.

“You guys can slide over,” Holly offered, getting up and taking Mari’s place between Belle and Naimh. And then Mari, Alice, and I scooted over a bit so that I was sandwiched between the two SoCal BTC girls.

“I’m sorry about Eva’s issues momentarily delaying us,” I apologized to Mari. “I haven’t forgotten that I never got your orange thong.”

Mari waved me off. “Neevie’s thong game was fun, but it’s not a requirement. We had sex plenty this holiday break, and while I’d love to feel your big dick you stretching my ass again before we leave, whether or not we have sex again isn’t such a big deal.”

“Says you,” Holly muttered. “I, for one, was looking forward to getting laid again with my boyfriend before I have to leave.”

“You live an hour away,” Alice drawled. “If -I- lived an hour away, I’d be here every weekend to get regular doses of Matty-dick.”

Holly gave me a sad sigh. “If I came over here every weekend, I’d fall in love with him all over again and never want to leave.”

I frowned and gave her a heartfelt look. Mari immediately gestured for Holly to come back and take her spot, but the blue-haired girl held a hand up.

“It’s really the same kind of thing you were saying this morning about staring out the window, knowing he wasn’t thinking of you. I’m used to it. I’ve never been Matty’s favorite.” She shrugged in resignation.

I frowned again. “I really try not to play favorites.”

“Sam, Neevie, Belle: those are your favorites,” Holly stated plainly. “Even before they came to Berkeley with you, they were your favorites.”

“It’s not that--”

“Look, I’m not dogging on you for that,” Holly interrupted. “Everyone’s allowed to have favorites. I like my mom more than I like my dad. I’ve always been closer friends with Sam and Zofi than I was with the others. We can’t ALL be truly equal.”

I sighed and looked at Naimh. “Can you explain to her the favorite color, favorite food, favorite song analogy?”

Holly snorted. “Riiight. Get your quote ‘Head Girlfriend’ to back you up, Mr. I-don’t-play-favorites.”

I made a face. “-I- actually wanted to get rid of the Head Girlfriend title.”

“The BTC needs a Head Girlfriend,” Belle insisted. “Every group functions better with an acknowledged leader, and Neevie’s an awesome Head Girlfriend. No disrespect to Sam, because you were an awesome Head Girlfriend when you were in charge, too.”

“We’re getting sidetracked,” I interjected, focusing my attention on the blue-haired girl. “Something’s bothering you, and I want to know what I can do to help.”

“You can’t help, and we don’t need to make this about me,” Holly sighed and looked away.

Unwrapping my arms from around Mari and Alice to either side of me, I got up and moved over to the other couch. Belle popped herself up onto the armrest, giving me a spot to sit down next to Holly and give her a hug while she continued to look away from me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked gently, squeezing her tight. “Didn’t we have fun this weekend?”

“We did. Last night? When you were pounding my ass standing up against the wall? Holy fuck, Matty…”

I grinned.

“But that’s all I’ll ever have with you: a fun weekend here or there.” Holly shrugged again. “Me, Mari, Alice: none of us are full-time girlfriends. We all know we don’t have romantic futures with you. We’ll always be friends, and that’s good enough.”

“Your words say ‘good enough’ but your tone says you’re regretful.”

She pursed her lips and glanced up at me. She stared into my eyes, and I’d like to think she saw the warm affection for her I felt in them. And in a quietly sincere voice, she murmured, “Eva was just talking about being haunted by the past. Sometimes I find myself wondering how things might’ve been different if you hadn’t turned me down that first night after school started.”

“I’ve wondered that myself a few times.”

“Would -I- have been one of your favorites if I’d been your quote, ‘first’? Would I have fully joined The BTC earlier? How much deeper could our relationship have grown if we’d spent the whole year together instead of just the summer? Would you have fallen in love with me, at least as much as you’d fallen in love with the rest of them?”

I nodded slowly. “I would’ve liked for you to have been with us all year.”

“But I wasn’t. I only really joined up after Prom. Things turned out the way they turned out. And I ended up the seventh girlfriend in the pecking order, staring up at the rankings from the bottom.”

I groaned. “I don’t rank you.”

“We rank ourselves,” Holly pointed out, gesturing around the room. “We’re girls. We do that.”

At Holly’s waggling finger, Belle and Naimh blushed and looked away, while Alice, Mari, and Sam all shrugged and nodded.

Alice chuckled and said, “This is why I just never fell in love with you in the first place. No teenage angst staring out the window pining after you and feeling depressed at the thought you weren’t thinking of me.”

