Kinsey sat at her desk, drumming her fingers noisily against its dark wooden surface. It was her first day at work and she was already bored. Never having been one to dawdle, Kinsey had accomplished all of her daily tasks before two in the afternoon, giving her a good three hours to stare blankly into space, investigate all of the files and folders on her computer, and wander back and forth from her desk to any place in the office it seemed appropriate to visit. But, after her fourth trip to the water fountain and consequently her second trip to the bathroom, she found herself back at her desk, unable to do anything but think about the conversation she’d had with Tif that morning before Isaac had taken her to the airport.
Tif had come into Kinsey’s bedroom to say goodbye, but had surprised her by closing the door behind her. Kinsey had been busy picking out her clothes for the day and it had taken her a moment to realize that Tif was standing there looking at her expectantly with her arms crossed.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Tif asked once Kinsey had finally turned around.
“Tell you what?” Kinsey asked.
“That you and Taylor were sleeping together,” Tif replied matter-of-factly. Kinsey’s eyes opened wide and she literally froze in place for several seconds, unable to do anything other than stare or think anything other than “Oh fuck.”
“We’re not! Where did you get such a ridiculous-” Kinsey started, hoping to stop the conversation before it could go further into scary territory.
“I saw you leaving Taylor’s room Saturday night.”
“We were talking!”
“Don’t lie to me, Kinsey, I know you,” Tif sighed.
“That may be true, but you don’t know what I look like after I’ve had sex.”
“Your face was all red.”
“We were fighting.”
“Your tank top was on inside out.”
“I… know that. Taylor was making fun of me for it.”
“Stop lying!” Tif said, almost shouting now, “I’m your best friend and you and Taylor sleeping together is obviously pretty earth-shattering. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“You mean the way you told me about you and Isaac?” Kinsey bit back. Tifani waited for a second.
“Touché…” Tif said, “But that was different. We’re in a relationship.”
“One you failed to tell your best friend about for half a year,” Kinsey said, “I’m happy for you two, but do you have any idea how much it hurts that you didn’t tell me you were dating Isaac? Isaac is an amazing guy and I’m sure he treats you so well. You two are perfect for each other and you couldn’t even bother yourself to tell me about it.” Kinsey didn’t know where all of it was coming from. The things she was saying aloud were all things she’d thought in the time that had passed since Tif and Isaac had made their declaration, but she never thought she’d say it out loud to anyone. In all their time as friends, she and Tif had never been so harsh with each other before. But something about the way Tif had come in and accused her of wrongdoing because she hadn’t told her about her tryst with Taylor made her want to retaliate. They just stood there looking at each other for a second before Kinsey regrouped and started to head for the door. “I need to get ready for work.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tif started, “Look, I didn’t want this to turn into a fight.”
“What did you think was going to happen, Tif? If I didn’t tell you, I obviously didn’t want anyone to know. God, does Isaac know? Does Zac know?”
“No, I didn’t say anything to them about it. I wanted to but I didn’t because I wanted to ask you first,” Tif said quickly, stepping forward to close the distance between them, “So, how long has it been going on?”
“There’s nothing going on. It was one time. We were drunk, it was a very weak moment. End of story.”
“But it’s you and Taylor, Kins. He’s been the bane of your existence since you were, like, twelve!”
“And he still is. Even more so now because now I know that there are at least a few things he can do that aren’t completely annoying and detestable,” Kinsey said, laughing and forgetting that mere seconds ago they’d been arguing.
“Well, for the record, I want all of the details someday. I want to compare notes… see if the Hanson men share any similar… attributes,” Tif laughed.
“Oh gross! Go back to Tulsa, you sick freak!” Kinsey cracked up, reaching out to give Tif a crushing hug.
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” Tif smiled.
“I miss you already,” Kinsey admitted, “Have a safe flight.”
“I will. I’ll call you tonight, see how your big first day went.” And with that, she left, leaving Kinsey with a strange feeling in her stomach- a little bit of worry paired with a twinge of relief.
Though it was nice to know there was another person in the world she could talk to about hooking up with Taylor, besides Taylor of course, it also made her uneasy. She knew that it couldn’t be easy for Tif to keep such a big secret from her boyfriend and she hated being the one forcing her to do so.
Before she could enter another round of reflection, she heard someone knock lightly on her door. She looked up and saw the unmistakable face of the gorgeous guy who worked down the hall from her. His door was one of the ones she’d walked past several times that day, each time being sure to give him a friendly smile. The position of his office told her that he was part of the legal department, something that she had noted happily. She also knew from his door that his name was Tyler Cambell.
