“Do you hear that?” he asks as he plucks the E string of my guitar. The sound carries on the breeze blowing my hair into my mouth, and Shawn smiles as I try to brush it away.
It’s been a few weeks since our first band practice, but the late May weather still hasn’t realized it’s almost summer, and even though the cold is demanding I crawl back through my window to put on socks and boots, I don’t listen. Instead, I curl my toes against the roof and tell Shawn, “Still flat.”
The icy shingles pressed against the bottoms of my feet help keep me grounded, reminding me that I’m not in a dream, reminding me that I called Shawn and he called me back—six years late, but he called. And now he’s sitting next to me outside my bedroom window, looking perfectly comfortable with my guitar on his lap.
He tightens the string and plucks it again. “What about now?”
“Perfect,” I say with an easy smile. I crisscross my legs and tug my frozen feet into my lap, wrapping my hands around my icicle toes to warm them. “Who taught you to play?”
“Adam and I taught ourselves,” Shawn answers, a nostalgic smile curling the corners of his mouth as he places my guitar back in its case. He flips the locks and settles back against the roof, his strong arms holding himself up and his long legs stretched out in front of him.
It would be so easy to crawl on top of him—to straddle those beaten-up jeans of his and taste the breeze on his lips.
I force my eyes back up to his. “How long have you been friends?”
“First grade,” he says with a little chuckle I can’t help smiling at.
“What?”
“I dared him to try to walk on top of the monkey bars, and he got all the way to the last one before a teacher caught him and gave us both detention for the whole week.”
“So you’re the bad influence,” I tease, and the pride in Shawn’s grin confirms it.
“He dared me to try it as soon as our detention was up and we were allowed to go outside for recess.”
“Did you do it?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Nope. I told him I didn’t want to get more detention, and when he tried to convince me I wouldn’t get caught, I dared him to do it again himself.”
Almost twenty years, and those two haven’t changed at all. “Did he get caught?”
Shawn nods proudly. “We got two more weeks of detention, plus they called our moms.”
When I laugh, he laughs too. “I’m surprised your moms let you be friends,” I say.
“We were already brothers by then. It would have been too late.”
I don’t know why that makes me want to kiss him, but it does—just like every other damn thing he ever says. And just like every other night I’ve found myself alone with him, I bite the inside of my lip and try not to think about it. “So why guitar?”
“Adam’s mom bought him one for Christmas, and I played around with it until he decided he wanted to learn too.” Shawn’s smile brightens as he travels back in time. “I think he only wanted to learn for the girls, but after a while, he started writing lyrics and singing them. And I guess the rest is history.”
“What about you?” I ask, and he tilts his head to the side. “Adam wanted to learn for the girls, but what about you?”
He rakes a hand through his hair and says, “It’s going to sound stupid.”
“Tell me.”
“It just felt right,” he explains after a moment. “It came naturally . . . I never wanted to sleep or eat.”
“Or go to school or bathe,” I add, because I know exactly what he’s talking about.
“Or do anything but play that guitar,” he agrees. “I just wanted to keep getting better. I wanted to be the best.”
“You still do.”
He considers that for a moment, and a smile sneaks onto his face—one of his rare ones, the kind that makes his eyes shine a whole shade brighter, the kind that makes me wonder how my feet can be so cold when the rest of me is burning hot.
“So do you,” he says, and when I say nothing back—because my tongue is tied and my heart is in knots—he asks, “Are you nervous about performing at Mayhem this Saturday?”
Our first show. Hell yes I’m nervous, but I’m too excited to feel anything but anxious. The new songs we’ve been working on are amazing—ridiculously freaking amazing. Working with Shawn has been like . . . like working with a legend. Like creating the very piece of art I’ve been a fan of all my life.
“Are you kidding?” I ask. “I was born for this.”
With my pale knees poking through my shredded jeans and my wild black-and-blue hair jutting out of a clip, there’s no question that I look the part. My eyelashes are painted as black as my toenails, and my nose ring is glittering like a snowflake in the cold.