Our Song

by Morse, Jody

  When I didn’t hear the door open, I peeked out again.

  He was leaning against the bathroom sink and when he saw the curtain moving, his bright blue eyes met mine.

  Holy hell, did he want me to slip and crack my head open? Because it could’ve been a real possibility. Those eyes and a conditioner-coated shower floor were a lethal combination.

  I allowed my gaze to drift down his body. Wait a minute. That was my phone he was holding.

  “Are you going through my phone?!” I squeaked.

  He held it up for me to see my pink glittery phone cover, proving it was, in fact, my phone. He glanced back down and went back to whatever he was doing with it. “Yeah, I am.”

  I felt my jaw dropping. In what world did he think it was okay to go through my phone? And for him to act all cool as a cucumber over it?

  “Give it to me!” I hissed at him.

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “Just let me finish putting my number into it.”

  So he wasn’t going through my messages or anything like that? I mean, it still wasn’t okay that he didn’t even ask to see my phone, but it was less obnoxious of him.

  “Your phone number?” I asked dumbly.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I figured it’s about time we swapped digits with each other. Makes getting in touch easier. You know, so I can wake you up without pounding on the door and interrupting your so-called shower.”

  I ignored his comment. “That’s nice of you and all, but you do realize it’s an invasion of my privacy, right?”

  “I do. But I think taking pictures of people’s asses without their knowledge is also an invasion of privacy. I’d say we’re even.”

  He turned the phone around so I could see the picture on the screen. The picture I’d taken while drunk at the bar of his fully clothed butt. The one I hadn’t wanted him to see.

  I glared at him, knowing full well I’d gotten myself into this. Why hadn’t I just deleted that picture? Or better yet, not taken it at all? I could feel my cheeks getting red.

  He set my phone down, grinning like crazy. “It’s cute, isn’t it?” he asked, turning around and wiggling it for me.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, too bad the person it’s attached to is cocky as hell.”

  He leaned back against the sink. “I think, to make things even, I get to have a picture of your butt on my cell phone.”

  Ha, ha.

  “Not going to happen,” I promised him.

  He shrugged. “You’ll cave.”

  “I didn’t invite you to stay in here and watch me shower,” I told him grumpily.

  “I know, but I came here to work, so that’s what I’m doing. If you’d like to join me, that would be nice. I have the first part of our next song.”

  I raised an eyebrow. He worked fast. “What is it? Wait, no. Can’t it wait until I’m dressed and in my office?”

  “It’s really important,” he told me with a serious look in his eyes. “You take looong showers. What if I forget it by the time you get yourself squeaky clean? And I can’t forget it. This is your career we’re talking about here.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it,” I told him.

  He took a deep breath and waved a hand in front of his face, changing his expression to an ultra-serious one.

  He started belting out, in a tune that should’ve been accompanied by a banjo, “There’s a girl, in a towel, and I’m a little impatient right now, and she’s a little cranky ‘cause I woke her up and she’s trying to swirl herself down the drain now.” He stopped singing and said, “That’s the only reason you could be taking this long.”

  What could I throw at him? I eyed my expensive bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

  No. What if his big, egotistical head broke the plastic cap? That would just be annoying for all of my future showers.

  Instead, I reached for the blue loofah that rested on the shower caddy. I flung it at him, grinning when it hit his face with a satisfying smack. It bounced off of him, landing somewhere on the floor.

  “Yech,” he said, tilting his head forward to shake the water droplets off. “Cold, cold, cold.”

  “You’re like a Saint Bernard,” I commented.

  He shot me a playful pouty look. “That was cruel.”

  “Okay, you’re right. They drool a lot and I don’t think you do. A German Shepherd?”

  He bent down to pick up my loofah.

  “Drop it. Drop it right now if you want to live.”

  He gasped. “You threatened my life. That’s some serious business.”

  Smack. He tossed the loofah into my face.

  I scoffed. “So serious that you don’t take me seriously.”

  “Death isn’t really a joking matter,” he said quietly, his light blue eyes clouding over.

  “You’re right. It’s not. I’m sorry,” I said, my mom’s face flashing through my mind. As I rinsed the soap off my face, I added, “Now would you please give me some privacy?”

  He shook his head and took a seat on the toilet. “Nope.”

  I groaned. “Really? If this is just your way of trying to get that picture of my ass onto your phone, you’re going to be waiting forever. I’ll stay in here all day if I have to.”

  Laughing, he rose to his feet. “I’m kidding. I’ll wait for you in your office.”

  As he left the bathroom and closed the door behind him, I wished that I really could swirl myself down the drain.

  Chapter 19

  When I pulled the shower curtain open and started drying off, I realized my mistake.

  I had no clothes.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. My dirty clothes were still scattered all over the bathroom floor, but they were soaked and I didn’t want to put them back on. That defeated the whole purpose of taking a shower.

  I was going to have to sneak over to my bedroom to change.

  Wrapping the towel around my body and tucking it into the front, I stepped out into the hallway. I tiptoed across the tiled floor, careful not to make any noise as I walked past my office.

