by Jamie Shaw
“I have nowhere to live, Mike.”
“I just told you that you can stay with me . . .”
Another heavy tear drops onto my lap as I shake my head, because of course he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t know that Danica’s family pays my tuition, my rent, my insurance, my gas, my everything. There’s no point in staying here because Danica is going to make sure the money stops, and when it does, there will be nothing left but for me to go back home and pretend I never tried to drag myself out of the mud, that I never chased after my dreams.
Thirteen years of “When I grow up, I want to be a veterinarian” school photos: down the drain.
“There’s no point,” I tell Mike, knowing the pull Danica has over my uncle. He’s a good man, but his daughter is his princess, and she’s grown up knowing that. She’s always had that man wrapped around her little finger, which is why she’s twenty-four years old but has never once had to hold a real job.
“Why not?” Mike asks, his voice full of concern.
“Danica’s not going to change her mind. It’s not like I can live with you forever.”
“Sure you can,” Mike argues, and when I look up at him, his smile attempts to make the world right again. “We’ll eat pizza, drink beer, play video games—it’ll be great.”
I wonder why he’s being so nice to me, why he broke up with Danica, why he came here to find me, why he wants to take me home, what he’d do if I crawled onto his lap and kissed him until the sparks inside me burned the world to the ground.
He’s single now. Why is he single?
“Why did you break up with Danica?” I ask with nothing left to lose, and Mike’s smile flickers before it fades away.
“That’s a loaded question, Hailey . . .”
I want to ask if it was because of me. The words trip over themselves on the tip of my tongue as Mike studies me and I study him. I stare up into those impossibly warm brown eyes, remembering how tightly he held my legs last night. But then I study the curve of his lips, the scruff of his jaw, the perfect way his finger-combed hair lies on his head, and I’m reminded of the girls who scream dirty promises at him from the crowd. I’m reminded of the fact that my cousin, whom he dumped, looks like she belongs on a runway in Paris. I’m reminded of my messy curls, my short stature, my thrift-shop clothes. “Tell me anyway” is all I say.
Mike holds my gaze for a moment before staring out at the chain-link wall in front of us. He takes a weighted breath before saying, “She isn’t the girl for me.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t love her.” His eyes find mine, and I let myself get lost in them. “I’m not sure how I ever did.”
“What changed?” my small voice asks.
Each question I ask feels like taking one step further out onto the plank. Eventually, I’m going to drown.
Mike continues staring down at me, his arm snug around my shoulder. His voice is low and quiet when he says, “Everything.”
My heart is beating out of my chest when I break eye contact with him to stare at the frayed edges of my bootlace. My eyes travel to the hole in the knee of my jeans, the hem of my oversized sweatshirt.
I shouldn’t be with him right now—because he’s a rock star, because he’s my cousin’s ex, because there are bigger things I should be worrying about, because guys like him never want girls like me.
“She thinks I slept with you,” I say, and Mike squeezes my shoulder, reminding me that we’re friends.
Good friends.
“No, she doesn’t.”
“She does, Mike. She said—”
“She’s hurt,” he interrupts. “She’s angry. She wants someone to blame.” I stare up at him, and he says, “She knows you better than that, Hailey. Anyone who knows you knows that you would never do that.”
I’m not sure I believe him. I remember the fury in her eyes when she burst into my room like she was going to rip my heart out of my chest with nothing but fingernails and teeth.
“She knows I would never do that either,” Mike adds when he sees the doubt on my face. “She’ll cool down. You’ll see. Tomorrow, all of this will blow over.”
The basset hound finally manages to hop up far enough to crawl onto our laps, its heavy head a comforting weight on the tops of my thighs. I scratch it behind the ears and say, “I don’t think so.”
Mike scratches the dog’s rump, and it kicks its leg, in heaven. “Either way, you’re coming home with me tonight, Hailey. You’re not sleeping in a kennel.”
“Okay,” I say to assuage the guilt I realize he feels. He thinks Danica kicked me out for something he did. He thinks I’m innocent in this.
“Danica is mad at me,” he tries to assure me. “Not you.”
I sigh.
