Chaos

by Jamie Shaw

  “Exactly,” Mike says, and when I drop my jaw and smack him hard across his shoulder, he laughs.

  I smile and relax back against the seat, waiting until he’s playing a game to say, “Thanks for not saying anything to the guys about me and Shawn this morning.”

  “You should’ve just told me,” he says with his eyes on the screen and his fingers frantically pushing buttons. “I knew there was something going on with you two.”

  “That obvious, huh?” I try to ignore the fire-breathing dragon beneath the brightening skin of my cheeks.

  Mike glances at me and chuckles. “Yeah. But don’t worry. You’re a much better liar than Shawn is.”

  I grin at the smart-ass compliment, and then I ask, “How so?”

  “Dude,” Mike says, “he gave it away from the moment you auditioned. I just never really got why he looked at you like that.”

  My nose crinkles. “Huh?”

  “At first, I honestly thought he just didn’t like you.” Mike laughs. “I had no idea you guys hooked up in high school.”

  A ringing in my ears. A loud, loud ringing. “Wait . . . what?”

  All sorts of warnings are flash-firing in my brain, causing my heart to protest painfully against my ribs. He had no idea we hooked up in high school? In high school?

  Mike glances at me again before turning back to the TV with a chuckle. “Relax. Shawn told me everything. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “He . . . told you we hooked up in high school?”

  That’s impossible. He doesn’t remember we hooked up in high school . . .

  Mike curses and jerks to the side along with the character on the screen. Then he regains his composure and says, “At Adam’s graduation party, right?”

  “Yeah . . . ”

  “Kind of epic, if you think about it. It’s like you guys were always meant to be together or something.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter again, with dread pooling coldly in the pit of my stomach.

  Shawn remembers?

  Shawn remembers.

  When Mike glances at me again, I disguise my emotions with a fake smile, and he smiles back at me before returning to his game. “I think you guys will be good together.”

  I walk away from him in a daze, icy shivers dancing over my arms and up the back of my neck as I replay his words over and over again in my head.

  I had no idea you guys hooked up in high school.

  Shawn told me everything.

  You guys hooked up in high school.

  In high school.

  At Adam’s graduation party.

  Shawn has remembered this entire time. He’s known since my audition, since the first time he locked eyes with me after six years of nothing. He knew when he gave me a hard time at our first practice and I ended up throwing a guitar pick at his head. He knew when I kissed him in Mayhem, when he kissed me back and I ended up making an idiot of myself on the bus. He knew when we sat up on the roof of the hotel and I admitted I had a crush on him in high school. He knew with every kiss he stole, every smile he took, every time he made me look like a stupid fucking girl harboring the crush of a fifteen-year-old freshman.

  Betrayal plants in my belly and spreads like a weed, choking out the butterflies and making one thing perfectly clear: he doesn’t want to tell the guys about us because he never wants them to know. He didn’t want them to know back then, and nothing has changed. He only told Mike because Mike caught us and he had some serious explaining to do. But he doesn’t want me to tell Rowan, or Dee, or Kale, or Leti, because after all these years, I am still just his dirty little secret.

  When he climbs onto the bus and smiles at me, it takes everything I have to not cross the distance between us and clock him in the face. He’s not my boyfriend anymore, not the guy who made me giggle tonight onstage. He’s the guy who fucked me in a dark room and never called. He’s the guy who has lied to me for months. He’s the guy who broke my heart—twice.

  Once, shame on me. Twice, you are so fucking done for.

  After Adam and Joel pass by me to get to the back, I catch Shawn’s arm and haul him to the front, closing divider curtains the entire way. Driver is still on the other bus, and I have only minutes before he appears to drive us to the next city.

  “You looked hot onstage tonight,” I say, my voice carrying a manic sort of recklessness that I’m hoping he can’t hear. I boldly reach up and curl my fingers in his hair, a wild energy buzzing in my veins and threatening to make my fingers shake.