“I caught myself staring out the window a few times, but I never let that shit last long,” Holly continued. “I always knew I was the outsider to the original BTC. I even talked to Eva about what it was like trying to fit in with an already established group of close-knit friends.”

“Really?” I remarked in surprise.

“She actually asked me,” Holly explained. “She wants to fit in with the rest of you, but she’s not totally sure how. I know she acts all aloof, like she’s above it all; but deep down I think she’s just… scared. And when she’s not sure what to do or what to say, she doesn’t do anything and stays quiet.”

“Well, except with Matty,” Belle pointed out.

Holly shrugged. “Matty makes it easy to open up to him. The rest of you bitches…?”

“Much as I’d like to take personal credit,” I began with a chuckle, “I think that’s only part of it. Eva told me she never got along with other girls back home and only hung out with Kai’s group of guys, which only led to the other girls making certain assumptions about her. She’d lost her mother at a young age and was raised by a single dad. Making friends with other young women must be a foreign concept to her, and she’s not really comfortable hanging around a group of girls. And I get it – I’m in the same boat.”

“Then you do a good job of faking it,” Alice drawled, gesturing around the wall of estrogen surrounding us.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” I stated, raising a finger and waggling it. “All of my friends are girls and I was raised by a single mom. The closest I have to a male presence in my life is Mr. K. Most of my conversations with guys tend to revolve around whether any of you are available. And up until you started shoving your tongues down my throat in the lunchroom or pulling me into the parking lot and janitor’s closet for quickies senior year, half the school assumed I was The BTC’s gay mascot.”

I paused to let the girls titter for a moment.

“What if in an alternate universe, fate threw me a curveball and decided to send me an acceptance letter to my dream program at MIT while also sending me a rejection letter from Cal? Imagine me starting a brand-new life clear across the country. And if I happened to fall in with a group of guys who were already close friends? I’m not sure I would’ve known how to handle that. If that circle had one girl in it, I’d probably gravitate to her simply because being friends with a girl is all I really know and understand. It’s my comfort zone.”

Mari nodded. “I get what you mean; I’m living that life right now. The boys at Caltech have been nothing but nice; but forming close-knit friendships with them is definitely NOT my comfort zone. There are a couple of girls I’ve made friends with, but I do sometimes find myself wishing there were more girls around to make my social life feel familiar. I miss being a part of a large girl-power clique like The BTC. And if I hadn’t had Matty to practice being comfortable with a boy, I’m not sure how I would’ve adjusted to being around so many members of the opposite sex.”

I smiled at my Angel. “I’m glad you’re making it work, but Eva’s got both the lack of experience AND she’s sorting through her ex-boyfriend issues. Holly’s right: I think she does want to be friends with you girls. It just doesn’t come naturally to her. Plus, The BTC has been together for so long and shares a powerful, emotional intimacy that can be a little intimidating to a newcomer.”

“I’ll say,” Holly muttered with a rueful shrug.

I chuckled. “That closeness bonds us together, but there’s a reason why so many girls who auditioned for The BTC back in high school decided it wasn’t for them and didn’t really stick around. And I know you naturally want to put the onus on Eva to step up and make the effort to bond with everyone, but you guys have to offer a few olive branches, too.”

Naimh frowned. “It’s not that we haven’t tried…”

“Eva said that you’ve tried,” Holly pointed out. “Sam’s never around. And from what Eva told me, Belle’s been as inviting and as cuddly as a cactus.”

My impish pixie blushed and shrugged. “We’re making progress. At the end of the day, I want what’s best for Matty. He clearly likes her - and she’s soooo in love with him - so I’ll do whatever I need to do to make it work.”

Holly frowned. “She’s not in love with Matty.”

Belle snorted. “Of course she is.”

“Not yet,” Holly stated, really emphasizing the last word.

“You’ve been around for one day,” Belle pointed out. “You haven’t seen the way she’s been around him all year: the wistful looks and pensive stares.”

“I was here back in September. From what I’ve seen both then and now, the wistful looks and pensive stares are from her internal conflict. They aren’t the looks of a girl head-over-heels in love with him, the way Lily was when I first saw her.”

Belle knitted her eyebrows and pondered that.

“Eva’s very emotionally closed off,” Holly continued. “And although I obviously don’t know the whole story, I gather it has something to do with this ex-boyfriend Kai. She’s too scared of getting burned right now to really put her heart out there. If you ask me, she’s still in love with her ex, and there’s probably a part of her that always will be. Eva doesn’t love you, Matty. But she’s coming to trust you. And right now, that’s more important to her than being in love.”

