Written in the Stars

11: 2 Truths and a Lie

❝told her that i loved her / was not sure if she heard❞

- end of the day: one direction

After discovering that Penny lived alone, and her apartment had marginally more room than Lucy's little shoebox, the boys of Big Time Rush claimed it as their new gathering place. The group of teens sat scattered around the living room.

Lucy pulled an old board game spinner out from her bag, setting it proudly on the table between them.

"Okay," Lucy grinned. "The game is called 'What's the worst thing you've ever done to a person in this room that they don't know about?'"

"Uh, that sounds dangerous and, also, not a game," Kendall pointed out.

"Oh, come on, guys," Camille chimed in. "I love secrets."

"Let's play." Kit added.

Penny nodded in agreement.

"Is Big Time Rush afraid?"

Each of the boys brushed past Lucy's comment with dry laughter. With a sly smile, she explained the rules to her game. Lucy flicked the spinner. Kit's stomach dropped as the arrow landed on James. She turned to him, pleading silently for him to say something, anything, other than about them.

He rubbed his hands together. James's eyes scanned the room. "Kit," he said. "Okay, so funny story, actually."

She raised her eyebrows at him. Kit knew James well enough to know that it certainly wouldn't be. James's stomach flipped as he pushed out the confession. "So, do you remember in seventh grade when you got that Cupid Gram?"

She nodded slowly, confused.

"I didn't send it to you. See, you were just so excited when you said you thought it was me and I had a crush on you, so-"

He sighed. "I lied."

Kit's lips parted, frozen with the words she couldn't find. She stared coldly at James. Her stomach dropped to the floor. Slowly, she asked him:

"Is that true?"

He stared at his feet. James knew that his heart would shatter, should he look up at her. "It wasn't me," he confirmed.

Without another word, Kit rose from the couch and left Penny's apartment. Tears streamed quietly down her face.

As Kit entered her own apartment, Jennifer Knight set the cookies she had been making down on the countertop. "Kit? Sweetie, is everything okay?"

Kit didn't cry often, so it sent alarm bells off in her mother's head to see her like this.

"James lied to me," she said, wiping at her cheeks. Jennifer rushed to pull her daughter into a tight hug.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "I love you, Mom, but I think I wanna be alone right now"

"Okay," she said sadly. "Here, take a cookie"

"Thanks," Kit took one snickerdoodle from the plate and rushed to lock herself in her bedroom.

Immediately after closing the door and turning the lock, Kit knelt beside her bed. She reached her arm out to retrieve an old shoe box from under the bed. Over the years, it'd been decorated with stickers of everything from Pokémon to flowers and puppies. The cardboard was bent and scratched from use. She took the lid off and set it gently on the bed. Rummaging through its contents, she pulled out a familiar piece of folded paper tied to an old, dried out yellow rose. Her fingers ghosted over the words.