“Well,” I say, “I mean . . . having a private theater in your mansion is going to be pretty cool.”

Mike laughs, relaxing the tension in my shoulders. “I’m going to have a private theater in my mansion?”

“Where else would you have it?” I chide, and Mike chuckles again. “I mean, I guess you could put it out by your private grotto.”

“Right, the grotto.”

“Which will be right next to . . .” I tap my fingers against my comforter, wondering what Mike would spend an extravagant amount of money on. “Right next to your microbrewery,” I decide, smiling to myself.

“Well, it’s settled then.”

“What is?”

“You’re designing my mansion.”

Laughing, I say, “Then can I get all the autographs I want?”

“And beer and private movie screenings,” Mike says, and my smile brightens.

“It’s a deal.”

We sit in comfortable silence until I glance at my clock and reluctantly tell Mike, “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah.”

“I should probably get some sleep. I have a big presentation in the morning.”

“Play again tomorrow?” Mike asks, and I snuggle deeper under my covers.

“We already promised your best friend we would,” I joke, reminding him what he said about Luke.

Mike’s voice is happy when he teases, “Think we’ll have to rescue you again?”

“Goodnight, Mike,” I growl, trying not to let him hear the smile trying to sneak back onto my face.

“Sweet dreams, Hailey,” he says, and then he makes me hang up first.

Chapter 10

“So let me get this straight,” Dee says in the college café on Wednesday afternoon, one day after Mike’s epic wall-exploding trick and three days after I nearly decapitated Danica with a water bottle. When I sat down and Rowan asked what I’ve been up to, I decided to focus on the Danica thing instead of the fact that I’ve spent the past three nights gaming with her boyfriend. Disdain drips from Dee’s voice when she finishes, “You actually had the chance to take that bitch’s head off, and you missed?”

“I wasn’t trying to hit her.” Actually, I was trying to hit her, but that was before I realized she wasn’t a robber-slash-murderer-slash-rapist with a fetish for pajama-wearing farm girls. I take a sip from the thermos of coffee I brought from home, trying to concentrate on how good it tastes instead of how second-rate it makes me feel. My uncle gave me a credit card to use while I’m in school, but I hate using it for things that aren’t necessary. Bills, groceries, gas—those things are essential. Coffee is a luxury I can bring from home.

“I don’t know how you can stand her,” Dee complains from across the table. “If I had to live with her, one of us wouldn’t be leaving that apartment alive. I almost choked her out when she came to band practice on Sunday.”

Rowan chuckles and scoops the whipped cream off her iced coffee. “I think she’s scared of you.”

“She should be!”

“What happened?” I ask, and Rowan finishes eating the whipped cream off her spoon to answer me.

“She wouldn’t stop criticizing everyone—”

Dee makes finger quotations in the air. “Giving suggestions.”

“And she actually suggested that Mike try singing this one song—”

Dee throws her hands in the air. “Mike! Sing!”

“And even Mike thought that was hilarious, but Danica was dead serious. She started getting all frustrated. But Dee was so fed up by then that—”

“So fed up.”

“That she told Danica to find some other band to go play Yoko in—”

“That was what Yoko did, right? She broke up the Beatles?”

Rowan smiles and nods as she continues talking. “And then they started arguing, and Danica told Dee that groupies come and go, implying that Dee is a groupie or something—”

Dee growls. “I could have killed her.”

“And basically everyone had to end practice early because Dee flew completely off the handle—”

Dee’s face stretches into an unremorseful grin. “As one does.”

“And none of us really wanted to hold her back.”

“Hence the reason you should have saved us the trouble and decapitated her when you had the chance.”

I rub a line between my eyes as I stop looking from Dee to Rowan to Dee to Rowan. I’m about to take another sip of my coffee when Rowan finishes eating the whipped cream off of hers and adds, “I don’t even know why Mike brought her.”

“Adam brought you,” I point out, and when Dee’s dark eyebrows knit, I add, “And Joel brought you.”

“But no one can stand Danica,” Dee argues.

“But she’s still Mike’s girlfriend.”

Dee makes a sound in the back of her throat and says, “He’s probably going to bring her with us on Saturday.”

Rowan groans and rubs her silver-painted fingernails along the bridge of her nose. “Of course he is.”

I’m looking back and forth between them, wondering what’s happening on Saturday but not wanting to ask since it might seem like I’m trying to invite myself along, when Dee’s gaze settles on me, like a magnifying glass that makes me fidget in my seat.