“You’re cousins. She can’t stay mad forever. She’ll probably feel terrible for what she did, and she’ll beg you to forgive her.”
I don’t tell him he’s wrong, even though he is. Danica’s conscience died sometime during puberty, and now she does whatever she wants without guilt or remorse. I’m sure there’s already a missed voice mail from my uncle waiting on my phone. He’ll ask me to call him, and I will—but Danica will have already cried to him, and my silent tears won’t mean a thing.
“Okay?” Mike asks, pulling away to search my eyes. “No more talk about leaving.”
I can’t help the tear that spills silently down my cheek, or the one that follows it when the pad of Mike’s thumb wipes the first one away. I nod in agreement, because I don’t want to talk about it.
Danica isn’t going to change her mind. I’ll have no choice but to move back home.
Even if Mike doesn’t want me to. Even if I don’t want to either.
There’s nothing left to talk about.
Chapter 19
It’s late by the time we arrive back at Mike’s house. Since I was in no emotional state to drive, he helped me into the passenger seat of his truck, and sometime during the long, silent drive, I collected the pieces of myself.
By the time my feet hit the gravel of his driveway, my last tear has long since dried against my cheek, and inside, I help myself to his linen closet. I sort through stacked sheets, blankets, and towels I washed and folded myself just this morning, and Mike ventures off to find us something to eat.
“You’re not making this easy!” he shouts from the kitchen as I shake a navy bedsheet out and let it settle on the couch.
“Just find some cereal and beer,” I yell back, knowing that his freezer might as well be a meat locker. When I peeked in there last night, it looked like a Tetris game of supreme pizzas and meatball Hot Pockets.
Mike pokes his head out of the kitchen, and I stop unfolding sheets.
“What?”
“Did you seriously just suggest we have cereal and beer for dinner?”
“Oh,” I start, remembering that he’s still recovering from his cold. “You’re right. We should probably find you some soup or—”
“No,” Mike says, the corners of his mouth tipping up. “I feel better. I’m starved.”
“What is it then?” I ask, and he shakes his head, still smiling.
“You.”
He disappears back into the kitchen, and something that feels an awful lot like fuzzy baby caterpillars rolls around in my belly as I continue making up the couch for the night. By the time Mike joins me in the living room, with two bowls of Lucky Charms and two Guinesses, I’ve tucked and straightened and fluffed myself a bed that I can’t wait to forget about this hellish day in.
Mike sits down next to me and hands me a bowl of cereal. “You know you’re not sleeping on the couch, right?”
“Huh?” I ask through a mouthful of colorful marshmallows. I hold the bowl under my chin and try to keep milk from spilling out of my mouth.
“I’ll take the couch. You can sleep in my bed.”
I shake my head and swallow what I’m guessing is no fewer than twenty hearts, stars, and horseshoes. “No way. You’re still recover
ing. I’m fine on the couch.”
“Hailey,” Mike says, setting his cereal on the coffee table and picking up a beer instead, “there’s no way in hell I’m sleeping in that big comfortable bed while you’re out here on the couch.”
“It’s a comfortable couch . . .”
“Which is why I’m taking it.”
I furrow my brow at him, but his expression remains uncompromising—unblinking eyes over a straight-lined mouth. “It’s enough that you’re letting me stay here, Mike.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not the asshole that’s going to make a lady sleep on his couch.”
I snort at the idea of me being a lady. “So this is sexism,” I accuse with a scowl.
“Call it what you want,” Mike says, smirking as he steals a red heart from my bowl. “You’re still sleeping in my bed.”
I force myself to glare at him in spite of the warmth flooding my cheeks, but he continues smiling at me, and my heart skips rope behind my ribs. I ignore the double-dutch jumping and try to remain pragmatic—I want the couch, he wants the couch, but we both can’t sleep on the couch. And even if we could, that would be stupid.
“Look, we’re both grown adults,” I say before I can overthink what I’m about to suggest next. “If you’re really not going to let me sleep on the couch, we can share the bed.”
“Fine,” Mike immediately agrees.
