Chaos

God. It’s like I’ve never talked to a freaking boy before.

“So what happened at your parents’?” Shawn asks, interrupting my spastic inner monologue.

I make a noise and answer, “You don’t want to hear about it. Trust me.”

“If I didn’t want to hear about it, I wouldn’t ask.”

Soft heat radiates beneath my cheeks, soaking into the fingertips I press against them. “What if I just don’t want to talk about it?”

“Then can I play you something?”

I slide my fingertips away when that soft heat turns to fire. “On your guitar?”

“No, on my harmonica.”

I’m way too nervous to form a smart-ass reply to his tease. “Over the phone?”

“Yeah. I want to come over tomorrow, too, if that’s cool with you, but I’ve been waiting all day for you to listen to this song I’ve been working on.”

That smile I gave to the darkness earlier comes back full force, and I swallow another stupid giggle. “Sure. Play away.”

And then, he does. He plays his guitar just for me, and I close my eyes and let myself dream.

I dream that the song is mine, that the night is mine, that Shawn is mine.

“So what do you think?” he asks when he’s finished. “Do you like it?”

And with that dreamy smile still on my face and his song still in my heart, I answer him.

“No,” I say. “I love it.”

Chapter Six

OVER THE NEXT couple of weeks, my mornings are usually filled with Starbucks and Leti, and my afternoons are usually filled with practices or jam sessions, playing music or writing music. Most of the songs I learned that day in Shawn’s apartment end up getting changed anyway—the old guitarist’s parts getting replaced with new ones I write myself. The guys love the fresh flavor I add to their sound, and I love that they love it. We grow together flawlessly, and it’s all easy. Mike always has my back, Adam always makes me laugh, Joel always entertains my corny jokes, and Shawn . . .

Shawn is the only part that’s not easy.

Time alone with him is tough. I try to keep it professional; he has no idea that I have to try so hard, and I always feel like I’m going through withdrawal of him as soon as he leaves my place. Texting him and hearing my phone ding a response becomes an addiction, one that tugs at the strings of my heart, pulling it closer and closer to a place I swore I’d never go again.

Sometimes we meet up at his place. Sometimes the whole band practices at Mike’s. But it’s the times when it’s just Shawn and me sitting on the roof outside my bedroom window that I look forward to the most.

“Do you hear that?” he asks as he plucks the E string of my guitar. The sound carries on the breeze blowing my hair into my mouth, and Shawn smiles as I try to brush it away.

It’s been a few weeks since our first band practice, but the late May weather still hasn’t realized it’s almost summer, and even though the cold is demanding I crawl back through my window to put on socks and boots, I don’t listen. Instead, I curl my toes against the roof and tell Shawn, “Still flat.”

The icy shingles pressed against the bottoms of my feet help keep me grounded, reminding me that I’m not in a dream, reminding me that I called Shawn and he called me back—six years late, but he called. And now he’s sitting next to me outside my bedroom window, looking perfectly comfortable with my guitar on his lap.

He tightens the string and plucks it again. “What about now?”

“Perfect,” I say with an easy smile. I crisscross my legs and tug my frozen feet into my lap, wrapping my hands around my icicle toes to warm them. “Who taught you to play?”

“Adam and I taught ourselves,” Shawn answers, a nostalgic smile curling the corners of his mouth as he places my guitar back in its case. He flips the locks and settles back against the roof, his strong arms holding himself up and his long legs stretched out in front of him.

It would be so easy to crawl on top of him—to straddle those beaten-up jeans of his and taste the breeze on his lips.

I force my eyes back up to his. “How long have you been friends?”

“First grade,” he says with a little chuckle I can’t help smiling at.

“What?”

“I dared him to try to walk on top of the monkey bars, and he got all the way to the last one before a teacher caught him and gave us both detention for the whole week.”

“So you’re the bad influence,” I tease, and the pride in Shawn’s grin confirms it.

“He dared me to try it as soon as our detention was up and we were allowed to go outside for recess.”

“Did you do it?”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Nope. I told him I didn’t want to get more detention, and when he tried to convince me I wouldn’t get caught, I dared him to do it again himself.”

Almost twenty years, and those two haven’t changed at all. “Did he get caught?”

Shawn nods proudly. “We got two more weeks of detention, plus they called our moms.”

When I laugh, he laughs too. “I’m surprised your moms let you be friends,” I say.

“We were already brothers by then. It would have been too late.”

I don’t know why that makes me want to kiss him, but it does—just like every other damn thing he ever says. And just like every other night I’ve found myself alone with him, I bite the inside of my lip and try not to think about it. “So why guitar?”