Chaos

by Jamie Shaw

  “What do you want for dinner?” Rowan yells.

  “Order something!”

  “I should go,” I mutter, taking a step back and banging the backs of my traitorous legs against the coffee table. I decide to stop moving so I don’t end up falling flat on my face and needing Shawn to carry me all the way to the hospital.

  Yes, because in my fantasyland right now, ambulances don’t exist and Shawn is obviously the only doctor I need.

  Fucking hell.

  I am not this awkward girl. I had boyfriends in high school and boyfriends in college. One-night stands and semi-long relationships and casual dates and week-long flings. But not one of those guys ever took my number and didn’t call me or made me want to Taser him or made me trip over tables or made my heart pound in my chest like it does every time I lock eyes with Shawn Scarlett.

  Rowan just shakes her head. “Nope. We’re ordering something to celebrate your initiation into the band, so you’re pretty much obligated to stay. What do you want to eat?”

  When Adam pops out of the bedroom and suggests pizza, Rowan volunteers him and herself to go pick it up, adamant that Shawn and I should stay behind so we can finish working.

  “We already finished,” I insist, but she just holds up her hand, smiles, and closes the door between us.

  Abandoned alone in the living room with Shawn again, I take a minute before turning around. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Shawn and I have nothing to do, nothing to say, and Rowan literally shut us in here together and smiled while doing it. I take a deep breath and finally turn to face Shawn. “How mad would she be if I left before she got back?”

  He scratches a hand through his hair, his vintage band T-shirt pulling taut over his chest. “Why do you need to leave?”

  “I don’t . . . ”

  “Then stay.”

  I should run. I should tell him no, and I should run far, far away. I shouldn’t look back.

  I shouldn’t be here flirting with him, staring at his hands and his eyes and his lips. I should remember the way he made me feel when he said he’d call and then never did.

  But my brain is having trouble remembering any of those things, so instead, I reluctantly sit back down on the couch. I take a long sip of my beer. I stare at Shawn’s guitar. I take another sip of beer.

  When I finish one, he offers me another, and the first conversation starts awkwardly but continues easily. Shawn and I talk about guitars and equipment. We talk about our favorite bands, the best shows we’ve ever been to, crazy shit we’ve done at concerts. Two more beers, and I can’t stop laughing.

  “And then Adam just showed back up with no pants,” Shawn says through his laughter, “and I was so fucking drunk, I fell over from laughing so hard and busted my damn lip open.”

  Giggling like crazy, I wipe away my tears. “That’s nothing. When I was eighteen, I went to see The Used, and Bert had the crowd do a wall of death—”

  “Oh no,” Shawn says even before I can finish.

  I nod and hold out my left arm. “I broke my arm in three freaking places.”

  Shawn nearly coughs out his beer. “You seriously broke your arm?”

  “My band had to cancel shows for two entire months,” I explain, bending my elbow while remembering how much it sucked to be stuck in a cast. Shawn grins at me, and I laugh before adding, “My brothers freaked the hell out, so I had to make up some bullshit lie about slipping on a patch of ice—in August.”

  They had correctly assumed I broke it by doing something stupid—like slamming arm-first into a thoroughly inebriated Incredible Hulk—but I scrambled to say whatever it took to keep them from volunteering Mason to move in with me in my dorm.

  “Why?” Shawn asks, and when I take another swig of my beer and lift my eyebrow, he clarifies, “Why’d you have to lie about it?”

  I swallow the amber liquid down my throat and shrug. “Do you remember my brothers? Bryce was in your grade, Mason was two above you, and Ryan was one above him.”

  Shawn circles his thumb over the lip of his beer bottle. “Sort of. Don’t you also have another brother?”

  “Who, Kale?” I ask with more than a little surprise in my voice. He can remember Kale, but not me? “Yeah . . . ” I answer, trying not to let it bother me. The numbness taking root in the tips of my fingers helps. “We’re twins.”

  When Shawn says nothing else, I finish, “Anyway, they’re all just kind of . . . protective. Overprotective.”

  “What would’ve happened if you told them the truth?”

