How Not to Date a Rock Star
Author: Janci Patterson; Megan Walker
Date: 2020-03-10 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Contemporary Romance
Description: I want him. But he's a rock star, and any kind of real relationship would be too risky, too bound to end in heartache. When Maya Parker's friends drag her to an Accidental Erotica concert, she's surprised to receive a backstage pass from famous punk rock star Kevin Collins. While her friends are eager to attend the after-party and hook up with the band members, Maya can't help but feel skeptical. Kevin is cute and all, but Maya isn't about to join the harem of Accidental Erotica groupies. At the party, Maya and Kevin hit it off and end up sitting and talking late into the night about everythin
Publisher: Independently published
Rights: Copyright 2020 The Real Sockwives of Utah Valley

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Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Acknowledgments

One

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

How Not to Date a Rock Star

Copyright © 2020 The Real Sockwives of Utah Valley

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Design by Melissa Williams Design

Drums and guitars: Agor2012 Adobe Stock

Lights: sergeyvasutin Adobe Stock

Published by Garden Ninja Books

ExtraSeriesBooks.com

First Edition: April 2020

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Keri Lockhart

Whose help was invaluable

One

Kevin

We’re playing a sold-out show in Denver, which is my favorite city to play. The three original members of my band are all from Wyoming, and Denver was our closest big city with a music scene, so this is where we got our start. Some of the fans here have been with us for years, and others only heard of us when we got big a couple years ago when “I’ll Take You Back” climbed to the top of the charts. But the energy is live and the audience is excited. No matter how many times we play shows like this, I can never get enough of it.

JT, our singer, looks over his shoulder at Shane, our bassist, and grins. He just got flashed by a couple girls in the front row, and I know what they’re thinking. They’re trying to decide if they’re going to invite those girls to the after-party. It’ll be invaded by groupies regardless, but sometimes Shane and JT like to handpick the girls they’ll hook up with out of the crowd. It’s not really my thing—something Shane still razzes me about, even though he ought to be used to it by now.

Shane shrugs. Either he hasn’t seen anything he likes, or he’s holding out in case he sees something better.

I shake my head at both of them. Lando, our drummer, starts up the next song, “Still Falling.” The crowd doesn’t know this one as well yet, because we just launched our second album, but when we hit the first verse and JT belts it into the microphone, I see a few people singing along. This song has a crazy-fast guitar riff, and I’m killing it. It’s one of my favorites, weirdly sad even though it’s one of our fastest and hardest songs, about continually falling for someone who’s long ago moved on.

Not that any of us would know. Neither JT or I have ever had a real relationship—JT because he’s way too into whatever girl has most recently flashed her tits at him, and me because while I’m in my element up here on the stage with all eyes on us, I’m far less comfortable if I’m expected to actually carry on a conversation. Both this album and our last were supposedly written about Shane’s high school girlfriend, Anna-Marie, but that’s a pile of crap. Shane staged the whole thing to get back at her for running off to LA and forgetting about him. Anna-Marie was my friend, too, and I’m ready for Shane to drop it already, but he writes all our lyrics, so it’s not like I really have a say in what our albums are about.

I’m not about to confront him on it, either.

We hit the bridge, which is where I really get to show off. Shane backs me up on the bass, and we both rock out. If our sorry high school asses could see us now, they’d be shitting bricks. We always said we were going to be rock stars, and here we are. It’s not without its problems, but it’s pretty awesome, all the same.

We finish the set. I’m sweating under the lights, and I step behind the drums and take a long drink from my water bottle while JT works the crowd. I swear he sounds like he’s going to lose his voice by the end of the night, but he never does. He’ll hit the after-party still shouting too much and too loud until Shane tells him to shut his mouth and JT yells back at Shane to shut his.

That’s the thing about playing with the same guys for more than a decade. Lando’s only been with us for six months, but from Shane and JT, there are never any surprises.

I think they’d probably say the same thing about me.

I return to my microphone and tune up for the next song. The girls in the front row have their shirts back on, though I don’t expect that to last, especially since word has gotten around about how exactly women get backstage invites at Accidental Erotica concerts. I saw a whole thread on a fan forum a while ago, which labeled me as the hardest to impress and postulated that maybe I’m not into white girls, a theory I’ve heard before.

I may be the least social member of the band, but that doesn’t have as much to do with me being black as with me being shy. A surprising number of stage musicians are, I’ve learned. There’s a big difference between performing and interacting. Not that I haven’t been with my share of groupies, even if my bedpost has significantly fewer notches on it than either Shane’s or JT’s.

And it’s not, as Shane frequently reminds me, like groupies actually require us to talk.

JT asks the crowd to give it up for my solo during that last song, and the audience goes nuts. I like to underplay my reaction to the crowd—a reviewer once wrote that I’m the perfect understated foil to JT’s manic energy, and I like that better than a lot of things I’ve been called over the years.

Lando starts the next song, and one of the girls in the front row strips her shirt completely off and throws it toward the stage. It’s caught before it reaches us by the girl sitting next to her—a black girl who’s dressed more straight-laced than most of our fans, and a hell of a lot less skankily than her friends. She throws her friend’s shirt back to her and sits down, shaking her head like she disapproves.

Her friend shrugs and then throws the shirt right back up on the stage, where it lands at Shane’s feet. Shane laughs.

This girl, though—the shirt catcher—crosses her arms and shakes her head and glares up at the stage like she can’t believe these shenanigans. I rarely see this much disapproval except from the protesters who sometimes picket our concerts, claiming that we promote “riotous living” and “free love,” which I’m pretty sure isn’t a term anyone cool has used in the last fifty years. This girl doesn’t appear to be one of those people, though. First, because she’s sitting in the front row instead of outside the venue, and second because she’s actually dancing a little to the beat of the song, though not as much as her friends. She looks over at her now-shirtless friend and says something, and they both laugh.

And then she glances up at me.

Damn, she’s gorgeous. She’s got more going on than anyone else in the audience, and that’s with her shirt buttoned all the way up. She’s got deep, dark eyes and a heart-shaped face, russet-brown skin and the kind of smile that’s effortless, even if it has to be earned.

She catches me staring at her—not difficult, since I’m up on stage under spotlights—and raises her eyebrow at me, like she’s not sure what I’m looking at.

I want to meet that girl, I realize. I want to know if she really is that difficult to impress, and if we’re managing it anyway. She’s still staring at me when I look back over at her, and this time I wink. There’s the glimmer of a smile on her face, like she likes what she sees but isn’t willing to admit it yet.

And that’s when I decide. During the next break between songs, I wave over one of the stage assistants, describe her—not hard, since she’s the black girl sitting next to the girl who’s lost her shirt—and scribble a note for them to take to her, inviting her backstage.

When I turn back to the band, Shane is smirking at me. “Nice,” he says.

He probably thinks I’ve invited the shirtless girl, who will no doubt come backstage too, since I sent enough passes for her friends.

Let him think that. It’ll keep him off my back for not indulging in all the perks of our rapidly growing success.

I just want to talk to this girl and see if she’s anything like I’m imagining. It’s possible her personality is intolerable, but if so, it’s not like I can’t slip out of the after-party and leave her to have fun with the rest of the band.

Wouldn’t be the first time—or the fiftieth.

Two

Maya

It’s my twenty-fourth birthday, and I’m at a concert for a band I’ve never heard before, squished uncomfortably in a huge screaming crowd with friends who are tossing off their shirts like it’s Mardi Gras.

Except I know it’s not beads they’re trying to get, but a backstage invite and a hookup with whatever members of Accidental Erotica’s attention they can catch. Which doesn’t seem all that out of character for Leigh, honestly, but I’m a little surprised at Miranda’s enthusiasm—she’s usually more picky with her hookups.

Though when she wants something, she goes all in. Which in this case apparently means sacrificing her perfectly good shirt, despite my best efforts to stop her.

“Oh my god,” Leigh shrieks from other side of Miranda. “I let you borrow that!”

Scratch that. Apparently it means sacrificing Leigh’s perfectly good shirt.

Miranda gives her that determined, take-no-prisoners look I’ve grown used to over fifteen years of friendship. “It’ll be worth it when we’re backstage,” she yells back over the loud crashing notes of the song.

“Wooo!” Leigh says in mildly intoxicated agreement, and both Miranda and I laugh. I knew I should’ve tried to stop her from drinking that third margarita at Chili’s, but I honestly thought that my birthday celebration meant dinner and an old-fashioned sleepover at Miranda’s apartment, complete with horror-movie marathon. When Miranda announced there was a surprise change of plans and brandished three tickets to an Accidental Erotica concert she’d won from a radio contest that morning (“Front row, ladies!”), I didn’t have the heart to deny them their chance at rock-star-banging glory. And it suddenly made sense why the both of them had dressed up like they were going clubbing instead of having margs at Chili’s.

“We don’t have to go,” Miranda said. “It’s your birthday. It’s not too late to sell these—the show’s sold out.”

“She’s right. We really don’t have to go, Maya,” Leigh said, but I hadn’t missed the inadvertent little whimper she’d made when Miranda mentioned selling them.

“But it could be fun to try something new,” Miranda said with a knowing look, waving the tickets back and forth. “Something . . . out of your comfort zone.”

Shit, I thought. Because I’d just told her last week that I was feeling a little stagnant.

So here we are. And this isn’t actually so bad. Even if I may not be able to hear for the next week. Even if I think the whole thing is ridiculous and demeaning. Miranda is a badass, powerhouse law student, and Leigh is a sweet, selfless environmental activist. Both are gorgeous, too—Leigh’s got this sort of adorable Irish-pixie look to her, pale and freckled, with chin-length bright red hair, and Miranda is half Korean and half white, tall and model-graceful. And I’m the cautious, protective one who thinks they both deserve way better than entitled rock stars who require some sort of boob-quality assessment before determining their hookup potential.

But I suppose it’s not like they’re looking for life partners here. And, truth is, the guys are pretty hot.

I flick a glance back over to the lead guitarist, the lone black guy in the band. He’s looking right at me, and when he smiles, I feel a flutter in my chest. I eye him back. There’s no denying how good-looking he is—he’s got broad shoulders, toned arms, sepia-brown skin and his hair cut in a short fade—but if he’s hoping I’m going to toss my shirt up there to join Miranda’s (well, Leigh’s), he’s going to be disappointed.

He does have an incredible smile, though.

Miranda’s long, dark hair nearly whips me in the face as she dances in place.

“So are you going shirtless for the rest of the night?” I yell to her.

“If that’s what it takes.” She grins at me again, bobbing up and down so her boobs bounce. Thank god she’s still got her bra on, practically see-through though it is. Not that she wasn’t lifting that up earlier, too.

“Does this really work? It’s not like they’ve never seen boobs before.”

“They’ve never seen mine!” Leigh says, beaming. Though that statement stopped being true about half an hour ago.

“Did you see Shane laugh when I tossed my shirt?” Miranda asks. “We get back there, he’s mine.” This last part she yells to Leigh, who sticks her tongue out at her.

“Which one is Shane?” I ask.

This garners me one wide-eyed gape of disbelief (Leigh) and one long-suffering head shake (Miranda).

“I told you I don’t know these guys!” I yell. “Is he that blond white guy or the other blond white guy?”

The band has just finished another song while I was speaking, and I’m glad the screams around us are instantaneous, preventing me from shouting that awkwardly into some beat of silence.

Leigh giggles, still a little tipsy, and Miranda points at the bassist, a tall guy in ripped jeans, and with shaggy hair I’m sure was inspired by an old picture of Kurt Cobain. “That blond white guy. Shane Beckstrom.”

Admittedly, he’s the cuter of those two. And I know I’ve heard that name before, and not just from Miranda or Leigh.

My eyes dart over to the guitarist again, but I can only see his backside—it looks like he’s talking to someone just off-stage while the singer (other blond white guy) yells into the microphone about how he “fucking loves Denver” and the audience screams like he just announced he discovered the cure for cancer.

I want to roll my eyes, but I find them pretty hardcore focused on the guitarist’s backside.

“Ahhhh,” Miranda says, following my line of sight. “I see who you like.”

“I don’t—” I start.

“Kevin’s my favorite too!” squeals Leigh, reaching past Miranda to grab my hand, like we’re united in the exclusive sisterhood of lusting after guitarists. “He’s so laid-back and sensitive and I heard he really cares about the environment—”

“Kevin’s hot, but give me bad boy Shane any day,” Miranda counters. “Or JT. He’s kind of bat-shit crazy, but I like it.” She points at the singer, clearly for my benefit.

Leigh shrugs and screams another “Wooo” at the stage. Kevin walks back out, the singer nods at the drummer, and they start up another song. Both my friends start dancing, and I can’t help but join along.

The music is kind of catchy, even if it’s not normally my thing.

Even if I can’t seem to take my eyes off of Kevin. I don’t know anything about guitar, but his fingers flit nimbly across the strings, and I wonder how long he’s been playing. He seems like he’s really good.

He glances over at me again, and I feel a flush down to my toes.

I nearly get whacked in the head by the girl jumping up and down behind me and screaming “I love you, Kevin!” So maybe he’s not actually looking at me.

Whatever. I’m just here to have fun with my friends.

We’re dancing, and I’m alternating between shaking my head and laughing at Miranda and Leigh’s antics, though I’m preparing myself to physically tackle Leigh if she decides to follow Miranda’s example and toss her own shirt on stage.

“Keep it on!” I yell to her. “You don’t even have a bra on underneath! You’ll be completely miserable taking a topless cab ride home.”

“Eh,” Leigh yells back. “It’s a concert. They sell t-shirts.”

“Still,” I say. It may have been an unseasonably warm day for October, but Denver gets cold at night regardless, which means they’re both going to be freezing. Maybe I should go out to the concession stand and buy a couple Accidental Erotica t-shirts for them, or maybe even hoodies, just in—

A stocky, bearded guy dressed all in black emerges through the squealing cadre of girls next to me. He holds out a few lanyards with what looks like tickets in them and hands them . . . to me.

“For backstage,” he yells over the music. “For you and your friends.”

“I—uh . . . What?” I ask. Because I know what these are, but why he gave them to me—

The guy doesn’t answer because he’s already turned and vanished back into the sea of screaming fans from whence he came. A few of whom are glaring at me like I personally sabotaged their chances to bone Accidental Erotica.

My friends, though . . .

“Oh my god! Oh my god!” Leigh screams, bouncing up and down, while Miranda just stares at the passes in my hand, open-mouthed.

“Holy shit,” she says. “Open the note! What does it say?”

I didn’t even notice there was a note until she said that, but I pull it out of one of the lanyards and open it. My body heats up.

Hope to see you at the party afterward, it reads.

And it’s signed: Kevin.

The concert is over, the band having come out for two full encores—seems excessive, but maybe that’s rock concert standard, I don’t know—and the crowd is filing out around us while we stand there like rocks in a vaguely pot-scented river. My ears are ringing from the sudden absence of music.

“You have to go,” Miranda says as I nervously fiddle with my lanyard. And Kevin’s note.

I chew on my lower lip. “I told you. You guys could go even if I don’t—you have the passes.”

“That’s not the point. Comfort zone, remember?” Miranda gives me a hard look. “You said it, not me.”

I’m not sure I said it with the level of surety she seems to remember, but she’s not wrong. “I’m not sure—this isn’t really my scene, you know?”

Leigh bounces excitedly beside us, though she’s clearly trying to tamp that down on my behalf, which makes her bouncing look more like random jerky motions. “Obviously you don’t have to sleep with him—”

“Obviously,” both Miranda and I say at the same time, and she grins at me.

“—but you should at least meet him. I really have heard he’s so nice. And he likes you!” For all that he’s her “favorite,” she doesn’t seem at all bothered that he’s apparently (weirdly) into me. I don’t think either of them particularly care about which band member they hook up with; they just want to hook up with one of them.

It’s not necessarily the hooking up part I’m resistant to. I’m not much of a one-night-stand girl, but it’s not like I’ve never had one, or really regretted it when I did. It’s more that I’m not comfortable with the party atmosphere in general, and I’m also not comfortable with the notion that some guy thinks that just because he’s a hot rock star, he can pluck me from the pool of groupies for the honor of his presence, and I’m supposed to—what? Be giddy with gratitude?

I’m also really not comfortable with the little part of me that sort of is. Giddy, at least. I’m not sure about the gratitude.

“Unless,” Leigh says, her eyebrows drawing down in concern. “Are you feeling too tired? Like, was the concert too much? Do you think this would set you back?”

“You sound like my mom,” I grouse. But really, I appreciate it. Usually I’m the cautious one, but when it comes to my illness, Leigh in particular is always careful to check in about how much is too much, do I need to sleep some more, etc.

Okay, sometimes it’s a little stifling. But only because I do it to myself already.

Maybe it’s that concern that makes up my mind. I know my limits. I can be careful and cautious and still have a good time. And if it causes another flare-up, well. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it won’t be the last.

“I’m good,” I say. “And yeah, let’s do it. Though—” I add, narrowing my eyes and pointing at them when they both start beaming in excitement. “I reserve the right to leave anytime, without you guys. Just because I leave doesn’t mean you should miss out on what is clearly some life-goal fulfillment here.” I roll my eyes dramatically at the last part.

They laugh, and Leigh nearly knocks me over with a hug, and Miranda starts pushing both of us bodily against the flow of traffic and toward the backstage entrance. Our first stop, however—per Leigh and Miranda’s insistence—is the women’s bathroom for a makeup refresh. It’s pretty obvious that they aren’t the only ones with this idea, judging by the cluster of girls crowded around the sinks, wiping off mascara streaks and swapping lipstick and drying their armpits out with the hand dryer.

On principle, I want to refuse to worry about whether my (already minimal) makeup is still in place. But I find myself reapplying my lipstick anyway. Not that I need to. It’s just to give myself something to do while my friends fight for sink space.

We leave the bathroom, and as we head toward backstage, my nerves are ratcheting up. There’s a big bouncer guy blocking the entrance, and a whole crowd of girls begging to be let in, flirting with him, and I see him letting by a few of the most model-esque, scantily clad ones. Ugh.

“They don’t even have passes,” I say.

“Oh, they have passes,” Miranda says pointing at her own (still-shirtless) chest. But even she looks irritated by this. I doubt, though, it’s for the same reasons I am.

The bouncer takes a single look at our passes and waves us in, much to the chagrin of all the (many) girls who are being kept out. We head down a hallway, and find ourselves at the green room after-party.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected—a hip, LA club atmosphere? Naked Jell-O wrestling? Smoky orgy crack den?—but this is none of those things. It actually reminds me of the few college parties I’ve been to, minus the kegs. There are couches and armchairs around the room, several of which are occupied by laughing girls snuggled up to guys who I’m guessing are either friends of the band or their roadies. One couch is facing a big-screen TV on the wall, and a couple guys are playing some shooter video game. There’s no real bar, per se, but there is a counter in the back with bowls of chips and a fridge with a see-through front that contains various beers and sodas and, weirdly, Pedialyte. There are several people doing shots of whiskey from one couch, and there’s rock music in the background which I’m pretty sure isn’t Accidental Erotica. I can’t tell if it’s actually being played quieter than at normal college parties, or if I’m mostly deaf now.

My nerves are still on high alert, though, because I don’t see—

“Where the fuck is the band?” Miranda asks, narrowing her eyes.

“They’ll be here,” Leigh says, as if she goes to these things all the time (to my knowledge, she does not), and flits off to the bar to grab herself a beer. On the way there, in the space of about thirty seconds, she flirts with three different dudes in crew-member black.

Miranda may be determined to bag a band member—and no doubt will, because Miranda—but Leigh slips in like she’s the one throwing the party.

I shrug at Miranda, who looks to be plotting the best position for lying in wait, when suddenly one of the doors to the side opens—a dressing room, I guess—and the singer, JT, walks out with new clothes on and his short hair still wet, like he just got out of the shower.

The energy in the room instantly skyrockets. People cheer and yell for him to come join them. Girls abandon the roadies they were draped on to fawn over him. JT yells to some guy named Andrew who’s chatting up Leigh by the fridge, and Andrew tosses him a beer, which comes within an inch of clocking some girl on the head before JT catches it.

Everyone cheers like JT just won gold in Olympic Beer Catching.

And then Shane comes out of the room next to him—also in new clothes, looking very post-shower—and the whole thing ratchets up even higher and I swear someone turned the music up, as if the dude needs his own theme song.

I want to make a comment to Miranda, but she’s already shoving her way into the crowd of girls who suddenly feel the need to dance sexily to what I think is an old Beastie Boys song and not particularly made to club grind to.

What I should do is leave, because I’m getting more uncomfortable by the minute, and maybe I’m feeling tired, after all, and—

A tap on my arm makes me jump and spin around.

And there’s Kevin, who apparently snuck in. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, it’s—It’s fine.” I’m a little breathless, and I’d prefer to think it’s because of the whole crowded party situation and not because Kevin is actually hotter up close, his dark skin glistening a little with that post-shower damp.

“I’m Kevin Collins,” he says, and it’s unexpected to hear him announce his full name, but I like that he doesn’t automatically expect every girl he meets to know everything about him.

“Maya Parker,” I say. I can feel my palms sweating and resist the urge to wipe them on my jeans.

Also, I think I’m the only girl here wearing jeans, and definitely the only one wearing sneakers.

Which is fine. I’m not trying to impress anyone. Even if now I wish I had spent a little more time on that makeup refresh.

