Riot

by Jamie Shaw

  “Who’s this one from?” I ask as I tear open the final gift. It doesn’t have a tag or a card, but it’s neatly wrapped in a plain dark purple paper, so I suspect it’s from one of the girls. When I glance at them, they both look just as curious as I do. I finish unwrapping a long poster-tube and open it up, pulling out a sturdy piece of paper and unrolling it.

  A penciled image of myself stares back at me. She’s lying on her back with her hair lying in thick pools around her smooth face. The sky is dark and full of stars that the pale wall behind her tries to catch. She smiles at me, and the love in her eyes is so clear that my breath catches.

  It’s a memory preserved on paper. And even though I’m smiling at myself now, I wasn’t smiling at myself when I was in that pool.

  “Who drew this?” I ask, unable to tear my eyes from the sketch in front of me. When no one answers, I lift my gaze and demand to know, “Who brought this?”

  “What is it?” Shawn asks, and I turn the sketch around for him to see. It steals everyone else’s breath just as it stole mine.

  We all know who drew it.

  “I just grabbed all the presents that were on the table,” Mike says.

  “I thought it was one of yours,” Adam adds.

  “Shit,” Shawn breathes.

  I look back inside the tube—for a card or a note or anything—but there’s nothing else inside.

  “Why would he do this?” I say to myself, angering when no one answers me. “Why the fuck would he do this?” I ask Rowan.

  It’s been three weeks since he fucked me against a bathroom wall, four weeks since he yelled at me at his mom’s, over a fucking month since he told me he loved me, and now he sends me this drawing? Why, just to remind me of a time when I was actually fucking happy?

  “Where does he live?” I snap, rolling the sketch back up and stuffing it into the tube.

  “Dee,” Rowan says in that voice she sometimes uses to charm the viper inside me. “I think you should just—”

  “Where. Does. He. Live?” I growl again, barely containing my calm. I’m saving my anger for Joel. Every fucking shred of it.

  Again, no one answers me. They’re all sitting around me in a shell-shocked circle, staring at me like I’m a grenade with its pin pulled. I’m glancing at Rowan, at Leti, expecting them to tell me, and when they don’t, I look to Adam, Shawn, Mike. More looks, more silence. Betrayal courses through my veins like burning poison, and I’m about to tell every single one of them to go to hell, when Kit is the one who speaks.

  “Adam and Shawn’s complex,” she says, and all eyes swing to her. “First floor . . . I can’t remember which number.”

  I thank her and grab my keys off the counter with all intentions of busting down every single door on the first floor if that’s what it takes to find him.

  I’m almost out the front door when Rowan shouts, “C!” I glance over my shoulder at her, and she gives me a worried but apologetic nod. “C. He’s in 1C.”

  I close the door behind me.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  OVER THE PAST few weeks, I’ve thought more than a few times about what I would say to Joel if I ran into him. I’d smile, I’d ask how he’s been, I’d exaggerate all of my good news, and I’d walk away first.

  “What the fuck is this?” I ask when I burst into his apartment. I hold up the poster tube as evidence, and from his position on the couch, he stares at me like I just broke his door down—which I would have if it had been locked.

  There’s a guitar on his lap and an amp at his feet. With no shoes, no shirt, and a single earbud dangling from his ear, he calls to my heart in a way that makes it want to open wide.

  “Joel?” a girl asks, popping her head out of a room in the hallway.

  And then the poster tube is flying right at his head.

  “What the hell!” he barks, barely getting an arm up in time to prevent the tube from hitting him in the face. It bounces off of his forearm and ricochets onto the hardwood floor.

  “What’s going on?” a second girl asks, poking her head out of the second room in the hall.

  “Why the fuck would you send me that!” I shriek. I sound hysterical. I am hysterical. Two fucking girls? TWO?! “Is a slut going to pop out of the coat closet next? Should I not look in the fridge?!”

  “Who are you calling a slut?” the first slut asks.