“I totally get that,” Alice agreed. “Trust has always been more important in MY relationship with Matty than love.”

“Cue the ‘Alice 2.0’ jokes,” Mari quipped.

Belle waggled her head. “Wasn’t Eva supposed to be ‘Zofi 2.0’?”

“Zofi?” Sam pulled her head back. “Eva’s nothing like Zofi. Unless you’re just talking about her physical proportions.”

“I don’t do ‘Anyone 2.0’,” I insisted. “Zofi is Zofi. Alice is Alice. Eva is Eva. Just like Holly is Holly.”

The blue-haired girl blushed when I returned my full attention to her, rubbed her thigh with one hand, and hugged her with my other arm.

“You will always be my uniquely beautiful, one-of-a-kind Holly,” I told her sincerely. “You’re absolutely right: things turned out the way they did and there’s no way of truly knowing how things might’ve been different. If we stop to wonder, ‘What if?’ all we’ll feel is more angst and regret. Believe me: I know.”

Holly’s eyebrows went up expectantly.

“I spent a lifetime growing up wondering, ‘What if my parents didn’t get divorced?’” I explained. “Every time I came home to an empty house, I’d look around and wonder, ‘Was it MY fault? Did I cause this? Was I not a good enough kid to keep my family together? Did my father not love me? Did my mother not care? Why was I always alone?’”

“Matty…” Belle said mournfully, and she leaned in to wrap her arms around my neck from behind.

“You were my everything, my Annabelle,” I told my impish pixie, patting her forearm while looking back over my shoulder to give her a quick peck. “You were my best friend before I consciously understood the term ‘best friend’. I’m grateful to your mom and Mr. K for taking me in. Your whole family was really great to me. And yet I could never forget how alone I felt back in those days, leaving your house full of life and love to go to sleep in that cavernous mansion all by myself.”

Belle squeezed me again, stating with deadly seriousness, “You will NEVER be alone ever again.”

“Well I did wake up alone this morning.” Belle’s face went white for a moment, but I quickly laughed and patted her arm, adding, “But don’t worry about that. I could hear all of you talking downstairs. I needed the rest, anyways.”

“I swear I will make sure you never wake up alone again for the rest of your life,” Belle stated gravely.

“Okay don’t get melodramatic,” I told her. “I don’t expect you to sit around watching me whenever I sleep in.”

“I wasn’t there when my mom died. I won’t make that same mistake again.”

I blinked in surprise, and arching my eyebrows, I murmured, “Didn’t I just tell you not to get melodramatic?”

“I’m being serious, Matty.”

“I know you are.”

“They wouldn’t let me be there for her. Said I was too young. I HAVE to be there for you when you need me. I HAVE to.” Belle took a deep breath, her lower lip quivering. “You’ve spent a lifetime wondering how things might’ve turned out had your parents not gotten divorced. I’ve spent a lifetime wondering, ‘What if my mom didn’t die? What could I have done differently?’ I should’ve taken better care of my dad. There was a woman he really liked: Stephanie. I ran her off. I accused him of cheating on Mom, and told him I hated him for it. I know he broke up with her for me – know he accepted that his daughter needed him to focus on her at the time. But looking back I’ve always felt guilty about that. Did I ruin my dad’s chance at finding happiness? Is that why he’s never brought another girlfriend home to meet me? Should I have convinced him to get married again so I would’ve had a stepmom and some kind of female role model in my life? What should I have done differently so that I didn’t feel so lost and alone in the world?”

“I swear I will NEVER let you feel lost and alone ever again,” I told her with quiet seriousness.

Belle smiled, and then she hugged my neck a little harder.

“We’ve all wondered, ‘What if?’” Sam said sagely, looking around the room. “I’m sure every one of us has a similar kind of story. What if I’d told my parents earlier that I didn’t want to be a doctor? Maybe then we wouldn’t have resented each other so much. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so competitive with my siblings, and we’d have grown closer instead of apart.”

“What if I hadn’t run off to live with Conor?” Naimh added. “Maybe then my parents wouldn’t mistrust me so much. Maybe I wouldn’t have to live with this guilt over betraying them.”

“What if I’d come here to Berkeley instead of going to Caltech?” Mari mumbled quietly.

“You all think too much,” Alice snorted. “That shit’s a waste of time.”

We all chuckled at that, and I remarked ruefully, “Perhaps. But then they say that misery loves company, so I think we each feel a little bit better knowing we’re not the only one struggling with regret.”