Kevin gives what looks like a shy smile. “I’m glad you got my note, and that you and your friends could make it.” He gestures with his chin to the “bar” in the back. “Can I get you a drink? The Pedialyte’s a particularly fine vintage, I hear.”

Shit. He’s actually really charming. But I look over to where Shane and JT are holding court, girls all dancing up against them to prove their innate sexability, and maybe he expects that I’ll be giggling all over him soon, fighting to hold his attention from the girls who even now are looking this way, clearly debating how best to pounce.

“I’m not going to be your chosen harem girl for the night,” I blurt out, and then inwardly cringe. Because probably there was a better way to put that. “It’s just not me. So.”

He gapes. “What? My harem—”

“Right.” I wave a hand towards his bandmates and the groupies.

He looks cautiously amused. “Explain, please.”

“Do I need to? I mean, the hand-picking girls from the stage to sleep with, like you guys are kings surveying your domain, and girls actually, like, fighting for this honor in some epic flashing contest. And that’s not even counting the bouncer who only cares about passes if you aren’t a size two double D, and—”

Before I can finish the verbal avalanche that is sounding way more passionate than I mean it to, those girls looking this way decide to do their pouncing.

“Kevin!” one of them shrieks, while the other just envelops him in a hug.

“Come dance!” a third says.

Kevin is still staring at me, a little stunned, and I flush, but pride compels me not to look like I’m backing down.

“I—” he starts, and then gives a nervous laugh to the girls around him. “Hi, hey. Yeah, maybe later, okay?” He extricates himself from the hug, and the girl wanting to dance pouts, but then one of them yells “Lando!” and they reform around a new target—the drummer, I think, who has just walked out of his room.

Kevin takes a step toward me, closing the distance that the girls wedged there. “Wow,” he says. “That’s definitely a . . . stance. ‘Kings surveying our domain?’” He eyes me like he’s not sure how seriously to take what I’m saying.

“It’s just kind of degrading, don’t you think?”

He flicks a glance over to his swarmed friends. One of whom, Shane, has Leigh pressed up against him, his arm slung around her shoulder. Miranda, however, doesn’t seem to mind—she’s already making out with JT in a chair.

Damn. I may disagree with my girls’ goals, but I admire their ability to achieve them.

“Your friends seem okay with it,” Kevin says, and I’m a little impressed he knows which ones my friends are, out of all these girls.

Was he really looking over at me that much?

There’s that flutter in my chest again, and I fold my arms, like that might keep him from knowing. And for all my speechifying, I find myself wondering when I got so defensive, so protective of myself. I look down at the floor, not wanting to meet his eyes.

“Look,” he says with a sigh. “I just wanted to invite you to a party, get to know you. I’m sorry if that offends you. That wasn’t my intention.” He sounds sincere about it, if more than a little dejected.

I cringe. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You meant it, though.” He doesn’t sound judgmental, just like he’s stating a fact.

I suck in my lips. “I did. But it’s not like I’m opposed to a cute guy inviting me to a party—” I flush even deeper. Oh my god, Maya. Have you forgotten how to speak? “I promise I do have social skills,” I say, though I think at this point I’m trying to convince myself as much as him.

His lips twitch upward. “Any chance I’m going to get to see those?”

He says it with this perfectly dry delivery, and even through my embarrassment, I can’t help but genuinely laugh. He grins, and wow, that smile.

And maybe I don’t want to be some rock star’s hand-picked conquest, but I’m also not ready to walk away from that.

I glance at the ad-hoc bar. “It’s possible, I suppose, that with the right balance of electrolytes, I might turn into a socially functional person.” I pause. “Or I might rant at you about, I don’t know, the deficits in our country’s educational system. It’s always a gamble with me. But if that drink offer is still good . . .”

His brown eyes glint. “I’m willing to take the risk.”

We head over to the counter in the back, but it takes way longer than it should, because along the way, girls are trying to get him to dance or sit down with them, and the guys playing the video games shout out to him to come join them. He’s genial about it, but he brushes them all off, and I don’t get the sense it’s just because I’m here. I don’t think he’s a guy that revels in all this attention, not like his bandmates.

I take a beer when we get to the fridge, and he grabs one, too.

“So no Pedialyte for you, after all?” I ask. “Is that a normal thing the venues stock, or an Accidental-Erotica-specific request?”

“Nah,” he says, “It’s pretty standard at venues. You sweat a ton up there on stage—sexy, right?” He waggles his eyebrows, and I laugh. “But I chugged some Gatorade back in my dressing room. I’m good.”

There are some unoccupied stools by the counter, and we sit down.

I look around at the chaos of the green room. “So, do you guys have these parties after every show?”

“Pretty much.” He shrugs. “I don’t usually stay very long, though. It gets kind of exhausting. I don’t have the . . .” He cringes, like he heard just in time what was going to come out of his mouth.

“Stamina?” I prompt him with a grin.

“Thank you for not letting me get away with my dignity on that one.” He shakes his head at me. But he’s smiling back, and takes a drink.

“I don’t blame you,” I say. “I’m—shocker—pretty introverted. And crowds make me anxious.”

“So you decided to spend your night at a rock concert?”

“My friends decided to spend my night at a rock concert,” I say with a laugh. “It’s a good thing I ended up liking your music.”

“Waaaait,” he says, his eyebrows shooting up. “Hold up. You ‘ended up liking’ the music? So you hadn’t heard it before?”

“Sorry, nope.” I shrug. “Punk rock in general isn’t my thing.”

He eyes me. “So what is your thing? What’s a typical Friday night for Maya Parker?”

“Honestly? I usually stay in.” That describes most of my life, actually, especially when my health gets bad. “I read a lot, but the perfect Friday night would probably involve my favorite horror movie or three.”

“Horror movies, huh?”

“I’ve always been kind of obsessed with them,” I admit. “Even as a kid. Miranda over there—” I point to my still-topless friend, who is straddling JT on an armchair, making out. “She’s been my friend since we were nine. We used to sneak DVDs from our parents’ stash that we weren’t allowed to watch, and her dad had tons of horror movies. Miranda would get scared and usually bail, but I loved them. Poltergeists, zombies, slashers—all of them.”

“Really. And your parents never found out?”

“Not until I was old enough they didn’t care much anymore,” I say with a smile. “By then, I was mostly getting shit from my older brother about how I shouldn’t like that stuff, how racist it all is, how it’s totally catering to a white audience—as if pretty much all of Hollywood isn’t the same. And he’s not wrong, there’s some super problematic stuff in there.”

Kevin nods. “Black guy’s always the supporting character and always gets killed, that kind of thing.”

“Right. And don’t get me started on Stephen King.” I shake my head. “But I feel like fear of the unknown is this universal thing, it’s something that transcends race and gender. I do wish we had more representation in the genre—but that’s a whole other rant you don’t want to hear.”

He grins and takes another drink. “So none of these movies scared you?”

“Not in a way that gave me nightmares or anything. But in a good way—like being on a roller coaster. My parents always teased me about how I never liked change or uncertainty. But with movies . . . I know the turns are coming, but I’m still on the track. It’s like I can feel the fear, but it’s in this controlled way. It’s safe.” I notice he’s watching me pretty intently, and I flush some more.

Why am I telling him all this? I had two margaritas a few hours ago, and about five sips of beer. I am not nearly drunk enough to explain away my behavior tonight.

I take another drink and try to shrug it off. “So how about you? What’s a typical Friday night for Kevin Collins?” I pause. “When he sneaks out early from a party, that is.”

He chuckles. “My typical Friday night doesn’t usually involve parties, unless we’re on tour or Shane drags me out. I’m kind of a homebody myself. I’ll mess around on my guitar, watch TV.”

“What do you watch?”

“A lot of comedies, sitcoms.” He says. “Way too much reality TV. Survivor, Chopped. Any of those shows where they strand Bear Grylls out in some desolate jungle with only a dull paring knife and a Snickers bar.” I laugh, and he grins, then wrinkles his nose. “And maybe a few other ones that I’m reluctant to admit.”

“But you’re going to anyway,” I say hopefully.

“I might have kept up with the Kardashians on occasion,” he says with a deep grimace. “And HGTV gets a lot of play at my place. Once JT came over and found me like four episodes into a Love It or List It marathon. He mocked me, but by the time Shane came over, he found JT and me in a heated debate about pendant lighting. And he just gave us a look and then turned around and walked right back out the door.” Kevin laughs at the memory, and it’s so easy to join in. He’s got a great, warm laugh.

I open my mouth to teasingly ask about his intense stance on pendant lighting, but then a loud cheer drowns out anything I’m going to say—apparently JT has stopped making out with Miranda long enough to engage in an arm-wrestling contest with one of the crew members, and a ring of people is forming around them, cheering them on. I don’t see Miranda, but Leigh is doing well, sitting with her legs across Shane’s lap while a group of them does shots.

The increase in noise and chaos skates across my nerves, and I can tell my discomfort shows on my face. “Sorry,” I say again. “I’m not used to all this.”

“I totally get it.” He toys with his beer bottle. “If you don’t want to stay, I could call you a cab or something.”

My heart sinks. I mean, I can see how he’d probably much rather hang out with someone who didn’t just accuse him of running a harem, or who didn’t admit to liking horror movies because they feel safe . . .

“Or,” he says. “If you still want to hang out, we could go somewhere else. We could find a bar or something, but those will be loud, too, this time of night.” He pauses uncertainly. “The hotel I’m staying at is nearby. No expectations or anything, I promise,” he says hurriedly. “But it would be a hell of a lot quieter.”

My heart pounds, and I’m not sure if it’s more at the thought of hanging out with him or the hotel room part. Honestly, I find myself wondering if it would really be so bad to just forgo my caution—and my pride, I suppose, after my judgmental rant—for one night and get myself good and laid. It’s been a while (way too long, my friends would say) and I can’t deny how attracted I am to him.

Dating a rock star, hoping for anything serious, would be a terrible idea, for lots of reasons. But hooking up with one, getting mine and getting gone—is that really as bad an idea as I made it seem to my friends? Especially with a guy who doesn’t seem at all like the overgrown frat boy his friends are.

Really, though, I actually want to spend more time with him. I want to talk with him, learn more about him, and I’m not sure how much of a problem that is.

Either way . . .

“Yeah,” I say, smiling. “That sounds great.”

Three

Kevin

I know Shane saw us leave the party, and I already know what he’s going to say about this tomorrow—me leaving the party to spend a few hours talking to Maya, and probably not doing anything else. But I was enjoying spending time with her. Sometimes I wish my lifestyle afforded me more opportunities to get to know girls who don’t expect to take their clothes off inside of ten minutes of meeting me.

Maya makes me feel lucky just to be in her presence, and if Shane doesn’t get what that feels like, I guess the joke is on him.

We go back to my hotel room—which is one bedroom off of a bigger suite that I share with the band. “We can sit out here,” I tell her, “but Shane and the guys are likely to plow through with their conquests at some point. Or we can go back to my room. There’s a couch in there, and I promise not to try anything unless you want me to.”

I bite my lip. That last bit sounded more hopeful than I meant it. Maya is hot, and the longer I listen to her, the more I want to kiss her. She’s infinitely more interesting than I was hoping, and that’s a decently high bar, given how gorgeous she is. It’s not that often I meet girls who get prettier the longer I’m with them, though maybe that has something to do with how clear it’s becoming that I don’t have a chance with her.

And yet, I still want to take her back to my room and hang out with her where Shane won’t blow through and harass me about still having all of my clothes on.

“Your room is fine,” Maya says. “I’ve seen enough of Miranda without her shirt on for one night.”

I laugh and show her back. I grab us both sodas from the mini bar and sit down on the end of the bed. Maya, as I expected, stretches out on the couch.

“You’re sure you want to hang out with me?” she asks. “Even if we probably won’t sleep together tonight?”

That’s more hope than I thought I had. “We probably won’t?”

Maya shrugs. “Well, I never say never.”

“Ouch,” I say. “Good to know where I stand with you. But yeah, I still want to hang out.” It’s true, especially here, away from the noise and the partying. I’ve been tagging along with Shane and JT to parties since we were fifteen—and sneaking out early to get some peace and quiet just as long. Half the girls I’ve hooked up with were the type to follow me, and what the forum groupies don’t seem to have figured out yet was that talking to me one-on-one upped their chances with me by a hundredfold.

Not that Maya appears to care about her chances. I’ve made it pretty clear she can have me if she wants me, and she’s made it equally clear that she doesn’t.

Still, something about her intrigues me.

“So, the girls you came with,” I say. “Are they your roommates?”

“No,” Maya says. “Just friends. I live at home with my family, actually. As uncool as that sounds.”

“Eh,” I say. “Until the band started having success and moved out to LA, I was still living with my mom. All of us in the band were living with our families, actually. Saving money and trying to get the music thing going.”

“Seems to have worked out for you,” Maya says.

“Yeah, it did. Most days, I still can’t believe it. What about you? What are you doing?”

“I’m in school. I’m a science education major.”

“Nice,” I say. “I was a terrible student. No way could I ever handle being a teacher. Karma for all the trouble I was always in.” That’s both true and it isn’t. My grades were fine, if not great. But being one of two black kids in my school—the other being my little brother—I got pegged for being trouble a lot. And it’s not like I wasn’t always surrounded by trouble. When Shane and JT wanted to egg something or piss in water balloons and throw them in the open windows of the school, I always went along for the ride. I just got a lot more credit for it than they did.

“I don’t know,” Maya says. “I think it would be good if more kids who got in trouble went into education. Those kids need someone who understands them.”

“Is that why you’re going into teaching? To show the troublemakers of the world they can make something of themselves?”

“Ha, not so much,” Maya says. “I was a total teacher’s pet.”

“Yeah. I kinda figured.”

She gives me a look like I’ve insulted her, and I grin at her. “So why science?”

“I just love it,” Maya says. “It was always my favorite subject. And not a lot of black girls get encouraged to go into STEM fields. I like to think I’ll be able to make a difference.” She shakes her head. “It’s been a lot of years, though, and I’m just barely finishing my associate degree next semester. It’ll take me forever to get there.”

“Why? Do you have to work full time to pay for it?” I’ve never had a real full-time job besides the band, because even before we were making money, I always had to be able to take time off to head down to Denver to play, or wherever else Shane got us a gig.

“No,” Maya says. “My parents are pretty well off, so I’m lucky that I don’t have to work while I’m in school. Which is good, because I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue a couple years ago.”

She waits for a minute, like she expects me to have a reaction to this. Honestly, though, I don’t know much about it. “Like, you’re tired a lot?”

She sighs. “Yeah. But it’s not made up. It’s a real disease. They don’t have a test or a cure for it yet, so a lot of people think I’m imagining it.”

Shit. That sucks. “Your family thinks that?”

She snorts. “Not my family. They see how hard it is on me. I had to drop out for a while, because I couldn’t function. And now I’m finally finishing up, but I’m hopelessly behind. But when I have a flare-up, all I can do is sleep. It’s pretty debilitating, even if it’s not visible to other people. And it sucks to feel like I’m sleeping all the time while life passes me by.”

“Like Rip Van Winkle,” I say.

Maya wrinkles her nose at me. “Really? You went with Rip Van Winkle and not Sleeping Beauty?”

I did. I totally did. “Aw, damn. That was right there, too.”

Maya laughs, and it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.

“It’s pretty cool that you’re getting your associate, though,” I say. “That’s more than I’ve done.” My mom used to get on me all the time about putting all my eggs in the same basket, but I always believed that as long as Shane was carrying that basket, it was going to pay off sooner or later. And I wasn’t wrong. We can all take credit for the music, but Shane’s drive is the reason we succeeded. I owe everything to him.

“Well, I still have a long way to go,” Maya says. “And if I push myself too hard, I won’t be able to function for a month.”

“Do I need to let you get home?” I don’t want to hurt her health, especially if all she’s getting out of this is conversation.

“No,” she says. “I’ll probably sleep most of the day tomorrow, but it’s my birthday today. It’s nice to get out.”

“Seriously? It’s your birthday and you’re stuck spending it here with me?”

Maya smiles. “Who said I was stuck?”

I shake my head at her. “You don’t even like our band, and you came to our concert on your birthday?”

“My friends dragged me. But I actually like your music. It’s turned out not to be an entirely intolerable experience.”

I’m pretty sure that’s high praise coming from Maya.

“What about you?” she says. “Do you want to stay in the band forever?”

That takes me by surprise. Most people just assume that I do, given all the success we’re having. And I wouldn't tell most people the truth. “Not forever,” I say. “The band has been my whole life for a long time, but the lifestyle is hard, you know?”

Maya nods, like she believes this might be true, which is more than most people do. “All the traveling?”

“Not exactly,” I say. “I mean, I was a poor kid from Wyoming. My mom worked for the post office, for god’s sake. I know how lucky I am to have gotten to see all the places we’ve been.”

“Do you really get to see them? Or is it just a bunch of concert venues and airports?”

I smile. This is something else I owe to Shane. “I’ve actually seen quite a bit. Shane is always dragging us out of bed early to go see some tourist thing or another. JT and I grumble about it, but I’m grateful, because he’s right that we shouldn’t waste this opportunity.” I shrug. “But being on the road all the time makes it hard to have a real relationship, you know? I’d like to have a family someday, and the band isn’t really conducive to that.” I take a long drink of my soda, hoping that admission sounds way more casual—way more like something I'd say to anyone—than it is.

Maya looks at me thoughtfully. “And that’s something you want. To give up the parties and the groupies and all that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m not exactly a huge party guy, if you haven’t noticed.”

Her eyes narrow slightly, like maybe she doesn’t believe me. Which is fine, I guess, but it still stings.

“Why are you still with the band, then?” she asks.

“Because I love it,” I say. “It’s hard to walk away. And me and Shane and JT have been playing together since we were kids. We’re like—I want to say like brothers but I have a brother. We’re closer than family. I don’t want to abandon them.”

“So you’d miss them,” Maya says.

That’s true. “And I don’t know how they’re going to react.”

Just thinking about it ties my stomach in a knot. Shane wasn’t even into Anna-Marie anymore, and he’s still pissed at her for moving away, so much so that he can’t stop lashing out at her in the music, even though I’m pretty sure she stopped paying attention a long time ago.

Maya looks like she’s going to question me more about that, but I’ve just realized that this is stuff I really shouldn’t be saying to someone I don’t know. That’s not smart, no matter how comfortable I am with her. “But please don’t say that to the press,” I say quickly.

Maya smiles. “You mean you didn’t want me to record this?”

I shoot her a look, and she grins at me. “I have no interest in telling your secrets to the press,” she says. “But maybe you should watch who you tell this stuff to.”

I shake my head. “I usually do.”

The suspicious look is back, and I wonder if she thinks I’m using some kind of seduction technique on her. Really, though, it’s been a long time since I’ve talked to anyone I felt close enough to share these thoughts with. JT doesn’t really talk about deep stuff, and I never know how Shane will react.

Or maybe I do, and that’s what scares me.

“I’m going to come over there and kiss you,” Maya says.

I about fall off the end of the bed. “What? Really?”

She nods resolutely. “Yes. Is that okay?”

My whole body is heating up, and she’s still across the room. “Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”

Maya gets up and walks slowly over to me. I’m aching, wishing she would move faster, and I wonder if she’s the one seducing me. If so, I’m all in.

Maya reaches the bed and sits down with her knee folded under her, facing me. I reach one hand out and rest it at her waist, and Maya looks into my eyes.

And then she rocks forward and our lips meet. It’s soft at first, gentle enough to make me crazy with longing. I reach an arm around her, pulling her closer, and our tongues are brushing, and I feel like my soul is on fire. The kiss deepens, just for a moment—

And then Maya pulls away, her eyes closed. “Yeah, okay,” she says. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

My heart drops about a foot. “It was sure as hell working for me.”

She nods, and opens her eyes. I swear she looks . . . sad. “Yeah, that’s the problem. I like you, but I don’t date rock stars. I don’t think long distance is a thing that even works.” She scoots away, shaking her head. “I mean, not that that’s something you were even wanting, right?”

I don’t want to answer that question. The truth is, I’m into Maya in a way I haven’t been into anyone in a long time. I get what she’s saying. I want more than a one-night stand. But if she doesn’t date rock stars—is this a rule people have?—then she’s right. It can’t work. I might want to leave the band eventually, but not anytime soon, not now that we’re doing so well. And definitely not for a girl I just met. Shane would lose his fucking mind, and really, so would I.

“I come out to Denver a lot,” I say, hoping maybe that will make a difference. But Maya continues to look at me sadly.

“I’m not interested in something casual,” she says, “and I don’t see how a relationship can work under these circumstances.”

And even though I said as much earlier in the conversation, I’m now desperate for that not to be true. I don’t miss the irony that now I have what I’ve worked for my whole life, I’m starting to chafe at the cost. Usually it’s something I push out of my mind, but here Maya is, telling me maybe I’d have a chance with her, if I were anyone but me.

“I’m going to have to hope that isn’t true,” I say.

Maya shrugs, looking down at her hands, and I can’t help but wish she hadn’t kissed me. Now I’m all wound up with no place to go, but I’m also desperate to convince her not to walk away.

“I could call you a Lyft,” I say. “Or you could hang out for a while, and we could watch a movie. Did your friends get you a birthday cake? I bet room service could dig something up.”

I expect her to say that she can get her own Lyft, but she pauses, considering, and then stretches out on my bed. “A movie sounds good. And no, we had margaritas, not cake. What are you in the mood for?”

