by Tracy Deebs
I bat him away before he can figure out just how badly I’m messing up the lyrics. I must not be fast enough, though, because he grimaces as he says, “It’s going that well, huh?”
“You have no idea how bad it is,” I answer with a groan. Then I bend over and pretend to hit my head against his shoulder a few times. “I can’t believe the crap I’m coming up with.”
He wraps a comforting arm around my shoulder. “It can’t be that bad. I’m sure you can cherry-pick a few of the lyrics—”
He breaks off when I smack him in the stomach, hard. “Are you kidding me with that?”
“Sorry. I tried to resist, but it was too good.”
“Yeah, well, try harder.”
I glance around as casually as I can manage, just checking to make sure no one heard. Not that they would think anything of it, necessarily, but if Finn keeps making Cherry jokes, it won’t be long before someone puts it together.
As I check out the classroom, I realize a couple things at once. First, a bunch of people are looking at us, but I guess that’s to be expected considering Finn made a point of coming over to sit with me. I barely resist banging my head again—and on the desk, this time. Because, seriously, for a girl who’s trying to keep a low profile, I am totally hanging out with the wrong two guys.
And secondly, Keegan is no longer sitting in his spot across the room. Instead, he’s standing a couple desks behind me, talking to Himesh. And while he seems totally absorbed in their conversation, something tells me he’s paying a lot more attention to Finn and me than he’s letting on.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel a little warm inside. At least until I remember that he likes somebody else. That’s what our whole friendship is based on, in fact. Me helping him get Dream Girl. I wonder if there’s a way to pound that into my head so I stop forgetting it.
For the first time, I wonder if she’s in senior seminar with us. And if she is, if he’s following my advice and trying to show her that she might have a little competition. Which is fine. I mean, it’s good even. Because the sooner he gets together with Dream Girl, the sooner I can stop thinking about how warm his hand is when he puts it on the small of my back. Or the way his eyes dance a little when he’s happy. Or how he smells all sexy and comforting at the same time, like the bergamot orange candles I like to burn during late-night recording sessions.
I’m still staring at Keegan when he turns to look at me and our eyes meet. I smile at him and he smiles back. But even as his lips curve, something feels off. His eyes are dark and somber, about as far as they can get from the laughing electric green gaze he wore throughout lunch.
I frown at him, then shrug in a kind of what’s going on way. He makes a face and shakes his head, like nothing’s wrong. I’m not sure I buy it, though, and I think about getting up and going to talk to him. But I don’t want to interrupt if he’s hoping to attract Dream Girl’s attention, either. Maybe he’s waiting for her to make a move or something.
I start to text him, already wondering what emojis I can use to ask what I want to know, but that’s when it registers that Finn is taking advantage of my distraction to read all of my ridiculously awful lyric attempts.
“Hey!” I slam a hand down on the notebook to cover the most heinous of the lyrics. “What are you doing?”
He just pushes my hand out of the way and goes back to what he’s doing—which is when I see that he’s crossed out a few of the phrases and circled some of the others. He’s even put numbers next to a couple of them, like he’s putting them in order.
“I didn’t know you write songs,” I tell him.
“I don’t.” But he ducks his head, even blushes a little. “I listen to a lot of music, though, and I have a feeling for what works together, lyrics-wise and story-wise.” He points at one of the lines that I actually like. The rhythm is off but the sentiment is good—the whole feeling like a misfit thing, feeling like you don’t belong wherever you’re at. I wrote it because I imagine it’s how Lizzie feels most of the time, but there’s a part of me that feels the same way. And as I look into Finn’s eyes, I realize he does, too.
Damien picks that moment to laugh really loudly. I look over and realize it’s because he’s pulled Willa down into his lap. She looks embarrassed and she’s fighting him a little, but she looks pleased, too. Like she’s actually happy about all the attention he’s showering on her.
I make a disgusted sound in the back of my throat. That guy is such a douche.
“Yeah, that pretty much covers it,” Finn agrees and I realize he’s watching them, too. And the look in his eyes is very distinctly non-stepbrotherly.
“So that’s how it is, huh?” I ask softly, so no one else can hear.
He glares at me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not blind, you know. I can see how you feel about her.”
“Maybe, but I’m not stupid enough to wait around for a girl who falls for a guy like that.”
“Maybe not normally. But none of this is normal, is it?”
For long seconds, he doesn’t answer. Instead he starts doodling on my lyrics page, drawing basketballs and stars and what looks like a giant black hole sucking a stick figure into it. Yeah, the guy isn’t gone over Willa at all… I can’t help thinking it must be rough, especially for someone like Finn who has had such a weird home life. It’s not jacked up in the way mine is, but with flighty Mia as a mom, it’s a long way from normal. And now, here he is falling for a totally regular girl. And not just any girl, but one who is going to be his stepsister soon. And who already has a boyfriend.
Is it any wonder Finn’s face looks like a particularly virulent thundercloud?
“She’s normal.”
His words echo my thoughts so closely that it takes a few seconds for me to register that he actually said them out loud, that I didn’t just think them. “Yeah, she is,” I agree.