  It would be easy to confront him, and it would be easy for him to lie. I’d look absolutely crazy—like just another one of the scorned groupies I’m sure he’s collected over the years. Shawn could deny everything—every kiss, every touch, every word . . . every goddamn fucking thing I was stupid enough to think meant anything. And honestly, I’m not sure who the rest of the guys would believe. The forgettable little girl from high school? Or their best friend since forever?

  Yeah.

  So instead of screaming and crying and kneeing Shawn where it counts, I twirl my fingers around and around in his hair, flashing him a wicked smile that’s full of bad intentions. And when the green flames in his eyes ignite, I can tell he’s misinterpreting every single one.

  My fingers are still twirling when his lips drop to mine. He kisses me just like he had last night, and the sting of it makes me pull away, but slowly.

  “Can you imagine how many times we would have hooked up by now if you had known about the crush I had on you in high school?” I whisper, watching his reaction closely and trying not to get my hopes up.

  I’m giving him an opportunity to come clean. All these months, all he would’ve needed to do is tell me the truth and say two words. “I’m sorry” would’ve been all I needed to hear to forgive him, and I’m giving him one last chance to say it.

  His smoldering gaze meets mine from centimeters away, and I watch the way it dims and sobers. Now that I know what to look for, I spot it—the recognition.

  He kisses me again, and I spot that for what it is too—a distraction. The hope in my chest dims, and I pull away again. “I thought about it, you know.” He watches me, and I watch him right back, trying to see him for the guy he was with me last night, and not the one who has lied to my face for four and a half straight months. “About what it would be like to be with you . . . I bet we would have been amazing.”

  I’m desperate for him to just admit it—to tell me I’m not forgettable, to tell me I was worth remembering, to make me believe I still am.

  “We’re amazing now,” Shawn says, and this time, when his fingers tangle in my hair, there’s no pulling away. The way he kisses me makes me want to pretend. I feel myself start to fall—start to forget, to forgive—and the only way I can save myself is to bite down. Hard.

  “Fuck!” He jumps away from me, his hand flying to his mouth. He stares at me like I’ve been possessed, and maybe I have been, because all I can do is stare blankly back at him. It’s like I’m seeing him for the first time, through someone else’s eyes.

  “What the hell was that for?” He wipes his thumb across his bottom lip and glances at the streak of red blood that clings to the lines of his thumbprint.

  “I guess I got carried away.”

  His dark eyebrows are pinched tightly in my direction when the nearest curtain swings open and Joel saves me from having to explain myself any further. “What the hell are you yelling about?”

  Shawn’s torn jeans get stained red when his thumb wipes across them. “Nothing. I bit my lip.”

  Another lie. And it rolls off his tongue so easily, my blood boils.

  “Oookay . . . ” Joel stares back and forth between us—at Shawn, glaring at the apparition I’ve become, and at me, with the taste of his blood still on my tongue. “What are you guys doing up here?”

  “Obviously having another secret rendezvous,” I answer flippantly, and Joel has no idea how honest I’m being when he brushes me off.

  “Ha, ha. Seriously
though, what are you doing?”

  “Wondering where Driver is,” Shawn answers for me, but I’m already walking away from his forked tongue, back through the bus. In the bathroom, my back slides down the closed door until my ass hits the floor and the world stops falling out from under me.

  Pathetic.

  Disposable.

  Shawn threw me away after having me six years ago, and now? Our last show is tomorrow night. Just one more day on tour . . . and then what? Were we ever going to tell everyone? He said that we would, but he never said when, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered.

  Because Shawn said a lot of things. And all of the things he didn’t say mattered just as much.

  I used to have a crush on you in high school, you know.

  Did you? he asked.

  It was one of a thousand lies left unspoken. One of a thousand, and I fell for every single one.

  Chapter Eighteen

  WAKING UP THE morning after the veil is yanked from my eyes is déjà vu, but not the kind of déjà vu that reminds me of waking up in a new city yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that. It’s a déjà vu that carries me back to the summer after my freshman year of high school, to another morning-after. Then, I cried into a pillow. Now, I’d sooner gouge my eyes out.

