by Jamie Shaw
“Do you know what the weird part is though?” I ask.
Rowan glances my way, stepping over a discarded beer can.
“Him refusing to ask me out was part of what made it so hot.” Her face contorts with confusion, and I can’t help but laugh. “Seriously. Any other guy would have told me whatever he thought I wanted to hear. He would have asked me out and then gone and cheated on me or something if I stayed with him long enough.” Rowan flinches, and I rush to get her mind off her scumbag ex. “But Joel was honest with me. And he said he doesn’t want me to be with other guys, and God, Ro, it was just so fucking hot.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better if he did ask you out though?” she asks, and when I don’t answer, she adds, “Wouldn’t you have said yes?”
I pull the length of my hair over my shoulder to detach it from the sweat beading on the back of my neck. “What would be the point? We’d just break up in a few weeks anyway. You know we would.”
She can’t argue, so she doesn’t. Instead, she lets out a hopeless sigh and says, “I just want you to be happy, Dee. This thing with Joel . . . yeah, he makes you happy sometimes, but he also makes you miserable. What happens if we go back home and he starts messing around with other girls again?”
It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. When I was lying on top of him with him still hard inside me, all he said was that he didn’t want me with other guys. He never said anything about him with other girls.
“I don’t know,” I confess. “It’ll bug me, yeah, but I’ll just have to get over it.”
“How?”
“Bury myself in school like you do?”
She barks out a laugh, and when I push her shoulder, she nearly trips over a guy passed out on the lawn. We both end up laughing hysterically, and she chases me all the way back to the bus.
Upstairs, I root out a white The Last Ones to Know T-shirt and butcher it with scissors. The shirt I wore last night was a big hit, but I modify this one differently, cutting peek-a-boo slits in the front and slashing the shape of a heart into the back. I wear it with a lacy bright red bra that shows through the sheer material and cuts.
Joel looks me up and down when he emerges from the bathroom downstairs and spots me sitting on a bench. He’s shirtless, with low-slung shorts and his hair dark with water.
“Remember what I said last night?” he asks, pulling me up by my hand and spinning me around.
“Uh-huh,” I say. I don’t want you being with anyone else. I let him ogle while I do a slow twirl.
“Yeah,” he says, “that.”
I giggle, but he cuts it short by twirling me the rest of the way around and catching my lips with his. My fingers grip his shower-warmed biceps, and I lose myself in the scent of masculine body wash clinging to his skin. It makes my head spin, and when Rowan interrupts us by asking if we’re ready to go, neither of us acknowledges her.
She clears her throat, and when that doesn’t work either, Shawn punches Joel in his sore shoulder.
“Fuck,” Joel barks, releasing me to rub the pain away.
Shawn shoots him an unrepentant smile. “Time to go, lover boy.”
Joel quickly does his hair in the bathroom, and then he pulls on an oversized tank and big Timberland boots. He’s a mismatched mess, and all I want to do is whine about how he’s so fucking hot I can’t stand it. All I can think about is last night, and each time the memory of his hands trickles back onto my skin, my heartbeat picks up and my cheeks flush red. I blame it on the sun, and Rowan offers me more sunscreen, but I bat it away and ignore the confused look she gives me.
After spending the morning rocking out in crowds and causing irreversible damage to our eardrums, all six of us are standing in a horizontal row at the side of the main stage. We’re waiting for Cutting the Line to perform, and Joel’s fingers are sneaking into the slits in the back of my T-shirt to trace the line of my bra. My breathing turns slow and steady in an attempt to keep my lungs functioning at all. I don’t know what it is about his hands, calloused from years of playing the guitar, and more precise and skilled than any hands I’ve ever had on me. Those long fingers brush over the lacy fabric, weave over the tiny hooks . . . and my bra suddenly springs wide open. I gasp and clamp my arms to my sides to keep it in place. Everyone looks at me, but I smile and pretend Joel didn’t just unclasp my bra. One-handed. In public.
