by Jamie Shaw
On second thought . . . telling them might not be such a bad idea.
“Time’s up,” Adam says, and I glance at the digital time on the radio. My half hour went way too fast. I sigh and grab the textbook from where I threw it into the backseat, and we immediately get back to work.
Chapter Seventeen
TWO HOURS LATER I slap the book closed, and Adam raises his eyebrow at me. “That’s all she wrote,” I say.
“We’re done?
I nod. “Yep. Except for practicing the written stuff.”
“We’ll have some time before the show.”
“Sounds good.” I smile over at him. “Congrats.”
Adam reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “Couldn’t have done it without you, you know.”
“Oh, believe me,” I chuckle, “I know.”
A smile stays on his lips as he asks, “Are you going to help me study for the rest of the semester?”
Are we seriously making plans for the future?! My feet twitch in anticipation of the nerdy dance I’d be doing if Adam wasn’t sitting right next to me to see it. My lips are just as twitchy, threatening to beam a giddy full-faced smile at him. “Sure, if you want me to.”
“I want you to.” He flashes me that smooth white grin, his eyes happy and sincere.
“You need me to.”
He laughs. “That too.” In truth, Adam doesn’t need me at all. He just needs to apply himself, but he doesn’t seem capable of doing that without someone breathing down his neck.
When I finally toss our textbook into the back and sit up straight, the sun glints off a road sign saying we’re ten miles outside of Fairview. I raise my eyebrow. “Where is this next concert, exactly?” We’re less than twenty miles outside of my hometown, and Adam told me our locations in distance, not by name.
“Fairview. Why?”
I tell Adam about growing up near here and that my parents still live two towns over. He jokes about me taking him home to meet Mom and Dad, and I laugh. My dad would have a heart attack and my mom . . . well, she’d probably bake chocolate-chip cookies and smile as she gifted Adam with fingernail polish remover as a two-months-early Christmas gift.
When we pull up to the venue, we have an hour and a half until showtime. On the bus, I sit Adam down with the textbook and a notepad from my backpack and he dives into written exercises, determined to finish before the show so he doesn’t have to do any studying afterward. I grab a Red Bull from the kitchen and sit nearby. The roadies are all inside the venue setting up, but most of the band is still on the bus, with the exception of Joel. After a while, I realize they’ve all been giving me super-weird looks.
I stare hard at Cody, who has been by far the least subtle. “What?”
He sniggers. “So much for all that stuff about self-respect, huh?”
“Uh, what?”
Mike snaps at Cody to shut the hell up, but Cody just chuckles some more. Mike casts me an apologetic glance, and from the way he looks at me and then quickly breaks eye contact, like he’s embarrassed for me, it finally dawns on me.
They think I slept with Adam.
“WHOA, whoa, whoa!” I say, animating my words with my hands. “NOTHING happened last night! I slept in the back room because I didn’t want to be held responsible for strangling Joel in his sleep. That’s IT.”
“Suuure ya did,” Cody replies with a sarcastic sneer, and just like that, he cements himself as my least favorite member of the band.
Mike stares at me curiously from where he’s gaming on the floor, and I whirl on Adam. “Tell them!”
Adam smirks at me. “I don’t know . . . I’d had a lot to drink.” He scratches his head, feigning a bad memory and looking downright wicked. “But if you promise to do body shots with me tonight, I’ll tell them whatever you want me to.”
I glare at him. “Tell them the truth. Right now! Or say goodbye to graduating in December!”
Adam laughs and shakes his head. He looks at Cody and Mike and shrugs. “I tried to put the moves on her, but she turned me down.” His eyes drift back to me before he adds, “Again.”
Shawn, who is descending the stairs in a fresh pair of soft-worn jeans and a clean black band T-shirt, asks, “What are we talking about?”
Mike sets the controller down and pushes off the floor. “Rowan didn’t hook up with Adam last night.” He scratches his hand over his scalp and then stretches his arms behind his back. His brown hair is disheveled into messy chunks, and he’s wearing dark denim jeans and a brown Guinness T-shirt.