“Well compared to Matty’s dad who abandoned him and Belle’s mom who passed away, now I just feel like I’ve been whining over nothing,” Holly muttered with a wry grin.

We all chuckled again.

“Ultimately, I don’t want us dwelling on the opportunities lost in the past,” I stated firmly. “I’d really rather that we all focus on the present, right?”

“Agreed,” Sam stated with a nod.

“My father may be long gone, and my mother may have moved to New York, but that means I get to spend all of my time with YOU: the special girls I love more than anyone else in the world - including my parents,” I said with a smile. “I’m forever thankful that I got to share Thanksgiving with Belle, Mr. K, Skylar, and Eva. I got to spend Black Friday with Eva and Alice. And I got to spend this entire weekend with all of you. That’s a WIN in my book, and I’ll bet there are thousands of guys who would’ve loved to trade places with me for the past several nights rather than endure their extended family gatherings.”

“You’re probably right,” Naimh laughed.

“Our reality is that this is the first time in a long time that we’ve been together like this, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. Winter Break is coming up soon, and Zofi’s flying back. Holly, Mari, Alice… that’s not such a long time away, is it?”

The three girls all smiled back at me.

“Now I’m happy to be a long-distance boyfriend if that’s what you want, and I’m happy to be your official boyfriend only when and if we’re together like this. Bottom line: I love each and every one of you in uniquely different ways. I am NOT giving serious thought as to the future at the moment, have no idea where any of us will be four years from now, and don’t want to get caught up in all the angst of worrying about it. Agreed?”

I looked around the room, meeting eyes with Belle, Sam, Alice, Mari, Naimh, getting nods of understanding from all of them before returning my attention back to Holly.

“I want to enjoy this time together whenever we can,” I told Holly sincerely.

Bowing her head, she mumbled to the middle of my chest, “And what would you say if I told you I wanted to be a full-time girlfriend instead?”

I frowned, not expecting that response. But I tilted her chin up so that I could look into her eyes, trying to read the sincerity in her gaze. And I intoned with reassuring warmth, “I’d say I’d make every effort to be your full-time boyfriend.”

Holly immediately shook her head. “But that wouldn’t be fair to you. I can’t ask you to drive down to San Jose State and walk around campus holding my hand. And I don’t want to walk around campus alone feeling silently resentful that you’re in Berkeley instead of walking around campus holding my hand. No, it’s better this way. I can playact at being your girlfriend when we’re together and then go live my own life when we’re apart.”

“It really is better this way,” Alice encouraged. “And like Matty said: none of us knows what the future holds.”

“Well I know at least a little of what the future holds,” Holly stated with newfound resolve, taking a deep breath and then pointedly looking up at the clock on the wall. “About six hours from now I’ll be heading home.”

“Six hours from now,” Mari chimed in, “Alice and I need to catch our flight.”

“And we’re all sitting here talking instead of fucking,” Holly complained, clapping her hands together. “Clock’s ticking, people!”

“Eva said she’d be right back,” Alice pointed out.

Holly waggled her head. “And do we think she’d really mind if she walked in to find me mounted on Matty’s dick? Hmm? I think she’d be cool with it.”

“She’d probably be cool with it, yes,” I agreed. “But we’ve got time, Holly. We’ve got time.”

And then the doorbell rang exactly twice.

****

Although Eva had a key to the house, she still preferred to politely announce her arrival with the doorbell rather than just waltz in as if she owned the place. The seven of us in the living room turned to look as she let herself in, with Naimh, Holly, me, and Belle on one couch, Alice and Mari on the other, and Sam in the armchair.

“Hey guys,” she greeted somewhat nervously. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” I reassured her. “We were just chatting while waiting for you to come back.”

“How are you feeling?” Naimh asked with obvious concern.

“I’m better now, thanks,” Eva murmured. “Sorry about that. I don’t usually lose it like that in front of other people.”

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Belle said warmly. “We all feel like that from time to time. I’m an emotional volcano waiting to erupt at any moment.”

“We know, B,” Mari drawled.

“It’s actually a relief to see signs that you’re human,” Sam added with a bit of a smirk. “That the frosty, sarcastic Eva actually has real emotions and all that.”

Eva smirked right back and nodded. She wore the same clothing from this morning: dressed to impress in form-fitting attire that accentuated her slender, model-esque figure. But she no longer wore the cat-eye sunglasses in the house, and she’d re-done her makeup. To look at her you’d never have known she was bawling her eyes out only recently.