  “YOU!” I shout down the hall. If I had more poster tubes, I’d be launching them like rapid-fire ammunition.

  She takes a step toward me, I take a step toward her, and Joel steps between us. “What are you doing here?”

  “Ruining your fucking orgy since you ruined my fucking birthday!”

  He puts his hand on my arm, and I knock him away. Fully aware that we have an audience, I glare up at him—hating him for hurting me and hating myself for letting it happen—and then I turn on my heel to leave.

  “What was I supposed to do?” he asks in a cold voice that snakes after me. “Be miserable forever so you could finally be fucking happy?”

  My fists clench at my sides, and I whirl on him. “You think that’s what I wanted?” When he just stares at me, a silent affirmation, I shout, “I went to Mayhem to tell you I wanted to be with you, Joel! And you fucked me in a bathroom and left with some stupid bitch two seconds later!”

  The angry mask dissolves from his face, revealing a slack expression. Shock. Confusion.

  I lean to the side to speak to the girls in the hall. “Congratulations, ladies, you’ve caught yourself a real winner!”

  I turn away again, needing to get the hell out of Joel’s apartment before I snatch the poster tube off the floor and literally impale someone with it. I make it to the door, I wrap my hand around the knob, and then my feet jerk off the ground.

  “Get out,” Joel orders with his arms tight around me.

  He spins me away from the door, and I scream at him to put me the fuck down.

  He begins carrying me toward the hall, and the girls there just stare at us like we’re a train wreck bursting into flames. “Get out!” he barks again, and they both blanch as they realize he’s talking to them.

  “GET OFF ME!” I shout as I bat and kick at his arms and legs. He shoulders past the girl in the doorway of his bedroom to get me inside, and then he kicks the door shut behind us and pins his back against it to block me from leaving.

  “Stop,” he says, lifting a hand between us when I take a determined step toward him.

  “You can’t just lock me in your room,” I growl, grabbing his extended palm and throwing it to the side.

  “If you wanted to be with me, why the fuck didn’t you say so? Why did you tell me to go home at your dad’s, and shrug me off at my mom’s? And not fucking say anything at Mayhem?”

  “You were with . . . another . . . GIRL,” I say, getting louder and louder with each word.

  His feet carry him forward and his fingers wrap tight around my shoulders. “Because you broke my fucking heart, Dee!”

  I let out a humorless chuckle, and he stiffens. “That’s funny, Joel, because it only took you seconds to move on, but I haven’t been with anyone else in months.”

  “You think I’ve moved on?” he asks.

  I shrug out of his hold and cross my arms over my chest. I’m sure the girls that may or may not still be in his apartment—including the ones hiding in the coat closet and refrigerator—would agree with me.

  “You think I’m fucking happy?” he asks, and when I don’t answer, he picks a crumpled piece of paper off the floor. Looking around, I realize the room is full of them. They litter the floor and overflow from a wire wastebasket in the corner of the room. “I drew you over and over and over again, and I could never fucking get you right,” Joel says, uncrumpling paper after paper. He pushes them at me one by one, each sketch a slightly different version of the image he gave me for my birthday. “I was terrified I was forgetting your face, and then when I finally got it, all I wanted was to give it the fuck away so I’d never hav
e to see it again.”

  “Then why bother drawing me?” I snap at him.

  “Because I promised you I’d sketch you something special for your birthday.”

  “You also said you loved me,” I scoff. “What’s one more lie?”

  “You’re one to talk,” he snarls, and fury flashes through me.

  “What the fuck is THAT supposed to mean?”

  He meets my raised voice with a gaze that burns through me, his voice threatening to bring down the walls. “WHY ARE YOU HERE, DEE?!”

  Every cell in my body trembles, demanding I yell back at him.

  “TELL ME THE FUCKING TRUTH!” he booms, and something inside me snaps.

  “BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!” I scream at the top of my lungs, watching the words hit him and nearly send him stumbling back. “I fucking love you, okay?! Are you happy?!”

