The week before I started taking classes at the Ivy Tech community college, my parents came with me to the bookstore. Since neither of them had ever gone to college before me, none of us had any clue what we were doing or how to shop for textbooks, but we figured between the three of us and my seven-year-old brother, we could probably figure it out. We talked to a nice employee who helped show us how to find used books for each of my classes, and she assured me I’d be able to sell them back at the end of the year. With all of my books successfully piled in my dad’s arms, my whole family was buzzing with excitement over the fact that I was starting college—college!—next week, and I grabbed some folders, notebooks, pencils, and a pretty green Ivy Tech hoodie to throw in front of the checkout register as well. A face-splitting smile stretched onto my face as the nice employee checked us out, and it stayed there right up until my father’s credit card was declined, and then declined again.
Outside the bookstore, with all of my textbooks and school supplies abandoned inside, I tried not to cry. State grants had covered most of my tuition, and my dad had assured me we could afford the rest, but apparently that wasn’t true. He called the credit card company, who told us our balance, and I begged my mom to wait with my brother outside while my dad and I went back inside to figure out exactly what we could afford. I put the folders back, I put the notebooks back, I put the pencils back, and finally, I hung my hoodie back up on the rack.
I told myself that I had my textbooks and that that was all that mattered—I could make do with my high school folders and notebooks and pencils, and I did. But that still didn’t stop me from bursting into tears when I opened up my first present that following Christmas morning to find the hoodie I had hung back up on the rack. My parents went back to buy it as soon as they could afford to, and even though it’s now five years old and its green color is a little less green, it still means the world to me.
“You forgot it on the bus,” Rowan says as I hug the soft material against my face, emotion catching in my throat.
“I know,” I say as I breathe in the fresh-washed scent. I spread the hoodie out on the table, adding, “In the sink. Shawn tried to help me clean it, but . . .” I trail off as I flip the right sleeve over and over and over. My eyebrows knit together, and I start doing the same to the left sleeve. “Where’s the stain?”
“What stain?”
“The one on the sleeve,” I say, continuing to flip and flip and flip. “It was right here. It was like . . . mud and oil, or something. We couldn’t get it out. It—”
“Mike must have done it,” Dee interrupts, and my eyes search hers for answers, but Rowan is the one to offer them.
“Mike gave me that to give to you,” she says with a soft smile. “I’m just the messenger.”
My head spins with the knowledge that Mike—Mike, rock star, gamer, my cousin’s boyfriend—got the stain out for me. The stain on my favorite hoodie that meant more to me than he could ever possibly know. The stain Danica put there.
“You should call and thank him,” Dee advises, standing up while Rowan packs up her backpack.
“I don’t have his number . . .” I say, sounding as confused as I feel. But Dee just grins and hands my phone over.
“Sure you do. Like I said”—she leans in and whispers—“necessary numbers. You owe me a story.”
Chapter 6
In my room, in my hoodie, with one hand fidgeting with my phone and the other pinching my bottom lip into a weird, squishy U, I’m a cliché. I’m every nervous teenage girl calling a boy in every straight-to-DVD coming-of-age movie ever. Which doesn’t make any damn sense, considering that Mike is just some guy I played video games with one night. Just some rock star I watched perform in front of an entire club full of screaming fans. Just some dude who went through the effort to get an impossible stain out of my favorite hoodie that I never thought I’d see again ever.
I tap my phone against my forehead.
He’s Danica’s boyfriend, for God’s sake. I’m just calling to say thank you. This isn’t a big deal. This isn’t even a small deal. This is no deal.
Resigned, I pull my phone away from my forehead and go into my contacts. Only there’s nothing under Mike.
Nothing under Madden.
I’m scrolling, scrolling, thinking about forgetting the whole thing, scrolling some more—and then there it is. Under S.
I shake my head and hover my thumb over “Sexy as Fuck Drummer,” imagining that Dee’s entire phone is programmed this way. Rowan is probably under “Best Bitch” and I’m probably under “That Awkward Girl Who Smells Like Wet Dogs.”
I groan and press my thumb against Mike’s number before I can chicken out, swallowing hard and holding the phone to my ear.
Please don’t pick up, please don’t pick up, please don’t pick up— “Hello?”
Mike’s smooth voice makes my eyes shut tight. “Hey. Um, is this Mike?”
“Who’s asking?”
Is it too late to say wrong number? It’s probably too late to say wrong number. . . . right?
“This is Danica’s cousin. We met last Saturday?”
“Hailey?” he says, and my heart stumbles at the sound of my own name. “Hey, I was just thinking about you.”
My lip gets clamped tightly between my fingers again before I ask, “You were?”
Why is Danica’s boyfriend thinking about me? Why is Danica’s boyfriend thinking about me?!
“Yeah. Kyle the PussySlayer asked about you.”
The laughter that bursts out of me is probably louder than it should be, the product of unfounded nervousness and a long, wet day. “Did you tell him I was busy sleeping with his mom?”
“Better,” Mike promises, and I hear the grin in his voice. I collapse back against my mattress, feeling the tension escape my body as my smile shines up at the pale green stars on my ceiling. “I told him that you were so good, they recruited you to beta test Deadzone Six.”
“There’s a Deadzone Six already?” I ask, and Mike laughs.
“Nope.”
My soft chuckle rasps against the phone. “But he believed you?”
“Yep. You should’ve heard him freak out. You know that scream he does—”
“The one that sounds like a meerkat with its nuts in a clamp?”
Mike barks out a laugh before I hear him half choking on his end of the line. “You made me spit out my beer!”
My cheeks ache from smiling so wide, and I poke at one with my fingers. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says, but it doesn’t matter, because I wasn’t anyway. “Hey,” he asks after neither of us says anything for a while, “how’d you get my number?”
I stop poking at my cheek. “Dee gave it to me. I hope that’s okay. Rowan gave me back my hoodie today, and I just wanted to say thanks.”
“I’m glad you got it. That stuff you got on the sleeve was hard as hell to get out.”
I’m holding the edge of the sleeve against my nose, breathing in the freshly laundered scent and forcing myself not to correct Mike. I want to tell him that his girlfriend was the one who got the stain on the sleeve, not me, but instead I simply ask, “How’d you manage it?”
“I called my mom,” Mike says with a little laugh, and a warmth pools beneath my cheeks.
“You called your mom?”
“She worked as a housekeeper for a few years when I was a kid. I figured she might know how. I called Shawn first, but he said he already tried, so—”
“Mike . . .” I interrupt, overwhelmed by his kindness. “You didn’t have to go through all that trouble.”
“It’s nothing—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“No.” I stretch my arm above my head and admire my rescued hoodie. It almost looks newer than it did when I first got it. “It’s something.”
“Well,” he says, his voice softening, “you’re welcome then.”