She also held a VHS cassette tape in a yellow Kodak cardboard sleeve, and as she walked over in front of the TV (which had been put back where it belonged), she waggled the tape and gave us a nervous smile. “So this is not who I am anymore; but it IS who I used to be. It’s who Kai and I used to be together.”

The girls and I all glanced at each other for a moment, with the girls mostly looking at me to see if I knew anything about this. But I gave them a clueless shrug before getting up to help Eva set up the TV. I changed over the TV input, Eva popped the tape into the VCR, and I grabbed the remote. We then backed up towards the couches, and Sam vacated the armchair while gesturing for me to sit down. And Eva perched on the armchair’s armrest to watch while the video began to play.

When Eva had set the empty VHS sleeve atop the TV cabinet, I’d noticed it had been labeled with a sharpie: Hoʻolauleʻa Festival: Waikiki Shell. The very first image in the video was a close-up of a handsome young man with well-defined cheekbones and twinkling eyes, his shoulder-length hair shaggy and unkempt as he grinned into what seemed to be a hand-held camcorder. The way the video moved, he appeared to be filming himself while he shouted, ‘Let’s go!’ and ‘Time to rock!’ along with several rapid phrases in pidgin that I didn’t quite catch. After he turned the camcorder around, it became clear that he was on-stage at some kind of large, outdoor concert venue, with three sections arrayed in a semi-circle shape some thirty to forty rows deep. Beyond the permanent amphitheater seats was a grassy lawn, inclined to allow people on picnic blankets to also see the stage. And the entire area was absolutely PACKED.

The video bounced up and down a bit, the camcorder-holder apparently skipping as he moved around the stage to zoom in on his bandmates. He first filmed the drummer: a shirtless young man with hair down to the middle of his back held back by what looked like braided rope fashioned into a sort of makeshift headband who grinned at the camera, shouted something inaudible, and twirled his sticks before returning to his loud and aggressive pounding of the drums. The cameraman then skipped over to the bassist: a tall and sullen looking dude with half-lidded eyes who barely glanced at the camera, just continuing to pluck at his electric bass.

But then the video jumped over to the one female in the group. There were two microphones side-by-side front and center of the stage, and the camera dropped low to the ground first to look up at the girl’s willowy, sinuous form.

I would’ve recognized Eva’s figure anywhere. There were few women in the world with her combination of height, skinniness, and curves. She wore chunky Army-surplus combat boots, ripped black fishnet stockings, and a black leather miniskirt with a white, silver-studded belt. The camera nearly looked up her skirt for a second before backing up to fully take in her compact but rounded ass, an ass she went ahead and shook side-to-side playfully for the camera just before the gorgeous hapa girl glanced back over her shoulder.

Eva wore heavy eye makeup but had her jet-black hair loose and flowy. Her midsection was bare, exposing her elaborate tattoo in all its glory. She wore a hot-pink lacy bra beneath a ragged black thrift-store tank-top that was cropped just below her breasts and exposed quite a bit of that pink bra. Her omnipresent necklaces, bangles, and bracelets adorned her neck and forearms, although she did not yet have that leather men’s cuff. And she flashed a pixie wink at the camera as it finished ogling her spectacular figure and then turned to survey the crowd.

Thus far, the band appeared to have been playing a purely instrumental song: loud and aggressive but without any particular melody. But after the cameraman danced back over by the drummer, he handed the camcorder itself to some other guy, strutted back to the front of the stage, grabbed a microphone, and started to scream.

While the opening song itself was completely original, I would have to say it reminded me a lot of Linkin Park’s brand-new Hybrid Theory album. The lead singer (I assumed to be Kai, since he was wearing what would become Eva’s leather cuff) would sing and rap the more aggressive lyrics, and let out the occasional primal scream, while Eva would sing the ballad hooks and melodies.

The camcorder video itself didn’t have the best audio quality, and whoever was holding it wasn’t always the steadiest hand, but it was still clear enough that the band had some pretty good talent. The audience was engaged and screaming along. And Kai had a magnetic leading presence as he bounced around the stage singing his heart out.

And Eva was… in a word: incredible.

Sexy.

Smoky.

Sultry.

Fading scratch marks on my back burned in sympathy as I recognized the feral look in her eyes while she stalked the stage left and right in those combat boots. Strumming away on her guitar with real talent, Eva’s stage presence evoked the same raw energy as when she made love at her most uninhibited - just barely beneath the surface. It was a dangerous promise to the audience restrained behind a wry, knowing grin, flowing through her music as she manipulated the crowd to a boil with Kai by her side, his manic energy the perfect counterpoint.