I’m in the mood to take Maya in my arms and make a solid argument for why she should give me a chance to convince her things could work between us. I could be up here a couple weeks a month, if I rearranged some things. But I’m pretty sure I just got hardcore friend-zoned. Shane or JT would mock me for this, but maybe I’ve been lacking for friends outside of the music scene. So I put in a call to room service, asking for a cake with candles, and I fire up Netflix and let her choose.

And hope that being friends with Maya will be better than being nothing at all.

We end up watching Paranormal Activity and eating cheesecake with candles in it (that being what room service could come up with in the middle of the night). We stay up laughing and talking until it starts getting light outside, and she finally lets me call her that Lyft. I give her my phone number and she gives me hers, but after she leaves, I can’t help but think about the fact that though we spent the whole night on the bed talking, we didn’t touch again.

I’ve definitely been friend-zoned, and when Shane bangs on my door at nine AM, I’m grumpy about it.

“Go away,” I yell at him. I’ve had about two hours sleep and my whole body aches like I’m coming down from a fever.

“No way,” Shane says. “I found this new breakfast place on Yelp that serves all kinds of weird crap. The hash browns are apparently cooked in duck fat. We’ve got to check it out.”

I am really not ready to admit to heartache over a girl I knew for one night. I will never live that down. “I feel like that was supposed to sound good,” I yell at the door. “But it doesn’t.”

“Duuuuude!” Shane yells. “If it’s terrible, we can get a Voodoo donut. But I want to try this place. Get up.”

I groan and open the door, because Shane isn’t going to go away. I collapse back in bed. “Seriously. I’m not into it.”

“Wow,” Shane says, looking me up and down. “I’d say you must have had a good night, but you’re still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Things didn’t go well with that girl from the party?”

“We hung out. She was freaking awesome, actually.”

“Okay,” Shane says. “So what’s the problem?”

I wish he would just assume I was up all night getting laid, but no. Shane probably did just that, and he’s still up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning.

I love Shane, but sometimes I hate him.

“This girl,” I say. “She was amazing, and she rejected me, okay? So get the hell out and let me wallow.”

“So some girl rejected you. We have girls after us all the time. Who cares about that one?”

I do. I sigh into my pillow. I already know Shane is going to convince me to get up and eat hash browns fried in duck fat just to find out if that’s a good thing. But I’m miserable enough to be slow about it. “Don’t you ever want anything more than a life banging groupies?”

Shane scoffs. “No. Why would I?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I’m lonely.”

“Dude, you wouldn’t be if you’d get your ass out of bed. JT’s in the shower, and then we’re going to head out.” He pauses, and I turn my head to the side and catch him looking at me like he’s worried. “Seriously, are you okay?”

He’s actually asking, and if I tell him the truth now, he’ll mock me, but he’ll listen. He’s my friend, and he cares about me.

“Yeah,” I say. “I just really liked this girl.”

“Yeah, well,” Shane says. “Trust me. Relationships are overrated. You should know. You were there.”

I was there when Shane and Anna-Marie had their four-year hurricane of a relationship, that’s true. I don’t know that that means every relationship is doomed.

But it doesn’t matter, because Maya wasn’t even willing to give me a chance. Shane’s right. I need to shake it off. “Let’s go,” I say. “If this place sucks and we want to hit Voodoo, we need to get moving, or we’re going to be late to the airport.”

Shane nods his approval and storms back out of the room, probably to tell JT to hurry the hell up.

I climb out of bed and dig up some clothes I didn’t wear all night. It’s probably for the best that Maya didn’t want a relationship with me. It probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.

But, like a sucker, I know I’m going to call her from the airport. If she wants to be friends, great. If not, she’ll reject me again. I want to say it can’t hurt worse than it already does, but I’m pretty sure it can.

Still, all I’m thinking about as I get into the car with Shane and JT is when I’ll be able to hear her voice again.

Four

Maya

I sleep fitfully, dozing in and out of consciousness, and in both states, I find myself thinking of Kevin. Of what it felt like to kiss him, the softness and intensity all at once of my lips against his, of his hand on the small of my back, drawing me towards him, and how much I longed to be closer, to feel my body pressed to him, to feel all of him—

When I dip into sleep, I imagine that I did, and our bodies moved together and there was heat, so much heat . . .

But then I wake up enough to remember that, really, I pulled away. Because I wanted that heat so bad. Because, more than just his body, I wanted him, and I knew that wasn’t possible. He’s a rock star, and any kind of real relationship would be too risky, too bound to end in heartache. And a one-night stand with someone I want more with . . . Nope. That’s not out of my comfort zone; that’s just plain stupid.

By the time I actually wake up enough that I know I’m not going to doze off again, I’ve re-convinced my brain of the necessity of my choice to not go further. It doesn’t mean, though, that I don’t keep thinking of him.

I roll over in the dark and check my phone. It’s 9:38 in the morning, way earlier than I thought I’d be up after staying out so late. Also, I have about a dozen texts each from Leigh and Miranda, both saying to let them know the minute I wake up. These don’t sound panicked about my well-being—probably because I texted them just as I was leaving the party—but desperate to find out what happened with Kevin, who they both saw me leave with, and desperate to share their own exploits. Which undoubtedly involved a lot less clothing than mine did. In Miranda’s case, at least, it started out that way.

I text them both, and hear back from Leigh immediately: I’m coming over.

Then I pull up the blackout curtain my parents put on my window when I first moved back here, letting the light flood in—or at least what light there is. Today looks kind of drizzly and damp. I told my parents I didn’t actually need things like blackout curtains or white noise machines to help me sleep. The problem, after all, wasn’t falling or staying asleep. It was how desperately my body still needed it, no matter how much I would get. The problem was that I couldn’t stay awake.

But they wanted so much to do something to help, and considering how much help I have needed over the last several years—financially, physically, emotionally, through years of being tested for everything from sleep apnea to vitamin deficiencies to food allergies—I’m just damn lucky I have them. And Leigh and Miranda.

My chronic fatigue has forced me to cut way back on everything—most especially my social life—and no small number of people in my life made it clear they thought this was all in my head. My family and those two are pretty much the only things that have kept me going and kept me sane.

I don’t know how long I have before Leigh gets here, but I decide to try to work on some of my organic chemistry homework in the meantime. I grab my textbook and my laptop and sit back against my headboard. I open my email and pull up the notes this guy in my class, Ted, was nice enough to send me when I couldn’t make it on Wednesday. This class is one of only two I’m taking right now, which is standard for me lately—the last thing I want is to lose another whole semester’s worth of work if I have a flare-up and need to drop out again.

But I love this stuff, learning about the way the world works, the way the tiniest atoms make up the incredible whole of a person, and I can easily lose myself for hours in it.

Except today, as I read the same section over and over again, because I can’t stop thinking about Kevin.

I hear a light knocking on my door, and then my mom pokes her head in with a smile. “Did you have fun with the girls last night?”

“I did,” I say. I want to tell her about the concert and Kevin, but I hold back. Not because I can’t talk to my mom about my sex life (or current lack thereof). We’ve always been open about stuff like that. She wouldn’t care if I had a one-night stand with a rock star.

But knowing I was out so late and got up so early—that she would worry about, and spend the rest of the day plying me with vitamins and making sure I’m not overexerting myself. Even though I am a grown-ass woman who, after years of this shitty illness, has a pretty good, very cautious gauge on her limits.

“Good,” my mom says. “Let them know they’re still invited to the party tomorrow.” The “party” consists of my parents, my older brother and his wife, my younger sister who’s still in high school, and my grandma—pretty much the same people I see every Sunday night. The only difference is that this one will have birthday cake.

I try to blink away thoughts of Kevin and me eating cheesecake in his hotel bed. Of wanting to taste the cherry sauce on his lips. Of how, when he said to make a wish, the first image to flash through my mind was him and me next year, just like this. Possibly with fewer clothes on.

I’d forced myself to wish for a year free of fatigue flare-ups instead.

“You can tell them yourself,” I say. “Leigh’s on her way over.”

“Leigh’s already over!” I hear Leigh shout from down the stairs, and then there’s loud pounding as she runs up them. I swear, for such a petite girl, she can sound like Bigfoot charging up those stairs.

Mom chuckles. “I’ll leave you two alone, then. Take it easy, though. Especially after you ladies kept my baby up to all hours.” Leigh beams innocently back. Mom says it teasingly, but we both know there’s at least a part of her that means it.

When Mom closes the door behind her, Leigh flops down on my bed right by my feet and raises her eyebrows. “She still thinks we were keeping you up to all hours?”

“She does. And I’m not even telling her how late it was.” I sigh. “God, I feel like I’m back in high school, having my friends cover for me so I can sneak out with boys.”

Leigh grins. “Except you didn’t do that back then.” I toss my pen at her, and she giggles, holding her hands up in defense. Then she lunges to hug me, squealing loudly enough that my already damaged eardrums hurt. “Last night! Oh my god!”

“That good, huh?” I ask with a laugh. “Did Shane have a lot of deep thoughts about global warming?”

She pulls back and leans against my headboard with me. “I wasn’t interested in his deep thoughts.”

“Don’t I know it. So was rock star sex everything you hoped for and more?”

“Totally. I mean the bragging rights alone—” She stops, pulling her buzzing phone out of her pocket. “Ah, Miranda.” She swipes a button and Miranda’s face appears on the screen. She’s got her dark hair in a messy bun, no makeup on, and she’s clearly driving in her car.

“Have you asked her about Kevin yet?” she demands, watching the road in front of her.

“I was just about to,” Leigh says, and turns the phone to face me.

Miranda looks down at the phone long enough to see me. “You definitely have bed head, but I’m not sure it looks like sex hair.”

I pat at my hair self-consciously. It’s been recently relaxed, but I still have to keep it oiled and conditioned to maintain it that way. Neither of which I have done, last night or this morning. “That’s because it’s not.”

“What?” both Leigh and Miranda say. Leigh disappointedly, and Miranda with her brow furrowed.

“I didn’t sleep with him.” I bite my lip. “But we did spend the night together.”

“Whaaat?” Leigh perks up at this news. “What happened? Or should we wait for Miranda to get here?”

Miranda shakes her head. “Sadly, I’m not on the way over. I fell back asleep, and now I’m late for study group, and I’m going to get my ass handed to me if—hey, asshole! Ever heard of a blinker?” She honks her horn, then glances back down at the phone.

“What about you?” I ask Miranda. “Did you get with JT?”

She gives me a look that clearly says she knows I’m just trying to change the topic, and will allow it. For now.

“Nah,” she says. “I mean, we made out, but I wasn’t as into it as I’d thought. But then I met this really hot guy who was the arena’s talent liaison, and he even found my shirt—”

“My shirt,” Leigh cuts in.

“—and I definitely got with him. And will probably do so again tonight.”

“Ooh, another date,” I say. “That sounds—”

I don’t get to finish before Miranda cuts me off. “Enough about me,” she says. “Spill it, Maya. Now.”

And because I’m dying to be able to tell them about this—and, if I’m honest, just to talk about Kevin—I do. “We may have spent the night together, just talking.”

“Are you serious?” Miranda says. “All you did was talk?”

“Yeah, but . . .” I don’t know quite how to explain to them how not-disappointed I was with that outcome. And also how sad it was, even though it was my idea. “He was really amazing to talk to. We watched Paranormal Activity, and he had room service bring up a cheesecake, because that was as close to a birthday cake as they had in the middle of the night. He got candles and everything, and had me make a wish—”

“I told you he was nice!” Leigh says, as if she had known this personally and not from internet hearsay.

“Wow,” Miranda says. “He totally sounds like your type, Maya.” She seems surprised about this, and I can’t blame her. She’s always been into the bad boys, while I like the quiet ones. And I don’t think either of us expected to find out that Kevin Collins was quiet and shy.

He wasn’t shy with me, though. Just sweet and considerate, even when I turned him down for more, something part of me violently regrets.

“Do you think he’s gay?” Leigh asks. She doesn’t sound judgmental about that, and I could see how she could think it. I wonder how the punk scene would receive a gay, black guitarist, and I’m guessing it wouldn’t be great.

“No,” I say quickly. “He made it pretty clear he wanted to sleep with me. And I kissed him, and he definitely kissed me back . . .” Heat flushes through me, just thinking about it.

Miranda sighs. “No spark? I get you there. JT is hotter than hell, but he kisses like a slobbering dog.”

“Hmm,” Leigh says. “He should take lessons from Shane.”

“I don’t think either of them would be into that, from what I saw,” Miranda says.

Leigh glares at her phone. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant practical lessons. Like, technique.”

“There was definitely a spark,” I say. “Too much, I think. He was so nice and sweet and I liked him. I wanted more than a one-night stand.”

Miranda looks down at the screen so sharply, I think she might have actually turned the car a bit with the motion. “Really,” she says. “Like, you wanted to date him. Like, date date him.”

I haven’t met anyone I’ve liked so much for a long time. Maybe because I’ve just been too distracted by trying to figure out how I can still get my degree with my chronic fatigue. Maybe because I’ve been too afraid to bring anyone into all this, to expend any energy on a relationship when I need that energy for other things.

Or maybe, a little voice whispers in my mind, you just haven’t met anyone like him.

“Yeah,” I admit. “But it’s not a thing that’s possible, even if he wanted to. He’s a rock star.”

“So?” Miranda demands. “It sounds like he’s a rock star who’s super into you. Which clearly shows his good taste.”

“Did he say if he wanted to date you?” Leigh asks, her green eyes wide. “Because if he wanted a hookup, there were lots of girls at that party who would have gone for that.”

“Not in so many words,” I say. I remember asking him if that was something he’d want. Part of me—a pathetic, idiotic part—had hoped he would say outright that he did. He’d dodged the question, saying that he came out to Denver a lot. Which could mean he wants to hook up whenever he’s in town. There was some longing there, though, that makes me wonder if that’s really all he wanted. “He didn’t say exactly. I don’t know. But—” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Because there’s no way it could work out. I’m not secure enough to date a rock star, for one thing—I mean, all the groupies just throwing themselves at him, the constant temptation. That would kill me, always wondering, you know?”

This is true. I know it. And maybe I’m glad for the distance, because if he was a guy who lived in town and wanted to hang out, I think it would be all too easy to forget what a terrible idea it is to get involved with someone who would probably get bored dating a girl who always wants to stay in and half the time doesn’t have a choice. And god knows there would always be plenty of girls ready to convince him he didn’t need to put up with that.

Leigh makes a sympathetic sound, then grudgingly nods. “That would be tough.”

Miranda honks again and swears at another driver, and then frowns back at the phone. “Is it just that?”

I think just that is enough, honestly. But no. “It would have to be a long-distance thing, and that never really works out, does it? I mean, even if he can afford to fly back often, he’s still got a life in LA and on tour, and I can’t really leave here often, with school, and I don’t even know how a lot of travel might set me back, health-wise—”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” Miranda observes.

I choose to ignore that. “It’s just not a situation that’s good for building a relationship,” I say firmly. “And I don’t even know if that’s what he wanted, really. I know he would have hooked up, if I was up for it, and he seemed to like having someone to hang out with. He doesn’t seem to be really into partying. Maybe he just gets bored with his bandmates off with girls all the time.”

“So that’s it?” Leigh looks crushed. “You’re never going to see him again?”

“I have his number. But—”

“Oh my god, Maya! Are you telling me you could pick up the phone right now and call Kevin Collins?” Leigh is about a second away from shaking me. “And there’s a real possibility that if you did, he’d want to date you? Or be your boyfriend?”

That seems like a pretty big leap. “It’s not that simple!” I say. “I doubt he’d want that. I was kind of a freak—I lectured the dude about his band’s harem and spent a not-insignificant amount of the night talking about the evolution of found-footage horror movies and how it started well before The Blair Witch Project—”

“Of course you did,” Miranda says with a smile.

“—And he probably never wants to see me again.” As much as I was desperate to tell them all about Kevin, now I’m equally desperate to stop. My stomach has a pit forming in it large enough to fit Frankenfish.

Was I just imagining this whole thing? Was he just bored, like I said, or too tired to head back to the party when he realized I really wasn’t going to sleep with him?

He seemed happy to hang out with me. But so much about last night feels unreal, it’s hard for me to sort it all out.

“But you’re going to call him, right?” Leigh asks. “You have to at least do that much.”

I shrug. “I don’t know if I will.” The idea of calling him up and discovering that things have gotten terribly awkward and that he didn’t actually want to hear from me is too terrible. I wonder if I wouldn’t be better off just holding on to my memories of last night. “He has my number, too. He can call me if he wants to.”

“Well, you’d better tell us right away if he does,” Miranda says, and Leigh nods resolutely.

“You know I will,” I say.

I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to help it.

Five

Maya

After Leigh leaves, I’m trying to decide whether to try to do more homework or just give in and take a nap, when my phone rings. I expect it to be Miranda calling to tell me that I should take a chance and call Kevin.

Kevin Collins, the caller ID says. I don’t know any other Kevins, but he’s the one who put his number in my phone, and I suppose he didn’t know that.

He’s calling me. He must be at the airport by now. He said his flight was before noon. I stare at it long enough that I’m afraid the phone will stop ringing, and hurry to answer before it does.

“Hey,” I say, hoping he can’t hear how breathless I feel.

“Hey,” he says back. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, I was already up. Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be on a plane right about now?”

“Fairly soon,” he says. “Our flight got pushed back an hour. Which was good, because these duck-fat-cooked hash browns Shane made us all eat made Lando sick—probably due to the amount of alcohol still in his system—and though he puked mostly out the window, mostly, JT insisted we get a whole new cab immediately or he was going to be sick, and also still wanted to stop for donuts.” I can practically see him smiling and rolling his eyes to the ceiling. He did that a lot last night, talking about his bandmates’ escapades.

I laugh. “What a glamorous life you lead.”

“You have no idea.” I can hear the grin in his voice, and I can’t help but grin along with him. This doesn’t feel awkward at all. It feels . . . safe. And while that might not be a word that Miranda would apply to the guys she wants to date, it definitely is for me.

“So duck-fat hash browns and donuts? No airport Cinnabon?” I ask. He told me last night all about how that was pretty much his favorite food ever. Growing up in Everett, Wyoming, the closest one was hours away, in Evanston—but the first thing he’d done when he got his license was to make the drive out there with his little brother, just to gorge on cinnamon rolls. His brother still gives him a Cinnabon gift card every year on his birthday.

“Tragically not. I’ll have to hit one up in LA to make up for this. Bring some back home, watch the rest of those Paranormal Activity movies.”

I’m more than a little happy about this—he did seem to really like the movie. “So it didn’t give you nightmares, then?”

“I don’t know that I slept long enough to have nightmares,” he says, and there’s a teasing hint in his voice that makes me warm all over. “But we’ll see if I can handle the others on my own, or if I need to make one of my friends watch them with me.”

“You can always Skype me in,” I say, probably too eagerly. “I’ll watch it with you.”

There’s a pause, and I cringe. How pathetic did that just sound? Who watches movies with someone over Skype?

But he said he might want to watch it with a friend, and given our situation, that’s all we can be. And he’s calling me, so that has to mean he still wants contact with me. Doesn’t it?

I am a little too desperate for that to be the case.

“We should do that,” he says. It sounds like he actually likes that idea. Or maybe I’m just being hopeful.

Because I do like him. And I’d much rather be his friend than nothing at all.

I find myself pacing nervously. “So you guys aren’t currently getting mobbed in the airport?”

He chuckles. “We’ve been in a few selfies, signed some autographs. One for a TSA agent’s daughter. But no, it’s pretty low-key right now. No one begging to join our harem.” I can hear the smile in his voice, and I groan.

“You’re never going to let me live that down.”

“Yeah, no. Never.” There’s a pause, and then: “You weren’t totally wrong about that, though. I mean, I always kind of found that whole thing a little on the skeezy side.”

“Inviting girls to parties?” I tease, though I know what he means.

“Inviting specific groupies backstage like that,” he says. “Though I think it was pretty obvious even from up there that you weren’t a groupie.”

“Because my shirt remained on?”

“Which is even more tragic than the lack of Cinnabon, I assure you,” he says, and he’s joking—mostly, I think—but his flirting tone makes my body heat up all over again. Then he clears his throat, his voice more serious. “But I don’t really do that very much, not like Shane and JT.”

“Yeah?” Having spent the whole night talking with him, this doesn’t surprise me.

It does, however, make me happier than it should to hear. Even though it really shouldn’t matter.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “But I’m glad I invited you.”

I should tease him some more, I think—maybe say something like, Even though you spent a sexless night eating hotel cake and watching a movie about demonic possession?

The words get caught in the lump forming in my throat. “Me too,” I say back, just as quietly.

There’s some muffled intercom voice in the background, and I hear one of the guys—Shane, maybe?—say, “Finally. I thought we’d be here all fucking day.”

Kevin sighs. “I’ve got to go. They’re boarding us now. But—” He hesitates, and I wonder if he’s longing to talk again soon as much as I am. “I’ll call you when I get home, okay? I’ve got a couple days off before the next leg of the tour. Maybe we could watch that movie?”

“Yes,” I say. “Tonight, if you want.”

I shouldn’t have said that. Now I sound desperate for someone to watch movies with, when I’m perfectly capable of watching them by myself. And I also sound like someone who will be awake late into the night.

I am definitely going to have to take that nap.