Shawn raises an eyebrow at me. “Really?”
“Oh my God,” I snap. “You too?!” When he doesn’t deny it, I look around at everyone and bark, “Look, if I sleep with Adam, I’ll make sure to make it so hot and heavy and LOUD that there’s no damn confusion! Does that work for all of you?”
Four pairs of eyes bug and four jaws drop while I just stand there with my hands on my hips. I take turns scowling at all four boys—until I can’t take it anymore and a wide smile blooms across my face. I can’t believe I just said that. I start chuckling, and so does Shawn.
“Oh wow,” he says, laughing. Mike smiles warmly at me, Cody looks thoroughly embarrassed, and Adam . . . Adam is just sitting there staring at me with his eyes wide and his lips still slightly parted. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking.
“I’m going upstairs to change,” I say before any of them can form a coherent response to my outburst.
When I get upstairs, I throw myself onto my old bunk and pull the pillow over my head. I can’t believe I just said that. Hot and heavy and loud? My disbelieving laughter is muffled by the pillow I’m holding over my cheeks. I’m officially losing my mind. Adam is driving me crazy!
When I feel someone push against the pillow and playfully shake it back and forth, I pull it away. Shawn is grinning down at me.
“On a scale of one to ten,” I ask, “how crazy does everyone think I am?”
“Oh, definitely an eleven.” He chuckles and sits on the edge of the bed. “So does he know yet?”
I shush him and sit up, casting a nervous glance to the stairs to make sure no one is listening. “No.” I lean in closer and whisper, “I told you, I’m not going to tell him.”
“You don’t think he deserves to know?”
I frown. “He just doesn’t need to know.”
“Peach is still on the backstage list, you know. He never took her . . . you . . . off.”
“He probably just forgot.”
“Maybe,” Shawn says, but he doesn’t seem convinced. He stands back up and scratches the stubble under his jaw. “Just tell him, alright?”
I shake my head. “No.”
Shawn groans and starts walking back toward the stairs. When I call to him and he turns around, I put my finger over my lips, silently asking him to keep my secret. He sighs and shakes his head in disapproval, but I know he’ll keep this between us.
In the back room, I change into tight-ish jeans and a dark blue, lace-trimmed tank top, and then I brush my hair out and tie it back up. I’m really getting tired of having it up 24/7—and don’t even get me started on wearing glasses instead of contacts—but I’m worried that wearing it down would jog Adam’s memory. If we’re going to be friends, I know he’ll see me with it down eventually, but . . . just not yet. He hasn’t even called me by my first name yet, so I’m not confident that I’m sealed into his memory as Rowan. I need to make sure there’s no room for faded memories of Peach to sneak back in.
I jog downstairs to check Adam’s exercises and correct the few he got wrong before handing the sheet back to him. “You pass.”
He beams at me. “Body shots to celebrate?” I roll my eyes, and he laughs. “Whatever, fine. But we’re definitely going out!”
After the show, which I’ll never tire of watching, I walk with the
guys directly into their usual onslaught of fans. Guys and girls . . . mostly girls . . . ask for pictures and autographs and the opportunity to take the guys out for after-show drinks. Michelle Hawthorne is the last person I ever expected to see.
“Hi, Adam,” she says in her sultriest voice, batting her lashes as she gazes up at him.
“Hi.” He smiles back, and I bristle because I hate when Adam smiles at girls like Michelle. She was the most popular girl in my high school—prom queen, cheerleading captain, most likely to marry an eighty-year-old billionaire and then divorce him two days later. She was in one grade higher than me, but my high school was so small, everybody knew everybody and most of us had been in the same district since kindergarten.
Michelle’s sun-tanned skin makes mine look stark white by comparison, and whereas my hair is dirty blonde and wavy, hers is sunny and straight. Even her eyes are a brighter shade of blue than mine. She’s like my prettier twin. Much prettier. Skinner and chestier and gigglier. For fuck’s sake, what the hell is she giggling about? “Hi”? “Hi” is making her giggle?
