Chaos

“So?”

“I don’t need his favors. I’m just one of the guys.”

“Hmm,” Mike hums.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

I’m seriously going to punch him if he says “nothing” again, but he doesn’t get the chance because Joel emerges from the bathroom looking ragged, like he’s been scratching his fingers through his Mohawk until the spikes are jutting in every possible direction.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, wondering what the hell happened during his phone call to make him look as lost as he does.

“I miss Dee.”

Mike and I both start laughing. “You win,” I tell Joel, and his sandy blond eyebrows tug together. “You didn’t even last a day.”

He groans and collapses next to me, and I hand him what’s left of Mike’s beer. He sighs and finishes it off. “Where is everyone?”

A giggling from the back of the bus answers the question about Shawn, so the only name I bother saying out loud is Adam’s. “Adam is outside trying to crack his head open.”

“On the roof,” Mike agrees at the same time we all hear heavy footsteps above us. Three pairs of eyes turn to the ceiling as we listen to Adam’s footfall walk the length of the bus and then stop. There’s cheering from outside, and Joel stands up to leave.

“Let us know if he’s dead,” I call as he walks toward the door to the bus. His fading laughter is cut off by the door that closes behind him.

With it just being Mike and me again, I’m afraid he’s going to pick our conversation back up. It’s late, I’m tired, my high from the concert has worn off, and Shawn is doing God knows what with three ridiculously willing girls just two curtains away. The last thing I need to be doing is talking about it.

What I need is for Mike to go back there and get me another beer.

Instead, the closest curtain opens, and my head jerks in that direction. Groupie One and Groupie Two emerge, unsteady in their heels as they make their way down the aisle.

“Are you two leaving?” I ask with unrestrained surprise in my voice.

Groupie One presses her bare knees up against Mike’s leg. “Unless you want us to stay,” she suggests with her eyelashes batting down at him.

He holds up the empty beer bottle that somehow got passed back to him. “Can you toss this in the trash on your way out?”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t stop smiling, and when she and her friend begin leaving the bus without taking the beer bottle, I call after her, “What about your friend?” Three gold diggers came on this bus, but only two are leaving. It’s been a long night, but simple math says they’re forgetting someone.

Groupie One tosses her blonde hair over her shoulder and stops only long enough to giggle and answer, “We’re going to the other bus. Shawn said he was a one-girl kind of guy.”

I STAY PARKED on the benches long after the first two girls leave and the last one’s giggling behind the curtain dies down. Long after Mike ventures through it with his eyes covered to get to the TV in the back. Long after my eyelids start to droop and my head starts to roll forward.

I stand up, take a deep breath, and move to the heavy curtain separating me from the bunks, imagining what I’m going to see on the other side. Clothes on or off? Shawn on the top or bottom? Ugh, I should just sleep on the fucking bench.

Instead, I grit my teeth and yank the curtain back—to find Shawn lying fully clothed on top of his bedcovers, his long legs crossed at the ankles and a book on his lap. His reading glasses are low on his nose, his pillows are piled behind his head, and he definitely does not look like someone who just spent the past hour playing rock god with queen of the groupies.

My confused gaze travels from him to the bunk across from him—my bunk—which now holds said queen, also fully clothed. She’s passed out under my covers, drooling on my pillow, and when my gaze slowly swings back to Shawn, he’s smirking at me over the top of his book.

“What the hell is she doing in my bed?” I snap.

“You’re the one who invited her on here. What was I supposed to do, let her sleep in mine?”

I hear Mike laugh from back in the kitchen, but I ignore it and bark at Shawn. “You sleep with her and then put her nasty ass in my bed?”

The girl under my covers stirs and mumbles something in her sleep. Then she goes back to smearing lipstick all over her drool-coated cheeks.

“Who the hell said anything about sleeping with her?” Shawn asks, closing his book and uncrossing his ankles to sit up.

“Then what the hell have you been doing for the past hour?”

“Cleaning up the mess you made.”

“What about her?” I snap, pointing to the body attached to the widening puddle of drool on my pillow.

Shawn has the nerve to smirk at me. “Figured I’d leave some of the mess for you.”

He leans back, recrosses his ankles, reopens his book . . . and I stomp over to him and slam it closed. “No fucking way. Get her out of my bed.”

“Do it yourself.”

“SHAWN.”

“Yes?” he says sweetly, and my fingers itch to strangle him. Instead, I growl so loudly, Mike laughs from the kitchen again.

I turn to the girl and yank my covers off of her. She’s curled up with her glittery silver heels still on, and I poke her shoulder with the tip of my finger and then wipe it on my jeans. “Hey.”