“Hi,” he said, just barely poking his head in the door and smiling at her, “I thought I’d come introduce myself since it’s your first day. I’m Tyler. I work down the hall in legal.”
“Oh,” Kinsey smiled back, pretending that this was new information to her, “I’m Kinsey and I’m the new assistant buyer. But you probably already knew that, didn’t you?” He chuckled lightly to himself and took a tentative step inside.
“Guilty,” he said, “So, did you just move to the city?”
“Just a few weeks ago,” Kinsey said, hoping that he’d drop it. She hardly knew his name and the last thing she wanted to do was be forced to divulge that she just happened to live with three celebrities.
“I see,” he said, “Always had big dreams of living in New York?”
“Something like that,” she smiled.
“So, I guess I should be a good New Yorker and welcome you to the city,” he said, taking another step towards her desk, “Do you want to have dinner with me Friday night?” Kinsey tried to hide the look of shock she was sure had immediately donned her face and answered as soon as she was able.
“Of course. You know, to see where the locals go out to eat,” she teased.
“Oh yeah. That’s the only reason I asked. So you would know where to go out for dinner,” he grinned. Kinsey couldn’t do anything other than smile back at him while she fought the urge to giggle or touch her hair or do anything else ridiculously girly and stupid. Tyler was by far the most attractive and nicest seeming guy to ask her out in a long time and she couldn’t have been more thrilled. “So, eight o’clock on Friday? I’ll make a reservation.”
“Where?” she asked curiously.
“Now, if I tell you, you won’t have any reason to go out with me. You’ll already know where to go.”
“I think I could probably come up with another reason,” she said flirtingly.
“Have a good afternoon, Kinsey,” he said, hesitating in her doorway for a moment before heading back for his own office. Kinsey fought the urge to squeal and instead sent Tif a fast and only halfway intelligible text message under her desk filling her in on what had just transpired in her office. The last few hours in the office would have normally drug by, but she kept herself busy by reorganizing her office more to her liking and then she practically bounced the entire way back to their condo. She opted to walk to a farther subway stop, allowing her some time to work out some of her excited energy before getting home. Because they hadn’t had the experience of Kinsey going on a date while all living together yet, she wasn’t sure what their reaction would be. It was likely that there would be a lot of teasing, and she knew that Isaac would be supportive at least, but she wasn’t sure about the other two. Their reactions to such things were quite varied. So, when she entered the house, even though the first thing she wanted to do was scream to the exposed rafters that she had a date with Tyler Campbell: Office Hottie, she instead just moseyed her way into the kitchen and found them in the midst of making dinner, aka. an epic disaster, in the kitchen.
“Hey, Iron Chef Bobby Flay!” she shouted out to Taylor who was using a hand mixer to make something that she figured was supposed to be guacamole, but instead looked like snot, “I think you killed it!”
“Fuck off,” he grumbled, “It looks great.”
“It looks… runny. Is guacamole ever supposed to be runny?” Zac asked.
“If you have to ask, the answer is probably no,” Kinsey rolled her eyes, peeking into the bowl as well.
“You are so fired,” Zac stated, glaring at Taylor who just sighed heavily and shoved the bowl away.
“If you don’t like how I do things, then just do them yourself,” he said, abandoning his post and going to sit at the table.
“So,” Isaac started, obviously trying to change the subject, “How was your first day at work, Kinsey?”
“It was okay. I got a little bored in the afternoon, but I think I’m really going to like it once I can start my own projects and stuff,” she started, looking at the guys carefully before continuing, “A guy in the office asked me on a date.”
“Was he a troll?” Zac snorted, adding various things to Taylor’s bowl in an attempt to salvage the dip.
“Not even a little bit. He seems really nice, too,” she admitted, unable to fight off the grin that snuck up on her. She tried to hide the smile by sticking her head in the fridge to grab a beer, but Isaac saw it.
“You’re really excited, aren’t you?” he asked, stepping over from his post at the stove to bump into her playfully.
“I might be. I don’t really know him yet,” she said.
“Well, that’s why people usually date. To find out if they like each other,” Isaac teased. She just nodded and kept drinking her beer, trying to figure out how she was going to make it until Friday without showing them exactly how ridiculously excited she really was for her date with Tyler.
It took a lot of self-control on her part to keep her true giddiness under control all week, but when Friday night finally rolled around, she couldn’t help herself. As she got ready in the bathroom, already dressed in her beautiful jade green wrap dress, she had to smile at her reflection. It had taken her over twenty minutes to choose the right bra, one that gave her enough cleavage to be noticeable but not enough to look slutty. It was only their first date after all.
