Kya & Xavier: It's Always Been You (Life As We Know It Book 1)

KYA
& XAVIER

Life
As We Know It (Book I)

It’s
Always Been You

A
Novel By

Charelle
Mills

Chapter 1

Kya Renee

“Stop frontin like you’re actually doing some work.” Xavier’s
voice snuck up on me and flowed through my room like a freshly sprayed
fragrance. In typical fashion I was so caught up in the book that I was reading
that I hadn’t notice him until I heard his deep raspy voice which startled me
causing me to immediately look up. He was standing in my doorway, hands deep in
the pockets of his perfectly fitting dark denim distressed jeans, legs slightly
bowed wearing a gray and blue t-shirt hoodie.
 
Looking perfect as always.
Shout
out to Victoria and Johnny for creating such a work of art
.

 
Too bad he had an
incurable case of chronic man-whore-itis.
Jerk!
I pulled off my glasses and fought back the urge to smile. He was cocky
enough without any help from me even though he definitely had reason to be.
I mean really just look at him. Perfection
and he knew it!
Mother Asian, father African American with a body that I’m
pretty sure was illegal based on the trail of damage he caused to countless
hearts mine not excluded and trust me, he knew it. I shook my head. “I think my
3.8 GPA is proof that I do more than just pretend to do work.”

“Whatever man, and what I tell you ‘but leaving that main
door open when you’re in here alone.”

I controlled the urge to say something smart because I knew that
it was pointless. He was overprotective, always had been and always would be.
No sense in pretending that I had a say in it one way or the other. Something’s
just weren’t up for debate with him.

“Why are you here?” I asked. These random visits were making
my life extremely complicated.
 
How the heck am I ever going to move on with
if you are always around?
He had been here so many times in the last month
that I was starting to wonder if he transferred from UNCG and enrolled at A&T.
For him to have a so called girl he sure
spent a lot of time with me
.

“I’m glad to see you too.” He said with a typical arrogance
that seemed to be a permanent part of his personality. “And I missed you, so I
thought I’d swing by for a minute.”

“I think you got your campuses mixed up. Your girl is across
town.

“My girl is right here and you know it, so stop frontin’.”
Oh god that smile.
He looked me dead in my
eyes with a smirk that basically dared me to challenge him. It amazed me how
easily I could love and hate him all within the same thought.

I laid down my History book so that I wouldn’t lose my spot,
sat up and crossed my arms. “I haven’t been your girl in a long time and I’m
sure Tori wouldn’t appreciate you saying that.”
Trick!
Simply
saying her
name infuriated me
but it was
required in order for me to make my point and besides I knew that it would
irritate him which was my initial goal anyway.

Xavier stepped inside my room like it was his own
heck it practically was because he was in
here enough.
He
sat on the foot
of my extra-long dorm issued twin sized bed and laid back. At 6’4 Xavier was
barely affected by the height of my bed the way that I was. It was almost waist
high when I stood next to it thanks to the storage units built in underneath it.
Housing’s answer to the lack of space in my tiny dorm room.

My miniature sized dorm room was the proud owner of one dresser,
a desk built into the wall and a twin bed that was about two feet too high for
my height. Typically I would just hop onto it or use the turtle printed step
stool that my mother had gotten me after we first toured the dorms during my
senior year.
Yes I’m nineteen and l have
a mild obsession with turtles don’t judge
. My mother was so excited that
her only child was going to college so basically buying something for my dorm
was her way of making it as she put it “more real” and since she obsessed about
the fact that the beds were so high, hello turtle printed step stool.

“Nah you know better than that. It’s always gonna be you and
me Ky.”
Yeah jerk if you’d ever get your
crap together, talk is cheap
is what I really wanted to say but settled on,
“Are you high?”

He smelled like a mixture of cologne that I was almost
certain that I had brought for him and smoke of the non-cigarette variety. A
smell that reminded me of high school and it brought back memories that I
definitely did not want to revisit. Memories of Xavier drunk, high and
sometimes both. Memories that caused the two of us more arguments and breakups
than I cared to remember.
I swear I hated
him back then
. I was glad that he had graduated from that phase of his life
and I was hoping that he hadn’t decided that it was time for a reunion with
those bad decisions and old ways.
Thank goodness
for random team drug testing.

“Come on Ky, you know I’m done with that.” His voice slow,
calm and steady. I loved that about him sadly and it’s one of the many reasons
why he was still in my life. He had the power to change my mind about almost
anything just by the way he said my name. He always had such a natural chill
about him, the kind that most people would pay good money for but with him it
was just who he was. No effort involved just Zay being Zay. He never really got
overly excited about anything which also pissed me off more often than not
because his emotions only had one level most of the time, nonexistent!
Try having an argument with someone like
that
.

“You sure ‘bout that?” I asked with a frown. “I smell it all
over you.”
And it’s making me feel nauseated.
I pulled my legs from underneath my covers before I slid off the side of my
bed. I picked up the fleece sweat pants that I had left in the center of my
floor about an hour before my surprise visit. After which I stepped into them, then
secured the drawstrings tightly around my waist but avoided looking at him
because I could feel him watching me. It was as if his eyes were physically
touching my body. As I moved past Xavier he reached for my hand and attempted
to pull me towards him but I managed to avoid contact and then walked into my
bathroom.
Restraint Ky!

“I was around it so it's probably in my clothes.” I guess he
felt the need to explain after I pulled away assuming that it was because of his
smoke filled clothes. He lifted his shirt, sniffed it and then frowned.

