I don’t like Shawn. I don’t need Shawn. I don’t want Shawn.
“Yeah, Shawn, drink with us,” Groupie Number Three says, positioning herself in front of him and lifting her lipstick-stained glass to his face. Her red hair is a silken waterfall tumbling over her shoulders, and I have to look away.
I’m driving a knife farther into my own heart—because I need him to know it.
I don’t like him. I don’t need him. I don’t want him.
I don’t love him.
I need myself to know it too—to believe it—but when the girl giggles, I can’t help it . . . I listen, I watch, and I hurt.
I watch as Shawn’s hand covers hers, as he lowers the glass she’s holding, and as he leans in to whisper something in her ear. She giggles again, and he grins before turning those green eyes on me. “Sure, Kit, pour me one.”
He turns on a charm I’ve always wished he’d direct at me, using that voice and those smiles that I’ve always wished I could claim for myself. He hijacks the tequila bottle from my hands and pours the girls drink after drink after drink while I stand by pretending not to care—even though I can’t help noticing that Groupie One’s breasts are bigger than mine, that Groupie Two’s lips are fuller than mine, that Groupie Three’s legs are longer than mine.
I stay until I can’t take it anymore—until their hair-flipping makes me want to claw my eyes out and their giggling makes me want to gouge my eardrums out. Shawn is too busy being fawned over to even notice me go, so I sulk my way down the long aisle of the bus, closing curtains behind me until I’m plopping down on a bench next to Mike. Joel is still holed up in the bathroom; Shawn is back in the kitchen with Big Boobs, Perfect Lips, and Long Legs; and Adam . . .
“Where’s Adam?” I ask. Mike hands me a half-finished beer I desperately need, and I gladly accept it. “Thanks.”
“He said something about seeing if he could get on the roof, and then he was gone,” Mike says.
“What about Driver?”
“Probably went to the other bus to take bets on Adam falling and cracking his head open,” Mike says dismissively. I chuckle until he says, “Any reason for your sudden love of groupies?”
“Who doesn’t love groupies?”
It doesn’t escape me that I’m asking the only guy in the world who doesn’t love groupies. Mike isn’t in the band for the girls or the fame. He’s in it because he loves the drums—and because the guys are his family, and he’s theirs.
“Tonight?” he says by way of answer, his eyes big, brown, and sincere. “Shawn.”
I grunt and take another sip of his beer, staring longingly toward the first closed curtain separating me from the kitchen, because I could really use a stronger drink but would rather swallow broken glass than go back there. “Shawn was enjoying himself in the kitchen, trust me.”
“Shawn didn’t want them on here in the first place.”
“Shawn thought he was doing me a favor.”
“So?”
“I don’t need his favors. I’m just one of the guys.”
“Hmm,” Mike hums.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
I’m seriously going to punch him if he says “nothing” again, but he doesn’t get the chance because Joel emerges from the bathroom looking ragged, like he’s been scratching his fingers through his Mohawk until the spikes are jutting in every possible direction.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, wondering what the hell happened during his phone call to make him look as lost as he does.
“I miss Dee.”
Mike and I both start laughing. “You win,” I tell Joel, and his sandy blond eyebrows tug together. “You didn’t even last a day.”
He groans and collapses next to me, and I hand him what’s left of Mike’s beer. He sighs and finishes it off. “Where is everyone?”
A giggling from the back of the bus answers the question about Shawn, so the only name I bother saying out loud is Adam’s. “Adam is outside trying to crack his head open.”
“On the roof,” Mike agrees at the same time we all hear heavy footsteps above us. Three pairs of eyes turn to the ceiling as we listen to Adam’s footfall walk the length of the bus and then stop. There’s cheering from outside, and Joel stands up to leave.
“Let us know if he’s dead,” I call as he walks toward the door to the bus. His fading laughter is cut off by the door that closes behind him.
With it just being Mike and me again, I’m afraid he’s going to pick our conversation back up. It’s late, I’m tired, my high from the concert has worn off, and Shawn is doing God knows what with three ridiculously willing girls just two curtains away. The last thing I need to be doing is talking about it.
What I need is for Mike to go back there and get me another beer.
Instead, the closest curtain opens, and my head jerks in that direction. Groupie One and Groupie Two emerge, unsteady in their heels as they make their way down the aisle.