“So, who is this guy again?” Taylor asked, leaning up against the door frame and watching her as she put the finishing touches on her makeup.
“For the millionth time, his name is Tyler Campbell and he works for the legal department which is right down the hall from my department. He’s tall, doesn’t look like a serial rapist, and looks nice. Okay?” she asked sassily. Instead of responding like a normal adult, Taylor just hissed at her, but stayed right in place.
“Does he know that you live with us?” he asked.
“I don’t name drop that I know you guys ever, so why would I start with a guy I’m going out on a date with?”
“I didn’t mean that you live with us and we happen to be famous or whatever. I meant to ask if he knows that you live with three guys period. I mean, it’s not exactly a normal situation. If I was going out with a girl, I would want to know if she had three male roommates,” he shrugged before turning to go downstairs, leaving Kinsey to have a near panic attack at his comments.
He trotted down the stairs and found Zac and Isaac sitting in the kitchen drinking beers and talking.
“So, what angle are we going to take?” Zac asked.
“Concerned older brother types?” Isaac suggested. Taylor scoffed and sat down at an empty chair with an untouched beer in front of it, assuming it was for him.
“That’s too obvious a choice,” he explained, “I vote for drunken rock stars.”
“I don’t want us to embarrass Kinsey. Well, not in a damaging, lasting way,” Isaac said.
“Well then do whatever you want. I’m getting drunk,” Taylor stated, chugging about half his beer after that as if to prove his point.
“Are you okay?” Zac asked him.
“I’m fine, I just want to mess with the guy a bit, is that so wrong?” he asked. Isaac just rolled his eyes and they sat there waiting for eight o’clock to roll around. Kinsey came down a few minutes before eight looking completely panicked.
“You!” she exclaimed, jabbing her finger in Taylor’s direction, “Why did you have to say that?”
“Say what?” Taylor asked.
“About how it’s weird that I live with three guys! He’s going to completely freak out, isn’t he? There’s no way he’s going to want to come home with me knowing that you three over-protective nutjobs are sitting here waiting to castrate him or something.”
“Whoa whoa whoa. You’re planning on bringing this guy home tonight? You hardly even know him!” Zac said.
“Oh shove it. Need I remind you of your recent one night stand?” Kinsey spat.
“We won’t be weird to him, Kins, we promise. We’ll even stay back here in the kitchen if you want us to,” Isaac offered.
“Ha! No we won’t!” Taylor laughed, now finishing Zac’s beer, which he had stolen from Zac a few seconds earlier. Kinsey just huffed and stomped out of the room, sitting herself in the living room until the doorbell rang. She scurried out to the front door in her heels to buzz him in and then went back into the kitchen.
“Ike, will you answer the door? Tell him I’ll be out in a minute?” she asked.
“I thought you wanted us to stay away,” Taylor said, three empty beer bottles now sitting in front of him.
“I never said that. All I wanted was for you guys to be normal but I guess that’s too much to ask of you,” she spat, snatching the beer bottle from his hands and taking a long swig before setting it back down in front of him, the glass of the bottle colliding harshly with the wooden surface. Isaac did as she asked and went to answer the door. Once Kinsey had heard them exchange some typical niceties, she went out to meet him, followed closely by Taylor and Zac. Isaac stepped back to join his brothers while Kinsey went up to greet Tyler and to explain the situation to him.
“Um… he looks a lot like Taylor, right?” Isaac whispered to Zac.
“I think the term doppelganger is almost appropriate,” Zac whispered back.
Kinsey walked up to Tyler trying to look as confident and comfortable as possible. In reality, she was freaking out. Taylor’s comment in the bathroom had left her almost shaking. What if he decided he wasn’t interested based on the fact that she had three guy roommates who also happened to be members of a famous band who also happened to be her three oldest friends in the entire world. It wouldn’t have been the first time for something like that to happen, which had given Taylor’s words that much more weight, even though he was oblivious to the fact that her relationship with them often had affected her relationships with other men. In fact, all three of the guys were unaware because she’d never told them a thing. She knew that if they knew about those problems, they would have offered to distance themselves but that was the last thing she wanted. As she had always told Tif, the guys came with her as a sort of package deal and if a guy she dated wasn’t okay with that, then she wasn’t okay with that guy either.
“Hi,” she said standing close to him and speaking softly at first, “I’m really sorry to dump my roommate situation on you like this, but I didn’t really know how to bring it up in advance without being awkward. These are my three roommates and three of my oldest and best friends Isaac, Taylor, and Zac Hanson.”