“She’s normal and nice and has a regular life that is totally getting turned upside down by my mother. The last thing she needs is a guy as screwed up as me to make things any harder for her.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not. Willa would be better off with a normal guy—not Damien obviously, because he’s an ass—but a regular guy who won’t draw her into his drama. Just like Keegan will be so much better off with Dream Girl than he would be with me.
The thought stings, even though it shouldn’t.
Even though I’m totally in this to help him get that other girl.
Even though we’ve only been friends for a couple days.
“So, I’ve got to go to L.A. next weekend,” Finn says suddenly. “Want to come with me?”
“For what?”
“Matt Bingham,” he answers, naming one of the brightest stars in the young Hollywood crowd. “It should be fun. It’s his twenty-second birthday and he’s doing it up huge. We can fly out Friday night and come back Sunday evening. You won’t even have to miss any class.”
It does sound like fun. And I actually got an invite to the party, too, as I know Matt pretty well. Because I’m doing the high school student thing in Austin, I told him that I couldn’t come. But Finn makes it sound so simple, and maybe that’s what I need. To get away from here for a couple days and clear my head. I can totally come up with something to disguise my hair and if I wear some of my regular Cherry clothes, no one would think to connect Cherry and Dahlia. No one but Finn, I mean.
“Yeah, I could do that,” I tell him after thinking it over. “And I can work on the lyrics on the plane, see if getting out of Austin maybe jogs something loose.”
“Cool. We can do the whole L.A. thing.” Finn’s voice gets louder as his enthusiasm grows. “I’ll get us a suite at the Redbury. We can do Venice Beach in the morning, and I’ll take you to La Poubelle for lunch. We can stop by the Ivy for chocolate chip cookies. It’ll be fun.”
“Yeah. And maybe we can do a hike at Runyon Canyon Sunday.”
He groans. “Ma
ybe we can have brunch at the Polo Club instead.”
“Maybe we can do both.” I start to get excited. It’s not that I miss being a celebrity, exactly, because it’s kind of nice not being swamped when news gets out that I’m shopping or eating somewhere, and it’s really nice not to have to worry about how I look if I’m going to the gym. But still, there’s something to be said for all those things he mentioned. Plus, being seen out and about in L.A. will finally help put to rest all the crazy tabloid rumors about me being kidnapped in South America or abducted by aliens or a member of some love cult in Colorado. And yes, just to clarify, those are all real stories about my disappearance that have run in the last two months.
“It’ll be fun. Let’s do it.”
Finn grins as he pulls me in for a hug. “Cool. I’ll get the tickets tonight.”
The bell rings as he’s letting me go, and we gather our stuff up quickly. As we do, Finn talks to me about the lyrics a little more, gets me thinking about what part of her story Lizzie Borden would want the world to know.
As we leave, I look around for Keegan but realize he’s already gone. It seems strange that he wouldn’t even wave good-bye, but then again, maybe he struck up a conversation with Dream Girl. Or maybe he and Himesh were so into their website/social media discussion that he didn’t think about it. Either way, it’s no use getting upset about it. Hopefully tomorrow he’ll institute part two of the plan, and then we can get him moving on part three.
Suddenly, I’m in a big hurry to get this plan going. The sooner he gets Dream Girl, the sooner I can stop thinking about him as anything more than a friend. Because while part of me talking to Keegan the other night was because Finn was right when he said that I need to experience real life with real people, the absolute last part of real life I want to experience is getting my heart broken because I fell for a boy I can’t have.
A boy I don’t deserve.
Chapter Ten
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Finn was taking Dahlia to L.A. next weekend? Getting a suite at the Redbury? Taking her for cookies at the freaking Ivy?
What the hell was going on here? And how the hell was Keegan supposed to compete with a romantic weekend among Hollywood’s elite when he couldn’t even get up the nerve to ask Dahlia on a date?
How exactly was Finn’s whole whisking her away thing going to work anyway? He could see how Finn’s mom wouldn’t care if he jet-setted out to L.A. for a couple of days, but was Dahlia’s dad seriously not going to be concerned with his underage daughter hitting the West Coast with Mia McCain’s bad-boy son? In what world was that even a possibility?
The whole thing made no sense at all. Especially considering she didn’t even bat an eye when Finn had asked her to go with him to Matt Bingham’s birthday party. Matt freaking Bingham, who was one of the most popular stars in Hollywood today. Every girl who had overheard the conversation—which was half the girls in class as they didn’t bother to keep their voices down—had been drooling at the mere mention of the guy’s name. And Dahlia was all, oh sure, that sounds fun. Let’s go. Like it was nothing. Like she and Finn had been dating for years, and she was used to him introducing her to famous people.
And the weirdest thing was, who even knew they were dating? Sure, they’d hung out at the dance, but they’d gone and left separately. Plus, when he’d asked around yesterday, nobody seemed to think there was anything between them. And now Finn was all, let me sweep you off to L.A. where I can awe you with my amazing connections?
It made no freaking sense.
Well, no sense beyond the whole two really attractive people going on a trip together and staying in the same hotel room together.
It made him want to hit someone, and he never wanted to hit someone.
