by Jamie Shaw
He stands up to get our drinks, and as soon as he’s out of earshot, Dee practically dives on top of the table and grabs my hands. “MARRY HIM. Oh my God, make beautiful babies!”
I shake my head, wishing my blushing cheeks would stop changing color like a manic-depressive mood ring. “You’re crazy.”
“YOU’RE crazy! How have you not hooked up with him yet?! He’s totally into you!” When I don’t say anything, she says, “Wait, HAVE you hooked up with him?!”
I subtly shake my head no as Adam strolls back over to our table. He sets our drinks down and then looks back and forth between Dee and me as we try—and fail—to pretend we weren’t just talking about him.
“Do I need to take another walk?” he asks with a suspecting glint in his eye.
Dee gives him her sweetest smile. “Would you?”
“Sure,” he says, grabbing his drink from the table, “I could use a cigarette anyway.”
First he teaches my ex a lesson for me, and now he’s volunteering to give my best friend and me some privacy so we can gossip like giggly schoolgirls about him? God, he’s perfect. If I thought he couldn’t get more perfect, I was dead wrong.
Dee swoons as he walks away, resting her chin in her hands and letting her big brown eyes follow him out the door. “I think I’m in love.”
“You and every other girl he’s ever talked to.”
Her eyes dart back to me, her finger pointing accusations. “Including YOU.”
I shrug. “Anyway, no, we didn’t hook up,” I say, answering her earlier question.
“BUT?”
“He tried . . . He kissed me, but I turned him down.”
Dee stares at me in shock for a minute, and then she lets out a deep breath. “Rowan . . .”
“Yes?”
“Why?”
“He’d break my heart, Dee. Just like Brady. Come on, you have to know that. I mean, this weekend, he almost hooked up with Michelle Hawthorne.”
“From high school?!”
“Yes!” I say, glad that she’s just as disgusted as I am. “He had a concert in Fairview, and she was all over him! They apparently hooked up a few months ago.”
“EW,” Dee shouts, her face contorted with disgust. She stares down at her drink like she’s watching a hi-def movie of something I don’t want to imagine. “Ewww.”
“Exactly.” I remove the lid from my mocha to scoop the whipped cream out, eating that first.
“She’s such a skanky whore-faced bitch. Do you know that she slept with BOTH of the Hazelton twins?!”
“So did you!” I laugh.
Dee’s straw stops swirling around in her drink as she pauses and scrunches her nose. “I did?”
“Yes! You slept with Henry at Beth Miller’s Halloween party in eleventh grade, and you slept with Hoyt at Laurel Lake that following summer.”
She cocks her head to the side, clearly not remembering. “Are you sure?”
“Positive! You said it was weird that Hoyt was the quieter twin because he was so much louder in bed.”
“Oh! That’s right! Oh my God, he was so LOUD.”
I laugh, remembering the way she had mocked the sounds he made. Her gorilla impression and her Hoyt impression were pretty much identical, minus some armpit scratching and imaginary-bug eating.
“Still though!” Dee says, looking positively disgusted. “Michelle Hawthorne, ugh! Why would Adam be interested in a girl like that?”
“Because he’s a total man-slut,” I say casually, replacing the lid on my mocha. “You think Brady’s bad? He and Adam aren’t even in the same league.”
“But Adam isn’t in a three-year-long committed relationship with you . . . It’s not the same.”
“And he’s not interested in a relationship, either.”
“And if he was?”
“He isn’t.”
Dee grunts at me, and then she says, “So why not just have fun with him? Like friends with benefits?”
“Can you imagine me doing that?” I pause to sip my mocha as she considers. “I’d get attached, and then it would get weird and we’d have to stop hanging out. I’d rather just stay like we are now. We have a lot of fun together. He’s cool.”
Dee nods. “He does seem pretty cool . . .” She shrugs and stirs her frappuccino. “It’s just a damn shame. Is he a good kisser?”
I giggle and blush a fierce rosy red. “What do you think?”