He moves behind me and pulls my back to his front, and I bite the inside of my lip, getting his message loud and clear.
I’m about to turn around and drag him back to the bus when Van sprints toward us from behind the stage, and screams fly out from the crowd as soon as the fans see him. The noise stops him dead in his tracks, and he gestures for us to join him backstage before backing out of sight.
“Wade is fucking hungover,” he complains when we meet him in the back. He strangles thick locks of his hair between his fingers like he’d rather be wringing someone’s neck.
“Like too hungover to play?” Adam asks.
“Like too hungover to fucking stand,” Van growls, looking back and forth between Joel and Shawn. “Can one of you fill in? I’ll give you my firstborn child, I swear to God.”
Before Shawn can respond, I nudge Joel forward. “Joel can play.”
Playing with Cutting the Line will get him more exposure. Once people see and hear him, they’ll want to know who he is, who his band is. It’s a good career move, and I don’t want him to miss the opportunity.
Joel glances at me before returning his attention to the pleading look in Van’s eyes. “Yeah . . . sure. Which songs are you playing?”
“Which ones do you know?” Van asks, leading Joel to where his two band mates are getting ready. The rest of us go back to our vantage point beside the stage, and I buzz with anticipation, waiting to see Joel perform with one of the biggest bands there is.
When they appear onstage, the crowd screams just as loudly as they would have if it would have been the original lineup. Van removes his mic from its stand. “How are you motherfuckers doing?!”
The crowd goes wild, and Van shouts back at it, making everyone scream even louder to be heard over the roaring speakers. He laughs and says, “Wade isn’t feeling so hot, so we’ve got a special treat for you today. This sexy motherfucker over here is Joel Gibbon from The Last Ones to Know. The rest of his band is standing right over there,” Van points toward us, and the guys lift up their hands in a wave at the crowd, “and all of you are going to know who they are real soon, trust me. They’re one of my favorite bands, and it’s an honor to have this asshole up here on the stage with me tonight.”
Joel laughs and flicks Van off, and Van grins in approval. Joel goes back to testing his pedals and getting a feel for his guitar, and Van goes back to priming the crowd.
“For real though,” he says, “go to their website. Buy their album. If you’re in Virginia or anywhere they’re playing, go to their shows. And if you see this guy later tonight,” he adds, gesturing to Joel, “suck his dick nice and good because we wouldn’t have a show to put on right now if it wasn’t for the huge favor he’s doing us.”
The crowd cheers, and some random girl in the crowd shouts, “I’ll do it!”
“I bet you will,” Van teases with a laugh. I’m already scanning the crowd, itching to punch her teeth out.
“Are you fuckers ready for a show?!” Van asks, and fog wraps around his ankles, lit by red and orange lights suspended around the stage.
The crowd screams, and then Joel’s guitar starts the show and all I see is him. Other girls are seeing him too, screaming and reaching for him as he plays as effortlessly as he does when he’s with his own band. The guitar is like an extension of him, something he’d know how to play even in his sleep.
I sing along with the lyrics, thrumming with energy that crashes through my body like rapids. When I jump up and down with the beat, I’m reminded that my bra is undone, and my laughter causes Rowan to give me a strange look.
“Can you clasp m
y bra?” I yell to her over the music. Her eyebrows pinch together, and still laughing, I turn away from her and lift my shirt in the back so she can re-clasp it before I turn back around.
We watch the show until the set ends, and the entire crowd screams until voices are lost and eardrums are bruised. The guys and I head backstage, and Joel barely has time to brace himself before he has to catch me in midair. My arms wrap around his neck and my knees bend as he holds me. “You were so fucking good!”
“Come back to the bus with me,” he says in my ear. His voice is low, seductive, and when I pull away to look at him, his eyes are full of unspoken promises that make the rapids in my veins boil.
I drop to the ground toe by toe when the rest of our group catches up with me, and Van joins us from the other direction and claps Joel on the back. “You guys have to come with us to the meet and greet.”
