by Jamie Shaw
I give him a look.
“Okay . . . I wasn’t . . . but I didn’t mean it.”
I give him another look.
“Okay, I did.”
He smiles innocently at me, and I can’t help laughing. “Don’t you want to graduate?” I ask.
He groans and drops his hands. “Yeah.”
“Then you have some serious work to do. This test on Monday isn’t going to be easy, Adam. Cramming for it the night before isn’t going to work, not with all the days you’ve missed.”
He sighs and rubs his eyes before picking a T-shirt off the floor and pulling it on. “Can I shower first?”
“If you make it quick.”
I’m back downstairs hanging with the guys when he emerges from the bathroom in a plain white T-shirt and faded torn-up jeans. “Shawn,” he says while towel-drying his hair, “where’s my muffin?”
Shawn laughs. “Your tutor ate it!”
“I did not!” I yell back.
Shawn points wickedly at me. “Did you or did you not eat a blueberry muffin this morning?”
I glare at him and grab a shirt that’s lying on top of the pile I made this morning, hurling it at him. “Prove it!”
The guys all laugh, and Adam smiles wide, his pearly whites shining brightly. He shakes his head at us. “You’re an asshole, Shawn.”
“Hey!” Shawn protests. “She’s the one who ate it.”
Adam crooks his finger at me. “Alright, let’s get this over with.” I pass by him to go up the stairs, and he shouts back to the guys, “She told me to make it quick this morning, guys!”
They laugh, and I roll my eyes, not bothering to look back at the stupid grin that I’m sure is plastered on Adam’s face. My backpack is still in the back room, so I grab it off of the floor and then bounce onto the bed, sitting cross-legged. “Alright, so . . . do you even remember how to conjugate verbs?”
“Oui?” Adam says. “Je pense.” I smile widely at his correct pronunciation of ‘I think’.
“Alright, well let’s start with some written stuff. We can work on verbal stuff in the car.”
By the time I exit the bus with him at eleven o’clock, I’m feeling pretty hopeless. I can’t fathom how Adam passed French 101, and he is so easily distracted, always getting off topic one way or another. At one point, I pressed my palms against his cheeks to quiet his yapping. When he stopped talking and just stared at me, I said, “You need to con-cen-trate.”
Adam’s gaze was fixed on me, and it was so intense that I loosened my hold. “If you don’t let go of my face,” he warned, “I’m going to kiss you.” I immediately dropped my hands, blushing beet-red. He chuckled and flipped to the next page, getting back to work. But after that, I was the one who couldn’t concentrate. When eleven o’clock finally rolled around, I was thankful for an excuse to get out of that room.
“Are we going to stop somewhere to eat?” I ask Adam as we walk to his topless black Camaro.
“I think so. If not, you and I can stop and just meet them there.” I throw my backpack into the back and climb into the passenger seat. Adam frowns at the backpack and then at the textbook in my lap. “You’re not going to make me study the whole way, are you?”
I shake my head. “No, I think I need a break.”
He laughs and slides behind the wheel. “Is there any hope for me?”
I stare over at him, at his gorgeous eyes, his untamed rocker hair, and that heartbreaker smile that could make a smart girl stupid. “I guess we’ll see.”
Chapter Fourteen
“WHERE ARE WE?” I ask Adam as I stretch in his front seat, using my hand to block the blinding sun. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I guess the sleep deprivation of last night finally caught up with me. I woke a minute ago to soft fingers rubbing gently over my arm, and I groggily opened my eyes.
“We’re stopping for lunch,” he says, nodding toward the tour bus parked at the back of the parking lot we’re in. We’re at a diner along the highway. A big red sign facing the road names it Rosy’s.
I reach for my phone, which Adam connected to his car charger earlier in the trip, and turn it on to look at the time. We’ve been on the road for almost two hours, and I have tons of missed texts and calls—from my mom, Dee, Leti, and Brady. I ignore them and tuck the phone into my purse, and then I slide out of the car and stretch my legs, rolling my neck from side to side.