She groans. “I think I should’ve taken French in high school.”
What transpires next can only be described as the Coffee Shop Inquisition. Dee shows no mercy; she’s like an iron maiden, stabbing every last detail out of me—with one major secret I manage to keep hidden behind my teeth. I tell her about Adam crawling into bed with me on the bus and kissing my shoulder. I also tell her about making out with him outside of Emily’s. But I still can’t tell her about making out with him at Mayhem a month and a half ago. It’s been too long; she’d kill me for not telling her sooner. This coffee shop is filled with potential weapons: plastic forks, scalding hot milk, sharp metal syrup taps. By the time Adam strolls back inside, I’m rubbing my right eye, trying to rid myself of the phantom pain that’s taken root there in anticipation of the straw Dee would lodge in the socket if I dared breathe a word about my first time on Adam’s tour bus.
“So are you two finished talking about what an amazing kisser I am?” he teases as he sits back down beside me.
I gape at him, resisting the urge to dive under the table to check for bugs because HOW THE HELL DOES HE KNOW THAT?!
Seeing my startled expression, he laughs. “Oh wow, you were talking about what a great kisser I am!” He glances at Dee, whose equally shocked expression hides nothing, and then his gaze swings back to me. “Scale of one to ten?”
“So anyway,” I interject, ignoring him as I desperately try to get Dee on board with changing the subject, “I’m really just hanging out with him for the free backstage passes. I got you one for next Saturday.”
She laughs and finishes off her frappuccino. “Yeah, that makes sense. Especially considering what a horrible kisser you said he was.”
“Bullshit!” Adam protests.
I shrug. “You can’t be good at everything.”
He turns on his stool to face me, his knees pressing against the side of my leg. One of his hands rests on the back of my chair and the other flattens on the table in front of me. “Let me try again,” he insists, and my blood somehow manages to burn hot and flash cold at the exact same time.
Dee kicks me hard under the table. “Let him try again!”
“OW!” I yelp. “What the freaking hell, Dee!” I lift my leg so I can rub the throbbing pain away and scold, “You got me right on the bone!”
“Sorry! But did you hear what he said?”
“He’s joking!”
She stares intensely at Adam, who is smiling innocently while his fingers drum on the table. “He didn’t look like he was joking . . .”
“Well he was,” I argue, even though she’s right—he really didn’t seem like it.
“Were you?” Dee asks him point-blank.
He smiles sweetly and shrugs, not saying a word. His eyes are locked on me, and I can feel the heat creeping up my neck.
I glance up at the clock on the wall, and it’s like the heavens have parted to allow me this one tiny miracle. “Dee,” I say, a grin spreading across my face, “don’t you have class right about now?”
She follows my line of vision and curses, swiping her bag from the stool next to her and pointing a long pink fingernail at me. “I hate you! Call me later!” And with that, she’s flying across the shop and spinning out the door like the erratic brown-haired cyclone that she is.
“She’s nuts,” I mutter to myself. I can’t believe she tried to get Adam to kiss m
e less than five freaking minutes after I told her what a bad idea that would be.
“She’s perceptive,” Adam replies.
I stare over at him, expecting to see that cocky “I’m just messing with you” smirk. But he’s straight-faced and staring right back at me.
“You should let me try again,” he says, all serious.
After swallowing the hard lump in my throat, I manage to murmur, “I thought we decided to be friends . . .”
“Yeah, we did. But can’t I still kiss you?”
I shake my head.
“Not even once?” he says, his tongue tracing the seam of his lips. “Just to prove myself?”
“Trust me,” I say, sliding off of my stool to throw my cup away because I desperately need the space, “you don’t need to prove yourself.” When I look back at him, he’s watching me intently, waiting for me to explain. “I remember,” I admit. “Vividly.”
“And?”
“And I’ll tell you your score if you promise not to bring it up again.”
Adam shakes his head. “I don’t do promises.”
I shrug. “Then I don’t do scores.” I start walking toward the door, and he rushes to keep up.
