I don’t see Kai for an entire week. According to Lottie, he spends most of it camped out at The Wilds, the zoo’s off-site safari park, where his crew shoots footage of the African painted dogs. He also goes to New York to make an appearance on the Today show, and Katie the summer intern plays the clip on repeat in the Ape House breakroom.
“Unf,” she says as Kai, sporting his trusty safari hat, chats with Hoda Kotb about the future of critically endangered rhinos.
I don’t care that Katie finds Kai attractive, nor do I want to assign her poop-scoop duty for watching the clip fourteen times in a row. Absolutely not. After all, he is attractive, and pretending he’s not would be like denying that chocolate chip cookies are addictive. I don’t have ownership rights to Kai or chocolate chip cookies, even if I do enjoy having them both in my mouth. So Katie can unf over Kai all she wants, because I have Keeva and Zuri to focus on.
But she is due for laundry duty.
I’m not sure if Kai’s avoiding me or if his schedule has kept him out of Ape House by coincidence, but by Friday morning, I’m no longer peeking around corners before I enter a room or craning my neck toward Phil’s office to check for Kai before I join my boss for a conference call. I can’t hide from him forever, and I’m sure he doesn’t care enough to hide from me.
Even so, when I stride into the breakroom to brew a much-needed cup of coffee, I almost drop my mug when I find Kai inside, leaning against the refrigerator in a way that should look ridiculous but somehow does not. My first instinct is to run away fast, and the fact that his gaze is glued to his phone gives me an opening. I scurry toward the door, and I’m halfway into the hallway when Kai calls after me.
“Lucy?”
Damn. Caught, I step back into the breakroom, letting the door swing shut behind me.
“Oh, hey, Kai,” I say brightly, as if I’m not the most awkward person alive. “I didn’t see you there.”
He raises an eyebrow. “No? Then why’d you run out of here so quickly?”
“Well,” I say, wishing I’d put on mascara this morning and then wishing I hadn’t wished that, “I came to make coffee. But then I thought I forgot my mug. And then I realized I didn’t. It’s actually right here!” I hold up my mug as if that somehow proves my point, but then I remember it’s one I borrowed from Lottie and reads, I HEART MY ABYSSINIAN CAT in glaring black letters. A picture of her grandmother’s late feline, Prince von Meowington III—may he rest in eternal peace—stares out at Kai. I lower the mug, wondering if I can drink enough coffee to caffeinate myself to death.
“Right,” Kai says, studying me for a long moment. He scratches his cheek, and I work hard to block out the memory of how good his stubble felt under my palm. “You know, Lucy, things don’t have to be weird between us.”
“Weird?” I ask. “Who’s weird? Not me. Not you. We’re not weird. We’re cool. Too cool for school.” I realize I’m making uninterrupted eye contact with Prince von Meowington, and I force myself to look away from the mug.
“Look, I’m sorry about the other night,” he says. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, and I shouldn’t have said what I did afterward.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I say, my gaze darting toward the door to make sure no one’s within earshot. “And for what it’s worth, you didn’t kiss me. I mean, you did, but I also kissed you. We kissed each other. It was, you know, a mutual kissing.”
“Yep,” Kai says, the hint of a smirk tugging at his mouth. “That is usually how kissing works.”
I nod. “Right.”
A beat of silence passes where I try not to think how strange it is that a week ago, I was telling Kai about my childhood and cupping his face in my hand, and now we’re staring at each other across the room like a pair of awkward middle schoolers at the Winter Wonderland Dance.
“How’s Keeva?” Kai asks at the same moment that I say, “How’s Hoda?”
Neither of us answers, and half of me wants to fling my arms around him and say screw forgetting about the kiss. The other half—the sensible, pragmatic half that knows how to focus on her career and not accept a godmother role she doesn’t deserve—wishes I could lock myself in the refrigerator until my frozen brain forgets that Kai ever existed.
“Hey, Kai,” Katie the summer intern says, popping her head into the breakroom. “Freya’s looking for you. She’s heading to Asia Quest and wants to make sure you’re good to stay here with the crew.”
“Tell her sure thing,” he says, flashing Katie his signature grin.
“Okay,” Katie says, batting her eyelashes at him. “See you out there?”
He nods, and I roll my eyes as she flounces off toward the nursery. Of course she’ll see him out there; they literally just discussed it.
“Everything okay over there?” Kai asks, smirking like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“Everything’s peachy keen,” I tell him, which is a phrase I have never before uttered in my life. “See you out there, Kai.”
I’ll brew my coffee later, when there’s not a six-foot-two brick house blocking my path to the Keurig.
“Hey, Lucy,” he says as I head for the hallway.
I turn around to face him, and I can’t deny that part of me hopes he’ll stride toward me like a bat out of hell and take my hands in his and say, I’m sorry for saying you have a small life. You have a big, astronomical life, and you were right about everything except the fact that we should forget the kiss. Because I can’t, not for a single second.
But he only smiles at me, cocking his head to one side. “After male bees mate, their testicles explode.”
It’s not a grand romantic gesture. It’s the extension of a peace treaty, a demonstration of his willingness to go back to Lucy and Kai 1.0, the versions of us who traded barbs and horrifying animal facts and didn’t confess their darkest secrets or press their lips to each other’s skin. He’s waving a white flag, and it’s up to me to accept it or not.
So I make the only choice I can.
“Ladybugs eat their own young,” I say, forcing myself to return his smile with one of my own.
Kai nods, as if to say, So we’re in agreement, then, the kiss never happened, and I nod back and stride out of the breakroom, clutching my mug so tightly that my fingers hurt.
Because if I’m getting everything I want—one step closer to the promotion and a return to normalcy with Kai—then why does it all feel so wrong?