  I’m guessing I’d still have Mason as a babysitter to this day, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in a big family, it’s don’t bring shit up unless you want to spend the rest of your life talking about it.

  “Who knows?” I answer as the front door of the apartment swings open and Adam carries Rowan in on his back. She’s balancing a pizza box on his head with a slice already hanging from her mouth, and I watch them even though my face is still turned toward Shawn. “I’m used to lying. It’s easier than fighting with them.”

  The entire couch stirs when Adam drops Rowan onto the cushion next to me.

  “Fighting with who?” she asks.

  “My brothers,” I answer while Adam flips open the pizza box and both boys grab a slice. “I was just telling Shawn they can be kind of overprotective.”

  Rowan chuckles and finishes swallowing a bite of pizza. “What do they think of you being in a band with these guys?”

  She points a thumb at Adam and a pointer finger at Shawn, and I just sit there, eyes stuck open, mouth clamped shut.

  Rowan narrows her eyes. “They do know you’re in a band with them, right?”

  “Yeah,” I lie to the sweet blonde girl in front of me. “Of course.” I grab a slice of pizza to buy myself some chewing time, but it does nothing to distract Rowan.

  “And they’re cool with it?”

  Shawn and Adam are both waiting for my response, so I flick another lie off the tip of my tongue. “They know this is a big dream of mine, so they’re super supportive.”

  I consider the fact that my pants don’t burst into flames a good sign, and Rowan’s appeased smile is a bonus. She grins at me, Adam spins on the recliner until his legs are dangling over one of the arms, and Shawn just stares at me like he can read my mind.

  “That’s cool,” Rowan says, oblivious to my paranoia about Shawn’s potential telepathy. “You should invite them to Mayhem sometime.”

  “Yeah,” I reply, not adding the rest of what I’m thinking.

  Yeah, and while I’m at it, I should prepare myself to be tossed over Mason’s shoulder kicking and screaming while Bryce restrains my hands to keep me from clawing Mason’s useless ears off. Then Ryan can interrogate the guys about their intentions while Kale starts the getaway car.

  “Maybe,” I finish with a saccharine smile.

  Rowan’s questions about my brothers keep coming one after another. How old are they? What are their names? What do they do? Were they friends with the guys in the band back in high school? Why not?

  “I’m kind of the black sheep of the family,” I divulge, setting my crumb-filled napkin on the table. “The rest of my family is very . . . ”

  I’m trying to figure out how to finish that sentence when Adam volunteers, “Football.” He’s completely hanging off of the recliner now, his head smashed on the floor and his legs tangled on the seat. He’s writing upside down in a mini-notebook, with a breadstick balancing like a bridge between his chest and his chin.

  I chuckle and agree, “Yeah, they’re very football.”

  My brothers aren’t like me, with my blue highlights and nose piercing. They’re not like Adam, with his black fingernails and stacks of bracelets. And they’re not like Shawn, with his quiet genius and vintage clothes.

  “So what made you different?” Rowan asks with genuine interest. “Why’d you pick up the guitar?”

  My eyes were already on Shawn, and they stick there, re
membering the first time I saw him perform, the way he played the strings of my heart with each and every note he struck. I had goose bumps and butterflies, and I’m not sure if they were all for Shawn or all for the guitar or all for both, but my fingers itched to touch those strings, and all of me longed to feel Shawn Scarlett.

  “I was a big fan of the band in middle school,” I confess when I finally manage to tear my dark eyes from Shawn’s green ones. “They made me want to play, and the guitar just kind of . . . spoke to me.”

  “Oh wow,” Rowan says. “So Shawn inspired you to play?”

  “Hey,” Adam protests from the floor. “How do you know it was Shawn?”

  “Well, it couldn’t have been Cody. But I guess it could have been Joel . . . ”

  “I played back then too,” Adam complains, throwing a chunk of breadstick at Rowan.

  She catches it in midair and pops it in her mouth, and I interrupt their flirty teasing by admitting, “It was Shawn . . . I’d never heard anyone play like him.”

  “You should’ve said something!” Rowan exclaims, and I manage not to argue that I did say something. I poured my heart out and was rewarded with having it stomped on.

  “Yeah.”

