Mr. Brightside

"Like, your ex ex?"

I shake my head looking at him without a hint of humor in my eyes. "Nope. The other kind."

I see him trying to figure out what I meant before the realization settled in that I was completely sarcastic, using our own personal brand of humor - and it got him this time.

"Ha-ha. No, seriously. How long did you guys date?"

I stood to start setting up the hooks for our upside-down hanging tomato plants while I tried to remember when anything really started between Kendrik and me but the math just got too overwhelming. "I don't know. Honestly, we never dated. Not really. I just broke up with him when I was over with whatever it was that we were doing."

Not one to let me get away with anything, he pushes. "Ok, and how long did that go on, then?"

I shrug a shoulder. "Maybe four or five months-ish. I broke up with him right before the summer break. I was over it and I was going back to Maine for the summer, so I didn't see a reason to continue."

Kaden is quiet for a minute, the only sound he's producing is the dirt that he's moving around in the pot he's currently planting in. I thought that was going to be the end of it, but he makes a show of a particularly deep exhale, so I stop fumbling with the hooks and turn to look at him. "What?"

"Were you with him like... last May?"

I'm pretty sure that when I told him it went on for several months and then explained that I broke it off right before we went for summer break that it would have been pretty clear that yes, I was with him during May, but he's making a show of asking for some reason. "Yes, Kaden. Spit it out."

He narrows his eyes before leaning back in the folding chair he's been stationed on for the better part of an hour already and folds his arms. "So, last year me and the guys were at a party. It was early May, a particularly awesome rager right before everyone buckles down for finals and finishes their projects and what not." He lifts one hand to nervously scratch at the back of his neck.

"Anyway, we had just finished our set. It was a great one, the party was roaring. We went looking for Jenson's girlfriend and we couldn't find her. She was nowhere to be found. We asked everyone. The only thing we could hear from around the party was that the last person they saw her with was Kendrik. When we started opening the rooms, we found them in bed together. Fucking."

I feel my eyebrows raise, scrunching the skin on my forehead. What a bitch. "Wow. I bet Jenson was absolutely fucking furious," I muse, returning to affixing the hook mechanisms to the side of the table. Kaden sits there in silence without moving back to his previous task. His silence feels heavy and I can't work out why.

"So," he clears his throat uncomfortably, "it doesn't bother you to hear that the guy you were dating was fucking someone else's girlfriend?"

Huh. It didn't even dawn on me to consider it in those terms, and yet Kaden is right. If it was the beginning of May, Kendrik and I would have been together. Still, it somehow doesn't bother me. It actually doesn't even surprise me which makes me wonder why the hell I stayed with him so long in the first place.

I turn around, propping my behind on the table in front of Kaden and setting the tools I was using down to my right. When my eyes meet Kaden's I know immediately that he was deeply conflicted about telling me about Kendrik, which is a fact that endears him to me. "Look, Kaden. This is honestly the first time I've really had to even consider my relationship with Kendrik in hindsight, so I haven't had a lot of time to decide what it meant to me, but when you told me that, I felt…. Well, nothing, quite frankly."

"Nothing?" His tone is incredulous which makes me smile.

Kaden reaches up and scoots me left on the table about a foot so that he's on the chair between my thighs before resting his hands palm down just above my knee on either leg.

I quirk a brow. "The only reason I got together with Kendrik was because he was just there. We never had particularly deep feelings for one another, and to be quite honest, I don't think I even liked him. He just wasn't an asshole to me, and he was convenient. I realize how that makes me sound, and maybe I should feel bad that I didn't really feel anything for him, but I don't. To be honest, I just feel bad for Jenson because he probably actually liked his girlfriend."

We both do a bit of airy chuckling. "Yeah, he loved her, I think. They were all pet names and planning their future children and shit. The rest of us knew she was bad news but he just couldn't see it."

He's watching his hands as they rub up and down my thighs, each pass going ever so slightly higher on my legs and my mind starts feeling fuzzy with lust at the prospect of something happening. But we're here, at my house, in my basement, with nothing to stop us but ourselves.

I place my hands on top of his, enjoying the feeling of his warm hands beneath my much smaller ones, a contrast between us. "Those tomatoes aren't going to plant themselves, you know."

He nods once. "I know." He lets his hands make one more pass over my legs before moving so I can stand from the table and return to my task at hand.

"So, what are you guys doing for Battle of the Bands this year? Something from the new album?"

"Um, probably. We haven't really talked about it. We play a lot of sets and have practice twice a week so we're usually prepared with something. I'm kinda jealous of your setup down here, though."

"Oh yeah?" I reach for the screwdriver to close the clamps onto the side of the table for the hooks, "What kind of setup are you guys running?"

"Oh, we're an authentic garage band, baby. We practice in an actual garage."

I chuff. "Hey, that means that someone has a garage that you can practice in, so the space can't be all bad. I don't have a garage. Or even a car to put in that garage."

"Yeah. It's my garage. I just have my bike, so there's plenty of space."

I realize at that moment that I haven't really given much consideration to what Kaden's life is outside of school and bands. And apparently drugs. I know he said he's from here, so I'm guessing his family must be as well.

"Do you live at home with your parents?"

He sets aside one planted tomato plant and begins on a second one. "No, I've got my own place. My folks live in town, though. My grandparents, too. I'm officially the third generation, but I don't plan to live here forever."

"Where do you plan to end up?"

His answer is so low and so sullen that I almost miss it.

"Anywhere but here."