“Dani has quite the voice,” Mark said.
I couldn’t admit the truth about my feelings for a sophomore.
I couldn’t admit that she made my heart beat faster, that I took the long route around the building just so I could walk past her locker, that I hid in the back row of the school plays and swore up and down I was only there for extra credit.
I didn’t know why I had these unfamiliar feelings for her, but I did know one thing. If I said them out loud, they’d be real instead of just this idea in my head I could easily fight. Acting on them would be disastrous.
She had the kind of beautiful soul that deserved better than anything I could possibly offer her. I barely knew her, but I knew enough to comprehend that truth. Not only that, but I might as well resign myself to the fact that I’d be stuck here forever if I admitted my real feelings.
Thoughts of our kiss in the hallway a few weeks ago snuck into my mind constantly.
I hadn’t been able to help myself. I watched her brown ponytail swing naively behind her with each step she took down the hall, and I knew it was my moment. I’d dreamed up all the ways I could get her alone, but I never acted on it. She was the one girl I wanted more than any of the others, but she was like a forbidden fruit.
If I had more than a single taste, I’d never be able to let her go.
And I didn’t want that.
I didn’t want that for her. She deserved better than what I’d ever be able to give her.
Besides, I wanted to move on with my life, move out of Chicago, start fresh. So instead of admitting the truth to my best friend, I said, “If Y2K doesn’t kill us, listening to that talentless pig sing another solo might.”
That girl threatened my resolve to get the hell away from my mother and father, to make something of my life. I deserved more than being a son to two people who never wanted me, and I deserved more than ending up like them—with a kid and wife I never wanted.
I had to put up a fight—it’s how I was raised and it was all I ever knew. I didn’t deserve to feel the way I did for her, but she didn’t deserve to get twisted, chewed up, and spit out by someone like me.
Pain and heartache is all I’d ever be able to offer her no matter how much I wanted to be able to give her more.
No matter how much she made my heart ache with need.
“Jesus, Ethan,” Mark muttered. “She’s none of those things.”
He was right, but I wasn’t about to admit that. Instead, I shrugged and took a sip of beer. “Whatever.” I walked away from my best friend because I didn’t want to stand around talking about her anymore.
He’d made a comment the week before about how he thought someone like Dani would be good for me, that we’d be good together, and I’d laughed it off. He’d said he saw the way she looked at me with stars in her eyes and he thought I should give her a chance.
I’d laughed in his face—until he started in on how hot she was. It took everything inside me not to beat the shit out of him.
But seriously, who the fuck was he to talk about getting serious with one girl? It’s not like he did it.
Besides, what the hell did good together at seventeen and fifteen even mean? It was fucking Romeo and Juliet bullshit, that’s all. And everyone knew what happened to them in the end.
I wasn’t about to change the course of my life for some teenage crush—and that was all it was. A simple crush on a girl who was on a completely different playing field than I was. She was sweet and talented and beautiful and I was the big bad monster who would only hurt her in the end.
Besides, a real, honest-to-God fucking talent agent showed up at our gig two weeks earlier. We played this local hole in the wall bar called Sevens, and he’d heard about us from a friend. He was interested in talking about a record deal.
A fucking record deal.
We were still in high school and someone was interested in giving us money to play music. It was just Mark and me and one other guy, Toby, who jammed with us, but he wasn’t serious about music. We needed someone who was.
I didn’t know if anything was going to come of it, but I had to choose my future over some stupid high school girl. Drumming was my first and only true love. It was paradoxically the calm in the storm and the storm in the quiet, the very essence of what gave my life meaning. Hope. If I could have a real shot at playing professionally, I couldn’t risk fucking that up because some chick gave me a boner. There’d be plenty of those hanging around if we caught a real break, anyway.
It was probably more complicated than that, but it was easy enough to simplify it down to that very equation in my mind. Life in general didn’t look kindly upon the Fullers, and I had to grasp onto whatever lucky break I could find.
Mark seemed to think this talent agent guy was trying to scam us out of money, but to me, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was someone was interested in us, and I wasn’t about to let anything—or anyone—hold me back from the ultimate dream.
So rather than find sweet little Dani Mayne and kiss her like I did in the hallway that day at school, kiss her good and long and hard like she deserved to be kissed, I looked around for Isabelle Martin. She’d spread her legs for me more than once under the bleachers at school, and I knew she’d do it again if I shot her the smoldering look I’d practiced in the mirror at home.
She was drunk on Jello shots, which made for an easy target. She’d help me forget about the sweet girl with the angelic voice who somehow managed to steal my heart when I wasn’t paying attention.
I’d pay better attention now, though. She couldn’t have my heart when it belonged to my drum kit. I’d ignore her presence, forget about her, and dedicate my entire being to my craft.
After I blew my load, of course.
We were in the basement of my childhood home. My mother was staying the night at some boyfriend’s house, and the only reason we even had a decent size house with a nice basement was because of my dad’s fucking drug money. Setting my mom and us up in this house was the one good thing he did before his stupid ass got locked up for good.
“Come up to my bedroom with me,” I said. I figured I’d fuck someone in there tonight, so I straightened up. I tossed a pile of dirty clothes into my closet, pulled the old tattered blanket I used as a comforter off the bed and hid it on the top shelf of my closet, and cleared off every item from the top of my dresser except for a pair of drumsticks. My stash of weed was hidden right next to my lucky sticks under my mattress, and I thought for a split second Isabelle and I could get high.
But then I realized I didn’t really want to share anything more than just sex with her.
She didn’t respond by nodding or speaking. Instead, her mouth covered mine. She wasn’t who I wanted her to be. I shouldn’t be doing this with her—I should be running after the one my brain was telling me to find. My brain typically had decent instincts, and I wasn’t a listen to your heart kind of guy. But instead of listening to my brain or my heart, I allowed my dick to lead the way up the stairs, through the house, up another set of stairs, and finally into my bedroom.
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