  “They could’ve gotten rid of Cody so much earlier,” she continues, like she’s a million miles away. Her half-eaten slice of pizza gets discarded in the box, her voice somber when she adds, “Things could have been so different.”

  “Maybe,” I agree, wondering how different they could have been if I hadn’t gone to Adam’s party that night.

  I still would’ve cried myself to sleep, I always would have wondered what could have been, and I would have lost my virginity to someone who wasn’t Shawn Scarlett . . .

  I eat my fill of pizza, using silent moments to wonder if I would change anything, even if I could. Would I stay home that night? Would I give that night up?

  Long after pizza, when Rowan finally runs out of questions and the sun has hidden behind the moon, I announce it’s time for me to head home, and Rowan insists Shawn walk me to my Jeep. The walk is quiet, without even music from the elevator to pierce the silence, until I’m sitting in my driver’s seat and Shawn is standing by my side. The parking lot lights cast harsh shadow over the planes of his face and stubble on his chin, and he parts his soft lips to say, “Sorry about Peach giving you the third degree.”

  The night smells like city air and Shawn’s cologne, and I long to melt into him. To tell him it doesn’t matter if he broke my heart that night six years ago, because I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t have wanted my first to be anyone but him.

  “Shawn,” I start, staring up into those dark green of his eyes. He’s close enough to touch, and yet he’s untouchable.

  I should hate him.

  I don’t.

  “Yeah?”

  I don’t know what I had planned to say . . .

  Why didn’t you call me?

  Would you still be able to forget me?

  Why couldn’t you just love me?

  “If I call you to run music stuff by you,” I say, “will you pick up the phone?”

  Rowan gave me all the guys’ numbers tonight, insisting that they were idiots for not exchanging them earlier. The only number I had was Dee’s, and Rowan’s blue eyes dimmed when she told me that Dee has gone AWOL.

  Shawn’s eyebrows turn in. “Why wouldn’t I pick up the phone?”

  When my worried expression doesn’t change, his softens.

  “Yeah, Kit . . . I’ll pick up.”

  “You sure?”

  “I promise.”

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN I’m home alone in my own bed, I remember the way I practically begged him to answer my call and groan. My face is buried in my overstuffed pillow, and it’s not enough to get his scent out of my nose or his voice out of my head.

  Just because I wouldn’t change what happened that night doesn’t mean I want to do it all over. I don’t want to fall for him again—not when the ground comes so quick, and not when it hurts so damn much.

  I fell for Shawn Scarlett once.

  And once was more than enough.

  Chapter Four

  THE NEXT FEW days are spent practicing music, listening to music, writing music, and doing whatever I can to go back to being the person I was before I reconnected with Shawn Scarlett.

  Tough. Independent. Indestructible.

  My hours are spent with a guitar pick between my fingers or between my lips, and food becomes an annoyance that nags at my stomach during songs and between songs and after songs. I live off of peanut butter crackers and coffee, and when I run out of the latter on Wednesday morning, I’m forced to change into real clothes and venture out of my apartment. In a black thermal, a tattered black skirt, a pair of star-print knee-high socks, and my trusty combat boots, I sit in my Jeep arguing with my phone until it gives me directions to the closest coffee shop: a Starbucks near the local college campus—one with no freaking drive-thru.

  I somehow manage to keep my eyes open during the drive, and after reluctantly climbing out of my Jeep and into the real world, I cross the weather-beaten parking lot. Inside, I find myself in a mishmash of polo-wearing college kids who make me look like a neon blue sharpie in a box of ballpoint pens. Some of the guys stare at me like I’m contagious¸ and some stare at me like they want to catch whatever I’ve got, but most just stare at me like I’m a foreign food they want to taste but are too intimidated to try.

  I scan customers gathered at tables and cozied on couches in the corner before my gaze drifts to the front of the line, where one guy is pulling at another guy’s shoulder to get him to place his order, but the latter is too busy smiling at me like I’m an adorable kitten with a “Free to a Good Home” sign hovering above my head.

  He’s wearing pink Chucks, long cargo shorts, and a Strawberry Shortcake T-shirt that looks like it’s legitimately scratch-and-sniff. Dark shades are pushed up into a thick lick of ombré hair, making the guy look just as out of place as I do.