I walk into the diner with a literal mob of boys. In addition to the five guys from the band, there are five roadies, including Driver. I feel kind of awkward . . . and kind of really freaking awesome. Inside, there’s no sign that tells people to wait to be seated, so everyone seats themselves. I slide into a booth seat, and Adam slides in next to me. Shawn and Joel sit across from us, and Mike, Cody, and Driver sit at a table next to us. The other four roadies sit in a booth farther down.
A middle-aged waitress comes by to take our orders, making pleasant conversation by asking about the band since she saw the tour bus out front. The weird look she gives me when she takes my order doesn’t escape my notice, but I let it slide—I can only imagine what she’s thinking, and I’d probably be wondering the same things if I were in her shoes. Still exhausted from my short nap in the car, I bury my face in my elbow while we wait for the food to arrive.
“Hey,” Shawn says, lifting my blonde pony tail and letting it plop back down. I tilt my head back far enough to stare up at him. “How did studying go?”
I groan and bury my face again, and all three guys laugh.
“I thought I did awesome!” Adam says.
I sit up and rub my eyes. “You did alright. But we really need to get some studying done in the car.”
Shawn is twisting his straw paper into knots when he asks, “Didn’t you do that on the way here?”
“No, I fell asleep.” I stare pointedly at Joel, who is busy sipping on his Coke. “Because someone kept me up all night.”
Adam chuckles, and Joel looks from side to side with the straw still in his mouth, noticing we’re all staring at him. “Who, me?”
“I think you need to see a doctor,” I say. “Seriously. I swear you died at least thirty times last night.”
Joel grins at me. “If you think I’m bad, you should hear my grandma.”
I’m imagining what hell it would be to share a room with Joel and his grandma when our waitress brings our food. I immediately snatch up my burger, taking a very unladylike bite out of it. Most girls would probably order a salad or something when surrounded by the likes of Adam, Shawn, and Joel—who are, I have to admit, all sexy as sin—but I’m too hungry to care. And it’s not like I’m trying to impress them.
Adam picks a steak fry off of my plate and replaces it with one of his onion rings. “I hate French,” he grumbles.
Joel blows on a chicken wing, and it looks so perfectly crispy, I’m kind of wishing I had gotten those instead. “So why did you take it?” he asks.
“Needed a language to graduate.”
I finish swallowing my bite of burger, watching Shawn as he trades one of his loaded potato skins for one of Joel’s mozzarella sticks. “Why are you in school, anyway?” I ask Adam. “I doubt any degree you could get would help you out with the band.”
Adam lays his pickle spear on my plate, which makes me smile since I absolutely love pickles, even though he doesn’t know that. “I enrolled right out of high school,” he says as I pick it up and take a bite, “back before we got as big as we are, and I just figured I might as well finish, I guess.”
“What are you majoring in? Music?” I’m half paying attention to Adam, half watching Joel trade one of Adam’s onion rings for a mozzarella stick. Watching the boys eat and pick off of each other’s plates is making me smile. They’re too freaking cute.
When Adam nods, I steal another one of his onion rings and give h
im three of my steak fries as a trade. He’s smiling down at his plate when Cody turns toward us from the next table and says, “So, Rowan, how does it feel to be the only girl in history to ever turn Adam down?”
A better question would be why the hell are we still talking about this? Before I can respond, Mike says, “Aw, c’mon, Code. She’s not the first girl to turn him down. There was that other one . . . What was her name . . .” His eyebrows scrunch together, and then he says, “Plum?”
“PEEEACH!” most of the guys near me suddenly shout out in unison.
Oh. My. God.