  I roll away from the metal wall of the bus and stare through the pale rays of sunlight separating me from Shawn. He’s facing me, like he’d been watching me sleep, and his face looks peaceful. Beautiful. Deceiving. His black hair is a tangled mess against his pillow, his jaw dusted with shadow and his dark lashes fanned against his cheeks. It was almost impossible to sleep last night, with him right across the aisle as the bus ferried us to a new city. Part of me wanted to crawl across the impossible space separating us and kiss him until I forgot about all the things he said and all the things he didn’t.

  But an even bigger part of me wanted to punch him in the face and then smother him with his pillow.

  I fell asleep angry, I woke up angry, and after tugging on a fresh pair of clothes, I leave the bus angry. Driver parked us in a new lot hours ago, and with the sun peeking through the windows, I know Shawn will be awake soon. He’ll expect me to meet him in the kitchen before everyone else is awake, just like I have every other morning for far too long, and maybe he’ll want to finish what we started on the roof of Van’s hotel, or maybe he’ll want to ask me why I went all zombie on his face last night, but either way, I hope he feels as lost as I do when he realizes I’m long gone.

  Block after block, crosswalk after crosswalk, my combat boots gain the distance I’m so desperately in need of. The city is buzzing with people heading to their day jobs, dressed in suits and formal wear that stand in stark contrast to my shredded jeans, my band tee, my black-and-purple hair. I don’t even know where I’m going—I only care that it’s away. Because I can’t think around him. I end up kissing him or biting his fucking lip off, or both.

  When my phone buzzes and Shawn’s face flashes onto my screen, I don’t slow down. I don’t turn around. Instead, I toss a few choice curses at his face before making it disappear. My contacts get pulled up. My thumb hovers over SEND. I make the call.

  “Hey,” Kale answers, the sound of his voice lifting an invisible weight off my chest.

  I take a deep breath and say the three words he’s probably been dying to hear. “You were right.” My voice is firm—loud enough to make the confession real even to my own ears.

  “Of course I was right,” Kale agrees. “What are we talking about?”

  “Shawn’s an asshole.”

  “O . . .kaaay . . . ”

  “He remembers.”

  With the phone pressed tight against my ear, I wait for Kale to cuss Shawn out or rub it in or say anything, but my twin is silent for so long, I end up pulling the phone away from my head just to make sure I didn’t lose the call.

  “Hello?” I prompt with it back under my hair.

  “Sorry . . . He remembers?”

  “Everything.”

  “Like . . . He remembers you from high school?”

  My heart twists in my chest, the writhing of a million jagged pieces that will never be put back together. “Everything, Kale.”

  “He told you that?”

  A single laugh escapes me, cutting into the morning air of a city much too far from home. “No, Mike told me.” I slip inside a random coffeehouse, the jingling bells on the door taunting me as my choice attire earns stares from the patrons. I dare them to give me a look, or say something, or breathe the wrong way. “But two nights ago, before I found out,” I say as I approach a wary barista, “he asked me to be his girlfriend.” I make a noise at the end, something between a scoff and a choked-out laugh. “I’ll take a large coffee. Black.”

  “And what happened after that?” Kale asks as I hand the barista my money.

  I laugh again, the wry sound a cruel reminder of just how much he hurt me. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

  Long seconds pass, and I try to block out the memory of all the sweet things he said to me that night, and all the dirty things he did to me the morning after. “You said yes?”

  “I did a lot more than say yes.”

  I woke in his arms and let him pin me to a wall. I let him kiss me, touch me . . . I let him drop to his knees. I let him—

  My skin heats from the memory of what we did on that roof, and my fist clenches with the urge to punch myself in the face for the way my body betrays me. Even after everything, part of me—an untrusted, carnal part of me—still floods hot for him, and probably always will. He’s still gorgeous. Nothing can change that. And he’s still talented and smart and funny. And my heart . . .

  My heart can’t be trusted either.

  “You slept with him?” Kale asks, worry seeping through the phone from hundreds of miles away.