  When he smiles at me, I furrow my brows at him, and he turns around and places his order.

  There’s this weird dude staring at me in a Starbucks, I text Kale while I wait for my turn.

  Oh, look who’s alive.

  If he murders me, bury me in my boots.

  Those boots have probably melded to your feet. We’d never get them off.

  Good!

  “Miss?”

  “Oh, uh.” I pocket my phone and scan the board behind the barista’s head. “A caramel mocha, please. Extra salt. Extra espresso.” I glance around for Mr. Shortcake, but all that’s left is polo, polo, polo.

  I hold back a laugh when I realize that if I called out “Marco” right now, every single guy in this entire joint would need to call back to me. And judging by the way a few of them are beginning to ogle, they wouldn’t mind if I felt around for them with my eyes closed.

  I ignore the unwanted attention and move to the end of the bar to wait for my drink, pulling out my phone again.

  Sorry I missed family dinner Sunday.

  Where were you?

  The writing cave. I’ll make it up to you.

  Better make it up to Bryce and Mason too. All they did the whole time was whine about how they’ve been replaced.

  Considering I haven’t seen much of Adam, Joel, or Mike, and Shawn is so not ever going to be like a brother to me, they have nothing to worry about.

  Did you tell them to stop being girls?

  I have the bruises on my arms to prove it.

  I smile and pocket my phone again when the barista slides my drink over. It smells like heaven, and I risk burning the roof of my mouth to take a long sip. Of course, it burns the shit out of me, but the caramel flavor on my tongue is worth it, and I’m still sipping as I toss my straw paper in the trash. I’m five steps from the door when a college guy in a red polo shirt abruptly stands to get it for me, but I hurry my pace and escape outside before he can get to it. I’m chuckling under my breath when
a voice from behind me nearly makes me drop my drink.

  “Hey. Kit, right?” Mr. Shortcake pushes away from the wall as I finish spinning on my heel.

  “How do you know my name?” I walk backward while simultaneously giving him my attention and scanning the area around us for anyone I might know. Either I’m in a practical joke or I am a practical joke, because I have no idea who this guy is—or why he’s looking at me and talking to me like he’s my biggest fan.

  “I also know that you have three—no, four brothers, and that you grew up in Downingtown, and . . . ” He closes his eyes and waves a hand around me, like he’s reading my aura or something. “And you just joined a band.”

  When I stop walking, he opens one eye and smiles at me.

  My voice is defensive when I say, “How do you know all that?”

  “I can read fortunes.”

  His smile grows wider, and skepticism drips from my voice when I say, “Uh-huh.” I take another sip of my drink to demonstrate just how unimpressed I am by his bullshit. “What’s my fortune, then?”

  He takes a sip of his coffee to mirror me, smacking his lips when he’s through. “Ah, that’s an easy one.” He pauses for dramatic effect and then grins and says, “We’re going to be best friends. Well, second-best friends, actually, or . . . third-best friends, but . . . semantics, Kit-Kat, that’s not important.”

  “Who are you again?” I ask, and Mr. Shortcake sticks out his hand, chuckling when I make no attempt to shake it.

  “If I told you I was Rowan and Dee’s friend, would that help?”

  I stare, and he smiles.

  “I’m Leti.”

  “Leti?”

  His hand drops to his side, and he raises a dissatisfied eyebrow. “You mean the girls didn’t tell you about their big gay best friend?”

  “No?”

  “Seriously?” When my expression doesn’t change, he pouts and flips his shades down over his eyes. “Well, that’s just disappointing.”

  Leti talks, and talks, and talks—and somehow, within five minutes, convinces me to walk with him to campus. He insists it’s so he can show me around, and I say five, maybe ten words total.

  “And this,” he says, gesturing to an auditorium in Jackson Hall, “is where Ro-cone met Adam. But more importantly, where she met me.” He flashes me a bright smile and pushes his shades back up into his hair. “We used to spend entire classes swooning over the back of his head.” He reminisces for a moment before resuming our walk and adding, “But I’m guessing he’s not your type.”