They break into loud laughter at Adam’s expense, and I’m suddenly mid-anxiety attack. Shawn is laughing with the rest of them until he sees the expression on my face. And before I can hide it, he witnesses all of the panic I’m feeling. He studies me curiously, his eyes growing narrower and narrower. And then I see the precise moment when he realizes who I am, because his eyes get wide, wider, super-freaking-wide. I can see him imagining me with my hair down, my glasses off, my makeup done. He looks from me to Adam and back again. When it seems like he’s about to say something, I shake my head almost imperceptibly at him, pleading with him to keep my secret.
Adam groans from the teasing and looks up at Shawn just in time to catch him staring at me with shock still written plainly across his face. He follows Shawn’s eyes and gives me a weird look, and then Shawn coughs and lets out a forced chuckle. “Yeah, Peach. I’d almost forgotten about her.”
My prayer for a distraction, any distraction—a fire in the kitchen, a five-car pileup on the highway, a nuclear freaking airstrike for all I care—is answered when the waitress pops back in to ask how everyone is doing. I stuff my face with more burger as I try to think of some way to change this disaster of a subject.
As soon as she leaves, Shawn says, “So.” I look up to see a devilish smirk on his face. “Why didn’t you get her number, Adam?”
“Because I’m an idiot,” Adam says, and my heart pumps a flood of heat into my cheeks. “I didn’t even get her real name.”
“And you have no idea what it is?” Shawn asks, shooting me an amused grin that no one else catches.
“Not a damn clue.”
“Do you even remember what she looked like?” Shawn chides. “You were drinking, weren’t you?”
“I’ll never forget,” Adam argues, rising to the challenge while Shawn’s smirk grows wider. “She was wearing these pink heels and this little black skirt. Her body, man . . .” This has got to be the universe’s idea of a cruel joke. Adam shakes his head like the memory is too much, and then he glances in my direction like he’s only now remembering that there’s a female sitting right beside him. He clears his throat and quickly finishes, “Blonde hair. Long legs. Pink eyes.”
“Pink eyes?” Joel asks.
“Her eye makeup,” Adam explains. “It was shadowy and sort of sparkly. And she must’ve been wearing glitter lotion or something because there was glitter all in the bed afterward.”
I swallow hard. Dee talked me into wearing shimmer body spray that night, and it had left glitter all in her bed too.
With a sharp glint in his eye, Shawn asks, “Her hair was kinda like Rowan’s, wasn’t it?”
I am going to MURDER him! My heart jackhammers in my chest when Adam glances in my direction, but he gives my hair only a cursory glance before dismissing the possibility that Peach’s hair was similar to what I currently have twisted up in my ultra-messy bun. “Yeah kinda, I guess. But lighter and wavier.”
My hair is always a little lighter in the summer, and Dee had worked her magic on my unruly waves.
“Maybe she’ll be at the concert tonight,” Shawn offers, his eyes sparking with trouble when I shoot him another warning look. It’s taking all of my self-control to not kick him under the table, but if he keeps this up, he’s going to learn what it feels like to have a kneecap lodged in his thigh.
Adam shrugs, and I interrupt the conversation by telling the guys I need to use the restroom. I tap Shawn’s shin with my toe and then dart my eyes to the front of the restaurant, hoping he’ll take the cue and follow. After Adam moves to let me scoot out of the booth, I walk around the corner to the front lobby and then stand there, waiting.
I can’t believe Adam told all the guys about me. I can’t believe he even remembered me.
When Shawn strolls around the corner, I practically steamroll him out the front doors so we can talk outside. He looks at me and starts laughing. “I knew I knew you!”
I sigh, worry settling on me like a blanket of ice. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Why? Why didn’t you tell Adam?”
I tug on a loose strand of hair escaping from my bun. “I didn’t want him to know.” I frown at Shawn, who looks as confused as he does amused. I use my hands to indicate my plain tank top, my jeans, my sandals. “I’m not that girl, Shawn.”
“But you are that girl . . .”
“But I’m not. I’m not interested in being one of Adam’s groupies.”
“He knows that, though.”