  “YES!” Joel shouts, the corners of his lips already tipping up in spite of the anger in his voice.

  I’m so livid and confused that I just want to cry, but Joel steps forward and cradles my face between his hands.

  “Yes,” he says again, softer. “Say it again.”

  “No.”

  “Say it again. I’m going to say it back, and then I’m going to kiss you.”

  I want that so badly, my heart pulses in my chest. Once, twice, three times. He’s waiting. He’s waiting on me, just like he has for the past few months. I need to trust that. I need to trust him.

  “I love you,” I confess in a quiet voice.

  He doesn’t smile at me, or say it back, or even wait for me to finish. One moment, I’m saying the last word, and the next, his lips are on mine. Kissing Joel feels like drowning in a memory, a secret place where I’m always happy, always home. His kiss is desperate but soft, and I part my lips to him, needing to feel his tongue, his lips, the heat between us. My fingernails scratch over the buzzed sides of his mohawk, and he lifts me off the ground, hugging me around my waist and kissing me until the past five weeks cease to exist. Our hearts thrum against each other, and eventually, I summon the willpower to hold his head in place and pull mine away. He smiles up at me, his blue eyes bright and his lips an irresistible, thoroughly kissed red.

  “You didn’t say it back,” I say, and he sets me down, smiling at me in a way that gives flight to the butterflies in my stomach. Normal girls have butterflies that flutter, but Joel stirs mine into a full-blown riot.

  “I fucking love you,” he says, and he nips at my lips and kisses me again. He’s still kissing me when he says, “Dee?”

  “Hm?” I say, but it comes out sounding much more like a moan than I intended.

  Joel chuckles and pulls away. “There’s one more thing.” I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I wait, but not patiently. My hungry eyes are locked on those pretty red lips when he says, “I want to be with you. Just me and you.”

  My gaze lifts to his.

  “Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?” I tease, but those butterflies are swarming into a frenzy. I’ve asked him this question before, and his answer has always been no.

  This time, he gives me a soft smile and says, “Are you saying yes?”

  “Do you always have to be so difficult?”

  He laughs and kisses me playfully on the mouth. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” I say, and he furrows his brow at me.

  “To the girlfriend part, or to the being difficult?”

  “So you admit you’re asking me to be your girlfriend,” I say, and Joel laughs hard.

  “Fine. Yes. Deandra Dawson, will you please for the love of God be my fucking girlfriend?”

  I lace my fingers behind his neck and give him a smile only he can bring out of me. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  IN A MOSTLY empty bedroom, I tap my finger against my chin and point to a corner. “There.”

  Shawn and Mike begin carrying my dresser to the spot I indicated, and I shake my head. “No, there.” I point to the other wall, and they huff and change direction.

  “Tell me again why I have to get you a housewarming present when I just got you a going-away present?” Shawn asks, quickly adding, “And I just got you a housewarming present for your last place a few months ago?”

  “That was a birthday present,” I scoff, ignoring the part about the housewarming present.

  “Tell me again why I have to get you a housewarming present when I’m living here too?” Joel asks, and I smile and wrap my arms around his neck.

  “Because you love me.”

  He lowers his mouth to mine in a single kiss that makes my insides flutter, and then he pulls away and curses himself. “Damn it.”

  I give him my sweetest smirk, someone behind us gags, and we all get back to moving my things into Joel’s bedroom.

  Yesterday, after I burst into his place, threw a poster tube at his head, and agreed to be his girlfriend, I remembered that I was moving six hours away. Reality settled heavily in my stomach, and I told Joel it didn’t matter if we wanted to be together because someone new was already set to move into my apartment and I was in the process of moving back home. I told him about how wrong college was for me, how I was thinking about going to fashion school, how popular the T-shirts were getting, and most importantly, how I had to move back home because I had no other options. Rowan had already told her parents about her living with Adam, so even if I could find another apartment in town, we couldn’t keep lying about living together. I’d have to find a roommate, and I had no idea how long that would take.

