“We already finished,” I insist, but she just holds up her hand, smiles, and closes the door between us.
Abandoned alone in the living room with Shawn again, I take a minute before turning around. What the hell am I supposed to do now? Shawn and I have nothing to do, nothing to say, and Rowan literally shut us in here together and smiled while doing it. I take a deep breath and finally turn to face Shawn. “How mad would she be if I left before she got back?”
He scratches a hand through his hair, his vintage band T-shirt pulling taut over his chest. “Why do you need to leave?”
“I don’t . . . ”
“Then stay.”
I should run. I should tell him no, and I should run far, far away. I shouldn’t look back.
I shouldn’t be here flirting with him, staring at his hands and his eyes and his lips. I should remember the way he made me feel when he said he’d call and then never did.
But my brain is having trouble remembering any of those things, so instead, I reluctantly sit back down on the couch. I take a long sip of my beer. I stare at Shawn’s guitar. I take another sip of beer.
When I finish one, he offers me another, and the first conversation starts awkwardly but continues easily. Shawn and I talk about guitars and equipment. We talk about our favorite bands, the best shows we’ve ever been to, crazy shit we’ve done at concerts. Two more beers, and I can’t stop laughing.
“And then Adam just showed back up with no pants,” Shawn says through his laughter, “and I was so fucking drunk, I fell over from laughing so hard and busted my damn lip open.”
Giggling like crazy, I wipe away my tears. “That’s nothing. When I was eighteen, I went to see The Used, and Bert had the crowd do a wall of death—”
“Oh no,” Shawn says even before I can finish.
I nod and hold out my left arm. “I broke my arm in three freaking places.”
Shawn nearly coughs out his beer. “You seriously broke your arm?”
“My band had to cancel shows for two entire months,” I explain, bending my elbow while remembering how much it sucked to be stuck in a cast. Shawn grins at me, and I laugh before adding, “My brothers freaked the hell out, so I had to make up some bullshit lie about slipping on a patch of ice—in August.”
They had correctly assumed I broke it by doing something stupid—like slamming arm-first into a thoroughly inebriated Incredible Hulk—but I scrambled to say whatever it took to keep them from volunteering Mason to move in with me in my dorm.
“Why?” Shawn asks, and when I take another swig of my beer and lift my eyebrow, he clarifies, “Why’d you have to lie about it?”
I swallow the amber liquid down my throat and shrug. “Do you remember my brothers? Bryce was in your grade, Mason was two above you, and Ryan was one above him.”
Shawn circles his thumb over the lip of his beer bottle. “Sort of. Don’t you also have another brother?”
“Who, Kale?” I ask with more than a little surprise in my voice. He can remember Kale, but not me? “Yeah . . . ” I answer, trying not to let it bother me. The numbness taking root in the tips of my fingers helps. “We’re twins.”
When Shawn says nothing else, I finish, “Anyway, they’re all just kind of . . . protective. Overprotective.”
“What would’ve happened if you told them the truth?”
I’m guessing I’d still have Mason as a babysitter to this day, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in a big family, it’s don’t bring shit up unless you want to spend the rest of your life talking about it.
“Who knows?” I answer as the front door of the apartment swings open and Adam carries Rowan in on his back. She’s balancing a pizza box on his head with a slice already hanging from her mouth, and I watch them even though my face is still turned toward Shawn. “I’m used to lying. It’s easier than fighting with them.”
The entire couch stirs when Adam drops Rowan onto the cushion next to me.
“Fighting with who?” she asks.
“My brothers,” I answer while Adam flips open the pizza box and both boys grab a slice. “I was just telling Shawn they can be kind of overprotective.”
Rowan chuckles and finishes swallowing a bite of pizza. “What do they think of you being in a band with these guys?”
She points a thumb at Adam and a pointer finger at Shawn, and I just sit there, eyes stuck open, mouth clamped shut.
Rowan narrows her eyes. “They do know you’re in a band with them, right?”
“Yeah,” I lie to the sweet blonde girl in front of me. “Of course.” I grab a slice of pizza to buy myself some chewing time, but it does nothing to distract Rowan.
“And they’re cool with it?”