Mayhem

I don’t bother answering because there’d be no point. Dee does what she wants, and right now, she wants a bad boy with a mohawk, a nipple ring, and more fame than he knows what to do with. Trying to stop her would be useless, and it’s not like I don’t have bigger things to worry about.

We’re seated in IHOP and have placed our orders when she clasps her fingers on the table and says, “Okay. Time to spill it.”

I sigh and rub my eyes, and then I lean forward and concentrate on a scuff mark on the plastic table. “Adam gave me my first—” I hold my fingers in the shape of an O, and Dee gasps, drawing my eyes back to hers.

“You had your first—OH MY GOD. Are you still a—”

“YES,” I interrupt, slouching in the seat and rubbing my temple. “I mean . . . I offered. I wanted to . . . But he turned me down.”

“Wait, so did he,” she turns her hand palm-up and wiggles her middle finger, and my face nearly melts right off, “or did he go,” her index finger points down and slowly lowers beneath the lip of the table.

“Both,” I answer, and her eyes widen with disbelief.

“And then he turned you down?”

Like it wasn’t mortifying enough that it happened, now I have to talk about it. With words. And eye contact. I sigh and let my head fall to the cushion behind me, preferring to stare at the weathered ceiling instead of the utter confusion in Dee’s eyes—like no guy would ever turn a girl down after doing that to her. Unless of course that guy is Adam and that girl is me.

“Yeah,” I say. Turned me down, broke my heart—whatever you want to call it.

Dee takes my hands and pulls me forward so that I have to look at her again. “Tell me everything.”

I stop chewing on the inside of my lip long enough to share in limited detail what happened between Adam and me last night, because I’m hoping she’ll have all the answers I don’t.

But she doesn’t.

“Were you really going to give it to him?” she asks about my virginity after our pancakes arrive, adding yet another question to a list that’s already impossibly long. But at least this one, I can answer.

“Yes.” I was going to give him everything, but he didn’t want it.

He told me I’d regret it.

My heart throbs painfully against the cage of my chest because I already regret it. I should have known Adam didn’t want me like I wanted him. I guess I should be happy he cared about me enough to be honest before we crossed that line instead of after.

Dee carves into her pancakes while I let mine grow cold, her brow furrowed while she tries to dissect everything I just said. “Okay, not one damn word of that makes any sense. Why would he turn you down after messing around with you like that?”

I have the answer, but that doesn’t make it any easier to say. Dee lifts her eyes to gaze across the table at me, and I suck in a quiet breath.

“Because I basically told him I loved him,” I admit. I almost said the words, and then my actions screamed it, and both of those told Adam the one thing he didn’t want to hear. He’s always treated me differently than he treats other girls, but then I had to go and act just like them. I had to fall for him just like they all do.

“Sweetie,” Dee says, the concern in her eyes forcing me to look away again, “you do love him.”

My forehead falls to the table, and I groan. I don’t know when it happened or how it happened, but the way my heart is aching makes it impossible to deny. The only thing holding me together right now is the hope that maybe I can fix this somehow before it’s too late.

My text ringtone dings loudly next to my ear, and I lift my head to see Adam’s face appear on my phone. His perfect smile pulls at the frayed strings of my heart, and I stare at the screen until Dee orders me to read it.

Why did you sneak out?

I rub my stinging eyes, hating that he knows that’s what I did. He doesn’t ask where I am, because I’m sure Joel told him, but he knows I’m avoiding him. Because we’re not going to be friends anymore and it’s all my fucking fault.

“Ro,” Dee says, her voice soft but insistent, “tell him how you feel. I’ve seen the way he is with you, babe. That’s not the way a guy treats a one-night stand. He doesn’t pick her when he has skanks throwing themselves at his feet, and he doesn’t hold her until she falls asleep every night. Adam likes you.”

I ignore her and type back, Sorry about last night. I know you don’t want a girlfriend. I didn’t mean to be one of those girls.

Dee and I fall into a nervous silence, staring at my phone until Adam’s next text rings through.

One of those girls?

I don’t wait for her to coach me this time. Instead, I answer honestly. The ones that want more from you.

When seconds without a response turn into minutes, I know I must have said the wrong thing, and I scramble to take it back. Friends?

But Adam never responds to that text either, and by the time we leave IHOP, I feel like the world ending would be less terrifying than going back to his apartment. I feel like I’m walking face-first into bad news when all I want to do is run from it.

“Well you’re going to get an answer one way or another later tonight,” Dee reminds me.

We’re supposed to go to Mayhem—Adam invited me back when the guys were touring—but after last night? I think I’d rather walk on the sun.

“I’m not feeling so well . . .”