“Fine,” I echo while my brain screams, OH MY FLIPPING GOD! Did you seriously just agree to sleep with Mike?! In his bed! Together?! Together!!! In his bed! What?! What the hell happened to staying on the wagon?!
“How are those Lucky Charms?” Mike asks, and my shell-shocked gaze drops down to my soggy oats. My mind is still screaming that I just made a huge mistake, that sleeping in his bed is only going to reignite my stupid sparks, that it’s wrong, that it’s going to make Danica hate me more than she already does, that she’ll never know, that I’ll know, that she’s my cousin, that she never deserved him, that he’s single now, that he’s a rock star, that he doesn’t like me as anything more than a friend, that none of this should matter, that I— “Hailey?” Mike asks.
“Huh?” I squeak.
“What’s on your mind?”
What should be on my mind is my education, my uncle, my tuition, my future. But the real answer is Mike’s bed, and I am most definitely never ever sharing that information with him. “Your music video,” I rattle, frantically changing the subject from beds to literally anything else. “Will you still let Danica be in it?”
“After she treated you like she did?” Mike all but growls. His fingers stop tapping against the neck of his beer, coiling tightly around it instead. “Not a chance in hell.”
I take a big gulp of Guinness to calm my nerves. It doesn’t go with Lucky Charms—not that any beer really could—but whatever, it’s beer. “Are you nervous?”
“About Danica?”
“About the video.” I crisscross my legs under me, thinking that the video seems a safe enough topic. No big bed, no angry Danica, no butterfly-winged sparks. “Have you ever made one before?”
“We made one in high school once,” Mike says. “But it was just a stupid kid thing. Nothing like this.”
“So? Are you nervous?”
“Nah. No one pays attention to the drummer.” He takes another sip and slides forward on the overstuffed couch so that he’s sitting on the edge. “All I have to do is sit in the background doing this.” He holds his beer with a curled pinky as he plays the lamest air drums ever, and I chuckle.
“Just this, huh?” I set my bottle on the coffee table to mock his movements, and his mouth stretches into a big grin. “Maybe I should be a drummer,” I tease. “This is easy.”
“You think so?” Amusement fills his voice as I strike an invisible cymbal.
“I mean, I don’t want to brag—” I let my toes drop to the floor so I can throw in some foot pedal work while I continue banging on my make-believe drum kit, “but I think I’m probably better than you.”
Mike watches me act like an idiot for a while, takes one last swig of his beer, and suddenly rises to his feet. My air drumming freezes as I sit motionless on the couch staring way, way up at him. “Come on then,” he says, holding a hand down for me.
“Come where?”
“My drums, Keith Moon. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
On a stool in front of a massive set of polished black drums, my palms sweat around two smooth drumsticks and my feet dangle off the floor. “You’re sure you want me to embarrass you like this?” I taunt with forced bravado, and Mike smiles wide at the challenge.
“I can’t wait.”
“But you’ll never be able to unsee this,” I bargain. “You’ll spend the rest of your life like, ‘Wow, what’s the point? I’ll never be as good of a drummer as Hailey Harper.’”
Mike laughs, his brown eyes glittering with anticipation, and I swallow hard. My grasp on the drumsticks tightens, and I wonder which drum to hit first. One of the big foot ones with The Last Ones to Know logos on them? One of the deep ones at my sides? One of the shallow drums in front of me? Dear God, there are so many drums.
I stare up at Mike, and the corner of his mouth kicks up. “Alright, Hailey Harper, how about a game of horse? All you have to do is match what I do, that way you don’t embarrass me too much.”
I thrust the drumsticks at him and slide off the stool like it’s about to catch fire. “Let’s do it,” I agree, thinking, How hard can it be to copy what he does?
Mike smiles as he takes the drumsticks, settling on the stool like I’d settle at a desk—like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The drumsticks look at home in his hands, and he looks at me with an easy smile on his face. “Are you ready?”
I nod, and Mike starts tapping one of the cymbal things with his right hand. Just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap . . . eight taps in an even rhythm. When he hands me the drumsticks, I lift an eyebrow at him, and he chuckles as he slides off the stool.
