“Dude, Dane Cook is so hot,” Kinsey stated, obviously ogling Dane as he pranced across the TV screen. She knew that Zac, her best friend, would be rolling his eyes at her and trying to think of a truly excellent response to her comment.
“You need therapy,” he replied simply, opting for a lackluster response due to his painfully lazy mood.
“Is that the best you could come up with?” she teased, tugging the bag of chips they’d been devouring from his hands.
“I’m tired, what can I say?” he shrugged, taking the bag back.
“You have absolutely no reason to be tired. You guys dicked around in the studio all day while I unpacked the entire living room. Which, you are now reaping the benefits of, loser,” she spat before standing and heading for the kitchen, maneuvering around stacks of unopened boxes in the process. Three days before, Kinsey, Zac, Taylor, and Isaac had packed up their entire lives in Tulsa and moved into a four bedroom condo in SoHo, much to their parents’ chagrin. It was a temporary situation until they all found places of their own, or at least that’s what they told their parents and themselves in order to feel less weird about the whole situation. Kinsey chose to interpret it as being a continuation of college, having her friends at her constant disposal. The prospect of moving to NYC with them had been exactly what she needed to make her lifelong dream to do so a reality. She never would have had the guts to do it herself, but was more than happy to go with them when they offered.
The main draw of the condo was that it had previously been the American home of Coldplay front man, Chris Martin, so it came equipped with a full recording studio in the basement. It also came with an extra bedroom, one that they had no real need for, so, they had jokingly offered it to Kinsey and she had eventually talked them into actually taking her along.
Kinsey smiled as she approached the refrigerator to grab beers for herself and Zac, seeing the single decoration held in place firmly by a magnet declaring the name and phone number of their landlord. It was a picture of the four of them taken the previous summer at one of their parents’ many gatherings. Kinsey’s father, Anthony, and Walker Hanson had been college roommates who had been randomly thrown together and who had graduated college best friends. As they were both chemical engineering majors and both found employment with Landon Enterprises as project engineers in Tulsa, their families grew while spending time together. Kinsey and Zac had always naturally gravitated towards each other, becoming fast and fierce friends. Isaac had always been a kind older brother figure, always being a shoulder to cry on or an unbiased sounding board. And then there was Taylor. He had teased her, ignored her, fought with her, basically whatever he could do to annoy her as much as possible. But it wasn’t intentional or vicious, it was just them. Their families knew it, their friends knew it, and Kinsey was certainly well aware. This was one of the few, precious moments when it was just her and Zac able to spend time together. Taylor and Isaac had gone out for groceries and likely about twenty other things they thought the condo absolutely needed.
She made her way back to the living room, two Fat Tire’s in hand, again trying not to fall and die over the guys’ mess. She had already managed to completely unpack and organize her bedroom and the living room while none of them had managed to do anything other than put blankets on their beds and find their necessary bathroom items. As she turned the corner, she sighed in disgust as she found Zac scratching his balls through the thick denim of his jeans.
“You’re so sophisticated, Mr. Hanson,” she rolled her eyes, “I just love watching you do that.”
“Oh I know you do, baby. That’s why I do it just for you,” he winked at her, taking one of the beers from her hand and moving to put his arm casually around her shoulders as she sat back down beside him. “You missed the part about humping mannequins.”
“Damn it…” she muttered, taking a long sip of her beer and snuggling into the warm familiarity of his side. Having him there was significantly easing the terrible ache the absence of her female best friend was causing. Tifani had been part of their lives ever since they boys went away for their massive 1997 tour, leaving Kinsey behind for months. In her first days of junior high, she’d met a girl who’d just moved to Tulsa and they’d become friends over the course of that year. Tifani had fit in well with the guys and had managed to not become too starstruck around them, a definite necessity for all of Kinsey’s other friends. She couldn’t even count on both hands the number of girls who had befriended her only because she was their best friend. They were living out some sort of Hanson fanfiction cliché and they all knew it.
Yawning loudly, Zac pulled his legs up onto the couch and sprawled across Kinsey’s lap.
“Excuse me… I rather enjoy having fully functioning legs, I don’t need your fat ass laying all over them cutting off the circulation,” she rolled her eyes, smacking his back hard as he continued to lay there. He grinned and just got more comfortable, trying his hardest to force as much of his dead weight onto her as possible.
“Ooo… I love it when you get rough,” he teased, knowing that she would definitely want him off of her lap as soon as he said that. As predicted, she pushed with all of her might, but her thin frame didn’t allow her to push his body off. After a few seconds of struggling, she just sank back into the couch and drank her beer, continuing to watch her favorite stand-up comedian.
