Chaos

My fingers yearn to touch something—maybe his guitar . . . maybe his hands . . . maybe his lips.

“I’m still working on it,” he says of the song he’s currently playing, his words slowing when we both realize I’m watching each one come out of his mouth.

“Awesome,” I say in a rush, standing up so quickly that half of the papers on my lap end up spilling onto the floor. “Shit.”

Shawn and I knock knees bending down to pick them up, get awkward when we make eye contact on the floor, and nearly jump out of our skin when Rowan pops up out of nowhere to ask if I’d like to stay for dinner.

“I, er—” I’m trying to get my wobbly knees to work and am bumbling like an idiot while Shawn stands beside me watching me go up in flames. I know why the hell I’m dropping papers and bumping knees, but what the heck is his excuse?

“Sweet,” Rowan says with a bright smile. “I’m making, um . . . ADAM!”

“What?” he yells from somewhere down the hall.

Shawn’s hand finds mine to give me the rest of the papers I dropped, and I nearly drop them all over again. I don’t thank him, because my voice isn’t working. I can’t even make freaking eye contact.

“What do you want for dinner?” Rowan yells.

“Order something!”

“I should go,” I mutter, taking a step back and banging the backs of my traitorous legs against the coffee table. I decide to stop moving so I don’t end up falling flat on my face and needing Shawn to carry me all the way to the hospital.

Yes, because in my fantasyland right now, ambulances don’t exist and Shawn is obviously the only doctor I need.

Fucking hell.

I am not this awkward girl. I had boyfriends in high school and boyfriends in college. One-night stands and semi-long relationships and casual dates and week-long flings. But not one of those guys ever took my number and didn’t call me or made me want to Taser him or made me trip over tables or made my heart pound in my chest like it does every time I lock eyes with Shawn Scarlett.

Rowan just shakes her head. “Nope. We’re ordering something to celebrate your initiation into the band, so you’re pretty much obligated to stay. What do you want to eat?”

When Adam pops out of the bedroom and suggests pizza, Rowan volunteers him and herself to go pick it up, adamant that Shawn and I should stay behind so we can finish working.

“We already finished,” I insist, but she just holds up her hand, smiles, and closes the door between us.

Abandoned alone in the living room with Shawn again, I take a minute before turning around. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Shawn and I have nothing to do, nothing to say, and Rowan literally shut us in here together and smiled while doing it. I take a deep breath and finally turn to face Shawn. “How mad would she be if I left before she got back?”

He scratches a hand through his hair, his vintage band T-shirt pulling taut over his chest. “Why do you need to leave?”

“I don’t . . . ”

“Then stay.”

I should run. I should tell him no, and I should run far, far away. I shouldn’t look back.

I shouldn’t be here flirting with him, staring at his hands and his eyes and his lips. I should remember the way he made me feel when he said he’d call and then never did.

But my brain is having trouble remembering any of those things, so instead, I reluctantly sit back down on the couch. I take a long sip of my beer. I stare at Shawn’s guitar. I take another sip of beer.

When I finish one, he offers me another, and the first conversation starts awkwardly but continues easily. Shawn and I talk about guitars and equipment. We talk about our favorite bands, the best shows we’ve ever been to, crazy shit we’ve done at concerts. Two more beers, and I can’t stop laughing.

“And then Adam just showed back up with no pants,” Shawn says through his laughter, “and I was so fucking drunk, I fell over from laughing so hard and busted my damn lip open.”

Giggling like crazy, I wipe away my tears. “That’s nothing. When I was eighteen, I went to see The Used, and Bert had the crowd do a wall of death—”

“Oh no,” Shawn says even before I can finish.

I nod and hold out my left arm. “I broke my arm in three freaking places.”

Shawn nearly coughs out his beer. “You seriously broke your arm?”

“My band had to cancel shows for two entire months,” I explain, bending my elbow while remembering how much it sucked to be stuck in a cast. Shawn grins at me, and I laugh before adding, “My brothers freaked the hell out, so I had to make up some bullshit lie about slipping on a patch of ice—in August.”

They had correctly assumed I broke it by doing something stupid—like slamming arm-first into a thoroughly inebriated Incredible Hulk—but I scrambled to say whatever it took to keep them from volunteering Mason to move in with me in my dorm.

“Why?” Shawn asks, and when I take another swig of my beer and lift my eyebrow, he clarifies, “Why’d you have to lie about it?”

I swallow the amber liquid down my throat and shrug. “Do you remember my brothers? Bryce was in your grade, Mason was two above you, and Ryan was one above him.”

Shawn circles his thumb over the lip of his beer bottle. “Sort of. Don’t you also have another brother?”

“Who, Kale?” I ask with more than a little surprise in my voice. He can remember Kale, but not me? “Yeah . . . ” I answer, trying not to let it bother me. The numbness taking root in the tips of my fingers helps. “We’re twins.”