He slammed into the Black Box for his extra period drama class with a scowl on his face. He hoped Mrs. Steele let them work on their scenes today. The last thing he wanted to do was spend the final class of the day taking notes when all he could think about was Dahlia and Finn on a plane together. In a hotel suite together.
WTF? Seriously. What. The. Eff.
Thankfully, Mrs. Steele was feeling merciful today—or lazy, depending on how you looked at it. Either way, she didn’t even bother standing up from her spot in the front row of the theater when she waved a hand and told them to go outside and work on blocking for the one-acts they would be performing next month.
He grabbed his backpack and thought about just taking off, but he didn’t want to deal with the crap that would come down if his mom found out. Plus, he didn’t want to give her anything else to worry about. She was already stressed enough over the doctor’s appointment his dad had Thursday afternoon. They all were, since it was when they were going to talk about the results of a bunch of tests they’d run last Friday—and what his next couple of months of treatment were going to look like.
Jacen caught up to him as soon as he hit the outdoor quad that was situated between all the buildings. The drama classes regularly used it for rehearsal, and the art classes came out pretty often to draw. Who knows how many pictures there were hanging around the school of the weird, Pokémon-like sculpture that sat in the middle of the lawn. Too many to count, that was for sure.
He and Jacen were doing Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, and had totally switched up the casting so that Jacen was businessman Peter, just minding his own business and trying to eat his lunch on his park bench, while he was the desperate and suicidal Jerry who would make Peter fight for that bench before the play was through.
It was a great play, and Keegan loved playing Jerry—especially since he was doing it opposite his best friend. But he just wasn’t in the mood for it today.
Which was okay, it turned out, because Jacen obviously wasn’t, either. They started working on the blocking for the knife fight scene that would leave Jerry’s character dead, but they’d barely gotten into position before Jacen asked, “What exactly was going on in seminar today?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His assertion might have been more believable if he hadn’t stumbled over his own feet as he said it.
Jacen just gave him a look before he continued. “I call bull. Don’t tell me you didn’t hear Finn listing off all the places he plans to take your girl—”
“She’s not my girl.”
“Obviously, or she wouldn’t be planning to run off to Hollywood with Prince Finn.” He says the last with an obvious sneer.
The nickname cut through his bad mood just enough that he had to laugh. “When exactly did you come up with that name? It seemed like the two of you were getting along great at the after-party.”
“That was before I realized he was going to steal my best friend’s girl.” He lunged in like they were really in a fight and Keegan jumped back at the last second, barely avoiding getting nicked with the capped pen Jacen wielded like a knife.
“Again, not my girl.”
“Yet. Not your girl yet,” he reiterated. “And she never will be if you let her go to L.A. with Mr. Movie Star. So what are you going to do about it?”
“What can I do about it? She agreed to go with him, didn’t she?”
“Of course she did! He offered her an all-expenses-paid trip to a fancy Hollywood party with a bunch of movie stars. Hell, I would have jumped at it, too. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, well, he’s not exactly my type.”
“Finn McCain is everybody’s type.”
Keegan glared at him. “So not helping here.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Jacen held up his hands in mock surrender. “I got carried away thinking about those eyes and that body and—”
“Still not my type,” Keegan grumbled. “And still not helping.” Then, for the hell of it, he lunged forward and stabbed Jacen hard in the stomach with his pen.
“Ow!” Jacen stepped back, rubbing his stomach as he did. “I’m supposed to kill you, remember?”
“Sorry,” Keegan answered, tongue firmly in cheek. “I got carried away.”
/> “Ha-ha. This is the last time I’m going to try to help you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m still waiting for the help, so I’m not sure it’s that big a loss. From where I’m standing, all you’re doing is making me freak out more.”
“Don’t freak out,” Jacen told him as they started to circle again. “We can still fix this.”
“And how exactly are we going to fix it?”
“Easy. You need to make sure she doesn’t get on that plane with Prince Finn. Otherwise you’re not the only one who’s going to get screwed. ”
Like he didn’t already know that? And like the thought of Dahlia with Finn didn’t turn him crazy? “You make it sound so easy. Just stop her from getting on a plane.”
“It is easy.”
“Oh, yeah? What am I supposed to do?”
Jacen looked at him like he was an idiot. “Seduce her, obviously.”
“Seriously? That’s your big plan? For me to seduce her?” Which was like wooing, right? Just with more sex.
“Why do you look so shocked? It’s simple, elegant, and it’s not like she’ll be the first girl you’ve gotten into bed.”
“No, but—”
“But what?”
But she would be the first who made him feel this way. Not that there had been that many—only three since he lost his virginity freshman year. And he’d been in relationships with all three of them. But he’d never lain awake at night staring at his ceiling and going over every word they’d said to him. He’d never freaked out at the thought of blowing his shot with any of them. And he sure as hell had never lost his confidence with any of them so badly that he was getting advice from not one, but two people on how to win her over.
The fact that one of the people he was getting advice from was also the girl he wanted to win was an irony he had no interest in discussing.
“Nothing,” he told Jacen after a minute. “I’m just being an idiot.”