Chapter Twenty-Three
THAT EVENING, AS Adam, Shawn, and Joel yank a mountain of trash bags filled with my personal belongings out of the trunk of Adam’s Camaro, I ask them the same question I’ve asked a million times since Adam told me I could stay with him. “Are you absolutely sure this is okay?”
“Are you kidding?” Joel asks, tossing one of the hefty black bags over his shoulder with another two hanging from his fist. By the time he slams the trunk shut, there’s nothing left for me to carry. “This is like”—he laughs to himself as we walk across the parking lot—“the best thing ever. You realize how huge this is, right?”
Adam kicks the sole of Joel’s sneaker as he takes a step. “Shut up, Joel.”
Joel skips to land on his feet, snickering quietly. The evening sun is glinting off of the stiff blond spikes on top of his head, making them look downright deadly. “Sorry, man, but come on! This is—”
Adam kicks Joel’s foot again, harder this time, and Joel trips forward, barely catching his balance.
“Asshole!” he shouts, still half laughing as he jogs ahead to get out of kicking distance. Adam smirks as he trails behind.
I really want to know what Joel meant, but it looks like he’s finally taken the hint and decided to shut up. I cast a questioning glance over at Shawn, who is carrying four of my bags, and he catches my look.
“It’s cool with us,” he assures me. But that’s not what I really wanted to know.
“Why is it ‘the best thing ever’?”
Adam rolls his eyes. “Joel’s just talking out of his ass. Isn’t that right, Joel?”
Joel chuckles and swings open the door to the apartment building, holding it open for everyone. “Whatever you say, Adam.”
Inside the apartment, I follow the boys down the hall into Adam’s bedroom and they drop my stuff off on his black comforter, which is still hanging half on the floor after our mad rush to get out the door this morning. His walls are stark white with blue painter’s tape crisscrossed in a random pattern, and filling the white shapes between the tape are lyrics—hundreds of lines written in bright blue marker. His curtains are black but sheer, and the only pieces of furniture in the room other than his bed are a small dresser and a corner desk. The dresser, the desk, and even the floor are covered with stacks and stacks of notebooks that I don’t doubt are filled from front to back. The room is a mess, and it’s beautiful, and every piece of it is Adam.
When Shawn and Joel leave for the living room, Adam stays behind, immediately pulling open half of his dresser drawers. He removes his clothes from the open drawers, stuffs them down into other drawers, and then carefully pushes the stuffed ones shut. When I realize what he’s doing, I hurry to stop him.
“Oh, no. You don’t have to do that,” I insist, moving to stand next to him. I feel so intrusive, I want to physically grab his hands and make him stop going out of his way for me.
“I know,” he says, but he’s already walking to his closet and squishing the hangers together to make extra room. When he’s not satisfied with how much space he’s freed up, he unhooks a stack of shirt-filled hangers and tosses them on the floor inside the closet. He turns around, smiling at me.
“Seriously, Adam. At Dee’s, I just had my stuff in piles on the floor. You saw.”
“So? Here it’ll be better.”
I take a deep breath. “Look . . . I really appreciate what you’re doing, but seriously, you don’t have to do this. I really don’t want you to think that you have to take me in or anything. I mean, we haven’t known each other for that long and I don’t want to be a burden and I know I don’t have anywhere else to go but I don’t want you to feel like—”
“Hey,” Adam interrupts while I practically pull my hair out, “we’re friends, right?”
“Yeah,” I answer, staring apprehensively at the empty drawers still hanging open.
“And friends help each other out, right?”
Forcing myself to look him in the eye, I say, “Yeah, but—”
“Well, I want you to stay with me,” he interrupts, giving me a warm smile. “So . . . you should help me out.”
I chuckle and shake my head at him. “I should help you out?”
He nods, a goofy grin spread wide across his cheeks.
“You know I probably won’t be back on my feet for the rest of the semester . . . right?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a long time . . .”
“It’s not that long.”
