Riot

And number two, have these two ever met me? Boys chase after ME, not the other way around.

“I don’t like him!” I protest.

Rowan and Leti share a look and speak at the same time. “She likes him.”

“I hate you bitches.”

I hop off of my stool and head toward the crowd. Mayhem is the biggest club in town, and tonight, The Last Ones to Know are opening for a band even bigger than they are, so mayhem is an understatement for the vibe on the floor. Before the bands take the stage, the club pulses with house music that makes the floors throb and the walls shiver. I have every intention of dancing my ass off until my brain overheats and shuts down from mind-numbing exhaustion.

“Aw, come on, Dee!” Rowan pleads before I get too far.

“Don’t be mad!” Leti adds.

I turn around and prop my hands on my hips. “Are you two coming or what?”

After four songs of me being the meat in a Rowan-and-Leti sandwich, the house music fades out and the roadies begin the sound check. The crowd splits in half—half surging toward the stage to get good spots, and half retreating to the bar to catch their breath and drown themselves in liquor. Rowan, Leti, and I join the latter half, grabbing the best seats at the bar and spinning around to face the stage.

Every time Adam is about to perform, Rowan gets antsy, her feet dancing and her fingers curling. She picks at the pretty pink polish I painted her nails in this morning, and I tell her to stop, but I’m pretty sure she’d self-combust if she ever actually listened to me.

Adam is the first to walk onstage, and the crowd goes insane. He’s followed by Shawn, the lead guitarist and backup vocalist. Then Cody, the annoying rhythm guitarist who had the nerve to ask me for my number; Mike, the adorable drummer who has grown on me these past couple months; and Joel, the bane of my existence.

His eyes rove over the front row, and I know what he’s looking at: eager faces and barely-covered boobs. Those girls are just eye shadow and tits on legs, which is just how Joel likes them. And now, with Adam making it widely known that he’s off the market, Joel and Shawn have their pick of the litter. Cody gets the leftovers, and Mike avoids them like the plague—which each of those girls probably has, along with a million other communicable diseases that health teachers lecture horny freshman about in high school.

“Let’s go backstage,” I tell Rowan, already hopping off my stool. I have one thing those girls don’t—a best friend with a permanent backstage pass I intend to use to my advantage.

“I thought you wanted to stay out here?” Rowan asks. Adam wanted to drag her backstage before he left to perform—since Rowan’s dirty-blonde hair, big blue eyes, and tight little figure aren’t exactly dick repellant, in any sense of the word—but I insisted I wanted to stay at the bar so we could drink.

“I did want to. Now I don’t.”

She and Leti follow me to the backstage door, where Rowan doesn’t even need to tell security her nickname to get them to let us in. Most of the guys know her as Peach, which Adam took to calling her back before he bothered learning girls’ names or remembering their faces. Now, she has him wrapped around her little finger.

“What?” she asks when she catches me studying her. Sure, she’s gorgeous, but so are lots of other girls who throw themselves at Adam. Something about her won him over . . . maybe her innocence. Maybe I should give it a try. Stop being so forward, wear flats more often, keep my mouth shut once in a while.

I laugh when I realize I can’t even imagine that. “Nothing.”

I lead Rowan and Leti past the side of the stage where Shawn stands, circling around the back to get to the side where Joel stands. My heels click against the stage stairs, and once we’re at the top, I pull my long chocolate hair over my shoulders, hike my skintight dress up a little higher, and freshen my lip gloss.

It’s hard not to scream like a groupie while I watch the guys command the stage, especially from this vantage point. The way Joel’s blond spikes shine deadly under the foggy blue glow of the spotlights above him. The way he doesn’t even need to look down at his guitar while he plucks the strings. The way his blue eyes periodically find mine and his mouth tips up at the corners. His presence on the stage is magnetic. It turns my blood to lava and makes it impossible to think. Part of me wants to play hard to get, but the other part of me knows all too well the rewards of letting him have me.

When Joel’s impossibly blue eyes capture mine and hold them long enough to make me melt under their heat, my skin flushes and I know I need to do something to put myself back in control. With a devilish smile, I say, “Ro, you might want to close your eyes for this.”

Without lifting my dress up, I wiggle out of my lacy black thong and dangle it from a manicured pointer finger. Joel’s hands are busy playing his guitar, but his eyes remain fixed on me, and when I toss my panties at him, he snatches them out of the air. He finishes the song with them dangling from his wrist, and then he stuffs them in his back pocket, giving me a wink that would make any other girl weak in her knees.

“I can’t believe you just did that!” Leti shouts over the music.

“I can!” Rowan shouts back, making me laugh.

“I’m heading back to the bar,” I tell them, and Rowan questions me with a look.

“Why?”

The truth is, I want to see if he’ll come after me. And if he doesn’t, I need to have enough distance to pretend that I don’t care.