Chapter Eleven
“I’M JUST SAYING we should look at the evidence,” Rowan says as I toss clothes from my suitcase in a tornado of not-skirts and not-dresses. There’s a festival’s worth of rock stars outside—including one in particular who seems dead set on not noticing how hot I still am—and I’m stuck on the bus with a consignment shop wardrobe and a fashion-challenged best friend.
“I’m never going to forgive you,” I complain, cursing myself for letting her pack for me.
Ignoring me as if I said nothing at all, she begins counting on her fingers. “One, Joel got you these tickets.”
“I mean, what the hell is this?” I hold up an oversized T-shirt that looks like it could swallow me whole. “Do I look like I weigh five hundred pounds?”
“Two, he fixed your door.”
“And this!” I present a pair of ridiculously long shorts. “Even if I was a forty-year-old mother of five, I still wouldn’t be caught dead in these.”
“Three, he spent all day following you around.”
“I should just go to this party naked,” I grumble.
“Four, he ignored every other girl who tried to get his attention—”
“ROWAN,” I interrupt, huffing and turning on my haunches to scowl at her, “do you know what all that evidence says? He wants to be friends.”
Not even two hours ago, I was lying on my back beside him, and instead of crawling over top of me or even just kissing me like he wouldn’t have been able to resist doing a few weeks ago, he insisted on talking about dancing. And drawing. And anything except why he’s no longer interested in me, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the only thing that really needs to be talked about.
Rowan lifts her eyebrow at me. “Do you remember when I thought Adam just wanted to be friends, and you told me I was an idiot?”
I turn my attention back to the suitcase, taking my frustration out on clothes that get thrown across the room.
“I hate to tell you this,” she continues, “but you’re an idiot.”
“He hasn’t even tried to kiss me at all this week,” I growl, standing up and dumping the suitcase on the bed. An avalanche of clothes tumbles from the mountain I create, none of them the kind I’m looking for. “We hang out, we have fun. He says he cares about me, but all he ever wants to do is talk. He doesn’t even want to have sex with me anymore!”
I’m so frustrated by what happened at the tree, I could scream, but I’m trying to put a cap on my crazy. I’m not going to try to make him jealous. I’m not going to beg. If he wants to be friends, I’ll be his friend.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t look hot doing it. He should be fully aware of what he’s missing.
“Maybe he wants more than sex,” Rowan counters, and I give her a look that says, Are you freaking kidding me?
“Dee, I live with Joel, okay? I’m his friend, and trust me, he’d never carry my stuff around for me all day or let me drink the last of his water.”
“It’s different when you go from being fuck-friends to just-friends,” I reason. Yes, Joel was sweet today. No, it doesn’t mean anything. “Maybe he thinks he has to do those things.” Or maybe he still feels like he owes me for what happened with Cody. One day, maybe he’ll consider us even and then we’ll be nothing at all.
Rowan sighs and flops flat on her back on the black-satin bed. I kick her foot and say, “I need scissors.”
“For what?”
“To murder you for convincing me to take your packing advice.” When she glares at me, I roll my eyes and say, “I need to go all fairy-godmother on one of these T-shirts.”
After she finds me a pair from downstairs, I spread one of my new band shirts flat on the bed and cut one of the sleeves off to make the shirt one-shouldered. Then I cut the other sleeve into a thin strap and tie the top of it into a cute knot. I continue cutting slits all the way down that side of the shirt, and then I cut a straight line through them and tie the ends of fabric together into more cute knots. With knots and peek-a-boo slits laddering the side of the shirt, I carefully pull the now fitted top over my head and ask Rowan how I look.
Even though she’s shaking her head, a smile sneaks onto her face. “You look like a freaking rock star.”