“You’ll get tired of me.”
“You’ll get tired of me long before I get tired of you.”
“You just met me.”
“I’ve known you for almost two months now.”
“You’re crazy.”
Adam flashes me his pearly white smile, and that alone is suddenly enough to convince me to stay with him for as long as he lets me. I thank him, he gives me a hug that makes my insides melt, and then he goes back out to the living room so I can finish unpacking.
As soon as he leaves, though, the warm feeling leaves with him and I’m suddenly freaking the hell out again. Am I seriously moving in with a boy I am not dating, who I’ve only actually known for less than a week, who also just so happens to be Adam freaking Everest?
I reluctantly fill his drawers with my clothes. Putting my bras and panties into his dresser feels beyond strange. Staring down at the white thong that tops the pile of panties in my new underwear drawer, I almost want to back out of my decision. I quickly snatch the silky garment up and bury it at the bottom, covering the bras and panties with a thick layer of boring socks.
God, this is crazy! My mom would so not approve. At least, I don’t think she would . . . Would she even like Adam? My dad . . . oh God, my dad, my dad! Do I really feel like sending my parents to an early grave?
“Are you alright?” Shawn quietly asks as he enters the room.
I let out a deep breath, feeling light-headed and overheated. “This is weird, right? Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is weird.”
Shawn sits on Adam’s black comforter, rubbing his hands over his knees. “It’s definitely weird.”
“Thank you!” I turn around and start pacing. “Adam acts like this is just normal. Like it’s no big deal.” I speak quietly and then slowly close the door, needing some private counseling from the sanest person available.
“Oh, it’s a big deal,” Shawn confirms. He’s staring absently at the wall, and I can see his wheels turning.
“Does Adam do this all the time? Just randomly ask girls to live with him?” If he does, maybe it’s not as weird as I think it is. And then I
’ll at least be able to ask Shawn what happens to those girls. Does Adam get tired of them? Does he kick them out?
If he doesn’t do this all the time . . . then, well, I honestly don’t even know what to make of this.
Shawn shakes his head. “Adam has never let a girl even spend the night here.”
“I just spent the night here last night . . .”
“I mean before you,” he corrects. “Adam has never let a girl spend the night here before you.”
I stare at him for a long moment, letting that sink in. “Ever?”
“Ever.” He raises a socked foot up onto the bed. “And now you’re moving in . . .”
When the door suddenly clicks open, Adam looks back and forth between us like he might be interrupting something, and then he asks if he’s doing just that.
“No,” I say. “I just . . .” I just needed to pry some intel out of your closest confidante. I don’t want to get Shawn in trouble, but . . . I need to ask. “Adam, you’ve never let a girl stay here before?”
He shoots a pointed look at Shawn, who raises his hands in surrender. “Sorry, man. She asked. She was kinda freaking out.”
Adam’s expression softens as he leans back against the door. “Why were you freaking out?”
Isn’t it obvious? Because that’s what I do! “I was not freaking out.”
Shawn and Adam are both staring at me when Shawn nervously says, “Yeah . . . ya kinda were. I thought you were going to tread grooves in the floorboards.”
Realizing I’m still shifting from foot to foot, I force myself to stop fidgeting. “Sorry . . . I don’t mean to seem ungrateful or anything . . . but . . .” I sigh and sit down right where I was standing, right on the floor. “I can’t help feeling like I’m taking advantage of you.” That’s only half of it. The other half of me is paranoid that I’m going to get kicked out on my ass the minute Adam finds something else to attract his attention. He’s like a honey bee at a botanical garden, and I’m just a tiny daisy in a bed full of roses. I’m the only flower that won’t put out.
Adam sits down in front of me on the floor. “Shawn, can you give us a minute?” When Shawn leaves, Adam rubs his hands roughly over my crisscrossed legs to loosen me up. “Peach . . . I’ve never let a girl stay here before because I’ve never been friends with a girl before. It’s not a big deal. I let my friends stay here all the time.”