  When I slid into my bedroom, I grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants from my closet and some underwear and a bra with loads of extra padding to make the girls look, um, bigger.

  Just as I was about to take the towel off, I heard a voice say from behind me, “Still in a towel, I see.”

  I whirled around to find Colton standing in the doorway. “Shut up. And don’t you understand the word ‘privacy’?”

  He shrugged. “You left the door open. If you wanted privacy, why didn’t you close it?”

  “Because I didn’t think you would follow me in here. You’re supposed to be waiting for me in my office, remember?” I said, glaring at him. Seriously, this could’ve been bad if he had walked into the room a second later.

  “I do recall you saying something like that,” he agreed, nodding. “But I really needed something to quench my thirst. Is it okay if I borrow a bottle of water from you?”

  “Borrow?” I raised my eyebrows. “Are you going to return it?”

  “If you want me to.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “You can have whatever you want in the fridge. Just get out of my room,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him in frustration.

  “Okay, okay.” He took a step back into the hallway and then said, “By the way…” He held his phone up for me to see.

  Even from across the room, I could make out the image of my (thankfully towel-covered) butt. “Delete it!”

  “Nope!” Colton laughed as took off for the kitchen.

  Ugh!

  Once I’d changed back into my clothes, I went back into my office. Colton was sitting on the couch, strumming his guitar.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Wow. You’re not even going to make me buy you dinner first? Somewhere expensive, like Giovanni’s.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. Giovanni’s was like $400 a plate. I wasn’t that materialistic. “I was talking about your phone, asshole.”

  “Why would
you want to have sex with my phone?” he asked, not even looking up from his guitar.

  “It would probably be more responsive,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “Seriously, what do I need to do to make you delete that picture?” So that it wouldn’t end up all over the internet.

  “Oh, that.” Glancing up, his blue eyes fell on mine. “That’s easy.”

  “Well, are you going to tell me?”

  “You’re a demanding little thing, aren’t you?” He smirked.

  I folded my arms over my chest, annoyed. “I’m waiting for an answer.”

  Setting the guitar down, he rose to his feet. He opened his phone and showed me the picture. “I’ll hit ‘delete’ right now if you do either one of two things.”

  “What two things would those be?” I rolled my eyes.

  “You could either show me your boobs,” he said.

  “Ugh, no! I’m not showing you my boobs! You’ll probably take a picture of them, too,” I replied, even though showing them to him really wasn’t a huge deal. I mean, I may have been drunk last time, but he’d already seen my boobs.

  Apparently, that meant he liked them enough to want to see them again. Go me.

  “That’s what I thought. The other thing you could do is delete the picture of my ass from your phone.”

  I grabbed my phone and opened the picture of his butt. Glancing over at him, I said, “How do I know this isn’t some sort of trick? Like even after I delete the picture of your ass, you’ll keep mine?”

  Colton shrugged. “I don’t know. You could just take my word for it?”

  I scoffed.

  “Or we can do it on the count of three, if you want,” he added.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “One...two…”

  “Three,” we said simultaneously.

  I hit the ‘Delete’ button and then glanced over at the screen of his phone to make sure he’d deleted the picture of my butt, too.

  He had.

  “Now that we’re done playing ass games, do you want to actually get some writing done?” Colton asked, sounded irritated.

  “I don’t know if that’s going to be possible.”

  “What do you mean it won’t be ‘possible’?” He glanced over at me sharply, his brow furrowing.

  “You’re somewhat of a mood killer,” I replied with a shrug.

  “That would mean you’d have to be in a good mood in the first place,” he said. “Which you never are.”

  Well, that wasn’t entirely off-base lately. Colton King just had this way of bringing out the best of me.

  “So, did you come up with a chorus yet?” I asked him.

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah,” he said, grabbing his guitar and strumming it. Clearing his throat, he began to sing, “That girl kept on prancing in her towel—”

  I shot him dagger eyes. “Not for that song.”

  But he just kept on singing. “And she’s glaring at me right now.”

  “Seriously,” I said.

  “Yeah, I seriously got nothing on the other one. There’s still time to switch to something else,” he suggested.

  “Okay. If that’s what you want to do. I mean, if you don’t mind that we wasted all that time coming up with the song.” It was my album. Why did he have to have a say in what song we wrote?

  He shrugged. “That’s okay with me. It was only a few days.”

  “Which means we’ll have to make those days up.” Which meant that I’d need to spend even more time with him.

  “Or you’ll become so inspired by my song choice that it will come even faster. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t want to spend more time with me?”

  “No comment,” I said, refusing to answer his question. “Okay, what is your song choice?”

  “I’m don’t have all the kinks worked out yet,” he warned me as he grabbed his guitar.

  As he began to strum random chords, he sang, “Viola Pierce…she’s pretty fierce. She’s always in a bad mood. Her comments can be so crude. She never wakes up on the right side of the bed. She’ll talk so much it’ll hurt your head.”