“Do you remember me?” she asks Adam, paying no attention to me even though I’m standing less than a foot away.
“Um . . .”
She giggles again. “It’s okay. We . . . met at a show you did here a few months ago.” She stands on her tiptoes to whisper something in his ear, and Adam’s lips curve into a smirk as he listens.
Gazing down at her, he says, “Sounds a little familiar.”
Ugh, someone shoot me. I’m in the process of starting to walk to a less slut-infested part of the room when Adam’s hand reaches out to grab mine.
“Hey,” he says. “Hold up.”
I let out a disgruntled sigh and turn around.
“Rowan?” Michelle asks, finally noticing me. “Rowan Michaels?”
I force a smile. “Hi Michelle.”
“Oh my gosh!” She pulls me in for a hug, and my teeth clench. “How have you been?! I haven’t seen you since graduation!”
“I’ve been alright,” I say. I don’t ask her how she’s been because I really don’t care.
“How do you know Adam?”
I glance over at Adam, who is watching us with amusement. I don’t know what it is, but something about him is pissing me off. “We’re friends.”
“Seriously?” Michelle asks with more than a little astonishment. Why is that so damn hard to believe? My eyes turn to stone as I stare at her, but she peppily adds, “That’s really neat! How is your friend . . . what was her name . . .”
“Dee.”
“Dee! How is she?”
“She’s fine too.” I might be imagining things, but Michelle seems to be gravitating closer and closer to Adam as we talk, and I’ve now made a mental note of just how many inches are separating them.
“Is she here with you?”
“No. I came with Adam.” Suspicions flash across Michelle’s features like a funny movie I’ll never get tired of watching, and pride flows through me like wine, making me feel like I could float two feet above her and laugh like an evil villain right down in her stupid sun-kissed face.
“Oh, that’s cool,” she says without her usual pep, but then she recovers. “We should all hang out! Catch up!”
Twenty minutes later, I’m trapped on the bus with too many groupies to count. We’re taxiing a huge group of people to a little club across town, and I’m sitting as far away from them as I can get, brooding. I’m feeling strangely jealous and . . . territorial. I irrationally feel like these are my boys, my bus. My friend, who is currently surrounded by scantily clad bitches. When we first got on the bus, Adam tried to pull me down to sit next to him, but I honestly think I’d rather fork my own eyes and ears out than have any more of Michelle’s giggling burned into my long-term memory.
I sit in the corner-most bench seat, keeping to myself and trying not to glare at Michelle or any of the other four girls flirting with Adam and making him laugh. I wish he and I had driven in his car instead of riding in this filthy slut-wagon. I know this Adam is the same Adam I’ve spent almost every waking minute with for the past two days, but . . . this one just feels different. Inaccessible. Agitating.
Heartbreaking.
I chew the inside of my lip raw as I stare out the dark window, watching the familiar businesses and shops pass by. Since my town is so small, Fairview is where everyone goes to do anything that’s anything. Movies, shopping, restaurants—you’ve gotta go to Fairview. And I know exactly where we’re headed, because Dee has dragged me there more times than I can count. Emily’s is a tiny little club on the west side of town. It has a bar and a dance floor and a DJ booth, but aside from pink interior lighting, there’s really nothing special about it.
When the bus is parked, I can’t get off of it quickly enough. I nearly trip over Joel’s ankle to get down the aisle, and Adam gives me a curious look as I pass by him. I kind of want to smack that look right off his stupid face. The girls pour out of the bus first, hanging off of band members and even roadies. Do they even know the freaking difference? By the way one slut is hanging off of Driver, I’m guessing that’s a big no.
Mike comes to stand next to me, and we watch as everyone else files off the bus. “I think I’m going to go across the street to get something to eat first,” I tell him. There’s a little pizza joint literally right across the road that stays open super late. They do great business from all of the club-goers who need to sober up before driving home.