My grasp on the drumsticks this time isn’t as white-knuckled, and I easily keep the beat Mike set: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“Nice,” he praises, taking the drumsticks I hand him and sliding back onto the stool I vacate. He takes his next turn, doing the same tapping beat with his right hand, but adding in one of the big foot pedal drums. Tap/thump, tap, tap, tap, tap/thump, tap, tap, tap. He repeats this a few times, then looks up at me. “Got it?”
I nod, and he hands me the drumsticks. He lowers the stool for me before I slide back onto it, and I carefully rest my foot on one of the pedals before taking a deep breath. Mike gives me a reassuring smile, and I try to mimic what he did: tap/thump, tap, tap, tap, tap/thump, tap, tap, tap. When I do it twice without messing up, I beam up at him.
“You’re a natural,” he praises, and I laugh as I slide off the stool, because he is so full of crap. But my insides feel all fuzzy anyway, and my cheeks ache from smiling when he slides back onto the stool.
“I’m going to add the snare to the bass and hi-hat this time,” he coaches, and I catalog these new terms in my mind, studying him carefully. “Ready?”
I nod, hoping I can get this new beat right, and Mike plays it out for me: tap/thump, tap, tap/bang, tap, tap/thump, tap, tap/bang, tap. He plays it a few more times, giving me time to memorize it, and my fingers start itching to take the sticks from him so I can give it a try. “Got all that?”
“We’ll see,” I say, and he chuckles as he relinquishes the stool. I slide back onto it and chew on my lip, my confidence fading as I replay the beat in my head and doubt my coordination.
“You’ve got this,” Mike promises, and the assuring look in his big brown eyes makes me loosen my death grip on the sticks. His hand squeezes my shoulder, and his thumb taps a beat against my skin: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“I can’t concentrate with you doing that,” I confess, and his thumb stops tapping, but he doesn’t pull it away. It starts rubbing back and fort
h across my shoulder, and my thoughts turn into strings of yarn that tangle around and around and around themselves as my toes curl in my tennis shoes.
I stare up at him, and he stares down at me. No one speaks, and my heart sets its own beat: BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.
“You’re cheating,” I breathe, and Mike’s mouth curves into a sly smile.
“How am I cheating?”
“If you keep that up,” I warn with my heart hammering in my throat, “you’re getting the H in horse.”
Mike laughs and lets his hand fall away, and I struggle to breathe evenly enough to keep a steady beat on the drums. Was he flirting with me just now? Was he only teasing? Does he know I like him?
Oh God. Does he know I like him?
When my toes curl inside my shoes, the foot pedal hammer whacks the bass drum and makes me jump. “That doesn’t count!” I squeal, and Mike laughs again. I poke him in the stomach with a drumstick. “That was an accident! It doesn’t count.”
“Fine,” he agrees with a chuckle, grabbing the end of my stick so I can’t poke him again. “It doesn’t count.” Holding the stick, he leans in closer, a playful smile on his face. “You’re still going to lose.”
When he lets go and crosses his arms over his chest, I turn back toward the drums and prepare to prove him wrong. My right stick taps the hi-hat, my foot pedal smacks the bass. Tap/thump, tap, tap/bang, tap, tap/thump, tap, tap/bang, tap. I continue playing, laughing when I don’t make any mistakes. I grin at Mike, in awe of the fact that I’m actually drumming. Ten minutes ago, I didn’t even know what a hi-hat was, and now I’m sitting here setting a beat like a legit drummer. “This is awesome,” I marvel with a laugh, and Mike’s smile brightens as he watches me.
“Told you you’re a natural.”
“Am I better than you yet?”
Mike tries to hide a smile and holds his hands out for the sticks. When I hand them over, he takes my seat and flashes me a playful smirk. “Let’s see.”
He starts by beating on the snare drums, and I try to memorize the order. But then, his hands start moving too fast for me to keep track of. His sticks dance over snares and cymbals while his feet pound on the two bass drums, setting a fast, loud, impossible beat. I stand there watching, in awe of him, in wonder of how many hours and how many nights and how many years it must have taken him to get to this level. He plays this wild beat like it’s easy, like it’s as simple as thinking, as breathing.