Chaos

by Jamie Shaw

  We sit like that forever, neither of us admitting that we miss the hell out of each other. Even after three years of sleeping under different roofs, I miss being able to sneak over to my twin’s room at night to share blackmail on our older brothers or watch scary movies that leave us both too terrified to sleep.

  Sometimes, Kale works on my nerves. But most of the time, he makes me feel . . . whole. Like a piece of my heart that sometimes leaves my chest.

  “I want you to meet Leti,” I say with my head still resting against his.

  Kale doesn’t budge. “You’re not setting me up.”

  “Of course not.”

  It’s a lie, and because he’s Kale, he knows it, and because I’m me, I know he knows it.

  When he elbows me, I elbow him back, and we keep going like that until I’m sure I have a bruise on my arm and he’s rubbing his and telling me he gives up. “Mean,” he scolds.

  I move to sit on the edge of my bed, resisting the urge to rub my tingling bicep. “You started it.”

  “It’s not my fault you’re annoying.”

  “It’s not my fault I met the guy of your dreams.”

  Kale shushes me and shifts away from the door to peek out of it. He closes it softly and scoots across the hardwood floor toward my bed. “Just because you met one gay guy, one, does not make him perfect for me. Being gay does not make him my soul mate or something.”

  “He’s also funny and sweet and smart.” Kale rolls his eyes, and I grin like a Cheshire cat. “And ridiculously hot. He’s tall, with a great body and this sexy golden-bronze hair. He can rock a pair of sunglasses like nobody’s business.”

  “Then maybe you should date him. God knows you’re boyish enough.”

  “You’re going to regret saying that when you’re begging me to set you up.”

  “In your dreams.”

  When I smirk at Kale, he scoffs at me. “If you want to talk about boys so much, why don’t we talk about Shawn? Are you back in love with him yet?”

  When I lose my smile, his falls away too.

  “Oh God . . . you’re in love with him again.”

  I groan, collapse sideways onto my bed, and bury my face under a pillow—coming face-to-face with my phone and desperately wanting to check to see if I have any more texts from Shawn. I’m not in love with him again, am I? Even when all I want to do is rush Kale out of my room right now so I can stare at his face on my screen some more? So I can giggle in my Jeep, break traffic laws all the way home, and—ugh, God.

  “Seriously, Kit?”

  “He’s stupid,” I whine into my pillowcase.

  “Why is he stupid?” Kale asks, and I inhale a slow breath through the cotton.

  “Because he makes me stupid,” my muffled voice complains. He makes my heart do cartwheels. He makes me giggle at my freaking phone.

  Another pillow smacks me hard over the pillow covering the back of my head. “Stop being annoying and tell me what the hell you’re saying.”

  I pull the pillows away and glare at Kale through the thick web of hair falling over my eyes. “Why do you want to know anyway? You hate Shawn.”

  “Which you should too.”

  “That was six years ago, Kale.”

  “Has he said he’s sorry?”

  “How can he be sorry for something he doesn’t remember?” While Kale grimaces at me, I struggle to sit up and brush the hair out of my face.

  “He should say sorry for not remembering.”

  “Now who’s stupid?” I whack him with a pillow, catching only the forearm he lifts to block me.

  “Still you. Why not meet some of the other hot guys in town?” He snatches the pillow away and continues rubbing Shawn in my face. “You live by a huge college, for God’s sake. You’ve got to be swimming in them.”

  “They’re all Polos,” I complain, and it takes Kale a little longer than usual—two seconds, almost three—but eventually the static on our twin frequency clears and he shoots me a flat look.

  “Maybe you’re just not looking hard enough.”

  Or maybe all I can see is Shawn.

  Even in college, no guy ever made me feel like Shawn made me feel, even if it was just for one hour on one night at one party six years ago. No one else can compete with him—I just never fully realized it until I was sitting on that couch with him after band practice, watching him play that vintage Fender and remembering what it felt like to have my heart do that thing in my chest.

  That dancing, twirling, fluttering fucking thing. That thing straight out of books and Lifetime movies.