“Thank God,” Mike says. “I’m coming with you.”
“Hey Adam!” I shout. He looks up to find me standing a few people away. “I’ll catch up with you later. Mike and I are going to get something to eat.”
Adam weaves around people to get to me. Michelle is right on his heels. “Want me to come?”
“Nah,” I say on impulse, not wanting him to feel like he has to babysit the poor nerdy tutor girl who doesn’t quite fit in. And besides, the last thing I want right now is to have dinner with Michelle or any of the other girls who were practically drooling over him. “We’ll probably be over in like twenty minutes.”
Adam looks at Mike and then at me again. “You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s cool. We’ll see you later.” Michelle is already gently pulling him toward the crowd of people now walking toward the club. She’s dressed in a short skirt and super high high heels, and I kind of hope she trips and skins her knees so badly she has to have her legs amputated.
Okay, no . . . that’s a lie.
I really hope that happens. Please fall, please fall, please fall.
“Alright,” Adam says, interrupting all the bad karma I’m giving myself. “See you in twenty.”
I force a smile and turn away from him, jaywalking across the street with Mike. “I can’t stand her,” I mumble once we cross the yellow line.
He chuckles. “The girl with Adam?”
“She went to my high school. Prom Queen and all that crap. She’s so fake.”
Mike shrugs. “That’s kind of Adam’s type.”
I frown and clamp my jaw shut. This is so not a conversation I want to have.
Inside, Mike orders us an entire pizza. We get the plain cheese since there’s one already made, and then we find a table and sit down. “God, I’m starving,” I say, choosing a big piece with an airy bubble—my favorite.
Mike scoops three pieces onto a paper plate and sprinkles them with extra oregano and red pepper. “I live for pizza.”
“If you were stranded on a deserted island and had to live on only three types of food for the rest of your life,” I ask as I chew on a thick piece of cheesy goodness, “what would they be?”
Mike squints his eyes a little as he thinks and chews. “Pizza . . .” He pauses. “Pizza . . .” He pauses again. “And pizza.”
I laugh. “Excellent choic
es.”
He smiles around the piece he’s biting into. “What about you?”
When I list pizza as my first choice, he smiles wide at me. “And strawberry pancakes,” I add, “aaand . . . hm . . . what else . . . OH! Cookies, my mom’s.”
Mike chuckles. “I’d like to change my answer to that. Pizza, pancakes, and cookies . . .” He nods. “Yeah, ship me to this island.”
Mike and I talk about everything from what kinds of cookies my mom makes to why strawberry pancakes and bacon are the perfect cure for hangovers. He tells me that the parents of an ex-girlfriend of his actually owned a farm where they raised pigs and had a strawberry patch, and we make plans to grow strawberries in Dee’s dorm and raise a pig on the bus—a pig named Breakfast.
“But we can’t slaughter Breakfast!” I insist.
“How are we supposed to have bacon then?”
“We’ll just have to go to IHOP . . . and bring Breakfast with us.”
“And feed him bacon?!”
“Oh my God! You’re a monster!”
Mike laughs harder than I’ve seen him laugh before, which makes me smile.
“So what ever happened to that girlfriend?” I ask.
He makes a noise. “She went off to college and expected me to follow. She didn’t see a career with the band as being anything that was worth pursuing.” He smirks. “I disagreed.”
“That sucks.”
With a shrug, he says, “Yeah, it kind of did, but what can you do.”
“Why don’t any of you guys have a girlfriend now?” I regret the question the second it slips from my mouth. It’s really none of my business.
Mike chuckles. “Well, Adam, Shawn, and Joel don’t really want one. Cody can’t keep one. And I just haven’t met the right girl yet.”
I suspected as much—about all five of them—but hearing Mike say it out loud . . . eh, it kind of stings. Adam doesn’t want a girlfriend. I mean, not that I want a boyfriend, and even if I did, it wouldn’t be a playboy like Adam, but . . .