“Dee has a headache,” Joel says without taking his eyes off me, and Van laughs and gives me a wide smile.
“Meet and greet is in fifteen minutes. Joel can take care of your headache later or you guys can find a Porta-Potty and take care of it in there, but then he needs to get his ass to our tent.”
Fifteen minutes later, after Joel tries and fails to sweet-talk me into a Porta-Potty, Rowan and I are sitting at the back of Cutting the Line’s merchandise tent. Van and his two non-hungover band mates are busy signing people’s stuff and introducing them to Joel and the rest of The Last Ones to Know.
“Networking,” I muse, swinging my pointer finger back and forth between the two bands.
Rowan nods and blows a big bubble with her gum. “Sometimes it makes me nervous.” I gaze over at her, and she sighs. “Did you see how big that crowd got today?”
It was impossible not to. Once people realized Cutting the Line was playing, they abandoned other stages to join the frenzy. A mob of people manifested out of thin air, and I realized where the festival got its namesake.
“It was like the girls in the audience suddenly developed an allergy to clothes,” Rowan complains, and a single chuckle escapes me. There were topless girls crowd surfing and sitting on shoulders, and it didn’t escape me that one of them was probably the girl who offered to suck Joel’s dick. I don’t doubt that she would if given the chance, and then I’d have to kill her.
“Adam loves you,” I assure Rowan, but I understand why she’s worried. Relationships require a lot more than just love, and a relationship with a rock star is going to be tested. A lot.
My gaze drifts to Joel, and as if he can feel my eyes on him, he looks over his shoulder and flashes me a pearly white smile. I try to return it, but it feels weak.
When he turns back around, chatting up a group of girls clamoring for his attention, I turn back to Rowan. She’s glancing back and forth between us like she’s trying to figure us out. Like that isn’t impossible.
“What is it about him?” she asks sincerely, and I brush off her question.
“He’s hot.”
“What else?”
“He’s a rock star.”
Rowan narrows her eyes on me. “I think you’re lying.”
“You also think aliens built the pyramids.”
Her eyes remain narrowed, and I smirk at her. She blows another obnoxiously large bubble and pops it at me, and then we both stare out at the long line formed in front of the tent.
In our silence, I think of all the reasons I didn’t give her.
I like Joel because he makes me laugh. Because he doesn’t put up with my shit. Because he breaks down doors and convinces me I’m not broken. Because he tells me he cares about me. Because I’m starting to believe it.
Chapter Thirteen
THE SECOND TIME Joel and I have sex without a condom is different from the first, with lots of giggling and repositioning and knocking things over on the kitchenette counter. Afterward, I’m liquid in his hands, and it takes every ounce of strength I have left to put my clothes back on and join everyone else outside. The bonfire is relit and raging, and the entire party is rippling with an exhausted sort of excitement, the kind that makes people friendly and stupid-happy.
We find Rowan, Adam, Shawn, and Mike sitting in a circle of lawn chairs with Van, his band mates, some familiar faces from last night, and a few faces I don’t recognize.
“The man of the hour!” Van shouts, and everyone cheers Joel and lifts their Solo cups in a toast. I’m looking for a spot to sit when someone taps me on the shoulder.
Two pretty girls grin at me when I turn around—one short, one tall, both with candy-apple-red hair and milky white skin. The short one has an eyebrow piercing and a pixie haircut, and the tall one has a tiny diamond nose stud and hair down to her waist.
“I love your shirt,” the tall one says. She’s built like she was born to roll around in music videos, with long, long legs and a slim, slim waist.
“Thanks . . .”
“Did you make it yourself?” the shorter girl asks. When I nod, she beams up at her friend. “Told you!”
“Can you make me one?” the taller girl asks me.
“And me?” her friend adds.
Today, I lost count of the number of compliments I received on my shirt. A few girls asked me where I bought it and were awed when I told them I made it. But these are my first requests, and I feel an odd sense of pride getting them. “I’d need scissors . . .”