  “There’s no one like him, Kale.”

  I don’t even know what it is about him. It’s the intense way he stared down at his guitar when he was playing, the soft way he looked at me when I made him smile. It’s like there’s an even more beautiful person beneath his beautiful shell, and all I want to do is be with that person. I want to be the only girl he smiles at like that.

  Kale sighs, his chest deflating and the worry lines around his mouth deepening. “You should hate him.”

  “Forever?”

  “At least until you remind him what he did.”

  I never can.

  “He needs to know, Kit.”

  He never does.

  “And you deserve to hear an apology.”

  I never will, and that night, when I’m in my own bed under heavy covers, I don’t ask for one. Instead, I text Shawn, tell him I’m home, and answer my phone when it rings two seconds later.

  Actually, I answer it when it rings ten seconds later, because it takes me that long to stop smiling around the lip I’m biting and feeling like I’ll start giggling as soon as I hear his voice.

  “Hello?”

  “You’re home now?”

  Three words, and that giggly smile is back on my face. I pull the phone away until I can get a grip on myself, and then I answer, “Yeah, I’m in bed.”

  “Oh . . . ”

  Shit . . . did that translate to, I don’t want you to come over? Because that is definitely not what I meant. What I meant was, Yes! I’m home! Come over! Stay a while! We can do . . . stuff!

  God. It’s like I’ve never talked to a freaking boy before.

  “So what happened at your parents’?” Shawn asks, interrupting my spastic inner monologue.

  I make a noise and answer, “You don’t want to hear about it. Trust me.”

  “If I didn’t want to hear about it, I wouldn’t ask.”

  Soft heat radiates beneath my cheeks, soaking into the fingertips I press against them. “What if I just don’t want to talk about it?”

  “Then can I play you something?”

  I slide my fingertips away when that soft heat turns to fire. “On your guitar?”

  “No, on my harmonica.”

  I’m way too nervous to form a smart-ass reply to his tease. “Over the phone?”

  “Yeah. I want to come over tomorrow, too, if that’s cool with you, but I’ve been waiting all day for you to listen to this song I’ve been working on.”

  That smile I gave to the darkness earlier comes back full force, and I swallow another stupid giggle. “Sure. Play away.”

  And then, he does. He plays his guitar just for me, and I close my eyes and let myself dream.

  I dream that the song is mine, that the night is mine, that Shawn is mine.

  “So what do you think?” he asks when he’s finished. “Do you like it?”

  And with that dreamy smile still on my face and his song still in my heart, I answer him.

  “No,” I say. “I love it.”

  Chapter Six

  OVER THE NEXT couple of weeks, my mornings are usually filled with Starbucks and Leti, and my afternoons are usually filled with practices or jam sessions, playing music or writing music. Most of the songs I learned that day in Shawn’s apartment end up getting changed anyway—the old guitarist’s parts getting replaced with new ones I write myself. The guys love the fresh flavor I add to their sound, and I love that the
y love it. We grow together flawlessly, and it’s all easy. Mike always has my back, Adam always makes me laugh, Joel always entertains my corny jokes, and Shawn . . .

  Shawn is the only part that’s not easy.

  Time alone with him is tough. I try to keep it professional; he has no idea that I have to try so hard, and I always feel like I’m going through withdrawal of him as soon as he leaves my place. Texting him and hearing my phone ding a response becomes an addiction, one that tugs at the strings of my heart, pulling it closer and closer to a place I swore I’d never go again.

  Sometimes we meet up at his place. Sometimes the whole band practices at Mike’s. But it’s the times when it’s just Shawn and me sitting on the roof outside my bedroom window that I look forward to the most.

  “Do you hear that?” he asks as he plucks the E string of my guitar. The sound carries on the breeze blowing my hair into my mouth, and Shawn smiles as I try to brush it away.

  It’s been a few weeks since our first band practice, but the late May weather still hasn’t realized it’s almost summer, and even though the cold is demanding I crawl back through my window to put on socks and boots, I don’t listen. Instead, I curl my toes against the roof and tell Shawn, “Still flat.”

