Chaos

“Do you three want to see the inside of the bus?” Driver asks the three bodies in the three smallest skirts after all of the fans have gotten pictures and autographs. He’s playing the role of recruiter, which I don’t doubt he’s done a thousand times before. It’s probably in his job description: find hot chicks for Shawn to bang, invite them on bus, drag them off afterward.

Shawn’s eyes dart to me at the same time mine dart to him. “Oh, uh, not tonight,” he stammers, shaking his head at Driver. “I told you, not this tour.”

Not this tour?

Not this tour.

It hits me then, why he’s saying no. It’s not because he doesn’t want them to come on board. It’s because he thinks I don’t want them to. He thinks he’s doing me a favor. Like he’d be hurting my damn feelings. Like I have feelings.

I deliberately roll my eyes at him and smile at Groupie One, Groupie Two, and Groupie Three. “Shawn’s just a party-pooper. Come on, I’ll show you where he sleeps.”

ON THE BUS, I walk the slut parade back to the bunks, pointing out Shawn’s bed and ignoring the irritated look he gives me as I play the role of tour guide.

“Where does Adam sleep?” the bleachiest bleached blonde asks, casting a flirtatious smile over her shoulder at Adam, who isn’t paying her even the least bit of attention. He’s sitting on a bench next to Mike, his black-painted fingernails typing texts back and forth with Rowan.

“Adam sleeps with his girlfriend, Rowan,” I answer in a no-nonsense tone that shuts the girl right up. They always want the lead singer first, always—because they think he’s the fastest way to get their name in a song or their face in a gossip column.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Undeterred, she turns that flirtatious smile on Shawn, just like I knew she would. “But you don’t have a girlfriend, right?”

Shawn tears his gaze from her to shoot me a cold stare that I return with an oversweet smile. I continue leading the girls to the kitchen, where he leans against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Joel locks himself in the bathroom, probably to call Dee, while I pour the groupies drinks.

I offer Shawn a drink too, but he’s a statue. With the way he’s looking at me, I’m guessing the only thing he wants is to tape my big mouth shut or kick me off this bus. But I keep egging the girls on, like I have something to prove. Because I feel like I do.

I don’t like Shawn. I don’t need Shawn. I don’t want Shawn.

“Yeah, Shawn, drink with us,” Groupie Number Three says, positioning herself in front of him and lifting her lipstick-stained glass to his face. Her red hair is a silken waterfall tumbling over her shoulders, and I have to look away.

I’m driving a knife farther into my own heart—because I need him to know it.

I don’t like him. I don’t need him. I don’t want him.

I don’t love him.

I need myself to know it too—to believe it—but when the girl giggles, I can’t help it . . . I listen, I watch, and I hurt.

I watch as Shawn’s hand covers hers, as he lowers the glass she’s holding, and as he leans in to whisper something in her ear. She giggles again, and he grins before turning those green eyes on me. “Sure, Kit, pour me one.”

He turns on a charm I’ve always wished he’d direct at me, using that voice and those smiles that I’ve always wished I could claim for myself. He hijacks the tequila bottle from my hands and pours the girls drink after drink after drink while I stand by pretending not to care—even though I can’t help noticing that Groupie One’s breasts are bigger than mine, that Groupie Two’s lips are fuller than mine, that Groupie Three’s legs are longer than mine.

I stay until I can’t take it anymore—until their hair-flipping makes me want to claw my eyes out and their giggling makes me want to gouge my eardrums out. Shawn is too busy being fawned over to even notice me go, so I sulk my way down the long aisle of the bus, closing curtains behind me until I’m plopping down on a bench next to Mike. Joel is still holed up in the bathroom; Shawn is back in the kitchen with Big Boobs, Perfect Lips, and Long Legs; and Adam . . .

“Where’s Adam?” I ask. Mike hands me a half-finished beer I desperately need, and I gladly accept it. “Thanks.”

“He said something about seeing if he could get on the roof, and then he was gone,” Mike says.

“What about Driver?”

“Probably went to the other bus to take bets on Adam falling and cracking his head open,” Mike says dismissively. I chuckle until he says, “Any reason for your sudden love of groupies?”

“Who doesn’t love groupies?”

It doesn’t escape me that I’m asking the only guy in the world who doesn’t love groupies. Mike isn’t in the band for the girls or the fame. He’s in it because he loves the drums—and because the guys are his family, and he’s theirs.

“Tonight?” he says by way of answer, his eyes big, brown, and sincere. “Shawn.”

I grunt and take another sip of his beer, staring longingly toward the first closed curtain separating me from the kitchen, because I could really use a stronger drink but would rather swallow broken glass than go back there. “Shawn was enjoying himself in the kitchen, trust me.”

“Shawn didn’t want them on here in the first place.”

“Shawn thought he was doing me a favor.”