Riot (Page 68)

All of the sound gets sucked out of the room. Three sets of eyes lock on her and three jaws drop open. She glances at each of us, as if just realizing that she said it out loud, and gives an embarrassed smile.

“You slept with Shawn?” Rowan asks, and the apples of Kit’s cheeks redden.

“Not recently . . . It was a long time ago. When we were in high school.”

Rowan shares a look with me. She’s gone to a few of the band’s practices with Kit, and she’s told me how weird Shawn acts around her, but I know Rowan’s loyalty is to Shawn over Kit, so she chooses her words carefully. “Has he brought it up?”

Kit shakes her head. “He doesn’t remember.”

“Are you sure about that?” I ask. The girl code in me wants to tell Kit I think she’s wrong, based on what he said about her at her audition, but just like Rowan, I’ve been friends with Shawn for a lot longer.

“Why, has he said something?” she asks, and I can hear the dusting of hopefulness clinging to the edges of her voice.

I shake my head. “No, but . . .” I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. I don’t want to give her false hope, but I recognize something in her that I see in myself every time I look in the mirror anymore. A quiet longing for something lost. “But I think you’d be hard to forget.”

She gives me a smile that seems bigger than it should be, like she’s fighting to keep it on her face. “I didn’t look the same in high school. I was way more of a tomboy—T-shirts and flannels, less makeup, no tattoos or piercings, glasses.”

“Hot enough to sleep with,” Leti offers, and Kit gives another forced smile.

“Why don’t you say something to him?” I ask, watching as her smile grows both warmer and colder. It’s a troublemaker smile, the smile of a girl who grew up with four older brothers and knows how to take care of herself.

“It’s fun playing with him. I’ll tell him eventually . . . maybe.”

I chuckle, and Leti pouts. “Well, it’s official. I’m the only one here who hasn’t slept with someone in the band. Shawn, Adam, J . . .” He trails off on the ‘J’ sound, and we all know why. Shame colors his face, and his apologetic eyes swing to meet mine. “Shit.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” I say, taking one more purple swipe over his pinky before twisting the nail polish shut. “It looks like Rowan is the only one who got a happy ending out of it.”

When I sit back, she frowns at me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to invite him tomorrow?”

“In what world would that turn out okay?”

“What happened between you two?” Kit asks, and Leti subtly shakes his head, freezing when I catch him doing it.

“A lot,” I answer, and when she continues waiting, I add, “Too much.”

“Were you in love?”

The answer is that we were. The answer is that I still am. I love him, and I hate that, and if I could shut it off, I would. Part of me wants him to be happy, in his own place with his new life, but the other part of me hopes that he can’t sleep, can’t eat, and never gives his heart to anyone else. I hope that when the next girl tells him she loves him, he tells her to go home. “Who wants another margarita?”

That night, after I’ve drank enough to forget about Joel and everyone else has drank enough to stop bringing him up, Leti and Rowan both wrap me in a cocoon of arms. They do it as a joke, and we all giggle, but no one pulls their arms away, and eventually we fall asleep like that. In less than thirty-six hours, I’ll be moving home, and next semester, Leti will be graduating. The cocoon is precious, a memory not yet a memory, and we hold on to the night for as long as we can.

In the morning, I wiggle out of my tight spot between them still feeling more like a caterpillar than a butterfly. I crawl over an unsteady mountain of pillows, slip through the exit of our fortress, and find Kit groaning in the kitchen.

“I can’t believe we packed away your coffeemaker,” she says, her layered black-and-blue hair wild and untamed. Her lashes are so thick and dark that they frame her eyes even without eyeliner or mascara, and I hate her just a little for it.

“Let’s wake up Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming so we can go to IHOP,” I say.

I’m walking back toward the fort when Kit replies, “I love their pancakes.” My mouth tips up at the corners, and I know with absolute certainty that we found the right girl for the band.

After pancakes, Adam, Shawn, and Mike show up at my apartment with the moving van and start loading my stuff into the back—my bed, my dressers, my boxes and boxes and boxes of shoes. Not all of this stuff is going to fit into my room at my dad’s, and I wonder if maybe I should get my own apartment back home. Maybe a roommate. Hopefully not a weird one like I had at the dorms. If I can find the band a kickass guitarist, I should definitely be able to find myself a not-weird roommate, right?

Considering Rowan will still be here, over three hundred miles away, I can’t imagine liking anyone I’d be living with. She could be the most amazing person in the world and she’d still feel counterfeit—I’d always hate her for not being Rowan.

“What’s wrong?” Rowan asks as we watch Mike and Shawn carry my dresser into the van. Leti and Kit are taking a break on the grass, and Adam is sitting in a basket chair waiting to be loaded, smoking a cigarette and looking downright cozy.

“Nothing.”