  “No. Almost . . . but no.”

  His sigh is heavy, and the weight of it bears down on me as I move to the edge of the counter to wait for my coffee.

  “Kit . . . ” Kale says after a while. “Are you okay?”

  “No.” My anger resurfaces with the admission. “No, I’m not fucking okay, Kale. He’s been lying to me this whole time.”

  “Start at the beginning,” Kale orders, and I collect my coffee and find a table. I sip at the rim of my recycled-paper cup, welcoming the way the scalding liquid burns away any last traces of Shawn’s lips. And then I tell Kale everything, even though I swore to myself I never would. I tell him about the kiss in Mayhem before the tour, about the way Shawn pretended nothing happened. I tell him about the kiss the night I met Victoria, and the way Shawn pinned me against the bus. I tell him about sober kisses and drunk kisses and secrets—all of them, every single one.

  “I feel like a fucking idiot,” I finish. “I feel like I don’t even know him. I guess I never did.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I press my knuckles into my eye. “I don’t know.”

  “How do you not know?” Kale snaps. “Come home, Kit. Fuck him. He’s not worth it.” My twin’s voice is stern, and there’s no mistaking that he’s related to Bryce, or Mason, or Ryan—or me. He’s repeating the exact words he said to me that summer after our freshman year.

  He’s not worth it. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth it.

  “Do you even know what the worst part is?” I ask, not waiting for an answer. “He told me not to tell anyone about us. He said I wasn’t even allowed to tell you. I guess he just wanted me to be some dirty little fling again.”

  I can feel my brother’s anger radiating through the phone during the silence that spans between us. I don’t even hear him breathe, and in the quiet, I stare out the coffee shop window, watching the nine-to-five parade pass me by. Pantsuit, pantsuit, pantsuit, pantsuit. My eyes swing to the mismatched bracelets on my wrist and the chipped black polish on my nails, and I know with absolute certainty that I could never do what the people outside are doing—wake up at the same time
every day, do the same job every day, come home at the same time, eat at the same time, go to bed at the same time. This band is my shot, my one big shot. And I want that, even if I don’t want Shawn. Even if Shawn doesn’t really want me. Even if he never did.

  When Kale finally speaks again, his voice is a coiled snake. “Kit, listen to me. You need to come home. Right the hell now. Do you hear me?”

  “We have a show tonight.”

  “So? Shawn is a fuc—”

  “I’m not going to let the rest of the guys down just because Shawn’s an asshole.”

  “Are you really sure they didn’t know about that night too?” Kale snaps, and my heart sinks even further into my bottomless hole of a stomach.

  “Mike didn’t,” I answer as I continue staring hopelessly out the coffee shop window. The sun is too bright, the glass is too clean, and I’m too many worlds away from home. I do just want to go home, but I can’t. Not yet. “I don’t think Adam or Joel do either,” I finish.

  “Just like you thought Shawn didn’t . . . ”

  My knuckles gravitate to my eye again. “I don’t know, Kale. This whole fucking thing is so fucking fucked.”

  A woman at a nearby table clears her throat in an obvious objection to my language, but I’d sooner bite her head off than worry about one more thing.

  “Kit,” Kale pleads, “just come home. This isn’t worth it.”

  It’s what he’s been saying from the start—and from the start, he’s probably been right. But here I am, with one show left to do, one day left to bear. “I’ll be home tomorrow.”

  “No way—”

  “Tomorrow, Kale. I’m finishing this.”

  It takes me forever to get Kale off the line, and after I finally manage it, I just sit there, staring at my phone and remembering Shawn’s unopened text. I haven’t wanted to want to read it—but here I am, wanting, staring. I watch the black screen until I light it up and make one final call.

  “Did you just get off the phone with your brother?” Leti asks by way of greeting. He and I have kept in touch these past few weeks, but I haven’t told him a thing about Shawn. He’s asked, I’ve avoided, he’s persisted, and I’ve changed the subject by getting him to dish about Kale.