And when the music transitioned into a bridge, stripping back the music and leaving the song to be carried by Eva’s voice through semi-repetitive lyrics, she poured her heart and soul into her solo. Feeling no need to show off her range, she instead tasted the words with her raspy voice, building emotional resonance with each iteration until she exited with a plaintive wail, cementing the song’s climax as the final chorus washed over the tattered remnants of her vocals.

All around me, the other BTC girls stared in amazement.

“Whoa…” Belle breathed.

“You are amazing,” Alice complimented.

“I can only dream about being as good as you,” Holly muttered approvingly.

We only watched two songs before Eva took the remote control from my hands and paused the video. Honestly, I could’ve kept watching throughout the entire set, and from the chorus of disappointed groans around me, the other girls could’ve done the same. But Eva pursed her lips, scrutinizing the floor with the exact opposite stage presence she’d shown in the video, and I was reminded of the time she’d told me she had a love/hate relationship with crowds.

“So yeah…” she muttered, looking rather embarrassed. “Uhhh… So that was me and Kai.”

“No bullshit, Eva,” Sam began first. “That was really, really cool.”

“You’re incredibly talented,” Naimh added. “From one artist to another, you’ve got something special.”

“Thank you for sharing this with us,” I told her sincerely. “I had no idea…”

“Wait, you didn’t know Eva could do this?” Belle asked me.

I shook my head. “She told me about what happened in the end to her and Kai, but never mentioned music or a band.”

“How long were you guys in a band?” Mari inquired to Eva.

The Hawaiian girl thought for a second before exhaling. “About three years - basically from the time we were fifteen on. Kai got a fake driver’s license that said he was eighteen. He bought a beater cargo van to hold all our gear, and we drove all over the island doing gigs for the hell of it. I lost my virginity in that van.”

That last line brought a smile to Eva’s face, and the others all giggled.

“We certainly didn’t get paid much, but that wasn’t the point,” Eva continued. “We were having fun. Kai was my best friend, our bandmates were our best friends, and for a little while, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life but riding around with him all over the place playing music and spending every waking minute together.”

Her words were upbeat, but towards the end, Eva’s tone turned melancholy. She went quiet for a long while, and everybody waited her out. She glanced down at me, looking sad and almost ready to cry again with tears glistening in her eyes. I quickly wrapped my arms around her midsection, pulling her off the armrest and into my lap so I could give her a reassuring hug. And she practically melted in my lap.

“And now, music reminds you of him,” Mari murmured sympathetically.

“Everything reminds me of him,” Eva muttered softly. She took a deep breath while absentmindedly rubbing that leather wristband. “I was supposed to come here to forget about him, but it’s not that easy.”

“What happened between you two?” Belle asked pointedly. And there was steel anger in her voice as she added, “Did he hurt you?”

Eva winced. “Not exactly.”

“Define ‘not exactly’,” Belle stated coldly, as if gearing up to fly halfway across the Pacific Ocean and go beat the shit out of the guy.

Eva held a hand up to forestall her. “Kai has never touched me in anger, so don’t worry about that. He wasn’t like that. I told Matty that he could be a rough, foul-mouthed moke to everyone else, but he was always a total sweetheart with me.”

“Then what happened?”

The beautiful - but beautifully sad - young woman closed her eyes and sighed. She suddenly stood up from my lap, walking a few paces away while hugging herself around her midsection. The paused video was still up on the TV screen, the camera man standing to the side of the stage with Kai in the foreground and stage-Eva just beyond him, both facing the crowd as they sang their final notes. The real Eva walked up to the screen, gently running her fingertips down the glass over her ex-boyfriend’s cheek. And then her shoulders slumped, and for a moment it looked like she was about to collapse against the TV.

But just before I bolted from my seat to go catch her, she stood up straight and spoke while still facing the screen. “Drugs are an easy thing to get in the islands. Pakalolo is cheap and grown everywhere.”

“Pakalolo?” Mari queried in confusion.

“Marijuana. Weed,” Holly readily explained.

“Oh,” Mari mumbled with a pink blush.

“That kine shit was kid stuff,” Eva continued. “And Kai didn’t want to be perceived as a ‘kid’.”

I took a deep breath and bowed my head. I already knew where this part of the story was going, even if the girls didn’t know yet.