“Yeah,” Kevin says. “Tonight works for me.”

“Have a safe flight, then,” I say. Which is the lamest of the lame things to say to someone getting on an airplane, because is that really going to keep the plane from crashing? But we all do it anyway for some reason.

“Thanks,” he says. “And you rest up. Because you’ll probably be stuck watching the next dozen of those movies with me.”

I smile. “There’s only five more in the series.”

“Only five,” he says. Okay, well, I’m sure you’ll have others to recommend.”

My heart beats harder. Would he really want to spend that much time together? Even if it’s just over Skype?

I know I do.

“So many more,” I say. “And maybe we can catch an episode or two of Super Property Brothers.” I bite my lip to keep from laughing at how I already know he’s going to react.

“It’s just Property Brothers! They’re not a video game!” He pauses. “And you already knew that and are messing with me.”

I grin. “They do their own plumbing, don’t they? Are they Italian? What kind of materials do they use, because I’ve heard that some houses you can just punch right through the bricks and find money insi—”

“Okay, fine, just go ahead, mock away,” he says, but he’s laughing.

There’s another voice from his end: “Seriously, man, now.”

Kevin mutters something that is muffled—possibly by him covering up the phone.

“I’ve really got to go now,” he says, and I wonder if I’m reading too much into how reluctant he sounds. “But I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. We say goodbye and hang up, and I sit down on my bed, the phone feeling too heavy in my hand.

I know I’m right, that dating him—a long-distance relationship with a rock star, for crying out loud—couldn’t work. It would be too difficult, too constantly uncertain. And if I’m already this invested in him after two conversations . . . It’s definitely too likely to end in hurt and bad feelings on both our parts. Friends is better, for sure.

As I curl up in bed, though, I can’t help imagining watching the movie tonight with him in person. Imagining him throwing his arm around me, casually. Wondering how long it would take for our hands to wander further.

I know even before I fall asleep that I’m going to have good dreams.

Six

Kevin

Seriously,” Shane says. He’s standing at my breakfast bar with his sunglasses pushed back up on his head, glaring at me with righteous indignation. “You’re bailing on us again?”

It’s been over a month since the end of the tour. We all did our own thing for a couple of weeks, as usual, since we were pretty sick of each other’s faces.

But Shane’s long-since ready to ramp back up into full social mode, and I, unfortunately for him, am not. “I’m not bailing on you,” I tell him. “I told you I was staying in tonight.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “And I’m telling you you’re coming out with us. I know parties aren’t your favorite thing, but there’s going to be a bunch of other bands there, and you need to at least come for a couple of hours to meet some people.”

I put my elbows on the marble countertop, and Shane and I stare each other down.

“I mean,” Shane says. “Unless you have something else truly important to do.”

I want to kill him. He’s trying to pick a fight about the way I’ve been spending my evenings over the last two months since that show we played in Denver.

But how much time I spend on Skype with Maya is none of his business.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not going.”

“Okaaaay,” Shane says. He has at least figured out that I’m a grown-ass man who he can’t strong arm into partying. “You should, though. There will be actual women there. Ones who date rock stars, even.”

Now I am going to kill him. “Shane,” I say. “Lay the fuck off.”

Shane groans and sinks onto the stool across from me. “Kevin,” he says. “Give me a fucking break. You’ve been hanging out with that girl for months. She’s never going to sleep with you. You really need to move on.”

“I’m not trying to get her to sleep with me,” I say. Which is true. I got hardcore friend-zoned by Maya back when we met, and I know I’m never getting out of it. But spending time with her makes me happy, and while I know she’s not going to get over her resistance to long-distance relationships or her disdain for my lifestyle, I care about her.

“I know,” Shane says. “That’s the problem.”

“Look,” I say. “She’s my friend. And yes, I’m not going to the party tonight because I’m watching the Starving with the Stars finale with her. If she crashes after the show, I’ll text you guys and come meet up, okay? But no promises. I’m not going to bail on her just because you think I need to get laid.”

“I don’t think it,” Shane says. “I know.”

He’s not wrong. I’ve been with exactly two girls since I met Maya, and both of them were a desperate attempt to convince myself that I’m okay just being friends. Both times I felt like shit afterward, so I haven’t been willing to try that particular tactic again.

“Have you thought any more about opening for Donnie’s band in January?” Shane asks.

I take a deep breath. We haven’t been back to Denver since I met Maya—mostly because of the tour—but one of our friends invited us to open for him. The guys were all on the fence about taking it. We’d be opening for a band less popular than we are, so it’s not a glowing career opportunity, but any chance to play in Denver is an opportunity to keep our fan base energized while we’re between albums. We’ve played all over the country, but Denver is still our bread and butter. There’s just a lot more on the rest of the table than there used to be.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” I say.

“Because you’re hung up on her,” Shane answers.

He’s not wrong. If things were different between me and Maya, I’d be jumping at every chance to play in Denver. With the rest of the guys back and forth about this particular gig, Shane’s willing to let me make the call. He’s being a little bit too accommodating, in fact.

“You’re okay with me saying let’s not take that gig, but not with me skipping out on a party,” I say.

Shane shakes his head. “It’s not just one party. People are starting to notice that you’re missing. I’ve been getting questions.”

“Right,” I say. “Because the great Shane Beckstrom gives a fuck what anyone else thinks.”

Shane gives me a look, and I shut my mouth. There’s pain there, and I get what he’s not saying.

He doesn’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks. But it bothers him that I’ve been absent a lot. Even on that last leg of the tour, I skipped a lot of the parties outright, and hung out in my hotel room watching more horror movies than I’d seen in the rest of my life combined. I’ve never partied as much as Shane and JT, but I used to be up for it a couple nights a week, at least. Lately, they’ve been lucky to see me one night a week, less than that if we don’t have a show.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “What have you got going on next week? I’ll come to a couple of things. I promise.”

“Yeah?” Shane asks. “Because it’s not the same without you. You know that, right?”

I hear what he’s asking. It’s not one party he’s concerned about, or even a lot of them. It’s everything—our band, our life. For more than a decade our lives have revolved around each other.

I’m starting to wonder if Shane is being so accommodating about skipping out on the Denver gig because he’s afraid of what will happen if I see Maya again.

I’m pretty sure I’m avoiding Denver for the same reason.

“I know,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better, okay? Just not tonight.”

Shane looks somewhat mollified. “All right. I’m going to put some things on your calendar for next week then. And you’ll show. You promise?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I promise.”

The truth is, I know I should be hanging out with the guys more. Shane’s been there for me since we were in kindergarten. He may be a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s my best friend, and he’s still going to be there for me when Maya inevitably decides she’s sick of me.

Though that thought makes me more heartsick than I’m ready to admit.

A few hours later, I’m kicking back on my couch with my guitar when Maya Skypes me on my laptop. I answer and grin at her when her face appears on the screen. She’s got her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she isn’t wearing any makeup. I think she stopped trying to impress me way back when she decided this wasn’t going anywhere. I like that, though. It’s nice to feel comfortable with someone, to not have to worry about keeping up appearances.

“Hey, gorgeous,” I say. I always answer her calls this way, and she seems to like it.

Maya grins at me. “Hey,” she says. “I know the show doesn’t start for another hour, but I’m just so excited. Do you think Alec and Jillian are going to get back together?”

I laugh. This is the question being debated across America, and it’s a small part of the reason I wasn’t ditching our joint viewing of the Starving with the Stars finale for a random party. I was there at the VMAs when Alec Andreas got shoved off the stage by Felix Mays—who weirdly happens to be the brother of the best friend of Shane’s ex-girlfriend, Anna-Marie, because the entertainment industry is a small and very strange place. Alec got busted that night for a bunch of lies he told—chiefly for pretending that he and the co-headliner of his band were married, when really they’d broken up a year before. Alec apparently tried to revive his career by going on a reality show, and promptly got caught trying to pick up a new girlfriend and use her to improve his image.

“Come on,” I say to Maya. “Do you really want them to? Jillian totally deserves better.”

“I know,” Maya says. “But over the last several episodes he’s just seemed so sad. I think he really loved her.”

So goes the theory. The viewing public has sorted themselves into two camps. Maya’s in one, and I’m in the other. “And I still say he’s trying to salvage what good press he can. If he looks like he got his heart broken on air, that’s a lot more sympathetic than admitting that he was never actually interested in her in the first place.”

“I don’t know,” Maya says. “I don’t think you can fake that kind of pain.”

I strum a chord on my guitar. I’m supposed to be working on the guitar line to some new lyrics Shane wrote. They aren’t perfect yet, but if I can get a rough melody going, then I can go back to Shane with specific requests for fixes, instead of just a general sense that the rhythm is off.

“How’s the song coming?” Maya asks.

“It’s not. Because I spent my afternoon Googling all the spoilers about Alec Andreas and Jillian Fall.”

“Cheater!” Maya yells, and I laugh.

“I didn’t read anything about the end of the show. But you know he’s been photographed in DC, right? And the rumor is that he’s living there?”

“Oh my god, stop,” Maya says. “No more spoilers!”

I grin. This is another way that Maya and I differ. She likes to hear as little about a film or TV show as humanly possible so she can have what she calls a “pure experience.” And I like to read up as much as I can, so I know what to expect. “All right,” I say. “If you insist.”

“I do,” Maya says. “You shouldn’t have told me that much. And you definitely shouldn’t have been Googling.”

I just shrug and give her a cheeky grin. Maya tried to make me promise not to learn anything about the show if we were going to watch it together. I told her I’m in the same industry as Alec—even though he’s in pop and we’re in punk—and there was no way I could completely avoid spoilers.

She reluctantly agreed that was probably true, and since then I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m not even trying, just because of how adorable she is when she pretends to be annoyed.

“Fine,” Maya says. “If you already know what’s going to happen tonight, then I don’t want your opinion. I’ll find out myself in an hour.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I say. “For example, that promo where he’s stomping a fish to death? I have absolutely no idea why that would happen.”

“YOU KNOW I DON’T WATCH THE PROMOS!” Maya shouts. “He stomps a fish to death? What the hell is this we’re watching?”

I laugh, and when I don’t answer, Maya mumbles something about not talking to me about this anymore before I spoil the entire thing, and I hear her shuffling through her backpack. We stop talking, but the silence is companionable. And not actually all that silent, because I’m working out the melody to this song and doing a crap job of it.

“Oooh,” Maya says, after I’ve run through a couple of possibilities. “I like that last one.”

“Yeah?” I say. I play those chords again, trying to work out a riff. “What are you working on?”

“Organic chemistry,” she says. “This final is going to kill me.”

“I think there’s a line about chemistry somewhere in this song.”

“Is this another lie about Anna-Marie?”

I’ve told Maya the whole sordid story about Shane and his ex, including how bad I feel about continuing to tell this lie about her, even though I’m pretty sure most people suspect the truth.

“No,” I say. “We’ve agreed we need to evolve a little, so theoretically our next album will have a different theme. This is just a single, though. There’s a bunch of artists putting together an album to benefit GLAAD, and this one is our contribution. Or it will be, if we can get it sounding halfway decent.” The lyrics are good—the song is about not being able to choose who you love, so it works on multiple levels, and I think could become an anthem for anyone who’s ever been in love, gay and straight alike.

“Really? I wouldn’t have pegged you guys as spokespeople for LGBT rights.”

“It was JT’s idea,” I say. “He got us the invite. His sister’s gay, and he wanted to do something to show his support. And since she’s basically like a little sister to all of us—except Lando—of course we were all on board.”

“That’s sweet,” Maya says. “So it’s not just an image thing.”

“Who do you think we are? Alec Andreas?”

Maya grins and shakes her head. She’s bent over her textbook, with her eyebrows pushed together in a cute little V as she pretends to concentrate on it. “Not that you guys couldn’t stand to evolve your image a little. Everyone thinks you’re just a bunch of punks looking to party. And that’s only true of three of you.”

“Well, we’re all a bunch of punks who need to grow up,” I say with a chuckle. “And we probably do need to start evolving that image, or we’re going to flame out. But no, for this project, our motives were pure. I’m still trying to get Shane to pick something a little less vindictive for the theme of our next album. If I succeed at that, we might have a flying chance of not becoming the kind of has-been losers who need to go on a reality show.”

Maya smiles. “You guys are doing great. At least, that’s what the internet seems to think.”

I like that she cares enough to Google me. “Yeah,” I say. “For now. But what about the future?”

Maya doesn’t respond, ostensibly because she’s actually working on her chemistry homework, but that question sits heavy in my chest. It applies to more than just my music career. Things between me and Maya are great now, but what about the future? How long will I be able to stomach just being her friend?

How long is she even going to want that?

The silence stretches on, less comfortable now, though Maya doesn’t seem to notice. I know I should go back to working on the song, but I’m too nervous. Too involved in my own head. Maya is working something out on a piece of paper, and I love the intense way she focuses. We’ve spent hours and hours like this over the last couple months, goofing off, watching movies, her doing homework and me playing guitar. I’d rather be doing this than going to parties or hanging out with the band. Shane is probably right to be worried about me. I love everything about this except for the physical distance between us, except for all the other things I want and know I’m not going to be able to have.

Finally, mostly to break the silence, I say, “You’re still thinking about Alec and Jillian, aren’t you?”

“Yes!” Maya says. “I don’t understand how you can root against them. They’re freaking adorable.”

“I’m not rooting against them,” I say. “I just think Alec needs to clean up his act.”

“Maybe he will,” Maya says, cocking her head as she looks toward her TV, even though the show still hasn’t started. “He really seems sorry.”

“I hope so.”

It would be nice to believe that someone’s love life works out, even if it clearly isn’t going to be mine.

Seven

Maya

It’s snowing out when Ted and I leave the Mexican restaurant. It’s a place we’ve been to on enough dates now that I don’t need to even look at the menu to know what I want. I don’t think it’s either of our favorite restaurant, but it’s conveniently close to both the university and my house, and the food is good enough.

My heeled boots slip a bit on the sidewalk, and Ted grips my elbow. “I can bring the car around if you want,” he offers.

“Nah. I need to walk off those pork tamales.” I grin up at him. “Even if it’s only across a treacherous parking lot.”

“Okay, but if you think I’m going to be able to save you, you’re wrong,” he says. “One of us slips, and we’re both ending up on our asses out there in the frozen tundra.”

“The restaurant will send out rescue crews, I’m sure. And maybe more tamales. Come on.” I tug him forward, and he laughs. His cheeks are already bright pink from the cold, and blond hair pokes out haphazardly under his gray beanie.

We make our way to the car slowly, our breath misting out in front of us. Despite the slick parking lot, he opens the door for me first and then goes around the car to get in on his side. I’ve told him about a dozen times that he doesn’t need to do that, especially when it’s the temperature of a blast freezer out. But I do appreciate the gesture. Ted’s a sweet guy, thoughtful; I’ve always liked that about him. It’s part of why I agreed to go out with him in the first place.

There’s another part of why that I’m a little less comfortable thinking about. The part where it hit me, harder than it should have, when Kevin and I talked during that finale about a month and a half ago, about how the band is doing great now, and then he’d said, “But what about the future?”

The future. Where he’s still a rock star living states away from me, going on tour—probably more and more as their band gets even bigger—and thronged by so many women that I still feel stupidly insecure about, even though Kevin and I are just friends. It’s his life, and it’s important to him, and I respect that he’s probably not going to be ready to leave it for years, at least. But I think he was right that first night: it’s not a life conducive to a real relationship. Especially not with a girl who has months where she can barely drag herself out of bed, let alone along on rock tours, and who is trying desperately to scrape through her two-year degree before she officially reaches her mid-twenties.

And now the thought of trying to make a relationship work through all that doesn’t just seem near-impossible, it’s terrifying. Kevin and I have grown so close in the months since we’ve met, closer even than I’ve ever been with Leigh or Miranda, closer than I feel with my parents, my family. If we tried to really be together and it didn’t work out, then it wouldn’t be just losing a boyfriend. I’d be losing my best friend.

I can’t do that. I can’t take that risk. Honestly, I don’t think that at this point he would want to, either.

Ted climbs into the car and puts his keys in the ignition. It takes a few tries for Ted’s car to start up, which isn’t unusual. But then his ancient Honda grudgingly gets going, and we start the drive back to my house. Occasionally I’ll stay over at his place, but not tonight. I’m coming off of a bit of a flare-up, where I spent the last week or so needing to sleep even more than usual, and he’s got work early tomorrow.

I shiver, waiting for the heater to start up and thinking about that Emily Blunt movie, Wind Chill, that I watched with Kevin a few weeks ago, just after Christmas, about two kids who get stuck on the side of the highway in a snowstorm. I smile, thinking about the way Kevin insisted on calling every twist in the movie and only got half of them right—though some of his ideas were better than what actually happened.

I smile even more when I think about the Christmas gift he sent me, which I opened that day—the script of Paranormal Activity, the first movie we watched together, signed by the actors. I don’t think my gift to him—a framed picture of Alec and Jillian showing off her engagement ring on the Starving with the Stars reunion show, complete with big photoshopped words across the top, “Maya was right”—was even close to as awesome. But he did laugh pretty damn hard about it.

Ted sees me smiling and reaches over to take my hand, pulling my thoughts back to right now.

Which is good. Ted has been amazing at helping me work on getting past the idea that Kevin and I could ever be more. I needed this, even if Ted doesn’t know it. I needed to move on from the desperate hope that I’d thought I’d already closed the door on months before.

When Kevin and I had that conversation about his band’s future, I’d been on exactly one date since meeting Kevin, with a guy who showed me about a hundred pictures of himself playing football in high school—high school!—and I hadn’t been eager to jump back into the dating pool. But I knew after that phone call I needed to. And so when Ted—who was cute and nice and already someone I knew wasn’t trying to relive his glory days—asked me out after a study group later that week, I agreed.

We had a good time and went out again. And again. He kissed me on our second date, and we slept together on our third—the first guy I’d kissed since Kevin, and the first guy I’d slept with in much longer.

I hated that it all felt like a betrayal, somehow—to Ted, because I couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. And to Kevin, because . . . I don’t know why. Kevin and I are just friends, and we both know that.

I almost ended things with Ted right then, and I told him I wasn’t sure how serious I could be. But he shrugged and said it didn’t need to be serious if I wasn’t ready for that. And, really, I got the feeling he wasn’t, either.

So we kept seeing each other, falling into a comfortable routine. He knows about my chronic fatigue, and he doesn’t mind that our official dates are usually limited to about twice a week. He’s busy, too, working retail full time to help support his single mother and younger siblings while going through college at the same snail’s pace I am. A couple weeks ago, I stopped over at his house one day to drop off a textbook he’d forgotten in my car, and his little sister asked him if I was his girlfriend. He looked at me, with an eyebrow raised. “She is if she wants to be,” he said. That same casual air as before.

Neither of us was seeing anyone else—honestly, neither of us had the time (or in my case, energy) to.

“Sure,” I said, and that was that.

I like Ted, and I like what we have—it feels safe, easy. I’m moving on, the way I need to be. Disentangling my romantic feelings for Kevin with my best friend feelings for him. Keeping those as separate as they need to be.

“I still feel like I should’ve taken you out someplace nicer to celebrate,” Ted says. “From everything I’ve heard, Botkins’s tests are brutal.”

I’d heard that, too, and I’d been panicked about this test—the first one of the new term, and way sooner than tests are usually given, especially tests as intense as this one. Mr. Botkins’s lectures are a nonstop spewing of facts and formulas, and he doesn’t take well to questions or being asked to repeat himself. Ted’s not in this class with me, so I didn’t even have his incredible note-taking skills to rely on.

And yet I got an A minus—which, from hearing my fellow students’ griping, was potentially one of the highest grades in the class.

“Yeah, well, we can save the nicer place for when I actually pass the class,” I say with a smile, though probably I’ll talk him out of that then, too. Ted works crazy hard for every dollar; I don’t want him to feel like he needs to spend his money taking me to fancy restaurants. “Assuming that I actually—”

I cut off at feeling my phone buzz in my pocket. “—manage that,” I finish, pulling my phone out.

I grin the second I see it’s from Kevin; I know he was busy at the recording studio this afternoon, but I’ve been dying to hear back from him. He’s spent a not-insignificant amount of time this last week hearing me stress about this test and also quizzing me, even though he knows about as much about molecular biology as I know about chord progressions.

The message is a long string of celebration emojis, and the words, Way to kick that test’s ass. Ms. Caroll would be proud. My whole body feels warm, even though the heater in the car has barely kicked on.

Ted glances over. “That’s a lot of emoji excitement,” he says. “Let me guess—Leigh?”

My friends met Ted the week after he officially became my boyfriend. Ted liked Leigh a lot, and the feeling was mutual—maybe especially because he was open to having a full, animated conversation about the importance of reusable water bottles. Miranda, on the other hand . . . She was friendly enough, but it was clear she wasn’t on board with the whole Ted thing.

I asked her about it later, but all she said was, “He’s fine. He’s just . . . I don’t know. I mean, he’s nice.” But there was still disapproval in her voice.

“I like nice guys,” I said.

“I know,” she said, giving me a look like she wanted to say more. But then she changed the topic, and I never asked her about Ted again.

I realize I haven’t answered Ted for a beat too long. “No,” I say. “Kevin.” I feel the same awkward twinge whenever I talk about Kevin with Ted—which isn’t that often. Though it’s more than I’ve talked about Ted with Kevin.