“Van!” the taller girl suddenly shouts, and Van stops flirting with a blonde sitting at his feet to look up at the girl by my side. “Do you have scissors on the bus?”
“How the fuck should I know?” he shouts back, and the tall girl rolls her eyes.
“He’s useless,” she says, hooking her arm in mine and walking me away from the party.
“Well, not entirely useless,” the shorter one quips, and they both chuckle while leading me toward the buses. I’m too curious to resist going with them, so I follow without argument, and on the way, I learn that the taller one’s name is Nikki and the shorter one’s name is Molly. Nikki stops at a monstrous silver-and-red bus and roots a key out from beneath the step pad. Then she unlocks the door and leads me inside.
It’s even nicer than Joel’s bus, sporting slick black leather and a new car smell. The girls lead me to a kitchen in the back and root through a junk drawer until they find a pair of scissors. Then Nikki pulls off her shirt and Molly follows suit, and I’m just standing in a ridiculously extravagant tour bus with a pair of scissors in my hand and two half-naked girls practically throwing their clothes at me. This must be what Joel feels like on a daily basis.
“So you’re with Joel?” Molly asks, hopping up onto the counter as I sit down at a table and stretch her T-shirt on top of it. Nikki hands me a hard lemonade, and I take a long sip, wondering who these girls are and why we’re suddenly best friends.
I glance up at Molly, wondering what she’s playing at, but her smile is easy and genuine, so I opt for telling the truth. “We’re not really together.”
“Well, yeah,” she replies with a giggle, “but I mean, like, you’re with him? You’re his girl?”
Nikki is leaning against the counter next to her, studying me as they both wait for my answer. “His girl?” I ask.
“Yeah. Like Nik and me, we’re with Van.”
“I thought that blonde outside was with Van?”
Nikki rolls her eyes. “He probably doesn’t even know that bitch’s name.”
“He doesn’t,” Molly says with a laugh. “I heard him call her Ashley, but she told me her name is Veronica.”
Nikki snorts out a laugh. “That’s not even close!”
“I know!” Molly says with glee, and Nikki smiles at me.
“Are you asking if I’m Joel’s groupie?” I ask her bluntly, the situation dawning on me.
“That’s such a dirty word,” she says, but her tone is light and she’s still smiling when Molly nods emphatically.
“Yes,” the shorter girl answers.
“I’m not a groupie.” I turn my atten
tion back to cutting the sleeves off Molly’s shirt, feeling more like a groupie than ever and trying to shake off the feeling.
“So what are you?” Nikki asks, and I wish I had a good answer.
“His friend.” Even as the words cross my lips, I know they’re a lie. Joel and I have never been friends. We’ve always been more. And less. After last night, there’s no denying it, even though I fully plan on doing just that.
“Are you sleeping together?”
“Yes,” I answer, hoping that ends the girls’ line of questioning.
It doesn’t. Instead, Nikki insists, “Then you’re not friends. How long have you known each other?”
“A few months.”
“Is he sleeping with anyone else?”
“Does it matter?” I ask, irritation seeping into my tone while I alter Molly’s shirt.
“Oh, it matters,” Nikki says. “With guys like these, you’re either a groupie or a girlfriend. If he’s sleeping with other people, you’re a groupie. If he’s not, you’re a girlfriend.”
“What if I’m sleeping with other people?” I counter.
“Then you’re an idiot.”
I shoot her a look, but she just shrugs and gives me a smile.
Molly swings her legs back and forth, watching me take my frustration out on her shirt. “Why would you want to sleep with anyone else when you have Joel?” she asks. “He’s so fucking hot. Did you see him perform with Van today? He was so good. I wanted to tear his clothes off with my teeth. That mohawk?” She swoons, and Nikki laughs. “I bet he’s a god in the sack.”
“Confirm or deny?” Nikki asks me, and I can’t help it—the ghost of a smile sweeps onto my lips.
“Oooh,” Molly croons, “that’s a confirm. Ugh, I knew it.” She lets her head flop back against a cabinet, and Nikki and I both laugh.