Your best friend needs help picking a prom date. He doesn't want you. Never.

The knock came at eleven — two taps on the window, quick, his. Same knock since you were twelve. He had never once used the front door.

The window slid up and Kai folded through it, all elbows and cologne, and dropped onto the end of your bed like it belonged to him. It kind of did. Same black tank he'd worn all week, same chain, and a fresh scrape on his knuckle he wasn't going to explain.

"Don't say anything," he said, before you could. "I need help."

He pulled out his phone and turned it toward you. Girls. Photos of girls. He started scrolling before you could even sit up.

"Okay. Prom." He said it like a math problem. "Three weeks. Pick one."

He scrolled. Marisol — cheer captain, nice, laughs at his jokes. "Her?" Bella — hot, kind of mean, already hooked up with her once. "Or is that weird." Some junior named Reese he barely knows, because her friend told him she'd say yes. "Easy, right?"

He wasn't really asking. He was thinking out loud, using your room as the inside of his head like he always did, and expecting you to sort it out for him.

Then he flopped back on your bed, phone on his chest, and stared at your ceiling.

"So who do I take."

A beat. And then, because he could hear you thinking it — he always could — he answered the question you hadn't asked yet, easy as anything, without even looking at you.

"Not you, obviously." He said it like it was funny. "We'd be weird. You're basically a guy."

He turned his head on the mattress and looked at you upside down, waiting for you to agree with him.

"So. Marisol or Bella?"

The diner on Route 9 was empty except for the two of you and a waitress who had stopped caring around midnight.

Kai had a split lip and a knuckle he hadn't cleaned right, and he was letting you hold a wad of napkins to his face without complaining, which meant it hurt worse than he'd ever admit. His car was outside, parked crooked. He'd driven straight here from the fight, because he always did.

"You're dripping on the table."

"You're holding it wrong."

He knocked your hand away, pressed the napkins himself, and reached across you for your fries like it was his diner and his fries and you were just the person sitting in front of them.

For a while neither of you said anything. That was the thing about six years of knowing someone — the quiet wasn't awkward, it was just comfortable, and comfortable was the whole problem.

Then he said it. Casual. Between fries.

"Oh, I asked Marisol." A shrug. "She said yeah."

Like it was weather. Like it was nothing. And then he kept talking — something about his dad, something about the fight, something about a song he wanted you to hear — and you were supposed to just keep holding the napkins and keep your face normal and keep being his best friend about it.

He looked up at you over the napkin.

"What."

A beat.

"You're being weird."

Prom was four days away. You had the dress on for no one in particular — for your mom, for the mirror, for yourself — and you were still fighting the zipper when the window slid up behind you and Kai came in like always, mid-sentence, already talking about something.

Then he stopped talking.

Half a second. That was all. He got one shoe over the sill and just — paused, looked at you, and did the smallest double take a person has ever done.

"...Huh."

That was it. That was the whole review.

He finished climbing in, dropped onto your bed, and started scrolling his phone like nothing had happened, which meant you had to ask. You always had to ask.

"'Huh' what."

"Nothing." Still not looking up. "It's fine."

"Kai."

"It's — " He glanced up again, brief, then back down, and shrugged in that way he did when he didn't want to say a real thing. "Looks good. It's weird. You look — it's weird."

Weird. The most words he had ever spent on how you looked, and they were all wrong and somehow still landed.

He cleared his throat and changed the subject before you could do anything with it.

"So who's taking you, anyway."

Prom was loud and gold and everything everyone had built it up to be, and you'd spent most of it watching Kai from across the room like you'd spent the last six years watching Kai from across a room.

He was with Marisol. He was supposed to be with Marisol. He'd picked her himself, off a list, on your bed, with your help.

Then some guy from your history class — Dylan, tall, nice, entirely unremarkable — leaned down and kissed you on the dance floor, and it was fine, and it was nice, and it lasted four seconds.

Kai saw it. You knew he saw it, because when you looked up he was already looking at you over Marisol's shoulder, and his jaw was doing that thing.

He didn't speak to you for the rest of the night. Which was worse.

Then, near the end, he appeared out of nowhere, grabbed your wrist, and hauled you through the crowd — past the bathrooms, past the coat room, into the empty classroom at the end of the corridor where the decorations had run out and nobody went.

He shut the door. Locked it. The music thumped through the wall like a heartbeat.

And he didn't say a word. He just turned, crossed the room in three steps, took your face in both hands, and kissed you.

No warning. No "okay wait." No anything. Just his mouth on yours, hard, like he'd decided somewhere between the dance floor and the door and hadn't bothered to tell you.

You made a sound against his mouth — half protest, half not — and his answer to that was to walk you backwards until your hips hit the teacher's desk and pin you there with his own body.

"Four seconds," he said, into your mouth. "In front of me."

You tried to say something. He kissed you again before you finished, one hand sliding down your waist, over your hip, gripping.

"I don't care. I don't wanna hear it." His teeth caught your lip. "You're not going back out there."

You said Kai, wait— and he answered by lifting you onto the edge of the desk and stepping between your knees, and the protest died in your throat.

"Wait," he mocked, low, pressing in. "Wait. I've waited six years. Sit still."

His hand went to the hem of your dress, and he didn't ask, and he didn't slow down, and he didn't look at you like you were his best friend anymore. He looked at you like you were his and everyone in the hall had better hear about it.

He pulled your underwear down your legs with one hand and didn't bother with the rest of it. The desk creaked. You grabbed his shoulders.

"Kai—"

"I know." He pushed in slow, jaw tight, watching your face the whole time like he was memorizing it. "I know. Shut up."

A beat. Then he started moving.

And he didn't stop being angry the whole time. door's locked."

.