“Just congratulating me,” I say unnecessarily. “And he says Ms. Caroll would be proud.” I don’t know why I’m feeling the need to tell him what exactly Kevin texted. It’s not like I have anything to hide or—

“Ms. Caroll?”

Shit. I haven’t ever told Ted about Ms. Caroll. I mean, not that it’s a big deal. It just hasn’t come up.

“She’s my science teacher from seventh grade. She was the one who convinced me to go into that career in the first place,” I say. It was more than that, too. She was the only black teacher I’d had to that point, and learning from that smart, confident, science-minded black woman had been a revelation.

Not that my mom isn’t strong and smart, but she’s always had a more artistic bent than I have. And there weren’t a lot of black people in our overwhelmingly-white area of Denver (there still aren’t), so it was huge to see a professional black woman who was so much like I wanted to be.

Kevin totally understood. I’m not sure that Ted would, not in the same way. Which maybe isn’t fair. It’s not like he doesn’t understand racial issues at all—he’s a white guy dating a black girl, which comes with its own micro-aggressive societal judgment.

But it’s different if you haven’t lived it your whole life.

Ted looks back out at the road, the wipers squeaky as they brush off the falling snow. “Nice,” he says. “I bet she would be proud.” There’s something off about the way he says it, though, and I consider telling him about all that anyway. Maybe he would get it. Just because we haven’t talked much about racial stuff—

My phone buzzes again in my hand.

Just so you know, my coffee mug at the studio left a ring stain and just as I saw that, Shane plugged in the amp and it fritzed and made this loud static sound and I nearly pissed myself and I blame you.

Immediately after that, there’s a gif of the freaky chick crawling out of the television in The Ring, which we watched last night. And then a gif of a dude hyperventilating into a paper bag.

I laugh, imagining it. My fingers automatically go to start texting back, I told you so, but then I stop, because I notice Ted looking over at me, and I shove my phone back in my pocket. Not because it’s Kevin texting, but just because it’s rude to be texting friends in general while I’m on a date.

“Was that still Kevin?” Ted asks. Not accusingly, but there’s still that slightly off quality to his tone.

“Yeah.” I shrug. “He got freaked out today because I made him watch The Ring last night. Which, for being a PG-13 movie, is one of the scarier ones out there. I think he cussed more during that movie than I’ve ever heard him—”

“Wait, you watched it with him?” Ted very carefully turns the car across a snow-covered intersection. “Isn’t he in LA?” The blinker sounds extra loud in the beat of silence.

Um.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yes. To both.” I feel my palms sweating a bit in my gloves. Which is ridiculous. I can watch a movie with a friend. “We Skype during movies sometimes so we can watch them together.”

“Huh,” Ted says. “Okay.”

It doesn’t sound particularly okay. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” he says, though he squints out at the road, like he has to think about it. “I mean, not necessarily. How often do you guys text and stuff?”

I feel my hackles rise. “Text and stuff?”

“Text, talk. Watch movies over Skype.”

“I don’t know.” I can hear my voice growing sharper. “I don’t exactly keep a log.”

Ted flicks another glance over to me. “Right. But you must have, like, a ballpark figure.”

“I don’t—” I feel myself flushing. “Why does it matter? I watch movies with friends. I watched a movie with Leigh last week.”

I’m reacting way too much to this, I know it, but I can’t seem to stop.

Ted nods slowly. “Yeah, I know. Because you told me about that.”

I want to snap that I just told him about watching the movie with Kevin last night, but we both know I didn’t tell him before that on purpose. My mouth feels too dry; why haven’t I told him any of this? I’m not doing anything wrong being friends with Kevin.

Am I?

“We text a lot,” I say, trying not to shift too uncomfortably in my seat. “Pretty much every day. And we talk a lot. But—” I shake my head. “I told you he was my friend. My best friend. You know that.”

“I do, yeah,” he says. He pulls his beanie off, runs his gloved hand through his hair. “I just didn’t realize you guys talked that much. It’s okay, it’s just . . . It’s a surprise, that’s all.”

I nod. Okay, I can get that. Probably I’ve been too cautious in talking about Kevin, assuming it would make Ted uncomfortable to know the details, when maybe the opposite is true.

I open my mouth to apologize for that, when Ted looks over at me again.

“He knows about me, though, right?” Ted asks. We’ve pulled into my driveway, and he puts the car in park. The Honda hums as it idles.

My stomach twists. “Um,” is all I can say.

“Are you serious, Maya?” Ted’s brow pulls together with this incredulous look. “You have this best friend you talk to every day and he doesn’t know you’ve had a boyfriend for weeks now?”

There’s hurt in his expression, and guilt floods through me.

And also, still defensiveness. Because I have reasons I haven’t told Kevin about him.

“Kevin and I don’t really talk about our dating lives. He doesn’t tell me about his, either.” This is true. He knows I’ve been on dates, but he’s never pressed for any further details. He’s been going out to parties and stuff, and I don’t ask about that. Maybe it’s because of how our friendship started, but it feels weird to dig into each other’s romantic lives.

Besides, we have plenty of other stuff to talk about.

“Really,” Ted says, and I get the feeling he’s taking completely different information from that statement than I meant to convey.

This whole conversation is completely getting away from me. “It’s just . . . It’s not like that.”

Ted’s eyes narrow, and he crosses his arms. “Okay, Maya. So what’s it like, then?”

Maybe it’s the fact that he’s used my name twice in the last fifteen seconds, or the look on his face, but it’s clear this has passed into “problem” realms after all. And I don’t appreciate the implication that I’m, what? Cheating on him? With a guy I have kissed a total of once, months before I ever went on a date with Ted?

“Do you want to just come out and say what you’re accusing me of?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything—”

“It sure feels like you are.” I feel my gloved hands ball into fists and force them to relax. “He’s my friend, Ted. We talk a lot, and yeah, we watch movies together, but it’s not like we’re doing anything sexual, or even romantic. We’re friends.”

Ted lets out a breath, this sharp chuffing sound. “Doesn’t it bother you that it makes me uncomfortable? Does it matter at all what I think?”

“It does matter, I just don’t see—” I swallow, shake my head. The snowflakes are hitting the window with more force than before, turning into tiny crystals ricocheting off the windshield.

“If I texted constantly with a girl and it made you uncomfortable, I wouldn’t do it.” Ted says. His cheeks are still flushed pink, but I don’t think it’s from the cold outside, not anymore.

I don’t know if he would or not, if it was his best friend. I do know I would never ask him to. “What do you want from me, Ted?” I glare at him. “You want me to give up my best friend because you don’t like that we watch movies together?”

“No, I just—” He grips the steering wheel. “No. He’s your friend, and I knew that. I just . . . It bothers me that he doesn’t even know I exist. It bothers me that he doesn’t know you have a boyfriend.” He looks back over at me. “And it bothers me that you don’t seem to care.”

That last part hits me hard. Ted’s a good guy. I like him, and I don’t want to hurt him.

I’m not about to give up my friendship with Kevin for him—not a chance—but if that isn’t what he’s asking for . . .

“I do care,” I say, letting out a long breath. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this stuff before. I didn’t think it would matter. But if it’s important to you that I tell Kevin that you’re my boyfriend, I’ll do it.”

“Yeah?” He looks over at me cautiously.

“Yeah. I’ll call him tonight. It’s not going to be a big deal, really.” And it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t. Kevin and I don’t talk about our dating lives, but that doesn’t mean we can’t. It’ll be easy enough: I have a boyfriend, his name is Ted, so what part of The Ring scared you the most?

Ted’s voice goes quiet, and he reaches over to give my gloved hand a squeeze with his own. “Thanks, Maya,” he says. “That’s really all I want.”

He looks relieved, the tension leaving his expression, but for me the tension seems only to be growing, tightening into a fist.

I squeeze his hand back. “Of course.”

He leans over and kisses me, and I kiss him back, but I barely feel it, my lips numb.

I say goodbye and cross the snowy driveway into my house, and the headlights of Ted’s car swing across the front door in an arc before he heads down the street. I go into my warm house and shed my coat, gloves, and hat. I can hear the TV in the family room and my little sister practicing her flute from her bedroom.

“Maya?” Mom says, walking out from the family room. “You’re back early, honey. Are you feeling tired?” I can barely answer before she bustles around me, hanging up my coat and putting away my snow-covered shoes in the front closet, as if doing so myself will break me in my fragile condition.

“Mom, you don’t have to—”

“Nonsense. You go lie down. I got you one of those Himalayan sea salt lamps. It’s in your room. They’re supposed to be wonderful for getting more restful sleep.”

“It’s not the quality of the sleep that’s the problem, Mom,” I say with a sigh. About a half-dozen different types of sleep studies have told us that over the years.

“Well, it can’t hurt,” she says, patting me on the cheek. “You need to take care of yourself.”

“I know.” I give her a smile and then hustle off to my room. She can think I’m dying to crawl into bed—god knows that’s been true for way too many days recently—but really I need to gather my courage to call Kevin.

Which is crazy. It’s not a big deal that I have a boyfriend. Maybe this will break the ice on talking about our dating lives—something that shouldn’t be weird, not anymore. Maybe he’ll feel okay telling me about the girls he’s dating.

I try to ignore the queasy feeling that gives me. I try to ignore my own fear, brittle like a thin sheet of ice, that Kevin will be hurt and upset that I didn’t tell him sooner, that this will change something between us.

I get up to my room, and yep, there’s this big-ass rock lamp glowing orange on my dresser and supposedly emitting . . . I don’t know, special sleep ions? Salt-crystal angel prayers?

Until I see some serious, research-based studies, I don’t believe it’s going to do shit for my fatigue.

But a little part of me can’t help but wish it would help make this phone call easier.

Eight

Kevin

I’m in the middle of scrolling through the latest streaming service offerings in the horror genre when Maya Skypes me. I answer mid-scroll. “Hey gorgeous,” I say, glancing at the screen. “Looks like we finally have some new movies to add to our list.”

“That’s cool,” Maya says. Something in her voice makes me put down my remote. She’s looking off to the side, not quite paying attention to the screen, but also not fully focused on something else, like homework.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, sure,” she says.

But it isn’t. I can tell. I wonder if she’s gotten some bad news about her health. She’s been available fewer nights lately, which I assume means she’s needing to get more rest. I know she says that her illness comes and goes, and sometimes she needs more sleep and that’s just how it is.

But I still worry about her.

“So,” she says, sounding like she’s trying to bring something up casually but doing exactly the opposite. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” I say. I can already tell it isn’t something good. “What’s that?”

“Um, about this guy.” She bites her lip and looks up at the ceiling before continuing, all in one breath. “MyboyfriendTed.”

It takes me a second to parse that.

Her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend, Ted?

“Uh, okay,” I say. I manage not to blurt out any of the things I’m thinking, which go in this order:

You have a boyfriend?

And you didn’t tell me?

How long has that been going on?

A hot wave washes over me, and it takes me a minute to figure out what it is. I’m embarrassed. I’m fucking mortified that I haven’t been with another girl in over three months and meanwhile she’s had a boyfriend for an undetermined period of time. I mean, she doesn’t owe me anything. We’re just friends, a fact that we’ve reaffirmed many times in the months we’ve known each other.

But we’ve spent so much time talking—hours and hours every week, and all this time, she’s had a—

“Yeah,” she says. “I probably should have mentioned that, I guess? I mean, I told Ted it’s not like we really talk about our dating lives, you know. It’s just not our style, right?”

What?

“Uh, yeah,” I say. “Sure.” Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out what she means by not our style. How many guys has she been seeing over the last several months? I mean, I knew she went out on dates. She’s mentioned a couple here and there as reasons she might not be able to hang out. Usually, though, she’s texting me by ten o’clock Mountain time on those nights, so I definitely didn’t think it was anything serious.

Does she think I’ve been dating? I sure as hell would have told her if I had a girlfriend.

Maya seems relieved, though I can’t imagine why. “Good. I told him it was no big deal. He seemed to think it was some kind of issue that I hadn’t told you about him, but I really don’t see why—”

“Yeah, I bet he did.” It comes out with more force than I want it to, but all this emotion has to go somewhere.

Maya’s eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

I open my mouth, then close it again without speaking. I’m not sure how much it’s my place to say, but I know how I would feel in this Ted guy’s place.

“It means I bet he was uncomfortable with that,” I say. “If I had a girlfriend who was spending hours on the phone with some guy friend, and hadn’t even told him she was taken—”

“We’re friends,” Maya says defensively. “Why would it matter?”

My chest ties in a knot. It matters because I thought we were close. Because I’ve been harboring feelings I shouldn’t be, hanging out with her under false pretenses, clinging to the smallest hope that someday things will be different between us. Even if I wasn’t willing to admit it before, that’s what I’ve been doing all along.

It matters because this means there was never a chance for us, and I’ve just been fooling myself.

I’m the world’s biggest idiot, which is what Shane’s been trying to tell me for months now.

“I think it matters because we probably shouldn’t be hanging out this much if you have a boyfriend,” I say.

Maya’s face falls, like this crushes her as much as it crushes me. “Why not? I don’t understand why it should matter. I’m allowed to have friends.”

“Of course you are,” I say. “And we’ll still be friends.” This sounds so much like a breakup that for a second my throat closes.

It feels like a breakup. That’s how deep I’m in this.

“I don’t think anything has to change.” She’s upset; I can hear it in her voice and see it on her face.

It does have to change. I know it in my bones. Not just because she has a boyfriend—because honestly? Fuck that guy—but because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep pouring my heart into this, hoping one day she’ll throw me a bone.

I love her, and she doesn’t love me back, not like that.

I don’t want to lose her entirely, so things have to be different now.

“Maya,” I say. “Do you really think you can fully commit to a relationship when you’re spending all your emotional energy on me?”

Maya sucks in her lips and looks down at her knees. She’s sitting on her bed, I can see now, all crunched up against her headboard. She was nervous about this call, probably afraid I was going to be pissed at her for not telling me.

And I should be. Shane would sure as hell tell me I should be. But right now, all I feel is hurt.

I push that aside. I’ll deal with it later, not in front of her.

“You’re my best friend,” she says quietly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“And you won’t,” I say, as softly as I can. “But if you’re into this guy enough for him to be your boyfriend, you need to be putting your focus there, you know? He’s the one you should be texting from class or hanging out with in the evenings.”

The thought of that guts me. I already know what has to happen. Maya and I will become the kind of friends who might get together if they have a minute when they’re in town, who only text when they have big news. And just like that, I’m imagining the day that she texts to tell me she’s moving in with her boyfriend, getting engaged, asking for my current address so she can send me a wedding announcement. I don’t know this dude from Adam, and I know it’s probably not that serious, especially because they couldn’t be together that much, given that she spends most of her free time with me.

Or does she? Has she been with him every minute that she’s not with me? Has she been texting me while hanging out with him? That shouldn’t feel like a betrayal. I knew the score.

But I can’t help it. It does.

“Is that really what you want?” Maya asks. Her voice is so quiet, so vulnerable, that I nearly tell her hell no, this isn’t what I want. I want her to be my girlfriend. I want to get a place in Denver and split my time between there and LA. I want to spend every spare second with her. I want to be the guy she kisses and makes love to. I want to be everything to her, the way she’s everything to me.

I have the self-respect not to say that, at least. So I tell her something else that’s true. “I want you to be happy. And I think maybe I’ve been taking up too much space in your life, and that’s not fair.”

“It didn’t feel like too much space to me,” Maya says.

“But your boyfriend. He’s not thrilled about it. Is he?”

“I don’t think it should be his decision.”

“It isn’t,” I say. “But if you were my girlfriend, and you wanted to spend all your time with some other guy, I’d be concerned. And jealous. And wondering if I was wasting my time on someone who wasn’t really into me, you know?”

Okay, I’m all of those things. This is way too close to the truth, except for the part about wasting my time. That’s the trouble with my friendship with Maya. Time with her never feels like it’s wasted.

Even if it’s keeping me from opening my heart to something that might really work, instead of saving it all for her.

“I want the best for you,” I say. “And if that means we need to talk a little less while you focus on your relationship, that’s okay.”

It’s not okay. It’ll never be okay. But that’s all the more sign that I need to let go.

Not before I get my heart broken, though. Like an idiot, I’ve already handed it to her, and she’s torn it to shreds.

“How much less?” she says. And I want to read heartbreak into her tone, but I’m afraid I’ve already assumed too much.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Why don’t you talk about it with your boyfriend? It’s not his decision, obviously,” I add quickly. “It’s not like I think he has the right to tell you what to do. But if you’re in a committed relationship, you should at least hear his opinion and work out something you’re both comfortable with, right?”

My eyes are burning. They should work this out, because they’re the ones in the relationship. They’re the ones with something to navigate, not me.

I’m just the friend. The expendable one. The third, unnecessary wheel.

“Yeah, okay,” Maya says. “I guess you’re right.”

I love you, I almost say. And even if I could play it off like I love her as a friend, I know I can’t let those words pass my lips. I need to be working on disentangling my heart, on figuring out how to be as open to a relationship as she apparently is.

I have no idea if or when that is ever going to happen.

Nine

Maya

I should feel better. I came clean about Ted to Kevin, like Ted wanted. And Kevin didn’t flip out or accuse me of keeping secrets. He seemed surprised, of course, and hurt, maybe, that I hadn’t told him before now, which made me snap into defensive mode again. He even understood where Ted was coming from—way more than I did. Or maybe just more than I was willing to admit.

Which means, probably, telling him was the right thing to do. It means I should feel better.

But I don’t. I feel like complete shit. I feel like never leaving my bed, like wrapping myself up in my comforter and keeping the whole rest of the world out.

I think maybe I’ve been taking up too much space in your life, Kevin said. Calmly. Gently, like he was trying to let me down easy, even though my heart was cracking apart. You need to be putting your focus there.

With Ted. Who is my boyfriend.

And maybe Kevin’s right about the focus. Maybe that’s what Kevin actually wants, some space of his own. Maybe it’s what’s best for both of us. To show we really have moved on. Maybe how well he took all that, how much he wanted me to make things work with Ted, is a sign that he has.

Which is a good thing.

The whole drive to campus the next day, I tell myself this over and over.

All throughout my molecular biology class, I tell myself how this will be better for everyone, not listening at all as Professor Botkins lectures rapid-fire in the background.

Kevin and I can still be friends, I think. I don’t talk or text with Leigh and Miranda every day—not even close. And we’re still friends. Not like Kevin and me, but—

My eyes burn, and the words on my laptop swim around so much that I close the thing entirely.

Some change is good. Necessary, even.

I’ll feel better when I talk to Ted. When I see how much better he feels about all of this.

After class, I walk across the courtyard to the building where Ted will be getting out of his statistics class. The snow is drifting down lazily, the sky steel gray. The sudden cold air stings my cheeks, and then entering the warm math building stings them all over again. Sometimes after class, we meet up for a late lunch. Not all the time—he often has to go back to work, or one of us has a study group, or I’m too tired and need to go home to crash. But I don’t think any of those are happening today, and probably it’s good for us to go out again, talk things over. Spend some more time together, even when it’s not planned. But just because we want to.

We never do that, I realize.

He’s the one you should be texting from class or hanging out with in the evenings, you know? Kevin had said.

My throat feels too tight. Ted’s my boyfriend. He’s the one I should want to do those things with.

Ted steps out of his classroom, his backpack slung over his shoulder, his blond hair still messy from the beanie he likely wore in the snow on the way to class. He doesn’t see me at first; he’s talking with another guy in his class. The guy says something and Ted laughs.

He’s cute. I’ve always thought so. But it hits me then that I’ve never felt my heart skip when I’ve made him laugh like that. I’ve never felt that electric current run through me when we kissed, the goosebumps along my skin at feeling him close.

I like Ted. He’s kind and sweet and fun to hang out with, and I really do enjoy spending time with him. But I’ve never felt like I couldn’t wait to share big news—or small news—with him. I’ve never longed to be in his presence, even if it was only through text or Skype. I’ve never wondered if he’s thinking about me when he drifts off to sleep, or when he wakes up in the morning.

Ted looks over and sees me, giving me a hesitant smile and wave, and it comes crashing in on me all at once.

All those things I haven’t felt with him, those are things I’ve felt with Kevin. Things I still feel with Kevin, no matter how much I try to convince myself I don’t. Or that it’s just because he’s my best friend.

But telling myself I don’t have feelings for Kevin, telling myself I’ve moved on, that we’re just friends, that I only want us to be friends—it doesn’t make any of that true.

Ted, I care about as a friend.

I’m in love with Kevin.

The words stun me. They feel like terror and relief all at once, but I don’t have time to process them, don’t have time to turn them over and test them, because Ted’s right here now, and I suddenly know what I need to do—as far as things with him go, at least.

“Hey,” he says, his smile slipping as he studies me warily. “So, um. Did you talk to Kevin last night?”

“Yeah. I did.” I swallow; it’s hard for me to meet his eyes, because it’s hitting me now how unfair I’ve been to him. Maybe I didn’t know how deep my feelings for Kevin were—maybe I didn’t let myself know—and maybe I didn’t think Ted and I were all that serious, even when we had official labels.

But it was still unfair, and I’m searching for a way to say that, when he nods, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Right,” he says, staring at the ground. He knows what’s coming. Possibly he knew when he first saw my face just now. Possibly he knew last night.

I look up at him. “I’m sorry, Ted. I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“Because of Kevin,” he says, nodding again.