But all of a sudden, Eva wasn’t ready to tell it. I saw her knees begin to buckle and was instinctively out of my seat before I realized what I was doing. I caught her just before she hit the floor, but we still ended up in a heap. My right knee was rather awkwardly pinned beneath her while my left foot was still flat, but I managed to hoist her limp and sobbing body against my chest before sitting down on my ass and pulling her into my lap.

“I can’t…” Eva muttered through her sobs. “I can’t…”

“Shh, shh,” I soothed, stroking her back while she buried her face into my shoulder. “It’s alright. It’s alright. I got you. I got you. I’m right here.”

The girls remained seated rather than approach, and they stayed silent for a couple of agonizing minutes while Eva slowly caught her breath. But as soon as she did, she popped her head up and stared bleary-eyed at our audience before blushing pink in embarrassment, and then buried her face into my shoulder again, muttering, “You all must think I’m such a basket case.”

“Not at all,” Sam said reassuringly.

“Why the fuck am I always crying?!” Eva exclaimed suddenly, and rather angrily. But then she grimaced, started crying again, and dropped her face down onto my shoulder again.

“It’s alright. Don’t mind us,” Naimh offered. “Let it out.”

“Maybe we should leave them alone,” Mari suggested.

“No, no,” Eva insisted, picking up her head again. “This is your last day with Matty. I’d feel so guilty if I took these precious few hours with him away from you.”

Alice piped up, “Well, how about you two go upstairs and take a minute to recompose and then come back down when you’re ready?”

I nodded, stroking Eva’s back as I replied, “Sounds reasonable.”

“But you deserve to know the full story,” Eva muttered, taking a deep breath and looking for all the world as if she was steeling herself for certain death in the face of a firing squad.

“Doesn’t have to be today,” I told her gently.

Eva pursed her lips and looked into my eyes. “You tell them the story.”

I arched my eyebrows. “Me?”

Eva nodded definitively, then started whimpering again and pushing her face into the crook of my neck.

“I don’t want to say this stuff if it’s gonna upset you even more,” I told her.

“It’s not gonna upset me any more than I already feel,” she mumbled. “At least this way I’ll feel better about the story getting shared with the girls today rather than let some future confession hang over my head any longer than it already has. They really do deserve to know.”

I took a deep breath, pondered that, and knitted my eyebrows together trying to organize my thoughts. I really didn’t want to overdramatize the situation – just state the facts as I knew them. And as the girls realized they were finally going to learn just what the fuck had happened between Eva and Kai, they all leaned forward in their seats.

“Kai’s a heroin addict back in Kaua’i,” I stated flatly. “Dropped out of high school. Disowned by his parents. Lives in a homeless encampment. Wants nothing to do with Eva anymore.”

“Holy shit,” Belle muttered.

“Eva tried to help him,” I continued. “They tried it together at first, but Eva never went past sampling the stuff just for kicks. But Kai got hooked. Got dependent on heroin to help his mood swings. Said he didn’t feel pain anymore. He had plenty of money and started using all the time. Eva would come over to find him doped up and barely lucid. Twice she found him nearly drowning in his own vomit and having shit his pants. She tried getting him help. Even ratted him out to his parents and got him into rehab. Nothing worked.”

Eva whimpered and tightened her grip on me. I paused from my storytelling to stroke her back. But after a few shudders, she relaxed and looked up at me with a nod to continue.

“His parents cut him off. Eva had her own money and poured her heart into helping him; it was supposed to be the two of them against the world, after all. But then her dad didn’t want her to have anything to do with him anymore. He wanted her to write off Kai as a lost cause, but she couldn’t. She started skipping school. Her grades suffered. She swore she’d do everything in her power to cure his addiction and bring back the Kai she’d known and loved.”

Eva started crying again, so I stopped again. I cuddled her close, and her crying turned into sobbing. And when I looked back up at the girls, I pursed my lips and shook my head in the negative.

“It’s okay,” Sam pronounced softly. “You don’t have to keep going.”

I gave her a grateful nod and squeezed Eva tightly. None of the other girls said anything, but they started to shift in their seats. Naimh whispered something to Belle, and Mari and Alice put their heads together. I gathered they were prepping to slip away and leave us alone, but I wasn’t the only one to come to that realization.

“No,” Eva said quietly but firmly. “Don’t go. I told you I didn’t want to feel guilty about taking him away from you.”

The girls all stopped whispering and silently turned to face us.

Eva took a deep breath, wiped her face on my shoulder one last time, and then climbed up from my lap. I stood up with her and slipped my hand into hers, and she gave me a brave, teary-eyed smile while squeezing our interlaced fingers gratefully.