“Oh,” Tyler said, sounding surprised, but not disapproving, she noted, “Nice to meet you guys.”
“Likewise,” Isaac said, choosing to be the polite one.
“We should probably get going. Our reservation is in about twenty minutes,” Tyler said, “I’ll have her back at a respectable hour, I promise.” He smiled at them with that wonderful, genuine smile that had captured Kinsey’s heart the first time she’d seen it, and Zac and Isaac returned it, giving Kinsey an instant approval that she found oddly comforting. Taylor, on the other hand, just stood there staring, obviously trying to be a further annoyance. She just smiled and nodded before following him out the door, flipping Taylor off before shutting the door behind them.
Dinner was wonderful. Tyler had made a reservation at his favorite restaurant, a great Italian place called Puttanesca where he ordered for them the most delicious meal she’d had in a long time. During their appetizers and first glass of wine, they’d started in on a conversation so fantastic and ever-changing that it morphed from topic to topic seamlessly throughout the entire meal. Even though she normally would have curbed her impulse to eat herself into an uncomfortably full state on a first date, the ravioli and chicken was so delicious she couldn’t help herself.
“I’m never eating again,” she smiled as they traversed the city streets, the three glasses of wine she’d had at dinner bringing a bright red warmth to her face despite the frigid cold air all around them.
“That means you liked it, right?” he smiled, walking along side her with equally rosy cheeks.
“No, Mr. Campbell. It means I loved it,” she clarified, “Thank you for taking me to a great New York restaurant.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said, “And I hope that you’ll give me a chance to take you to another one some time.”
“I think we could arrange that,” she smiled, but found that it disappeared when she realized that they were standing in front of her building. That meant the date was over and that now came the almost always awkward last minutes of a date.
“So, you’re friends with Hanson, huh?” he asked, the topic finally coming up as he looked up at the building.
“Best friends,” she said sheepishly.
“They’re very protective of you,” Tyler smiled.
“They have a tendency to be annoying like that, yes. But, I’ve known them for my entire life, you’d think I would be used to it by now.”
“Well,” he paused, opting to change the subject instead of asking her more questions about the guys, “I had a great time tonight.”
“Me too,” she replied geuninely, wanting desperately for him to kiss her goodnight. But when he reached forward to give her hand a squeeze, she knew he wouldn’t.
“I’ll see you on Monday,” he smiled, She nodded and made her way up to the door, unlocking it and stepping inside, giving him a little wave before shutting the door behind her.
“How was the date?” Taylor asked the second she walked in the door, scaring the hell out of her. She looked and found him sitting on the steps in the near dark.
“Mega-creepass much?” she asked, her hand clutching her chest as she willed her heartbeat to resume its normal speed, “It was great except… never mind.”
“No, what?” he asked. She just looked at him for a minute, wondering if she could trust him with the information, but decided that she couldn’t and just walked past him up the stairs. She could hear him scramble to his feet so he could follow her and she rolled her eyes. He trailed her all the way down the blackened hallway to their bathroom where she immediately started to brush her teeth.
“He didn’t kiss you goodnight, did he?” Taylor smirked, “I knew he wouldn’t.”
“No he didn’t, not that it’s any of your business,” she spat, wishing that there wasn’t half a bottle of wine coursing its way through her system. Every part of her body that was capable of becoming aroused had been turned on by Tyler. He was gorgeous, smart, funny, and a damned wonderful first date in every way except that one. But instead of just doing what she had wanted him desperately to do and kissing her, he had instead chosen to be a gentleman. She knew that she would appreciate that fact in the morning, but at that moment, all she wanted was to feel his new, wholly inviting lips against hers.
“Do you think he’s gay?” Taylor asked.
“Of course he’s not gay! What? Because he asked me out, he obviously wasn’t straight and serious. He must have just been a gay guy looking for a new fag hag!”
“Don’t get pissed at me because your stupid date didn’t seal the deal,” Taylor said, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“He’s not stupid!” Kinsey said, unable to think of another, more coherent reply.
“If he didn’t kiss you goodnight, he’s stupid,” Taylor replied, “It seemed like you guys had chemistry and if he didn’t act on it by at least giving you a peck goodnight, then he’s a moron.”
“Just… be quiet, Taylor,” she said softly, brushing past him as she walked out of the room and towards her bedroom.
“I’m sorry your date didn’t go the way you wanted it to, Kins,” he said sincerely, sticking his head in her door. Instead of replying, Kinsey just grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him into the room. As her lips repeatedly sought his as she walked them towards her bed, she thought that even though he wasn’t the guy she had started the night with, he would do to quench the fire that Tyler had started.