About forty-five minutes later, the front door opened to the loud sounds of Isaac and Taylor reentering the condo. The rustling of plastic grocery bags indicated that they had at least done their job to some extent. Kinsey was sure that there were many other non-grocery related bags also in their possession, but she tried not to get too annoyed. It was their money, not hers, but she couldn’t help but worry about them when their spending excursions got too out of control.
“We’re home,” Isaac called from the kitchen. Zac lifted his head to give Kinsey a look that said “Duh” and struggled to a sitting position again, turning his attention now to whatever show Kinsey had changed to after their DVD had ended. In a much shorter amount of time than it would have taken normal people to put away groceries, Isaac and Taylor came into the living room, Isaac carrying a large white box and Taylor wearing a green foam hat that was supposed to resemble the Statue of Liberty’s crown.
“Well, if it isn’t Lady Liberty,” Kinsey said as he plopped down beside her.
“Hey! That’s Mr. Lady Liberty to you,” he told her before taking off the crown and shoving it forcefully onto her own head.
“Aren’t you twenty-three years old?” she asked disgustedly, taking off the crown and throwing it at Zac, who promptly put it on.
“I’m just trying to embrace the New York culture,” he started.
“One shitty tourist trap at a time,” Isaac finished, “I swear to god, if you drag me into one more of those cheesy stores I’m going to slap you.”
“Oh lighten up,” Taylor said. Kinsey just sat there and looked around the room shaking her head.
“What the hell did I get myself into?” she asked aloud. The guys shared a look before Isaac took the bait.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to have to be the only responsible one here, aren’t I? I’m going to have to unpack the entire house, buy the groceries because if I don’t you guys will be broke in three weeks if Isaac and Captain Dipshit here keep buying everything they see.”
“Hey! I bought a chocolate babka!” Isaac explained, opening the box for them all to see.
“Do we need a chocolate babka?” Kinsey asked, folding her arms over her chest.
“No, Mom, but it looked good so we bought it,” Isaac teased her with a smile.
“Thank god I’m not your mother. I’d have murdered you all years ago,” she said, settling back into the couch. She joined in their conversation about what to do the next day, a Saturday, and they all decided that it would be best if they went to out to dinner and to a movie to scope out their neighborhood. They’d all heard of little unknown restaurants with apparently tremendous food, but they’d yet to do much more than order take-out or grab something at the grocery store down the street.
After they’d decided on a time, they all made their way for the stairs, leaving Kinsey alone to throw away the stray beer bottles and put Isaac’s babka in a cake-sized Tupperware container before going upstairs as well. She cursed under her breath at their inconsiderateness and headed down the hallway to the left which led to her and Taylor’s bedrooms and the bathroom they were forced to share with each other. Kinsey couldn’t help but think that for how much they were paying each month in rent that each bedroom could come with its own bathroom. To add to the frustration of sharing her bathroom with a boy, it also just had to be Taylor. They’d drawn slips of paper for bedrooms and she and Taylor had landed themselves in that part of the condo, much to the teasing delight of Zac and Isaac. Taylor and Kinsey’s arguments were at times a source of entertainment for them–that or a severe annoyance–and she knew that they never made any efforts to stop them once they got started.
She trudged down the hallway, thoroughly annoyed at all three of them and assuming that they were all already in bed half asleep. When she turned the corner, she saw that the light from the bathroom was still on and filtering into the hallway. With a loud, overdone sigh, she entered the large bathroom and went straight for her own sink, trying her hardest to avoid Taylor as he went through his typical nighttime routine.
“Opting for boxers only this evening? How scandalous,” she rolled her eyes as she squirted toothpaste onto her toothbrush.
“Only because you love it so much,” he said as he put his toothbrush back in his medicine cabinet and headed for the door.
“Try not to watch your porn so loud tonight. It kept me up last night,” she lied, shouting out to him.
“I will if you try not to snore so loud. You sound like a 300 pound truck driver with sleep apnea,” he said, smiling at her before actually leaving.
“I don’t snore,” she said under her breath, frowning at her reflection in the mirror.
“Yes you do!” he shouted out before his bedroom door slammed shut. Kinsey finished getting ready for bed and then went into her bedroom, closing her door at a much more respectable volume than Taylor had. Even though their bedrooms were far away from Isaac and Zac’s and she didn’t care if she bothered Taylor, she still always tried to be respectful. As she changed into her pajamas and climbed into bed, she heard the distinct sounds of sex coming through the wall her bedroom shared with Taylor’s.
“Shut up!” she screamed, and she could hear him laugh through the wall before the sound subsided and she snuggled deep into her covers. “What did I get myself into?”