But then she let go of my hand.

And she started to unfasten her leather wrist cuff.

The girls all knew about her suicide attempt via Lily’s previous communication with Eva’s dad, but they still all gasped in surprise when she pulled off the cuff. The cut-marks on her wrists weren’t particularly visible, especially not from halfway across the room, but there was something inherently symbolic about Eva quite literally baring her scars for everyone to see.

“I lost track of the number of times Kai told me to leave him,” she murmured in a raspy voice, deeper and more soulful even than her singing voice from Black Balloon. “He told me I was better off without him, that the Kai I knew and loved was gone. I told him that as long as he kept insisting I was better off without him, that was how I knew he still loved me – still cared.”

The girls all glanced at each other for a moment, nodding their agreement.

Eva took a deep breath and sighed. “There was a guy I ran into a lot at the encampment where Kai had a makeshift tent. Makoa worked for a non-profit trying to help the homeless and the addicted. He brought food and blankets and tarps to those in the encampment, things like that. He was nice. Encouraged me to never give up. We got to talking. He wanted to know my story and all about Kai. Some days I’d sit with Makoa and we’d talk for hours. Some days, he’d sit with me in silence and we’d just watch Kai sleeping. Made me feel like I wasn’t so alone.”

I swallowed thickly, feeling a little nauseous from the prior knowledge of where this story was about to go.

Eva’s eyes clouded over as her jaw set. “One day, Makoa kissed me out of the blue. I tried to be nice about turning him down. I apologized if he felt like I was leading him on and all that, but he got angry. Called me a tease and a bitch. Asked what did I think he was spending all that time with me for? How many hours had he spent by my side? Didn’t I owe him for being such a nice guy? Didn’t he deserve a little something for all his efforts?”

“Ohmigawd…” Mari murmured beneath her breath, her face ghost-white.

“Makoa was a BIG guy. Huge, hulking Samoan who could snap me like a twig, know what I mean? He didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer, and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back with him pinning me down and his hand crawling up my leg.”

Someone gasped, and I saw Alice with her hands up over her face, peeking between her fingers. That’s when I also noticed Belle had slipped over to the other couch to hug Mari.

But Eva’s stony cold gaze was pointed at nothingness in front of her. “Kai was right in front of us, sitting up and staring. I screamed for him to help me. It wasn’t the first time some overzealous okole tried to feel me up, and Kai had always been quick to defend my honor. But he just stared at us, not doing a fucking thing. Even worse, he actually shook his head with a dismissive wave as if I wasn’t fucking worth his time. And the rat-bastard motherfucker walked away from me!”

Eva’s eyes were narrowed, her teeth were clenched, and her nostrils flared. But fresh rivers of tears were streaming down her cheeks. She bunched up her hands into fists, and as much as I wanted to reach out and hold her, I knew her first instinct would’ve been to turn and punch my face out through the back of my head.

“It was supposed to be the two of us against… against…”

And then all the fight went out of Eva as she bowed her head, closed her eyes, and sighed. Her shoulders slumped, her fingers relaxed, and she started sobbing again.

Only then did I draw her into my arms, and she collapsed to the floor with me once again. I pulled her onto my lap while she curled into a fetal position, shaking and sobbing.

I didn’t want her to continue the narrative any further, didn’t want her to relive what had happened for a second longer than necessary. So I raised my head and stated, “Makoa didn’t succeed in raping her. Kai may have walked away, but some other guys at the encampment heard what was going on and rushed over. Pulled Makoa off and started beating the shit outta him. The cops came ten minutes later, but what upset Eva even more was that the cops tried to insinuate that it was somehow Eva’s fault for being so pretty and spending all that time with the guy. So when she finally got home, all emotionally wrecked and unable to process it all…”

I let my voice trail off rather than spell out any further details. A glance at Eva’s discarded leather wristband felt like it was enough.

Instead, I finished simply, “And she hasn’t seen Kai since.”

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Prologue & Chapter 1: The BTC: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99290461

Chapter 2: Hoalauna: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99357682

Chapter 3: E10: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99433482

Chapter 4: Leeloo: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99506524

Chapter 5: The Fifth Element: https://www.patreon.com/posts/99618767

Chapter 6: Lily: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100326143

Chapter 7: The Hangover: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100548952

Chapter 8: Quality Time: https://www.patreon.com/posts/100806434

Chapter 9: The Favor: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101140618

Chapter 10: Ku’uipo: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101372817

Chapter 11: The R-word: https://www.patreon.com/posts/101672192