I wet my lips. “Because I’m in love with him. I didn’t realize that until—I mean, I knew I’d had feelings for him, but I thought I was over those, or getting over—”

“It’s okay,” he says. “You don’t need to explain. I kind of figured.”

I frown, confused. “You knew all this time I had feelings for him?”

“No. But on some level, I knew you weren’t totally in this. It wasn’t until last night that I knew why.” He gives me a small, sad smile. “You’d never looked so happy to see me as you did getting those texts from him.”

I close my eyes. “God, Ted, I’m so sorry. I care about you, I really do. I didn’t mean to hurt you like this.”

“I know. And yeah, it sucks. I care about you too. I mean, I’m not in love with you, and I didn’t know if I would get there someday or not.” He gives a little shrug. “But I sure as hell wasn’t in love with someone else while I was dating you.”

This last bit stings, but it’s completely fair. Because that’s definitely what I was doing, even if I had convinced myself otherwise.

“I’m a total ass, and I’m sorry,” I say. I know I’ve apologized several times by now, but those are the only words I seem to be able to say.

“Yeah, me too.” He shifts awkwardly, adjusts his backpack. He gives me another sad smile. “I guess I should go. Take care, Maya.”

“You too,” I say, but he’s already turned away, walking down the hall.

I want to hope he and I can still be friends, but I’m not about to push anything like that on him now. And I wouldn’t blame him for never wanting to speak to me again.

I didn’t mean to, but I used him. I used him to pretend to myself that I could move on, that Kevin and I were just friends.

Have I been using Kevin, too? Knowing that all we could be was friends, but still so desperate to keep him in my life, to have every bit of him that I possibly could?

If he was glad for the space, happy to say we should talk less, is he still going to want that now? I lean back against the wall, against taped-up ads for roommates and jobs and trivia nights at the local bar, and I feel my whole world closing in on me.

I love Kevin. I’m in love with Kevin. My best friend. The most important person in the world to me.

And while it feels like my brain is letting out a sigh, like it’s finally stopped fighting against that knowledge for so long, the rest of me is all but paralyzed by the thought of it.

I’m not with Ted anymore, so Kevin and I might be able to go back to where we were. But can I handle that now, knowing that what I really want is so much more? Could I handle more, knowing all I have to lose? Would he want more if I could?

I want to flee back to the safety of my bed, but I know even there, I can’t escape the truth:

I’m in love with Kevin, and I don’t have the first clue what to do about it.

I text Miranda on the way home, and she tells me she can be over at my house in about an hour. She’s finished up with her own classes early today, and I know later tonight she’s meeting with her boyfriend, Jared—the talent liaison at the arena she met the same night I met Kevin. They’ve been kind of off and on since then, but they are firmly on now.

I don’t want to intrude on her with my crap, but Leigh’s at work saving the world one governmental lobbying proposal at a time, and while there’s a not-small part of me that’s dying to call Kevin— “Guess what? I broke up with Ted. We don’t have to take up less space in each other’s lives after all! It can all go back to normal!”—I’m also scared to do so, now that I know how I really feel about him.

Normally, I’d have gotten a text from Kevin by now, or texted him something. He’d have sent a link to some gossip site with spoilers for The Bachelor, even though he knows I won’t open it. He’d just be taunting me with it, with that little smiling devil emoji. Or I’d have texted him about the way the guy in front of me in class won’t stop cracking his knuckles over and over again like a popcorn machine, possibly with a sound recording so Kevin can truly appreciate my pain.

Something like that, or something totally different. But something.

There’s nothing from him on my phone since those gifs he sent last night, though, and when I crawl back into bed, I find myself watching them play in tiny two-second loops until my eyes hurt.

I pull the blankets up around me. I resent my bed so often, resent the amount of time I spend here instead of being able to hold a steady job or take a full course load of classes. Or spend more time with my friends than the once-every-couple-weeks we can all get together. But despite that, it always felt safe here. Even when the snow pelts the bedroom window like it does now, I feel warm here.

Especially, I realize, once this became the place I’d spend time with Kevin. I stopped resenting it then, stopped feeling so trapped by my room and my fatigue, because even though he wasn’t physically here, he was with me. Nearly every night, just on the other side of the screen. Where, if I closed my eyes, I could pretend there wasn’t a screen at all, and he was really here.

Where many nights, I’d fall asleep wishing just that.

God, how did I not know I was in love with him? How did I convince myself that I could move on, that I could just be friends with him, and be okay without anything more?

I don’t feel safe or warm here right now, no matter how many blankets I tuck around me.

Eventually Miranda walks in. My mom and dad are both at work, and my sister has orchestra after school, so I left the door unlocked so she didn’t have to bother knocking. She takes one look at me, sitting up against my headboard with only my head poking out from a huddle of blankets, and sighs.

“Shit. That bad a day, huh?”

I look her over. I may be drowning in blankets and prepared to remain so for the rest of my life, but she looks amazing. Her dark hair is pinned back, just barely wet with snow, and she’s got on this shimmery-but-somehow-understated black dress and heeled boots.

“Oh god, Miranda. Were you on your way to meet Jared? I don’t want to interrupt—”

“Whatever. No. I’ve still got a while. I just didn’t want to have to go back home and get changed first.” She peels off her boots and sits next to me on the bed, up against the headboard.

“Well, you look amazing. Especially those socks.”

She wiggles her toes in the socks I got her for her birthday last spring, which are part of a pack that all have terrible lawyer-related sexual puns on them. Today’s say, “Are you pro-bono or just happy to see me?”

“Right? Jared’s cooking tonight, so I thought I’d really turn the sexy on.” She pats the pile of blankets roughly where my legs are. “So what’s going on?”

“I broke up with Ted.”

She eyes me. “Was he an asshole? Do I need to key his car? Would he even notice if I keyed that hunk of shit?”

I’m too tightly bound in blankets to elbow her, so I give her a look instead, then shake my head. “No. I was definitely the asshole who deserves a keyed car.”

“Because . . .?”

“Because I’m in love with Kevin, and I’m pretty sure I dated Ted just so I wouldn’t have to face that.” Maybe hoping I would never have to face that.

“Ahhh.” Miranda doesn’t sound surprised in the least by this revelation, which makes me glare at her.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I say. The grimace on her face is confirmation enough. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because, my dear Maya,” she says, patting the blankets again, “—and believe me that this is said with the greatest love—you can be the most stubborn person I’ve ever met when you’ve got your mind made up about something.”

I groan, because she’s not wrong.

“So when you’d made up your mind that you and Kevin were just going to be friends,” she continues, “I knew nothing I could say would change that, and you’d just have to figure it out for yourself. I just hoped it wouldn’t be because Kevin got a girlfriend.” She gives me a suddenly concerned look. “He didn’t, did he?”

“No,” I say, though even the thought of that sends a trickle of ice through me. God, how did I ever think this would be okay?

Is this the way he felt hearing about Ted? Or was he really fine with it?

“I mean, I’m sure he’s seeing girls,” I say, trying not to picture any little bit of that. “But we don’t talk details about that. Or at all, really.” Until I announced that I had a boyfriend, and he very kindly told me how I should focus on that, and how maybe we didn’t need to talk so much anymore and . . .

I pull a hand up from under the blankets just enough to rub at my forehead, where I can feel a headache starting.

Miranda nods. “So you’re not with Ted anymore.”

“No. And I still feel shitty about doing that to him. He’s a nice guy.” I give her a firm look when I say this.

“Yep,” she says. “He is. But he’s not the nice guy you really want to be with.”

Of course. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Ted; it was that she didn’t like him with me. Because she knew how I really felt about Kevin.

Shit. Everyone must know. Panic tightens my chest. Does Kevin know? Is that why he was so open to me focusing on my relationship with Ted?

“And also,” Miranda says, “Ted’s a big boy. He’ll be fine.” She pauses. “So what are you going to do? Are you going to tell Kevin?” She asks this like it’s even a possibility for me to blurt these words out to my best friend, especially after the words I had to blurt out last night.

“I—I mean, I can’t,” I say, my eyes burning again. “I don’t know if he feels the same way about me. And not even love, but, you know, is he even interested in me that way at all anymore? We’ve been such close friends for so long now, if I said that and he doesn’t feel the same way . . .” I close my eyes, already feeling the deep shame of that, of him having to tell me I missed my chance with him months ago.

What would that do to our friendship?

“Okay,” Miranda says slowly. “Let’s just pretend that he does. Let’s pretend he’s crazy in love with you and wants to be more than friends.”

God, I both desperately want to pretend that and desperately don’t.

“Miranda, I don’t see how pretending—”

“So,” she cuts me off. “Given that, could you see yourself trying to make it work? He’s still a rock star, and he’s still going to be surrounded by girls wanting to sleep with him. Could you trust him?”

I think about that. And yeah, I get insecure when I think about all those girls, but now I think that insecurity comes from them getting to be with him when I can’t.

I know Kevin now, better than I know anyone. And I know what kind of person he is.

“Yes,” I say. “I could trust him. If we were together, he wouldn’t cheat on me.”

“Okay. So the long-distance thing. You guys have obviously been able to have a pretty tight relationship even with being so far apart, and if you were together—”

I groan again. “I know. I see where you’re going with this. And yeah, we’ve been able to build a relationship long-distance. But I still don’t think that’s particularly conducive to a romantic relationship, even if he did come out here more often or I went out there—and even if I didn’t happen to have a flare-up during one of our visits and spend the whole time sleeping instead of being with my boyfriend.” I can feel my voice getting higher and faster, the fear building. “And then, then, if we try this, and it doesn’t work out . . . I can’t lose him, Miranda.”

The tears slip over onto my cheeks, and Miranda’s expression goes soft and she puts her arm around me, leaning her head against mine. We sit there in silence for a long moment, and then Miranda draws back enough to look at me.

“So are you going to try to keep things with him the way they are now?”

I frown. A huge part of me wants to. Or at least keep things the way they were before I told him about Ted. And probably they could go back to that, once I tell him Ted and I broke up? Our friendship, so incredible, so comfortable.

I think about that word for a moment. I’ve used it often in my head to think about my relationship with Ted. Comfortable. Easy. But it’s not the same way I think of it with Kevin, and it takes me a bit to realize why.

With Ted, it was easy because it was a relationship that didn’t require much of me—or him, either, for that matter. It was comfortable because I didn’t have to put much of my heart into it.

But with Kevin, it’s easy because of how much I can be myself with him, unreservedly me. It’s comfortable because all of my heart is already in it, and has been for a long time.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I don’t know that I have the guts to do anything else.”

I think back to that first conversation with him, to talking about horror movies being like roller coasters—scary, but in a good way, because no matter how sharp the turns are or how deep the drops, you always know you’re still on the track.

I’m terrified of leaving that track. Or finding out I’ve never been on one at all.

“I know,” she says, putting her head back against mine. “You’ve spent so long protecting yourself, making sure to get enough rest, making sure not to overdo it. And I get why. You need to. But somewhere in all that, you’ve forgotten that Maya’s a brave, kickass mofo who’s able to handle a lot more than she thinks.”

I sniffle, though I can’t help but smile too. “A kickass mofo who can’t even keep her friends from taking their shirts off and throwing themselves at rock stars.”

“Yeah, well, some things are more inevitable than others.”

I laugh. We sit there for a while longer, talking on and off, speculating what kind of dinner Jared is making for her and whether she’s going to end up with salmonella poisoning or a reheated can of Spaghetti-Os and how sweet it is that’s he’s doing this for her, even with what she claims are “supremely dubious” cooking skills. Then eventually my sister comes home, and my mom, and Miranda needs to take off to meet Jared for her romantic and hopefully-not-poisonous dinner.

And I hold my phone in my hand, preparing myself to call Kevin.

I’m going to tell him about breaking up with Ted, of course. I’m going to hope that means we can at least have our friendship back to what it was.

But I know now how much more I want, and despite what Miranda says about me, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to take the risk to find out if that’s possible.

Ten

Kevin

After Maya calls me to tell me about Ted, I send a text to Shane, telling him Maya has a boyfriend. He doesn’t miss a beat, just tells me he’ll be over in an hour and shows up with a bag of Cheetos, a case of beer, and a couple of joints. We spend the rest of the evening getting trashed and saying bad things about Ted. Shane wisely doesn’t extend any of the insults to Maya, and I’m glad. It feels good to rip apart this guy I’ve never met, to forget for a few hours that I actually hope he’s a decent human being, since he gets to be with the girl I love, and I don’t.

In the morning, I want to do it all over again, but I don’t. Instead I answer some emails from a club venue we’re playing next month, pick up all the empty beer cans in my apartment, and force myself to take a shower. Shane took the rest of the pot with him—he always does that, ever since he saw some documentary about racial demographics and mass incarceration and got all woke about how he’s much less likely to go to prison for drug possession than I am. Now he’s always on me to let him buy the drugs (which I always did anyway, since I’m not a big user) and makes sure not to leave any behind in my apartment or car. It’s that last part I mind. I may not be the biggest pot head around, but I have smoked a startling number of Shane’s leftovers over the years.

Today I really could have used one.

I know Shane would be back over here in a minute if I asked him to be, but I can’t bring myself to make that call. I need to be an adult about this. I got rejected months ago by a girl who happens to be a good friend of mine now. Who she dates is her business. If we’re spending less time together, that just gives me a chance to get out of my head and put myself back out there. I can party more with the guys, who god knows would love that. I can work more on our music—I’ve got a couple of sets of lyrics Shane wrote now, the beginnings of what may eventually be our next album, and I ought to be working on them more than I am.

Hell, I could remember how to watch TV by myself again. I never used to mind being alone. Unlike JT and Shane, I need my down time. I always have.

I just liked it better when Maya was in it.

Taking my own advice, I spend my afternoon with my headphones plugged into an amp, working out some new riffs that might go with some of the songs Shane wrote. The lyrics aren’t great yet, and I don’t know that any of these songs is going to be The One—the song that hits the right mix of theme, rhythm, and melody that makes us know it’s going to be our central hit to build the rest of the album around. But it feels good to spend time with my guitar, just me and the music.

Even if I can’t shake the feeling I want to ask Maya’s opinion.

I’m taking a break to order in dinner when my phone rings. I’ve been keeping it out of my pocket to avoid the urge to text her all day. I said we were going to back off, and I have to mean it. Not just because it’s what’s best for her, but because I don’t know how to be around her, knowing that none of it means anything.

You always knew that, I remind myself.

I stare at the caller ID. It’s Maya calling. She almost always texts first, and after yesterday’s disaster, I can’t help but be nervous about what she’s going to say. No doubt she’s talked to Ted by now.

Is she going to tell me it’s over, that we can’t even be friends?

“Hey,” I say when I answer. I don’t add my usual “gorgeous.” I’d always thought that was deniable before, but really, is it? Was it ever?

“Hey, Kevin,” Maya says. She sounds sad, and I’m sure, then. She and Ted agreed. It’s over between us. “Ted and I broke up.”

It takes a moment for this to sink in. They . . . broke up? “I’m sorry,” I say, even though I’m not. I’m the opposite of sorry. I’m ready to throw a freaking parade. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Maya says. “I mean, I know it was the right thing to do.”

“You broke up with him?” I ask, still stunned. Not sure what significance I dare to read into the fact that she broke up with him the very day after she told me about him.

“Yeah,” she says. “I just . . . wasn’t as into it as I should have been, you know?”

I did not know, but now that I do, I feel like crying. All those smart things I said yesterday about how we needed space and to be able to give our all to other relationships go flying out the window.

Maya’s single. And she’s here, talking to me. And right now, those two things are the only ones in the world that matter.

“I know you’re probably still mad I didn’t tell you,” Maya says. “It didn’t feel like a big deal, I guess. And it should have, if I’d been more committed to it. But I wasn’t, and I just didn’t want anything to change.”

I almost tell her I hope that’s not why she broke up with him, but that’s a bald-faced lie. I hope that is why she broke up with him. I want her to want me and only me. I should tell her; I should confess everything right here, tell her I’m hopelessly in love with her and it broke my heart to know that there was someone else, and I don’t ever want to feel that way again.

“Yeah, okay,” is what I actually say. “You didn’t seem like you were that invested in what he thought.”

Maya groans. “I know, right? I am the worst. He was a nice guy, and I shouldn’t have done that to him.”

I can’t help asking. “Why did you?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe because it was easy.”

She probably doesn’t mean it this way, but that slaps me in the face. It was easy, because he was there. It was easy, because he was a normal guy, with a normal life.

It was easy, because he made it easy on her.

And here I am in this insane career, two days’ drive from her, making no effort to get back there to see her.

If I did, would it make a difference? If I made this easier on her, would she want me?

My heartbeat pounds in my ears.

And if so, would it matter? Is Shane right to worry? Would I quit the band for her?

I don’t know how to think about that, let alone talk about it. I nearly lost everything, and now I’ve got her back with me, and that feels fragile and precious, and I want to protect it.

Even if what I’m stupidly protecting is my own heart.

“Still,” I say. “Breakups suck, no matter the circumstances.”

“Yeah,” Maya says. “They do.”

“So what are you going to do now? Pick up guys at school? Try online dating?” What I want her to say is that she’s going to beg me to come out to Denver and console her. I can think of dozens of ways I’d like to do that, and only half of them involve both of us naked.

“God, no,” Maya says. “No online dating. I tried that once. Waaaaaay too many dick pics.”

“Ha. I can see how that would be a problem.”

“Why do people send dick picks anyway?” Maya asks. “Is anyone legitimately attracted only to someone’s dick?”

I shouldn’t like the direction of this conversation, but I do. Mostly because it feels good just to talk to her again, to be the person to whom she spills all the thoughts in her head.

Even the ones about dick pics.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not generally into guys’ dicks to begin with.”

“Okay. But if some girl sends you just a picture of her vagina, is that attractive?”

Um. “Depends on the girl,” I say honestly.

“Like, some vaginas are attractive and some aren’t? Is this really a thing?”

I laugh. “I think it’s more like some advances are welcome and some aren’t. Like, if I’m into the girl, then that’s hot. But if I’m not . . .”

“I can see that. So it’s not the vagina in question that’s attractive, it’s the person sending it to you.”

I shrug. “I guess? But if I’m honest, I’ve found some girls more attractive to look at down there than others. So maybe there is an objective component.”

“Huh,” Maya says. “I wonder where mine fits, objectively. It’s not like girls I know sit around and compare.”

My jeans get tight. I shouldn’t say this, so I try to sound like I’m joking. “If you need an objective opinion you could send me a pic,” I say. “I promise not to take it the wrong way.”

My face burns. Oh, god, I am now that guy who is asking for nude pictures. It’s not so much that I need images of her naked as that I want her to send me one—I want her to want to come on to me. I want to spend the next few days—weeks, months even—reveling in everything that could mean. Especially after the misery of the last twenty-four hours, I just want to believe that there’s hope.

“I don’t know,” she says. She sounds nervous, but there’s a sexy edge to her voice, too, like part of her wants to, and god, do I ever want her to lean into that. I want her to think about me like that, as a guy she could come on to, as a guy who wants her. “I don’t want to be the stupid girl who’s sending nude pictures. What if your phone gets hacked? That’s a thing with celebrities, isn’t it?”

Ugh. The fame thing. That’s always what gets in the way with us. “You could email it to me,” I say. I’m trying to sound nonchalant, like I’m really just doing her a favor, but I’m pretty sure I’m failing.

I tell myself I’m not trying to take advantage of her. I don’t want to do that, not ever.

But god, do I ever want this.

“Okay, but what if my email gets hacked?”

“You don’t have to,” I say. “But if that’s all you’re worried about, you could make a dummy email address just for that. And then if my email got hacked, yeah, the picture might get out, but no one would ever know it was you.”

She laughs, and it, too, sounds nervous, and maybe also a little excited. I might be reading that into it, though, because I want so bad for her to want this with me. Not the pictures, exactly, but the sexual advances and everything that might come after.

“Would I be the only one sending a picture?” she asks. Now she sounds like she’s trying to sound nonchalant, and I have to shift because my zipper is getting so tight.

“Are you saying you want to see a picture of my dick? Because I’ll send you one, but I thought you didn’t see why anyone would ever want one.”

Maya pauses, and my heart slams against my ribs. Is she regretting this conversation? Worse, does she feel like I’m being a perv? I so badly don’t want to be that guy.

“It only seems fair, though,” she says. “If I’m sending one to you . . .”

“You’re right,” I say, my breath catching. “Fair is fair.”

“Okay,” she says, finally. “Hang on while I make that new email address.”

Damn. I’ve never taken naked pictures to send to a girl. I’m suddenly super self-conscious. Not in the least because my zipper is about to bust. “So, um,” I say, “what are your expectations for this picture?”

Maya laughs. It’s sounding more excited than nervous now. Maybe a little giddy. “I don’t require you to line it up with a ruler, if that’s what you’re asking.”

My face grows hotter. “Yeah, not exactly. I mean, you can send me a picture, but the um, condition of your, um . . .”

“Condition?” Maya says. Now she just sounds purely confused, and with good reason. “Of my vagina?”

“Yeah, it doesn’t necessarily change based on how you’re feeling at the moment. Mine, on the other hand . . .”

I really do not want her to be startled by how much talking like this with her turns me on, but Maya laughs. “Oh. Well, we’re talking about vaginas. So I would definitely expect you would have an erection, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It is, and I feel a wash of relief, along with the powerful need to undo my fly. Something I’ve often had the desire to do while on the phone with Maya, but have always resisted until after.