  The icy shingles pressed against the bottoms of my feet help keep me grounded, reminding me that I’m not in a dream, reminding me that I called Shawn and he called me back—six years late, but he called. And now he’s sitting next to me outside my bedroom window, looking perfectly comfortable with my guitar on his lap.

  He tightens the string and plucks it again. “What about now?”

  “Perfect,” I say with an easy smile. I crisscross my legs and tug my frozen feet into my lap, wrapping my hands around my icicle toes to warm them. “Who taught you to play?”

  “Adam and I taught ourselves,” Shawn answers, a nostalgic smile curling the corners of his mouth as he places my guitar back in its case. He flips the locks and settles back against the roof, his strong arms holding himself up and his long legs stretched out in front of him.

  It would be so easy to crawl on top of him—to straddle those beaten-up jeans of his and taste the breeze on his lips.

  I force my eyes back up to his. “How long have you been friends?”

  “First grade,” he says with a little chuckle I can’t help smiling at.

  “What?”

  “I dared him to try to walk on top of the monkey bars, and he got all the way to the last one before a teacher caught him and gave us both detention for the whole week.”

  “So you’re the bad influence,” I tease, and the pride in Shawn’s grin confirms it.

  “He dared me to try it as soon as our detention was up and we were allowed to go outside for recess.”

  “Did you do it?”

  He laughs and shakes his head. “Nope. I told him I didn’t want to get more detention, and when he tried to convince me I wouldn’t get caught, I dared him to do it again himself.”

  Almost twenty years, and those two haven’t changed at all. “Did he get caught?”

  Shawn nods proudly. “We got two more weeks of detention, plus they called our moms.”

  When I laugh, he laughs too. “I’m surprised your moms let you be friends,” I say.

  “We were already brothers by then. It would have been too late.”

  I don’t know why that makes me want to kiss him, but it does—just like every other damn thing he ever says. And just like every other night I’ve found myself alone with him, I bite the inside of my lip and try not to think about it. “So why guitar?”

  “Adam’s mom bought him one for Christmas, and I played around with it until he decided he wanted to learn too.” Shawn’s smile brightens as he travels back in time. “I think he only wanted to learn for the girls, but after a while, he started writing lyrics and singing them. And I guess the rest is history.”

  “What about you?” I ask, and he tilts his head to the side. “Adam wanted to learn for the girls, but what about you?”

  He rakes a hand through his hair and says, “It’s going to sound stupid.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It just felt right,” he explains after a moment. “It came naturally . . . I never wanted to sleep or eat.”

  “Or go to school or bathe,” I add, because I know exactly what he’s talking about.

  “Or do anything but play that guitar,” he agrees. “I just wanted to keep getting better. I wanted to be the best.”

  “You still do.”

  He considers that for a moment, and a smile sneaks onto his face—one of his rare ones, the kind that makes his eyes shine a whole shade brighter, the kind that makes me wonder how my feet can be so cold when the rest of me is burning hot.

  “So do you,” he says, and when I say nothing back—because my tongue is tied and my heart is in knots—he asks, “Are you nervous about performing at Mayhem this Saturday?”

  Our first show. Hell yes I’m nervous, but I’m too excited to feel anything but anxious. The new songs we’ve been working on are amazing—ridiculously freaking amazing. Working with Shawn has been like . . . like working with a legend. Like creating the very piece of art I’ve been a fan of all my life.

  “Are you kidding?” I ask. “I was born for this.”

  With my pale knees poking through my shredded jeans and my wild black-and-blue hair jutting out of a clip, there’s no question that I look the part. My eyelashes are painted as black as my toenails, and my nose ring is glittering like a snowflake in the cold.

  Shawn grins and asks, “What about going on tour?”

