His back is to us when I say, “You can?”
“I got the same degree you said you were going to school for. So yeah.” He turns around and blows smoke out of the side of his mouth so that it doesn’t drift inside. “And Shawn can help you practice. Which we can do at our place.”
Our place? He told me earlier that he and Shawn are roomies, so . . . Shawn’s place?
My voice almost squeaks when I say, “Your place?”
“Yeah,” Adam answers, oblivious to the frantic beats my heart is skipping. He looks around the room at Joel, at Mike, at Shawn. “Who’s coming?”
THE ENTIRE WAY to Adam and Shawn’s apartment, it’s easier to pretend I’m just on a casual drive. Just driving for no reason to no place in particular—definitely not to Shawn Scarlett’s apartment six years after I let him inside me and never heard from him again.
The drive is too short, the parking lot is too empty, and even though my legs feel like soggy noodles, they carry me from my Jeep way too quickly.
The sound of my boots echoes off the floor in the arched-ceilinged lobby of his apartment building, and the entire elevator ride up to the fourth floor, all I can think is, God, how many girls must Shawn have brought back here? What kinds of things has he done in this elevator? How many groupies since he decided I wasn’t special enough to remember?
When I enter apartment 4E, I almost expect to see panties hanging off of lampshades and a pile of naked girls passed out on the couch. Instead, I find Adam’s girlfriend, Rowan, doing homework at a breakfast bar with a half-empty mocha and a can of whipped cream on the counter in front of her.
The walls are a pale gray except for a spot where someone has written in bright blue marker, DON’T COLOR ON THE WALLS! Guitar stands with Fenders line one side of the living room, stretching all the way to a massive entertainment system that screams “rock star bachelor pad.”
“It needs to be tuned,” Shawn says when he catches me running my fingers across the head of one of his Telecasters. Thinline. Three-color sunburst. Stunning.
I pull my hand away.
“Sorry,” I say as he studies me. “I have one of these on my wish list . . . ”
“You have a wish list?”
“Like twenty guitars long,” I explain. “But I’d have to sell my right arm to afford most of them.” I wiggle my fingers in the air. “And then what would be the point?”
The look on Shawn’s face transforms into a wide smile, and I’m about to smile back at him, when kissy noises interrupt us from across the room. Adam has his arms wrapped around Rowan’s shoulders, and he’s smothering her with sloppy kisses while she laughs and wriggles all over her stool. She threatens to squirt him with whipped cream, he makes a sound that says he’d like that, and Shawn and I swap uncomfortable glances before moving to the couch and recliner at the far side of the room.
With Adam distracted, it’s just the two of us. Mike opted to stay back at his place, and Joel took off in a beater Oldsmobile as soon as we got back, which sentenced me to the most awkward non-date ever.
“Is he actually going to get any work done?” I ask just for the sake of saying something, and Shawn casts Adam another look before rolling his eyes at the kissy sounds coming from that side of the room.
“When he feels like it, maybe. It’d be faster if we just did it ourselves. If I play it, can you write it?”
I nod, and Shawn disappears into a room off the living room, leaving me with nothing to do except twiddle my thumbs and pretend not to hear the noises coming from the breakfast bar. If those two start going at it, I swear to God—
A gorgeous acoustic Fender exits Shawn’s room, and I forget all about everything that isn’t the beautiful black instrument in his hands. It’s vintage, and probably worth more than my Jeep, all smooth lines and polished wood.
“That guitar is beautiful,” I breathe, the awe in my voice making Shawn smile as he sits down and props it on his lap. My fingertips long to feel the hum of the strings, and I rub my hands over my knees to distract my anxious fingers.
“It’s a ’54. Bought it at a thrift store.”
That guitar belongs in a museum. Or in my lap. Not in a hand-me-down thrift store. “How good of friends would we have to be for you to let me play it?”
Shawn smirks as he tunes the strings. “I’ve never even let Adam play this guitar.”
Judging by the way Adam haphazardly swung his mic around during practice this morning, I’m guessing that’s been a good call. “What would I have to do for you? To get you to let me play it?”
There are moments in life—moments when your foot defies all rules of physics and manages to implant itself wholly and completely in your mouth. When Shawn looks at me like I just offered to put his dick in my mouth instead of my own foot—like he’s surprised I’d be so forward—I realize this is one of those moments.