“Okay, good,” I say. “I didn’t want there to be any surprises.”

She giggles, and the heat spreads to my entire body. Are we really doing this? And if we are, what does it mean?

“All right,” Maya says. “I got the email set up. Hang on while I take a picture.”

“Yeah, me too,” I say, and I hold out the phone and snap a shot. I’m hard as hell and pointed straight up, and when I look at the picture, I’m a little too pointed at the camera. My dick looks almost . . . aggressive? Rudely accusatory?

“Shit,” Maya says. I put her on speaker.

“What?” I say.

“I am not used to this. These pictures are not coming out great.”

I laugh. “Yeah, mine either. It’s like a selfie, I guess. It doesn’t seem like there should be an art to it, but there is.”

“It’s kind of dark down there. I’m going to need to put a lamp between my legs or something. Or use a flash. But that would probably wash me out, and I clearly need a good picture for your objective opinion.”

Oh, god. Are we still pretending this is about objectivity? I’m pretty sure from the tone in her voice that Maya wants naked pictures of me for entirely non-objective reasons.

She can’t think she’s going to send this to me and I’m not going to get off to it, can she?

“Hang on,” I say. “I think I have a selfie stick around here somewhere.”

“Whoa! Do you need one?”

“It’s for the angle!” I say back, but we’re both laughing now, and it’s definitely charged, like we both know we’re enjoying this a little too much, but it feels so good to be connecting like this, after being so scared this was over. And god, the idea of her spreading her legs for me turns me on, whatever the context.

Is she going to get off looking at pictures of me? If so, I’d better make this a damn good picture.

I find my selfie stick and lie back down on the couch, taking a few different angles. “Okay,” I say. “I’m ready. You?”

“I have now pretty thoroughly flashed my bedside lamp,” she says. “But I think I have something acceptable.”

“Okay. I’m going to text you mine.”

“Oh, great,” Maya says. “So when my sister steals my phone, she can find that on there.”

“All right, fine,” I say. “I’ll email it instead. From an email that doesn’t have my name on it. That way if anyone sees it, they’ll think it was from Ted.” I pull over my laptop to sign in.

“Um, they definitely won’t think it was Ted,” she says.

There’s a long silence.

“Because Ted’s white.”

Oh. It shouldn’t matter, probably, but now I’m sitting here, signing into my email, my dick still jutting out of my jeans, and wondering what it means that Maya’s ex-boyfriend is a white dude. Is she not into black guys? She seemed into me that night when we kissed, but was she more attracted to him?

“Sorry,” Maya says. “I probably should have told you that.”

“No, it’s cool,” I say. I’m into my email, and I send the picture over to my computer and attach it. Suddenly, I’m all self-conscious. What if she doesn’t like the picture? What if she regrets this? What if this is just a dumb thing that she’s doing while she’s getting over her breakup with the guy she didn’t feel the need to tell me about to begin with, and later it’s weird and—

“Okay,” Maya says. “I’m ready to send.”

I hit send so fast my computer scoots back on my knees. “Sent.”

“Okay. Me too.”

My computer notifies me that I have a new email, from BarbaraBush4305@gmail.com. I laugh, though even to me it sounds wound up.

“Wow,” Maya says.

I blink. “Was that a reaction to the picture?”

“Um, yeah?” Her tone is stretched tight, and I think she likes what she sees, which sends further waves of heat and desire rocketing through my body.

I should have zipped up, because when I open her email and look at the picture on my screen, the urge to touch myself becomes overwhelming. It’s just a crotch shot, of course, so if it did get stolen, she could maintain her anonymity. I hold my breath, trying not to make any noise as I look at her lips, at the folds of her. Her hair is dark and trimmed but not shaved, and this is, unquestionably, the best-lit vagina I have ever seen.

I close my eyes. All I want in the world is to be allowed to touch her.

“Nice,” Maya says. “Yeah, okay. That’s good to know.”

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing!” She’s definitely worked up, and the idea that I can do that to her, even if it’s just on a lark—I’m more wound up right now than I can remember being, and if I’m not supposed to touch myself and talk to her, I damn well need to get off the phone and get some relief.

“Are you going to give me an objective opinion?” I ask.

“You still haven’t given me yours!”

“Okay. Well, my objective opinion is that, on a scale of vaginas, yours is extremely attractive.”

“Yeah?” Her voice is husky, and I wonder if she might be wanting to do the same things I am, which turns me on even further.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I find your penis objectively attractive as well.”

I smile. That’s not a compliment I ever expected to need, but . . .

“So,” Maya says. “Now that we’ve done that, I think I’d better . . .”

She sounds like she’s trying to come up with a way to hang up the phone without telling me she needs to, well, relieve herself. I want so incredibly much for this to be the case, which is my only excuse for what I say next.

“It’s okay if you need to get off,” I say.

Maya makes a sputtering sound, during which I gather this is exactly what she was getting at. But I’m struck with a deep, desperate need not to hang up the phone.

I let my hand drift down, and stifle a groan. “You can stay on the phone, if you want,” I say.

I hear her sharp intake of breath. “Yeah?” she says. “Would I be the only one . . .”

Her voice is pitched higher than normal, and I think that, like me, maybe she’s already gotten started. “No,” I say. I summon all my courage, because despite all common sense, it seems like we’re actually doing this. God, I desperately want to be doing this, damn the consequences. “Are you touching yourself?”

“Yeah,” she says, a little breathlessly. “Are you?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “That okay?”

“That’s okay.” From how out of breath she’s getting, it sounds like it’s more than okay.

“Tell me what you’re doing.” I feel a little electric pulse of nerves as I say this. There goes the last, tiny bit of deniability that I’m not trying to have phone sex with my gorgeous, sexy best friend who I’ve been in love with for months.

“Rubbing with two fingers,” she says. “Just a little. Not too fast.”

“That’s good,” I tell her. “Close your eyes, and imagine it’s my hand.”

Maya lets out a moan so seductive I almost lose it right there.

“You like that,” I say unnecessarily.

“Yeah,” she says. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve got my hand around, stroking.” I wouldn’t have thought, having taken it this far, that I could have anything else to be nervous about, but my whole body tightens a bit as I add, “Imagining I’m inside you.”

The gasp she gives after that is so sensual that I let myself echo it back.

She likes this. She wants it. She wants me. I can’t remember ever feeling so good.

“I wish I was there with you,” I say. I realize I’m carrying the narrative, but as long as she keeps sounding like she likes it, I don’t mind.

“I wish you were here, too. Inside me.”

“On top of you,” I add. “Us moving together.”

“My legs wrapped around you.” Her voice is deep and throaty, like she’s as lost in this as I am.

“Me kissing your mouth, your ear, your neck,” I say. And then, because I can’t help it, I add, “Telling you that I love you. God, I love you so much.”

Her cry when I say that is both sharp and desperate, and I think she’s getting close.

“Not yet,” I tell her. “Wait for me.” And I start working my hand in earnest.

“Kevin,” she says, and I echo her name back. For a while, we’re reduced to murmurs and groans as we’re both working higher and higher. And then:

“Are you close?” I ask.

“Mmm,” she says. “Yeah, I’m right there.”

“Me too. Tell me when you come.”

Her next groan comes from deep down in her throat, maybe all the way down to her other parts. She doesn’t have to tell me—I can hear her pleasure and it reverberates through me, and I follow her there, uttering a deep groan of my own as my pleasure crests, soaring higher than I ever remember, coming so hard, soaking my own hand.

“I’m coming,” she says unnecessarily.

“Me too,” I gasp, as I finish still holding the phone to my ear. The last echoes of pleasure radiate all through my body, and I can hear her panting as she comes down, too.

“I wish I was there,” I tell her again. “Holding you.”

“I feel like you are,” she says.

And even though we’re so many miles apart, I feel like that, too.

For a while, we’re silent. I wipe my hand off on my jeans, which clearly now need to be changed, and stretch out on my couch, closing my eyes.

Oh. My. God. What did we just do?

I had the most powerful orgasm of my life, that’s what I did. With the girl I’m desperately in love with. Is this a thing we’re doing now? Does that make us friends with benefits?

I told her I love her. Does she know that I mean it? She seemed to like it when we were there, but how will she feel about it now, after?

The silence stretches on. I can hear her breath returning to normal, and with the exceptions of a few wordless murmurs, I don’t know what to say, and I don’t think she does either.

Finally, she sighs. “I think I need a shower now.”

“Yeah,” I say, looking at the state of my pants. “Me too.”

“Text me later?” she says, like she’s nervous I won’t want to. As if the last several months and hundreds of hours on the phone have all been some lead-up to this and now that I’ve gotten what I want from her, I’m going to disappear.

Will she want me to? Will she still want to be as close to me, now that we’ve done this? Now that my desire for her is no longer plausibly deniable?

Now that I’ve maybe cost her a real relationship and then only been able to give her simulated sex in return?

It was easy with him. God, all I want is to make it easy with me, too.

“Of course,” I tell her. “Always.”

Because I’m not going to be the one to walk away from her. I’m not going to enforce any limits on how much we talk, on how close we are, even if I should. Whatever she wants from me, however she’ll have me, I’m hers, and I think I’ll always be hers.

We hang up, and I take a long, hot shower, standing under the water and trying to breathe and telling myself I have not irrevocably fucked up my cherished relationship with my best friend in the world for one night of messing around, and not even in person.

Not that it made it less intimate to me, I’m realizing. Not that it made it less important, or mean less.

That meant everything to me, because she means everything to me. But she’s been seeing other people and sleeping with other guys and I didn’t know, I had no idea that was even happening. Meanwhile the idea of touching another woman makes me feel sick.

I don’t know how to live like this. And my stupid excuses for not seeing it all the way through are starting to feel less and less important.

When I climb out of the shower, a towel wrapped around my waist, my phone dings, the special ding I have assigned only to Maya. I look down at the screen, resting on the bathroom counter.

Did you mean all those things you said?

It’s not really a choice. I have to tell her the truth. Yes, I respond. I meant every word.

There’s a long pause, during which I can picture her holding her phone, closing her eyes, trying to figure out how to gently tell me she doesn’t feel the same.

I think we need to talk in person, she says.

My heart stops beating. Does she want to let me down in person? Would she make me fly all the way there just to tell me she’s never liked me like that, that this was just a one-time thing?

I can fly out tomorrow, I send, just as I receive back:

I can come out to LA.

No, I say. I can come to you.

Clearly, I think. I’ve proven that well enough. But I don’t know if we’re laughing about that. I don’t know if we ever will be.

That would be great, Maya answers, and I fight to breathe. There are tears in my eyes, and I don’t know if they’re hope or fear or some terrible mixture in between.

We can’t go on this way. I told her that when she told me about Ted. Obviously we can’t keep taking up this space in each other’s lives if we’re not going to be anything more than friends. After tonight, I’m not sure that we’re capable of it.

But I’m not ready to lose her from my life entirely. I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready for that.

Which means I know what I have to do. It’s time to stop holding back, to put all of my cards on the table. I’m terrified, but I need to know, now, if she could ever love me the way that I love her.

I want to be with her for the rest of my life, and I need to know if she could ever feel the same.

Eleven

Kevin

The first thing I do when I get dressed is to book myself a plane ticket to Denver for the next day. I text Maya the time I’ll arrive and tell her I’ll get a rental car at the airport and then take her to dinner, if that’s all right.

Sounds great, she replies, which gives me absolutely no information about what’s going to happen.

I’m going to stop pretending, I tell myself. That’s what’s going to happen.

But before I get on that flight in the morning, there’s something else I need to do. I text Shane and tell him that we need to talk, and that I’m coming over. I don’t know what plans he had for the night, but he doesn’t argue with me, and replies with a simple, K.

I arrive at his place and walk in. I have a key, but I don’t need it. Shane never locks his door. He’s sitting on his couch in a pair of jeans and nothing else, with Cage the Elephant screaming from his stereo. He grabs the remote and turns it down, looking up at me. “What’s up? I’ve got some beer in the fridge, if you need—”

“Maya broke up with Ted,” I tell him.

A shadow crosses Shane’s face, and it tells me everything I need to know. Shane’s a good friend. He wallowed with me last night because he knew I needed it. But it was made easier because of how glad he was that Maya and I aren’t a thing. It’s not that Shane doesn’t want me to be happy.

It’s just that he’s scared shitless about what that’s going to mean.

“I can’t do this anymore, man,” I say to him.

“Yeah, no shit,” Shane says back. “Did you tell her you can’t keep Skyping with her all the time? Because it’s ridiculous, the way she’s jerking you around.”

That’s the opposite of what I said, and Shane needs to know it. But first, I want to have one last conversation with my best friend before he tells me to go to hell.

“We hooked up tonight,” I say.

Shane’s eyes widen. “You and Maya? Isn’t she in Denver?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Over the phone.”

“Oh.” Shane runs a hand through his hair, like he’s absorbing this news. I see him trying to spin this some way that he can stomach, like that I’m finally getting her out of my system.

If that crosses his mind, he’s smart enough not to say it.

“She wants to talk in person,” I say. “So I’m flying out to Denver.”

“Okay.” Shane sits up and turns the music off entirely. Every muscle in his body is tense. We’re drawing down to the end now. To the moment where Shane is going to yell at me and tell me what an asshole I am and how he’s better off without me.

He won’t mean it. He’ll only be saying it to make himself feel better. And it won’t work, but he’s going to do it all the same. This is what I’ve been avoiding, I realize. So many years of my life spent trying not to have this conversation.

“And if she’ll give me a chance, I’m going to tell her that I want to move to Denver to be with her.”

Shane glares at his coffee table, which is right now covered in beer cans and take-out wrappers and old copies of Rolling Stone. “Are you serious? You can’t move to Denver. We need you.”

“I know. But I can’t do this anymore.”

Shane rubs his forehead. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he says, and I don’t tell him that I know he can believe it. He’s been afraid of it for months. That’s why he’s always given me such a hard time about Maya.

I don’t want to leave the band. I don’t want to leave JT and Shane. I have no skills and no education and no fucking idea what I’m going to do without my friends.

I love the band. I love the guys. They’ve been my life for so long, but if I don’t make this leap, I know I’m always going to regret it.

“You don’t have to quit,” Shane says. “You could work from Denver. Fly out for gigs.”

I shake my head. This is part of Maya’s objection to dating me, and it always has been. “I know Maya’s not comfortable with the touring, you know? She doesn’t want to live in the spotlight, and she doesn’t want a boyfriend who’s gone all the time.”

“But this is your life,” Shane says. “You can’t let her change who you are.”

This is honestly longer than I thought Shane would speak to me after what I’ve said, and I press forward cautiously.

“She’s not changing me,” I say. “Or if she is, it’s not because she’s trying. I need this. I need to be in Denver with her. And yeah, I wish I could have both. I don’t want to quit. But this is what I’ve got to do, Shane. I’m sorry.”

He looks up at me, and where I expect to see anger, I instead find devastation. Shane’s never had anyone but us, but me and JT. A long time ago there was also Mikey, our original drummer, and Anna-Marie. Shane’s dad is an asshole and his mom is a deadbeat and we’re his family. The awesome thing about growing up with Shane was knowing there was nothing I could do that would ever end our friendship.

Nothing except abandon him.

“Okay,” Shane says. “So you don’t want to tour. What about the albums? You could still write music and record with us. I could send you recordings, and you could send stuff back. We could do all that over the internet, and then when we have enough material, we could come out to Denver and rent some studio space and jam for a while and then record. We have the contacts out there. Hell, we could build our own studio in Denver and you could run it when we’re not recording, renting out to other people, you know? And you wouldn’t have to tour. We could get someone else to travel with us, but you could still be part of the band.”

Shane looks at me, and to my shock, I think maybe he’s going to cry. I think maybe he’s going to beg me to stay, to just give him this.

When really, it’s more than I could possibly ask for.

“You’d really let me do that?” I ask. “I thought if I was leaving, you’d want me gone.”

“What the fuck? I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay in the band until we’re too old to be cool anymore, man. Older than that, even.”

I laugh. That always was the dream, and we worked really hard for it. I don’t want to walk away from it, but this life isn’t for me, not forever.

If I could keep just the good parts, though . . .

“But if this is all you’ll give me, I’ll take it,” Shane says. “I just don’t want you to leave completely.”

I shake my head. I’m not sure how to take all this in. It could work, I think, but I’m scared to trust it now, with so much up in the air. “Can I let you know after I talk to Maya?”

“Yeah,” Shane says. He nods and seems relieved that I’m not turning him down right now. “Of course. And if that won’t work, don’t just quit, okay? There are other things we can work out. Give me a chance to think about it, and we’ll figure out something.”

I look up at the ceiling. God, I’m the one who’s going to cry. I spent so long thinking that Shane was going to vilify me when I left, the way he did Anna-Marie. And that was its own thing, and someday we’re going to have to talk about what happened there.

But Shane’s still my brother, and he loves me, and he’s going to work with me.

For the second time tonight, I’m unbelievably relieved.

Shane asks if I want him to fly out to Denver with me. He could hang with some of our friends there while I go out with Maya, he says. Be there to get wasted with me in case it goes bad. I think part of him just wants to be close enough to keep me from changing my mind about the band and quitting entirely, but the rest is that he wants to be there for me because he cares.

I tell him no. This is something I have to do by myself.

I’m regretting that as my plane lands at the Denver airport. It’s effing huge, and even though I know it like the back of my hand, it still takes me the better part of an hour to get my rental car and get out of there. I drive past the familiar, enormous mustang statue on the way out of the airport. It’s bold and fierce, both things that I’m not but wish I was. (Though I could live without being thirty feet tall and blue, so you win some and you lose some, weird-ass horse.)

The truth is, I’m terrified. The closer I get to picking up Maya, the more I want to play this whole thing off, let her make the first move. I could pick her up and take her someplace a friend might take another friend and act like I don’t care which way the chips fall. Then she can have whatever she wants, and I get to keep my dignity intact.

Except it’s me trying to keep my dignity that got us into this in the first place. I might not have been ready to be bold months ago, but I need to be now. I know what I want. I’m ready to give up what I need to in order to get it. Though if that’s not my two best friends and all involvement with my band, I’d be ridiculously happy about that.

I can’t let myself panic and pretend this is a friends thing, that I could ever be truly okay with that. That’s why I spent my hour at the gate in the Los Angeles airport on Yelp, looking through all the nice restaurants near Maya’s place. (And, okay, asking some fans if they had opinions, when they stopped me to take selfies with them.)

I have one more stop, one that will help me be clear about my intentions without having to say a word. I go by a nice flower shop in Maya’s suburb and walk right up to the counter.

“Hey,” I say. “I need some flowers.”

The girl behind the counter looks like she’s about eighteen. She’s got short blond hair and a wide smile, and her tag says her name is Kirsten. “You’ve come to the right place.”

I sure hope I have. “They’re for a date,” I say.

“Ah. I could have guessed that. You look super nervous. What kind of a date is it?”

I blank. I don’t know how to describe this. “It’s a first date. With my best friend.”

“Oh!” Kirsten says. “Those are the best kind. What do you want the flowers to say?”

Oh, god. So many things. “I love you?”

“Red roses are good for that.”

They are, I suppose. “Those seem a little . . .”

“Cliche?” Kirsten asks. “Or too serious?”

“Not too serious,” I say. “Serious is good. Maybe a little too traditional?” There is nothing traditional about Maya and me. “Maybe something that says ‘I love you and I hope we work out?’ Maybe, ‘I love you and I’ll leave my band for you?’ Or ‘I love you and I swear it wasn’t just a hookup?’”

I’m reaching here. I know it. Kirsten certainly knows it. She looks at me with wide eyes. “That’s a lot to ask of flowers,” she says. “Let me look in the back.”

I stand at the counter feeling like a total idiot. But when she comes back, she’s holding a single long-stemmed rose in this deep purple color. “What do you think of two dozen of these?” she asks. “It says ‘I love you,’ and also ‘You’re beautiful in a rare kind of way.’” She looks at me expectantly.

“Those are perfect,” I say. “Thank you.”

She takes my card and tells me she’ll have the bouquet right out. When she scans my card, she takes a look at my name and grins. “I thought that’s who you were,” she says. “Kevin Collins. Lucky girl.”

Possibly this whole exchange is going to be on the internet later, but I’m too nervous to care. “Trust me. If this works out, I’m the lucky one.”

“I hope it does,” Kirsten says. “Good luck.”

I appreciate that. I’ll take all the luck I can get.

Twelve

Maya

He’s in love with me.

I meant every word, he said.

It echoes over and over in my head, him telling me how much he loves me, his voice throaty and so close. It felt like he really was there with me, touching me, holding me, moving inside me, his skin pressed to mine.

It was the most intense sexual experience of my life—the most intimate, somehow. And I can only imagine (and have done plenty of imagining since last night) what it would be like to really be with him, to have his hands on my body and his muscles tensing beneath my fingertips.

I meant every word.

And that’s when I knew what I need to do. I was so certain of it—I am so certain of it—but that doesn’t mean I’m not practically shaking with nerves. Especially now that I’m going to be seeing him soon. His plane landed already; he should be on his way.

“You look like you’re about to pass out,” Leigh says, her forehead furrowed in concern.

“Seriously,” Miranda agrees. Then she gives me a sly look. “Save that for after he rocks your world so hard you see God.”