“Well it's strong.” I said over my shoulder before I placed
my hands on the sink in front of me and took a deep breath. Our so called
friendship was too complicated. He was forever crossing lines that didn’t need
to be crossed if we were to remain just
friends
and showing up here all the time was definitely one of those lines. I starred
at my image in the mirror and surveyed my reflection like I had never seen it
before. Large dark brown coils fell around my face and down the back of my neck
thick and crinkled from the braid out that I had recently performed on my hair.
I had been natural for almost three years and was finally starting to see some
length and curl patterns that I was happy with. Unfortunately what I thought
would be easier to maintain proved to be more work than my perm had ever been.

My round eyes were so dark that they looked black set into my
caramel colored skin, which was smooth and flawless. I had become mildly
obsessed with skin care the minute that I became aware that puberty had
introduced itself into my life. I refused to be a typical pimply faced teenaged
cliché. I
 
picked up a floral printed
head band off the counter and pulled it over my head and then around my neck
before I brought it back up and then slide it past my hairline to hold my hair
off from around my face. I took a deep breath then sighed.

“Whatcha doing in here?” Xavier asked now standing in the
doorway behind me. I looked at our reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t exactly
tall for a girl at 5’5 which made Xavier tower over me at 6’4. I surveyed his
round face and thin eyes courtesy of Victoria’s Asian heritage trying to find a
reason to dislike him.
No such luck!
 
He had just gotten his hair cut because the
sides were neat and low around his ears while the half curled half twisted mass
that sprouted from the top and sides of his head was in a sort of messy but
controlled type of chaos. When he stopped looking at me and noticed his own reflection
in the mirror he reached up and grabbed a small piece of his hair and began
rolling it with his fingers.

“Why are you here Xavier?” I turned to face him and then
leaned back onto the counter with my arms folded defensively.

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

“Because you haven’t answered yet.”

“You want me to leave?” He asked with a smug grin on his face
that I was all too familiar with. He knew the answer before he opened his mouth
to ask the question but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of making it easy.

“Depends on why you’re here.”
 
I attempted to move past him but he stepped in front of me so I took a
step back. “Do you mind?” I asked with a slight bit of irritation even though I
didn't really know why. I was actually glad to see him but I refused to let him
know it.

“So you don’t wanna be close to me now, it’s like that?”

“It’s not about what I want, it’s about what your girl
wants.” I said this time managing to make it past him. I hopped onto my bed and
sat Indian style before pulling my burnt orange and brown comforter up over my
legs. Xavier was right behind me but stopped at my dresser. He started picking
up random items that he had a million times before so I knew that he was
avoiding my last comment. He was surveying every item that he picked up as if
it were the first time he had ever seen it before returning it back to its
original location, simply to annoy me.

“Why do you always do that?” He asked. “Every time I ask you
anything you always have to bring up somebody that’s irrelevant.”

“Just because you keep forgetting that you have a girlfriend
doesn't mean that I do too. Does she even know where you are?”

“I see you got jokes, you know that nobody keeps tabs on me.”

Preaching to the choir homie!
I didn’t say anything I just laughed
sarcastically.

“Come on Ky, are we really gonna do this and I told you she’s
not my girlfriend?”

…and here we go.
“Do what Zay?” I said with enough
attitude to let him know that I wasn't in the mood. I knew exactly what he was
talking about, I just didn’t care. If he was going to have a girlfriend,
sideline, sex buddy
hell whatever she was
then I reserved the right to remind him every time he acted like he couldn’t
remember that very important little detail.

“This, Ky. Don’t play you know what I mean.” His voice was
calm but I could tell that he was getting irritated and honestly I didn't care.
I had earned that right to be pissed about it.

“What I know is that your
girl
darn sure would lose it if she knew that you were here in my dorm at
11:30 at night. Hell she’d flip out if she knew that you were here no matter
what time it was.”

“So now you care what she thinks.” He asked hinting around to
the countless number of times that he had been in my room recently doing more
than just talking. He sat on the end of my bed, leaned back and reached over
his head to place his hand on my knee.

 
“Honestly she’s
irrelevant but I just don’t have time to be dealing with another one of your
pissed off groupies because if she shows up here looking for you I promise she’s
going to be more worried about me than I am about her.”

“There you go, always tripping about the wrong thing.”

“Well excuse me if I don’t want to be caught in the middle of
your bullshit life…..again.” I said feeling a slightly offended.

Xavier’s phone rang which stopped him from responding to my
sarcastic remark. Instead he reached into the front pocket of his jeans and
pulled out his phone. After a quick glance at the screen he sent the call
straight to voicemail. A few seconds later it rang again so he did the same
thing and when the third call came through he decided to answer. I picked up my
book and pretended to begin reading even though I had absolutely no interest in
what was on the page that I was staring at. I assumed the calls were from Tori
who was probably looking for him.

“What?”

Uh oh, trouble in paradise.
He sounded irritated. Which explained
why he was here....
time to be nosy
.

“I’m busy.”

“Don't worry about all that.”

“Who says I am.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I gotta go and stop calling me. I told you I’m not in the
mood right now.”

I could hear a female voice but I couldn’t make out what she
was saying.

“Yeah whatever.”

“I’m not about to argue with you, I’m out.”

Whoever he was talking to had to be
insane to let him dismiss them like that. He knew better than to talk to me
like that whether we were together or not!

Xavier ended the call and then turned his phone on silent
before he stood up placed it on my desk. He stepped out of the loosely laced Nikes
that he was wearing, then pulled off his hoodie and tossed it onto the chair
that was sitting in front of my desk exposing a plain gray t-shirt with
Spartans printed on it.