When Kaya Perry graduates college, the last place she wants to go back is Layton, the town that she left behind. She left that place with bad memories and no friends, so there is no way she's looking to go back. So it's really a bummer when the job...
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"Do you get a kick out of messing with my boyfriend?"
Rolling her eyes, Kaya turned around to see Alison standing way too close to her. As in, invading your personal space close. Alison's arms were crossed and her nose was scrunched into a sneer, making even Alison's very pretty face look like a nightmare. At least, from Kaya's perspective below her, that's what she thought.
Kaya didn't know what Alison was talking about—let's be real, though, Alison only bothered Kaya when something happened with Julian—but she applauded the woman for confronting her in a relatively secluded section of Layton's community park.
"I'm not messing with anyone," Kaya said, turning back to her phone. She was waiting for a call from a client that she edited a video for.
Alison scoffed. "Please," she said. "Everyone knows that you want Julian. Why else would you be hanging out with him and Ty?"
Kaya rolled her eyes again. Over the past few weeks, she'd been hearing people talk about the amount of time she spent with her friends—Ty and Julian in particular. Kaya thought that it had been pretty clear that she wasn't interested in dating anyone, that men and women could be friends without being romantically involved, but apparently not. According to the gossip mill, Kaya was regularly having threesomes with the two men and that her eyes were on Julian.
"A man and woman can be friends without being lovers," Kaya said, still looking at her phone. "And I don't want Julian."
Even without looking, Kaya could tell that Alison didn't believe her. In the girl's mind, Kaya was out to get her and ruin everything that she loved.
"Whatever," Alison said. Kaya's phone started to ring. "Just stay away from my boyfriend." Kaya didn't hear her walk away because of the grass, but her shadow disappeared, letting Kaya know that Alison was gone.
Now what was the point of that? Kaya wondered.
Later, when she finished editing another commercial for Ansen Enterprises, Kaya leaned back in her chair and stretched. After six hours of working on the commercial and sending it back and forth for comments over the last few days, she was finally finished with the weeks' work. Besides the commercial, Ty's business had been bombarded with shoots. It was starting to warm up, spring on the way, and people wanted to take early Easter photos and get married. The money it made them both was nice, but Kaya hadn't done so much work in so long she was exhausted. Now that the work week was over, it was finally time to do what she had been looking forward to all week: soak in her tub with a glass of wine while listening to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. With it raining outside, it was the perfect end to what was otherwise a good day.
A knock on her door made her pause.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"It's me," came Ty's voice. Frowning, Kaya looked at the clock. It was well after eleven and Ty had to be in Gainey at six the next morning. The way that Ty worked, it seemed like he got almost no sleep. Whenever he had spent the night at Kaya's place or she at his, he was always awake when she fell asleep and awake when she woke up. The man was like a vampire.
She opened the door and saw him standing on her doorstep, dripping wet with his camera bag covered by a jacket. He shuffled in and dropped everything on the floor, careful not to break his camera. He did all of this in angry silence and Kaya went to get him some dry clothes. Ty was over enough for him to leave some loungewear at her house, so that's what she got.
With a grateful look, he headed to her bathroom to change. When he came back, Kaya was waiting, worried. He hadn't said one word since he'd arrived, and though she knew that he would talk eventually, she'd never seen Ty angry.
"What happened?" she asked, her voice quiet.
Ty paced her living room before speaking, occasionally running his hand through his hair.
"Did you see Alison today?" he asked, his voice gruff.
Kaya blinked. "Yeah, she cornered me at the park. Why?"
Ty's jaw clenched. "She said that you confronted her about Julian. That you went up to her and claimed that you wanted Julian and that you'd take him from her. And then Julian comes up to me saying all this bull about you spreading rumors that he and Alison are breaking up. He implied that you came onto him."
Kaya blinked once. Twice. This had to be some absurd joke.
"Are you serious?" she asked. Ty glanced at her. "Alison cornered me at the park, trying to say that I was messing with Julian even though I told her that I don't want Julian. When have you ever seen me do anything other than avoid him? Like damn, half the time I don't want him near me and Alison wants to go around accusing me of trying to mess with him?"
The two of them were quiet after her outburst, and Kaya decided that she was really ready to go soak in the tub. With the entire bottle of wine instead of just the glass. Alison, Julian, and their nonsense were really starting to get on her nerves.
It started after everyone learned that Kaya was Ty's new videographer. Julian suddenly wanted to play nice with Kaya, going as far and inviting her to game nights with him, Ty, and Alison. Like they were all friends. Then Alison and her friends start appearing where Kaya was, interrupting Kaya's routine with snide comments directed at her. Kaya was getting friend requests and follows on social media from people that Alison knew in high school and made Kaya's life a living hell. She had older ladies giving fake smiles to her at the grocery store and girls from high school looking down their noses at her whenever she saw them.
It was ridiculous and now they were pulling Ty into this mess. High school all over again.
She wished that Olivia and Lauren were still in Layton. They had been in New York for a couple of weeks by that point, but she missed them already, even if they did talk to each other every day.
She rubbed her temples and sighed. "I need a drink."
After rummaging through her kitchen, she came back with the bottle of wine, a glass, and some beer for Ty, who had settled on her couch. He gratefully took it and drank some immediately.
"I don't believe them," he said. He and Kaya gazed at each other across the living room. "You haven't said anything about Julian in months and you don't even really bother with him anymore."
"Thank you," she said. She paused. "I haven't liked him since Alison fired me from my job over him."
Ty nodded and leaned back on the couch that he was sitting in, closing his eyes. The two were quiet for a while, just listening to the rain.
"Can I spend the night?" he asked after a few moments. "I didn't drive and I didn't grab an umbrella when I left." He smiled a bit.
"You were that angry, huh?" Kaya asked, chuckling. "You live twenty minutes away walking and you walked here in the rain with your equipment." She tilted her glass toward the bag on the floor. "And you don't even have to ask at this point if you could spend the night. The guest bedroom is always open."