“And that’s all he needs to know.”
Shawn stares at me like I’m a puzzle he can’t put together. “Why did you really come along on this trip?”
I sigh again, rubbing the center of my forehead. “Our professor was threatening to fail him out of the class. I wanted to help, so I stepped in.”
“But why? Why did you do it?”
“The night you and Adam met me . . . I had just broken up with my boyfriend,” I confide. “I caught him cheating at that show, and Adam was really sweet to me. Honestly, that night would’ve been the worst night of my life if it weren’t for him. I felt like I owed him.”
Shawn stands there for a long time, thinking. Then he shakes his head. “I can’t believe he doesn’t recognize you.”
“I looked a lot different that night, and he had been drinking . . .”
“Yeah, but he like obsessed about you for weeks.”
“He obsessed about me?”
“Yeah. He talked about you a lot, and he always listed you on the backstage list, and he’d give you a shout-out every time we performed at Mayhem to see if you’d meet up with him afterward.”
I don’t even know how to process that, much less respond to it. I end up just standing there staring at Shawn, who still looks mildly stunned.
“So you’re never going to tell him?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, and I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t either . . .”
Shawn studies my worried expression for a long moment, and then he sighs and scratches the back of his neck. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t. BUT, for the record, I really think you should.”
“Nothing good would come of it, Shawn. He doesn’t need to know.”
He shrugs. “I still think you should.”
When we walk back inside, I make a bee-line to the restroom to pull myself together. Adam obsessed over me? I find that hard to believe, since he definitely didn’t recognize me when I saved him from Dr. Pullman, and he had sauntered quite happily into class with all of those sluts hanging all over him less than two days after we made out. But then again, it seems like most of the guys have heard about me—about Adam’s “Peach”—so he must have told them about me . . .
None of this even matters. Even if that night did mean something to Adam, he’s not relationship material. And even if he was, I’m not looking for a relationship.
I walk back to the table, intentionally avoiding meeting Shawn’s eyes, and wait for Adam to stand up and let me squeeze back in.
“You okay?” he asks. I realize he’s referring to my having been “in the bathroom” for so long.
“Yeah,” I lie. “I think maybe I’m just feeling a little carsick.”
“Oh . . . Do you want to ride on the bus?”
I glance at Shawn, who is attentively waiting for my answer to Adam’s question. “No . . . No, that’s alright,” I say. “Just don’t let me fall asleep again.” I force a smile at Adam, whose concern for me is clear in the way his brows pull together over his gorgeous gray-green eyes. It reminds me of the way he looked at me at Mayhem when he saw that I was crying, and it makes me want to melt into his arms all over again. I quickly look back to my plate and finish off the last few bites of my now cold burger.
The guys insist on paying for my food, and then we’re all walking back out into the bright afternoon sunshine. The diner’s air-conditioning had been blasting the whole time, so the warm rays feel great against my goose-bumped skin. Adam and I split from the rest of the group, and then he flips down his shades and lights a cigarette before climbing back into the car.
On the road, I grab my textbook and start quizzing him on things we covered on the bus. I need the distraction, desperately. If Shawn tells Adam who I am . . . I don’t even know what I’ll do. What would Adam do? Would he be happy? Pissed? Would he even let me stay the rest of the weekend?
I dive into French tutoring, and to my surprise, Adam actually remembers most of what we covered earlier this morning and he seems much more focused. I guess there are fewer distractions while he’s driving, and I intend to use that to our advantage and make the most of our car rides. We continue onto the next chapter, and I begin feeling a little more hopeful that we might be able to get him where he needs to be by the time we have our exam in a few days.
After about an hour of grilling him and making good progress, I slap the book closed and toss it into the backseat. “Time for a break.”
I rummage through my purse for my phone and start checking the messages I’ve missed. The last one I got from Dee this morning makes me laugh.
Have you been thoroughly deflowered yet?!
Leti’s text makes me laugh even harder.
