Trust me, babe

Chapter 5

Kenzie

The warm sun shining on me and the distant noises of traffic made me sleepy. Jacky's soft humming and his hand stroking through my hair didn't help at all in trying to stay awake. My eyes were half-closed, a content smile on my face as I lay there on the grass with my head on Jacky's lap.

Suddenly the humming stopped making me open my eyes to see why he had gone silent. He was smiling down at me.

"What?" I asked.

"You're so cute when you're sleeping," he replied.

"I wasn't sleeping," I claimed.

He laughed and leaned down to plant a kiss on my forehead. "I'll go get us some more iced tea," he said.

I sighed and lifted my head reluctantly to let him slip away from under me. Grabbing our glasses he disappeared inside and I sat up reaching for my phone to check the time. I was really glad I had Jacky to spend the summer with as Sasha was working most of the time and Kathryn was in Australia. Without him I would've been awfully lonely. It made me wonder how Kathryn was doing. How she was holding up alone on the other side of the world.

Jacky came back with two tall glasses full of iced tea and ice cubes. "Susanna is an angel," he said with a sigh as he handed me my glass and took a sip of his own. "I do not understand how she can make everything taste so good."

I nodded in agreement. Susanna, my family's au pair, truly was an angel. She had been with us for almost all my life and I didn't know what I'd do without her. I was lucky she hadn't yet fallen for a guy and left us but I was dreading what would happen in the near future as I slowly became more and more of an adult.

"Are you excited to see Kathryn again?" Jacky asked as he sat down next to me.

"Of course," I replied. "But I'm also feeling really bad about what happened with her and Mikey. Now that I've got you, I know how amazing it is to have a loving and caring boyfriend. She was so happy with Mikey and now it seems like she's gone into a shell or something. Like she thinks all guys are like your brother."

Jacky sighed. "What Mikey did was really shitty."

Mikey was a challenging topic for us, something we'd tried to avoid talking about during the past year. I had a deep hatred toward him because of what he'd done to Kathryn. But Jacky couldn't just blindly hate him because Mikey was his brother after all.

"You know, I've been thinking I could try to help her move on from Mikey by finding her a hot surfer," I said. It was an idea I'd been turning around in my head for a few days now.

"I'm not sure if that's a good idea," he said. "I mean, do you remember how annoying it was when Lyla tried to pair you up with Nathan."

Of course I remembered it.

It all started a little after the fateful party where Mikey's cheating was revealed to everyone. At first, I didn't really pay that much attention to it as nothing much really changed. Lyla only kept commenting on how hot Nathan looked, how energetic he was and how much fun being his girlfriend would be. I had just assumed she had a crush on him.

Until she had set me up with him.

***

9 months earlier

"It is a gorgeous dress," Lyla said as she eyed me up and down, "but where are you going to use it? That would be the perfect dress for a date, but you aren't seeing anyone, are you?"