“No, it’s not. I’m not the asshole that’s going to make a lady sleep on his couch.”

I snort at the idea of me being a lady. “So this is sexism,” I accuse with a scowl.

“Call it what you want,” Mike says, smirking as he steals a red heart from my bowl. “You’re still sleeping in my bed.”

I force myself to glare at him in spite of the warmth flooding my cheeks, but he continues smiling at me, and my heart skips rope behind my ribs. I ignore the double-dutch jumping and try to remain pragmatic—I want the couch, he wants the couch, but we both can’t sleep on the couch. And even if we could, that would be stupid.

“Look, we’re both grown adults,” I say before I can overthink what I’m about to suggest next. “If you’re really not going to let me sleep on the couch, we can share the bed.”

“Fine,” Mike immediately agrees.

“Fine,” I echo while my brain screams, OH MY FLIPPING GOD! Did you seriously just agree to sleep with Mike?! In his bed! Together?! Together!!! In his bed! What?! What the hell happened to staying on the wagon?!

“How are those Lucky Charms?” Mike asks, and my shell-shocked gaze drops down to my soggy oats. My mind is still screaming that I just made a huge mistake, that sleeping in his bed is only going to reignite my stupid sparks, that it’s wrong, that it’s going to make Danica hate me more than she already does, that she’ll never know, that I’ll know, that she’s my cousin, that she never deserved him, that he’s single now, that he’s a rock star, that he doesn’t like me as anything more than a friend, that none of this should matter, that I— “Hailey?” Mike asks.

“Huh?” I squeak.

“What’s on your mind?”

What should be on my mind is my education, my uncle, my tuition, my future. But the real answer is Mike’s bed, and I am most definitely never ever sharing that information with him. “Your music video,” I rattle, frantically changing the subject from beds to literally anything else. “Will you still let Danica be in it?”

“After she treated you like she did?” Mike all but growls. His fingers stop tapping against the neck of his beer, coiling tightly around it instead. “Not a chance in hell.”

I take a big gulp of Guinness to calm my nerves. It doesn’t go with Lucky Charms—not that any beer really could—but whatever, it’s beer. “Are you nervous?”

“About Danica?”

“About the video.” I crisscross my legs under me, thinking that the video seems a safe enough topic. No big bed, no angry Danica, no butterfly-winged sparks. “Have you ever made one before?”

“We made one in high school once,” Mike says. “But it was just a stupid kid thing. Nothing like this.”

“So? Are you nervous?”

“Nah. No one pays attention to the drummer.” He takes another sip and slides forward on the overstuffed couch so that he’s sitting on the edge. “All I have to do is sit in the background doing this.” He holds his beer with a curled pinky as he plays the lamest air drums ever, and I chuckle.

“Just this, huh?” I set my bottle on the coffee table to mock his movements, and his mouth stretches into a big grin. “Maybe I should be a drummer,” I tease. “This is easy.”

“You think so?” Amusement fills his voice as I strike an invisible cymbal.

“I mean, I don’t want to brag—” I let my toes drop to the floor so I can throw in some foot pedal work while I continue banging on my make-believe drum kit, “but I think I’m probably better than you.”

Mike watches me act like an idiot for a while, takes one last swig of his beer, and suddenly rises to his feet. My air drumming freezes as I sit motionless on the couch staring way, way up at him. “Come on then,” he says, holding a hand down for me.

“Come where?”

“My drums, Keith Moon. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

On a stool in front of a massive set of polished black drums, my palms sweat around two smooth drumsticks and my feet dangle off the floor. “You’re sure you want me to embarrass you like this?” I taunt with forced bravado, and Mike smiles wide at the challenge.

“I can’t wait.”

“But you’ll never be able to unsee this,” I bargain. “You’ll spend the rest of your life like, ‘Wow, what’s the point? I’ll never be as good of a drummer as Hailey Harper.’”

Mike laughs, his brown eyes glittering with anticipation, and I swallow hard. My grasp on the drumsticks tightens, and I wonder which drum to hit first. One of the big foot ones with The Last Ones to Know logos on them? One of the deep ones at my sides? One of the shallow drums in front of me? Dear God, there are so many drums.

I stare up at Mike, and the corner of his mouth kicks up. “Alright, Hailey Harper, how about a game of horse? All you have to do is match what I do, that way you don’t embarrass me too much.”

I thrust the drumsticks at him and slide off the stool like it’s about to catch fire. “Let’s do it,” I agree, thinking, How hard can it be to copy what he does?

Mike smiles as he takes the drumsticks, settling on the stool like I’d settle at a desk—like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The drumsticks look at home in his hands, and he looks at me with an easy smile on his face. “Are you ready?”