  We leave in two months, and that daily countdown has kept me up at night ever since he told the guys and me about the tour last week—but not because I’m nervous about performing in big cities for four weeks, which I kind of am, but because I’m nervous about where I’m going to sleep once I’m on the bus. I lie under my warm covers at night wondering if Shawn will be in a bunk above me, below me, across from me . . . I wonder if he’s a night owl or an early riser. I wonder what he wears to bed—if he wears anything at all. I wonder if he’ll bring girls on the bus after shows, and then I imagine myself being the one who shares his covers. We haven’t even left yet, but I’m already fighting the imminent urge to crawl into his bunk, straddle his hips, and—

  “Nah,” I say with a shake of my head to clear my thoughts. Shawn eyes me curiously, and I ask, “Are you?”

  “A little,” he confesses, and my eyebrow lifts.

  “Really? You still get nervous?”

  “Not really about performing . . . more just about everything else. If the crowd is going to be good, if the equipment is going to work, if we’re going to be on time—”

  “So basically everything you can’t control,” I say, and he smiles at my assessment.

  “Pretty much.”

  “It must be hell working with a bunch of rock stars.”

  “You have no idea. But record execs would be worse.”

  “Really?”

  “You’ll see. The music industry is one giant cannibal, especially big labels. Like Mosh Records—they’ve been after us for years. But they want you to look a part and play a part and be this part, and the whole time, they’re just eating you alive.”

  “Awesome,” I say, and Shawn shrugs.

  “That’s why we’re not with them.”

  “Even though we could be . . . ”

  “Even though we could be.”

  I wonder how many offers Shawn has gotten, and which labels they’ve been from, but instead of asking about any of that, I coil my hands around my ice-cold toes again, and say, “What do you think I should wear to Mayhem on Saturday?” Even though I know I don’t have to look a part or play a part or be a part like Shawn just said . . . I kind of want to, at least for our first show, and these shredded hand-me-down jeans I’m wearing just aren’t going to cut it.

  “Something warm,” he teases, and I lift my eyes to find him smiling at the way I’m holding
my feet.

  I sneer at him, he grins at me, and I say, “Maybe I can get Dee to make me something.”

  Dee is making a name for herself by designing shirts for the band’s website, but maybe she could do a cute dress or something . . . something Leti would approve of.

  “You’ve talked to her?”

  “A few days ago at Starbucks.” Whatever happened between her and Joel . . . it left the girl empty. She wasn’t the spirited, catty chick who swung open the door at Mayhem the day of my audition and basically told me to get lost. She’s as broken as Joel, only with better fashion sense.

  Shawn sighs and pulls a knee up, balancing an elbow on it and scratching his hand through his hair. “How was she?”

  “Hanging in there, just like Joel,” I say, obeying what I’m guessing is some kind of inner girl code by telling the truth without really telling it. The comparison alone says enough, because Joel is the same sort of shell. He goes through the motions—shows up at practices, hits his marks, forces a laugh when everyone else laughs—but even someone like me, who hadn’t really known him before, can tell his light his out. The one that lit for her.

  Shawn sighs and looks out over the big yard behind the old woman’s house, and I’m content to watch him think. It’s like watching the northern lights, a breathtaking phenomenon that not many people get to see. Guys like my brothers can simply space out, think about nothing, but not Shawn or even Adam. It’s a songwriter thing, a constant introspection, and it’s why the band’s songs resonate with so many people. It’s why they’ve always resonated with me. And now, watching Shawn climb inside himself, I wonder if I’m witnessing the lyrics of our next hit being drafted, if this is what that looks like.

  “I used to wish they’d stay apart,” he says. “Now, I wish they’d just get back together.”

  “Why?”

  “I think they need each other.” Shawn glances over at me, like he just realized he’s talking to another person instead of himself, and then he lets out a breath and stares back over the yard again. “I don’t think they needed each other before, but . . . I don’t know. It’s like none of us ever realized he was half a person until she came around. Not even him.”

  “Maybe that’s true of everyone,” I say, barely noticing the numbness in my toes anymore, because I’m too lost in this moment. It would take me ten seconds to get my socks and boots, but those are ten seconds with Shawn I’m not willing to lose.