  “Move in with me,” Joel had said, interrupting me mid-rant.

  The only response I could muster was, “Huh?”

  “Stay here,” he answered.

  “Joel—”

  “If you think I’m letting you go again, you’re even crazier than I give you credit for,” he challenged, and I ignored the taunt since, for once, I didn’t feel like fighting.

  “You don’t think it’s too fast?” I asked, and his voice softened.

  “I think that all we do is fast. When we try to slow it down, we mess shit up.”

  When we emerged from his apartment, after the hottest make-up quickie I’ve ever had, everyone from my birthday party was already gathered in the lobby anxiously waiting for me. Rowan, who was gnawing on a fingernail, lowered her gaze to our clasped hands, and her hand fell away from her mouth as a big smile lit her face.

  “Shut up,” I warned, but I couldn’t stop smiling and she started laughing.

  “Her stuff is already packed up?” Joel asked the guys.

  “Yeah,” Shawn cautiously answered. “Why?”

  When Joel announced I was moving in with him, Adam burst out laughing, Rowan’s jaw dropped, and Leti grinned like a goofball. From the expressions on everyone else’s faces, they thought we were batshit crazy. And maybe we are, but it’s either go crazy with him or go crazy without him, and that choice is finally easy for me to make.

  This morning, I called my dad to let him know I was going to move in with Joel instead of moving back home.

  “Are you there?” I asked in the long moment of silence that followed my announcement.

  “Yeah . . . Give me a minute, I’m trying to figure out how to feel about this.” I gave him what felt like the full minute, and he finally said, “Is Joel with you?”

  I cast a worried look at Joel, who was sitting next to me on his couch. “Yeah . . .”

  “Put him on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my little girl is moving in with him and we need to have a talk first.”

  I worried my bottom lip. “Dad?”

  “Dee.”

  “There’s something you should know first . . .”

  Another long moment of silence passed while I tried to work up the nerve to tell my dad I’d fallen in love, and he interrupted it by stating matter-of-factly, “You’re pregnant.”

  “No!” I shouted into the line, my outburst making Joel flinch. “No! Oh my Go
d, no! NO.”

  An audible sigh of relief sounded from over three hundred miles away. “Thank God.”

  “Jesus, Dad. What the heck?!”

  “I think I just aged thirty years.”

  “This is ME we’re talking about!”

  “YOU are acting strange lately,” he argued. “Now what were you going to say?”

  Joel leaned closer to try to hear more than one side of our conversation, and I rubbed a spot between my eyes as I confessed, “I love him. I just wanted you to know I love him.”

  “Sweetheart,” my dad said, “I knew that at Easter.”

  “How?” I breathed.

  My dad chuckled into the phone. “Because I’m your dad. I know things.”

  “So you’re okay with me living with him?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say that. Now put him on the phone.”

  I reluctantly handed Joel the phone, and he and my dad had a long talk during which he told my dad that he loves me and that he’d never do anything to hurt me. By the time he handed my phone back, all I wanted to do was hang up on my dad so I could kiss Joel senseless for saying all of those perfect things.

  “Okay,” my dad said. “You have my seal of approval, but if he ever gets out of line, you tell him I have a gun.”

  “But you don’t . . .”

  “But he doesn’t need to know that.”

  I laughed and told my dad I loved him, and when he finally let me off the phone, I beamed at Joel. Rowan and the guys showed up a short while later with the moving van, and I immediately got to work bossing people around, which I’m still doing when Shawn and Mike carry my dresser into the room.

  Moving the furniture in is easy, but the little things are hard—like positioning my coffee mug next to Joel’s, or spreading my comforter on his bed. When I drop my purple toothbrush into a plastic cup next to his green one, my heart lashes against the walls of my chest and I have to take deep breaths to calm it. The little things feel like bungee jumping, like skydiving.