Chaos

Clothes and all, it’s perfect, and we eventually settle with our backs against the brick wall of the hotel, our shoulders touching and my arms wrapped loosely around my knees. The view really is gorgeous up here, but a poor substitute for Shawn’s green eyes. I can’t stop myself from stealing glances at them, and each time he catches me and smiles, I have to look away to keep myself from giggling like the girly girl I’m not.

“I’m going to ask you to do something,” he says after a while, “and it’s going to be weird. But don’t laugh, okay?”

He makes it sound so ominous, I prepare myself for the worst. A guy I dated in college asked me to refer to him as “Daddy” once while we were making out, and I laughed so hard as I walked out of his life, I’m pretty sure I never gave him an answer.

My voice is nervous when I answer Shawn. “O . . . kay . . . ”

He spreads his knees and pats the ground between them. “Can you sit here? And . . . let me hold you?”

Butterflies swarm out from my heart, through my veins, and into my stomach. They’re fluttering wildly, their wings forcing goose bumps to the surface of my skin, as he waits for my answer. The nervousness in me wants to stall by asking him why, by ruining the moment, but instead, I swallow thickly and push that reaction down deep. I crawl between his knees, settle with my back against his chest, and swoon when he wraps his strong arms around me.

“Are you comfortable?”

I can’t help it this time—I giggle quietly—and when he asks me what I’m laughing about, I say, “You act like you’ve never been with a girl before.”

“Never like this. Not with a girl like you.”

If only he knew—that he was with me once, years ago, far more intimately than this. On a night like this, at a party like the one we just left, before he let me walk away. Before he forgot my name, my face, our story.

I try to push the memory away, but it’s hard when his arms are finally wrapped around me and only one of us remembers the first time our eyes met, the first time our lips touched.

My very first time ever.

“I used to have a crush on you in high school, you know,” I confess. I know he doesn’t remember, but I can’t stop myself from hurting, or hoping. My heart reaches for his in the dark, trying to make him remember.

“Did you?”

I let out a little sigh when my heart comes back empty, and he rubs his thumbs over my arms. “Yeah,” I say.

Shawn starts playing with my fingertips, his hard-earned calluses rubbing against mine. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t a good guy in high school.” When I lift my chin to gaze up at him, he brushes my hair away from my forehead and tucks it behind my ear. His T-shirt is soft against my cheek, his voice even softer when he says, “A guy like me wouldn’t have been good for you in high school.”

I want to argue with him, but I don’t know that I can. And anyway, what would be the point? I turn back around, settle against his chest, and let him tighten his arms around me. “What makes you good for me now?”

“Probably nothing. But I want you anyway.”

Part of me sighs in contentment while the other part wants to ask for how long. For the rest of this tour? For until he gets bored? For tonight? For forever?

“You don’t really know me,” I say, but Shawn’s response is quick.

“I know you talk in your sleep.”

I push off his chest and shift to look at him. “I do not.”

“Yes, you do,” he says with a playful smirk. “Last night, you kept saying, ‘Oh, Shawn, oh, you’re so hot, I want you so bad—’ ”

My jaw drops in a gasp. “You’re so full of shit!” When he starts laughing, I smack at him until he wraps me in his arms and tugs me back against his chest. I laugh along with him, delighting in the way his body shakes against my back, until I’m smiling out over the roof again.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he asks of me after a while, and I can hear him smiling too—it’s shining through his voice.

“I like ketchup in my macaroni sometimes.”

His thumbs stop tracing over my arms when I say the first thing that pops into my head, and the night is silent when he says, “Damn. That changes everything. I think you should go back inside.”

I laugh, and his thumbs start up again, keeping me still in his arms.

The smile is still in his voice when he says, “Tell me something else.”

“It’s your turn,” I argue.

“What do you want to know?”

“Have you ever been to a party like that?”

“Like that?” With my head nestled in the crook of his shoulder, he says, “Nah. I’ve been to some crazy parties, but none like that.”

“If you’d sign with Victoria’s dad, you could have them every night.”

“Why would I want to?”

I spin around and face him, bending my knees over his thighs. “Isn’t that the dream?”

He rests his hands on the worn knees of my jeans, twining his fingers into the threads. “You mean having someone else tell us what to do?” When I wait for him to elaborate, he says, “It’s not worth it. I never want someone telling me what to write or what not to write or how fast we have to put stuff out there. Cutting the Line is good, but compare them now to how they sounded five years ago.”