  “Ugh. How the hell did you get so popular if you never take anything seriously?” It wasn’t fair. I mean, sure he probably earned it, but that didn’t mean I had to feel any less jealous.

  “Maybe your problem is you need to loosen up. But don’t go drinking anything,” he warned. “Actually, maybe you should. I can think of some song lyrics that involve puking on some hot guy’s shoes.”

  “Really? I’ve never puked on a hot guy’s shoes,” I said with a smirk.

  He stared at me for a moment before saying, “Wow, you must be a bee, because that stung.”

  “Oh, please. I don’t think anything could hurt your ego.” I scoffed. “Now, can we please focus on the song that needs to be written so we can get this over with?”

  “Fine. What should it be about?” Colton asked.

  “I have no idea. I came up with our last song and we know how that turned out, so I say it’s your turn.” If he really was going to make us start from scratch, the least he could do was come up with the song.

  He paused for a moment. “I think we should write something angry.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why something angry? You do realize the whole reason I need you to collaborate with me is because my fans already think I’m too angry.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Told you you’re always in a bad mood.”

  “I am not,” I insisted, rolling my eyes.

  “If you weren’t always angry, you’d write happier music.” He paused. “We could always do a cover of ‘Baby One More Time’.”

  “Why that song?” I asked, frowning.

  Colton shrugged. “It’s the happiest song I can think of.”

  “I don’t think a cover of a ‘90s pop song is why Jimmy wants you to work with me,” I replied with a sigh. “Do you have any other ideas?”

  He paused for a long moment and then shook his head. “Nope. Looks like we’re going to stick with the same song.”

  “Maybe it will help if we figure out a name for it,” I suggested. “We can work the title into the lyrics.”

  “Let’s call it ‘Blowin’ Up My Phone’,” he said. “It’s pretty to the point, kind of catchy, room to work it into the lyrics.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  We fell into a routine where he would come up with a line and then I’d come up with a line. After what felt like forever, we finally came up with the song.

  “Let’s practice it,” Colton said.

  We both picked up our guitars and, strumming the melodies, we began to sing:

  Baby, when I gave you my number

  I didn’t know

  That you were gonna start

  Blowin’ up my phone

  My friends said you were crazy

  But I didn’t listen

  Now you got me wishin’

  My battery would die

  I think texting me gives you a high

  Now it’s four o’clock in the morning

  And I just want to sleep

  But my phone keeps vibrating

  Disturbing my peace

  It starts with one text

  And it turns into forty

  You keep blowin’ up my phone

  I just want to be left alone

  You’re asking where I am and where I’ll be

  You’re probably driving past me

  To make sure I’m all alone

  Stalking me is what you do best

  Why you so annoying shorty?

  Why you keep blowin’ up my phone?

  I told you I just wanna be left alone

  “I think it’s great,” he said once we’d gone through all the verses. “I guess we’re ready to hit the studio.”

  “Okay.” I grabbed my cell phone and shot a text message to Nat, asking her to arrange a time for us to record the song. “Do you want to start working on our second song now?”

  Colton shook his head. “No, I have somewhere I need to be.�
� He rose to his feet. “I’ll call you.”

  “You don’t have my number,” I pointed out. He’d put his number in my phone, but I hadn’t given him my number.

  “Yeah, I do. I sent a text to myself from your phone.” He paused and then added, “You might also want to check your official Facebook fan page.”

  I stared back at him, horrified. “What did you do?”

  He smirked as he left the room.

  Once I heard the sound of the front door of my apartment click shut, I opened my Facebook fan page with my heart pounding hard against my chest. I was terrified to know what he’d written. I had millions of fans. Just writing the wrong thing could send the whole Internet into an uproar.

  When the page loaded, I found that he’d posted that picture of his own ass. For the caption, he’d written:

  I get to work with this sexy ass today ;-)

  Ugh. I could’ve freaking killed him.

  Chapter 20

  Thanks to Colton’s little stunt, I spent most of my day fielding calls from Mads, Nat, everyone about my unusual Facebook update. My fans had gone crazy with their guesses of who the ass belonged to. They’d guessed everyone from Nick Jonas to Channing Tatum, though quite a few had been accurate about who the butt really belonged to.

  I made a point of password-protecting my cell phone so he couldn’t get into it again in the future. I wished I’d thought to do it before, but I didn’t usually worry about anyone going through my phone, especially in my own home.

  With Skylar working at the smoothie shop, the apartment got boring fast. I just couldn’t be cooped up anymore, so I headed over to visit Finn at his matchmaking agency.

  As I reached for the door to go into the building, it was being pushed open. Tessa DeLong stepped outside, pushing back her auburn hair. Her gray eyes fell on mine. “Hi, Viola.”

  “Hi.” I forced a smile, even though all I could seem to do was wonder what the hell she was doing there, when she was clearly involved with Colton. It had to mean one of two things: she’d either connected with him through Finn, which would’ve made me angry on so many levels, or she was cheating on Colton. Then again, there was also a chance that she was free to date other people, because they were only hooking up, too.