“Again,” Leigh says, waggling her eyebrows. I swear, they are about one more reference to my phone sex escapade away from high-fiving each other like locker-room dudebros.

And I kind of love them for it.

They were so excited to hear about last night—in more detail than I probably should have told them, but oh my god, I had phone sex with Kevin and I needed to tell someone. They’re even more excited to hear that he booked a flight out today and that he’s taking me out on a date, where I will finally tell him how I feel.

They don’t know the rest of what I’m going to tell him. Because it feels like he needs to hear it first. And I need to hear how he reacts to that before I can even think about telling anyone else.

“I’m going to actually see him again,” I say, like I haven’t said this about a dozen times already in the last hour. “Like, here. He’ll be here.” My body flushes, just thinking about him being so close.

Kevin. My best friend. The guy I’m crazy in love with. I’ve spent so long now denying how I felt about him, shoving that far into the back of my mind like it’s a box I can hide behind the dusty Christmas ornaments in the attic. Trying to forget it was there all along.

So it’s weird to let myself think about it so openly like this. Weird and scary and wonderful, all at once.

“And you’re going to tell him you looooooove him,” Leigh says, bouncing on the balls of her feet happily as she holds up another pair of earrings by my face—gold hoops.

“I am,” I say, drawing in a deep breath. “Right? I am.”

Miranda shakes her head, and for a panicked second I think she’s going to tell me I shouldn’t do this, that maybe there’s reasons I haven’t even thought of yet as to why this would be a Very Bad Idea. But she gestures at a pair of dangly fake diamonds. “Those ones. They look better with the dress.”

Leigh grabs the other pair and holds those up. “Okay, yeah. Definitely these.”

I stare at myself in the mirror, trying to imagine how Kevin might see me. Maya as a bundle of nerves, maybe. But I have to admit, this bundle of nerves cleaned up pretty well. I’ve got a form-fitting cocktail dress with diagonal magenta stripes that accentuate my curves and look pretty awesome against my rosy-brown skin tone. My hair is half-way pinned up, the rest falling smoothly down just past my shoulders. Makeup done—eyelashes nicely full, lips stained and hopefully very kissable-looking.

It’s not like he hasn’t spent months seeing me in pajama pants and even, a couple regrettable times, with my face covered in goopy face mask cream. So, really, this should be a massive improvement no matter what.

But tonight, I want to look beautiful. I want him to think I’m beautiful—even if I know he must already.

I feel the heat of those words again. On top of you. Inside you.

God, I love you so much.

“It’s good, right? I look good?” I know what they’re going to say. But they are my friends, and if there’s ever a pool you can fish for compliments in and never come up empty, it should be that one.

“You look incredible,” Miranda says, tugging at the dress so it’s showing more cleavage. I give her a mock-glare and tug it back up. I had plenty of cleavage showing already. I’m not trying to blind him with my nipples. Yet.

“Devastating,” Leigh chimes in. “And you’d better be the one ending up topless tonight.”

Heat flares through me imagining that, and all that would come after.

My gaze flicks over to my phone, seeing the time. “Okay, okay. He’s going to be here soon.”

“Which is our cue to leave,” Miranda says, and Leigh pouts a bit but nods.

“Fine,” she says, giving me her most adorable smile. “Go get your man.” She smacks me on the ass and heads to the door.

Miranda follows her, but gives me one last look. “Kickass mofo, right?”

“Right.” I smile at them, getting this sad little twist in my heart. “Thank you. You guys are the best. The. Best.”

“Yeah, well, you were the one who gave up your birthday movie marathon so we could go to a rock concert for some punk band you’d never heard. So . . .” Miranda gives me a wink, and I laugh.

“Worked out pretty well for all of us, I’d say.”

“Damn straight,” Leigh says. I know she’s gotten some serious mileage out of telling her “I boned Shane Beckstrom” story at parties. Probably she’s spent more time telling that story now than actually boning Shane Beckstrom. And Miranda is pretty happy with Jared—for the time being, at least. Right now she’s more concerned about her upcoming bar exam than her dating life, and I plan on providing her epic amounts of encouragement and fortitude-building snacks and maybe a few more lawyer sex-pun clothing items.

They leave, and I have to fight to keep from chewing my nails down to stubs while I wait for Kevin.

The house is strangely empty. My mom and dad had a dinner with friends already scheduled, and my sister is at her friend’s house, and while they know my “friend Kevin” is coming to visit, they have no idea yet what that might all entail—though I think my mom suspects.

I’m not ready to face them with all of this yet either.

Just Kevin. Right now, I only want to see Kevin.

I pace in my living room in my heels. I’m going on a date with Kevin. Is it going to be awkward after all this time of being friends? Of spending so many hours talking about everything and nothing, watching shows and movies, studying while he plays guitar?

But what we did last night . . . That wasn’t awkward. I mean, not after the initial “holy shit I just sent a picture of my vagina to my best friend” panic, which was quickly replaced by all the responses my body had to seeing the picture he sent me. Turns out that dick pics are a lot more appealing to receive when you’re totally in love with the insanely hot guy said dick is attached to.

Even that moment afterwards, before we both went to take our respective showers, didn’t feel awkward to me, but maybe that’s because my mind was reeling with what had just happened, and his words, and what I knew then that I needed to—

Headlights swing past the windows, and my heart pounds.

A few moments later my doorbell rings, and I take a breath, trying to steady myself, and open the door.

And there’s Kevin—here, not behind a screen states away, but here—and he’s holding this gorgeous bouquet of deep purple roses, and he’s got this nervous smile that drops open the tiniest bit when he takes me in, and I’m sure mine does the same, because wow. He looks incredible, dressed up in dark dress pants and a dark blue button-up shirt with just the slightest bit of shininess to it. But there’s still this laid-back rock star air to the outfit, too, from the slim fit of the pants to the black leather jacket. To the way he stands, the way he inhabits the space he’s in.

A rock star air, but not in the negative way I would have said before I met him. Not conceited, not entitled or playboy cocky.

Maybe it’s not a rock star thing at all; maybe it’s just a Kevin thing. Either way, I love it. I love him.

And he’s here.

“Hey,” he says, like he’s letting out a breath, the word coming out in a puff of cold air.

“Hey,” I say back, and I know I’ve probably got the goofiest smile on my face, but I don’t even care.

He steps forward and puts his arms around me and draws me into a hug—and maybe that’s a little awkward, because he’s still holding this huge bunch of flowers and I can feel the cellophane crinkling against my back and the roses against my head, but I feel myself melt against him. I breathe in the scent of leather and roses and Kevin, and maybe it’s the freezing air against my bare arms and legs giving me goosebumps, but really I think it’s him. Being in his arms again, like I’ve wanted to be ever since I pulled away from that first—and so far, only—kiss.

I want to hold on like this forever. But I also want to do much more and tell him much more and get to go on a date with him.

We draw back and just look at each other again.

“It’s so good to see you,” I say. “I mean, not that I don’t see you fairly often, but . . . you know.” I flush, thinking of some new parts of him I have definitely seen, as of last night.

“Yeah,” he says, smiling back. “I know.” He shifts and holds out the bouquet. “Here. These are for you.”

“They’re beautiful,” I say, taking the flowers from him. “And you’re not so bad-looking yourself.” I suck my lips in and give him a very obvious looking-over. “Pretty damn hot, actually.”

He grins.“Yeah? Well, these flowers have nothing on you.” His expression turns softer, more serious. “Nothing does.”

My heart flutters. I may be standing in an open doorway in the middle of the winter in freaking Denver, but I’m warm all over.

“So, um, should we—” I start, at the same time he says, “So maybe we should—”

I let out short laugh. “Yeah. We should. I’ll put these inside and get my coat.” I set the roses on the table by the couch—my mom will see them when they get home and put them in some water—and grab a coat. Maybe I should invite him in, give him a tour of the house and all that, but I’m not sure when my family is getting home, and the last thing I want is to be interrupted by my parents.

Especially because I’m not sure how far we’d make it past the bedroom.

And more than just the threat of being caught by my parents like I’m some rebellious teenager, I have things I need to tell him first.

I close the door behind me, and without even thinking about it, I take his hand—or maybe he takes mine. It’s so natural and strange, all at the same time, but my fingers thread through his like they belong there, and the look he gives me makes me wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.

We get to the car, and he opens my door for me, which, unfortunately, reminds me of Ted just enough to give me a pang of guilt for what a dick I was to him—and also to Kevin, for not telling him about Ted sooner.

Do I apologize again for that? Or probably I don’t want to bring my very-recently-ex-boyfriend into the conversation quite so soon. Or maybe at all?

My nerves, which had settled into a thrum of fluttery excitement at seeing him, are starting to build again.

Kevin gets in and starts the car and gives me another smile, and god, between the excitement and nerves I feel like a shaken can of Coke just waiting to be popped open before I explode everywhere.

Um.

“So I heard about this really good Italian restaurant,” he says, as the GPS on his phone directs him back out of my neighborhood. “Or, should I say, the grandma of this teenage fan who asked for a selfie with me at the airport told me about this really good Italian restaurant, and she mentioned their cannoli about six times, and she definitely seemed to know what she was talking about, and I had to look up what cannoli actually is, but—” He seems to realize he’s nervously rambling, and winces. “Maybe I should say, ‘Does Italian sound good, Maya?’”

I laugh, though probably that sounds just as nervous and charged as his rambling. “I don’t know. I kind of liked the intricate backstory for your restaurant selection. And yes. Italian sounds good.”

Great, in fact. Though pretty much anywhere with him would be.

He grins over at me. We drive in silence for a few moments after that, and my heart races.

“So should we . . .” I make a vague gesture with my hand, and realize that’s not helping explain anything. “Talk about things? Like, not just things in general, but, like, things things.”

Fabulous, Maya. Way to sound like a competent adult making important life decisions.

He looks back over, his eyes crinkling at the sides as he smiles. Then his hand reaches over and rests on my knee, his thumb moving in circles on my leg, and it sets my whole body alight. “We’ll definitely talk about things things, but let me take you to dinner first, okay?”

“Okay. Yeah.” I can see not wanting to get into all the implications of last night—of the fact that he’s here, and we’re on a date—while we’re still just driving to the restaurant. But it doesn’t make me any less jittery.

He transitions pretty smoothly—if quickly and apropos of nothing—into talking about the new Jordan Peele movie coming out, because Kevin knows what conversations are bound to distract me. It’s not the totally unselfconscious type of conversation we’d have over the phone or Skype, but it’s still a nice easing back into the comfort of the relationship I’m familiar with between us.

And he doesn’t take his hand from my knee.

When we get to the restaurant the valet takes our car and Kevin holds my hand as we walk in. The restaurant is a really nice one. Not pretentiously so, but still a clearly romantic, cozy setting. Small but not cramped, with a nice old-world-European feel mixed with modern touches (pendant lamps! JT would approve) and clean lines. Kevin apparently made a reservation from the airport, because the waiter sees us right to our table, which glows with flickering tea light candles, their light glinting off a small crystal vase with daisies and a small silver platter of crusty breads and olive oil.

He hands us the menus, points out the wine list, and asks us if we’d like to start with their house selection, “A fine red with . . .” He goes on for a bit about oaky finishes, but I can barely hear him over all the words in my head I need to say to Kevin, all the things I want to hear from him.

Kevin seems to either get what I’m feeling or is having the same trouble concentrating, because he agrees to the house selection pretty much as soon as the waiter has closed his mouth.

“I hope that sounded okay,” Kevin says, toying with the cloth napkin on his plate before unfolding it on his lap. “If you want a different wine—”

“No, that sounds great.” I nod perhaps more vigorously than I should for wine I don’t particularly care about. I open the menu and try to read the options, but my heart feels like it’s pulsing in my throat and I’m not really reading anything at all.

“The focaccia sounds good,” Kevin says. “If we wanted to start with that—”

“I love you,” I blurt out, and Kevin looks up from his menu, his eyes wide. “I’m in love with you. Like really, deeply in love with you. And I knew that even before the phone sex thing, which was incredible, by the way, and—”

I cut off because I notice Kevin’s eyes darting to something just over my shoulder, and I turn to see our waiter standing there with the bottle of wine, his own eyes wide, and I die a tiny bit inside.

“I’ll just leave this here,” the waiter says, setting down the bottle instead of pouring it into our glasses and walking off quickly.

“Oh my god,” I say with a groan, and Kevin appears to be torn between stunned and laughing his ass off.

“Really?” he says quietly, apparently leaning into the “stunned.”

I smile back at him, the pressure of all those nerves easing now that I’ve finally said it. “Yeah, really. Though maybe I shouldn’t have talked about phone sex in front of our waiter. Or at least saved that for after the appetizers.”

Kevin grins. “I didn’t mind.” He sets his menu down and pours us each some wine, and I can feel his leg brush against mine under the table. “Though maybe we should order so he doesn’t have to worry about coming over here again for a while.”

“Good idea.”

He beckons the waiter back over, and we order—I just pick the first thing my eyes land on from the menu, an osso buco dish—and the waiter takes our menus and is gone. Now it’s just us again, and the words I said.

Which seem to be well received, judging by the expression on Kevin’s face.

Although now that expression is turning nervous again, and I wonder if he’s worried about what that means for us, given the issues I’ve been all too open about with dating a rock star and doing the long-distance thing, and I’m just about to tell him the decision I’ve come to.

But he speaks first. “I love you, Maya,” he says, and his eyes are so warm and brown, and those words melt me all over again. “And I want this to work out, you and me. So if you’ll give me a chance, I’m willing to leave the band.”

And now I’m the stunned one, even as my pulse races. “What? Seriously? You’d do that?”

“I would, if that’s what I need to do for us. I told Shane that I would.”

I have about a million questions, and I’m pretty sure this is far from the most important one, but I ask it anyway. “How did that go?” I know how worried Kevin has been about how Shane would react one day when Kevin wanted to leave.

I just thought that day was much, much further off.

“Better than I thought it would,” Kevin says, with no small amount of relief. “He doesn’t want me to leave, obviously, and has all these suggestions about how I could still work with them if I moved out here, how I wouldn’t have to tour, but—” He shakes his head. “We can figure all the details out. I just need to know if this is even a thing you want. To be with me.” He swallows, and even though I’ve just told him I love him, I can feel the worry hanging there between us, that maybe I won’t really want that, that maybe his offer of giving up this huge part of his life won’t be enough. My heart cracks a bit.

I reach my hand across the table and he puts his there, too. Our fingers entwine again, so warm and so right.

“I want that,” I say, squeezing his fingers in mine. “I do, Kevin. So much. But—”

His expression drops like he’s settling in for the gut punch, and I squeeze tighter, hoping to forestall that fear. “But is that what you want, really?” I ask. “To leave the band, or to not tour or to work remotely or whatever? Like, is that something you’d want even if I wasn’t involved?” Despite my shock about this offer, I remember how he said that first night that he didn’t think he could do this forever. And before I tell him my decision, I need to make sure he isn’t thinking of this as a best-case scenario—getting to be with me and a way out of the band.

He wets his lips. “No. But you’re more important. Getting to be with you is the most important. I mean that.”

He does, I can feel it through my whole being. And the knowledge that he loves me enough to make that sacrifice for me makes it easier to make my own for him.

I knew what I needed to do after that phone call last night, and terrifying though it is, I knew I wanted to. For him. For us.

For me, too.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “How about this instead. How about I move out to LA and you stay in the band and you get to have both?”

His brow furrows, and his mouth gapes. “But that’s not—I thought you couldn’t deal with dating a rock star. Which I get, and I don’t want to make you feel like—”

“Kevin,” I say, putting my other hand on top of our joined ones. “Yeah, maybe I couldn’t handle dating a ‘rock star.’ But I want to date the guy who’s my best friend and who I’m in love with, and who happens to be a rock star. And a damn good one, too.”

He smiles but shakes his head like he’s still going to protest.

“I want to be with you,” I continue, before he can jump in, “and I’ve thought about it a lot since last night—in addition to thinking about a lot of other things—” Here he gets a knowing look, which tells me he’s been thinking about that, too “—and this makes the most sense. You have a career that’s still on the rise and that you love, and I’m still working slowly towards mine, but the location of that doesn’t matter so much.”

“But what about your degree?” he asks. “You’re so close.”

I let out a breath. “Two more classes. The two I’m in right now. So, yeah, I’d want to say here and finish out the semester. Which puts us doing the long-distance thing for a few months, which isn’t my favorite idea. But a few months seems so much more doable than, like, this indeterminate time period that could be years.” I tug my lip between my teeth. “And I think we’ve proven we can do lots of things long-distance.”

He runs his thumb over my knuckles, which sends goosebumps all along my skin. “True. But I’m definitely looking forward to doing lots of things up close and personal, too.”

There’s an ache deep in me that absolutely agrees and longs to finish this conversation and go back to his hotel and rip all his clothes off already. I smile back at him. “What do you think, though? Would you want me to be out there with you?” I can’t believe I’m still nervous asking this, after what he was willing to give up for me, but I am. Maybe because the whole thing still feels surreal—him and me, here together. Talking about our future, together.

“Of course,” he says. “God, Maya, I would love that. But what about your family and your friends?”

I pause. I want to just dismiss that concern, give some off-handed comment about how I see too much of them, anyway. But Kevin knows me too well for that.

“It won’t be the easiest, being so far away from them,” I admit. “But it’s not like I can’t keep in touch with them, or come back and visit. And I’ll have a few months to get them all used to the idea.” I cringe. “It might take my mom some time.”

He studies me, still running his thumb over my hand, back and forth, and it’s somehow both soothing and turning me on. Both of which he seems to be pretty good at.

“If we did do that,” he says cautiously, “I could get an apartment here while you finish school, and I could be here most of the time. I would need to fly back to LA a decent amount, but we’re not on tour in the next few months. So we wouldn’t even really have to do too much long-distance.”

“Yeah?” I can’t hide how excited that idea makes me. I was willing to do long-distance for a little bit, but the thought of him being here for so much of that time . . .

“Yeah,” he says. “Definitely. I don’t want to be away from you, well, at all. But at least not any more than I absolutely need to.”

“That’s how I feel, too.” We smile at each other—both of us, I think, just basking in this moment, in being able to finally say these things to each other. That doesn’t mean I still don’t have a twinge of that nervousness. “I am a little worried, though, about being the lame girlfriend who needs to sleep a lot. Like, I probably won’t be going to all the parties and events, and I don’t want you to feel like you can’t.”

“I don’t know, I think I’d enjoy the excuse to miss those things,” he says with a small laugh. “But yeah, if I’m still in the band, I’d have to do some of that stuff. You definitely don’t, though. You wouldn’t need to do the parties, the concerts, any of it you weren’t up to. You could stay in bed whenever. And I’ll be trying to join you there as much as possible.” Another twist of those lips, and god, the need to kiss them is near overwhelming.

But I’m pretty sure once I start that, I’m not going to be able to stop.

“I want to come see you play,” I say. “So I’ll want to go to the concerts.” I pause, thinking of what he told me about their crazy tour schedule. “Sometimes, at least. Maybe not every day for two months.”

He laughs. “It’s cool. I always knew you weren’t a groupie.”

“Speaking of which,” I say teasingly, though my gut twists the tiniest bit just thinking about this, “you’re going to have to give up sleeping with all those groupies, you know.”

A throat clears, and we both look up to see our waiter, holding two plates of food, and looking, once again, more than a little uncomfortable.

Seriously? Does this guy have the worst timing, or is it me?

He sets the osso buco in front of me, and Kevin gets his lasagna, and the waiter gives us a small smile and scurries off.

“Oh my god, the things he’s telling the rest of the waitstaff,” I say with a laugh. I notice then, that while Kevin’s got a smile on his face, he also looks kind of serious, too. He pokes at the lasagna with his fork.

“I haven’t been, you know,” he says. “Sleeping with groupies. Or anyone.”

My heart feels like it’s in my throat. “Really? Like, at all?”

He shrugs with one shoulder. “I did the first week after we met. I slept with a couple girls, because I thought I could prove to myself that I was okay with us just being friends. But it proved the opposite.” His smile goes so sad that my chest aches. “I knew how much I would always want more.”

I blink, stunned again. This whole time I’d thought there were girls—that there had to have been girls. He’s a rock star, for crying out loud. I’ve seen the way he and his friends get mobbed. I was the one who insisted we just be friends, so I knew I couldn’t let myself be jealous of that. So I’d just done my best to not think about it, and definitely never ask about it. I’d thought that was just our style, you know? That we didn’t talk about stuff like that and . . . oh shit.

I close my eyes briefly. “So when I told you about Ted . . .”

Kevin lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah. That was . . . God, that hurt. I knew I didn’t have a right to be devastated, but I was. It just . . . It made me feel like I was so much more emotionally invested in this than you were—like this was proof of what I’d worried about all along.” He looks at me like he’s not sure whether he should have said that. I’m glad he did, though, even if I hate that I hurt him. I don’t want us keeping back anything, not anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “If it makes you feel any better, I eventually realized that I was totally using Ted all along. I was only with him to convince myself I wasn’t in love with you.”

“Really?” The sadness in his eyes is fading, his lips turning up again.

“Really. Which ended up making me a total dick to both you and Ted.” I roll my eyes, and he smiles fully.

“Yeah, well, I’m feeling pretty good about it all now.”

I laugh. “I bet you are.” But the truth is, slight guilt aside, I am too. I’m feeling pretty good about a lot of things now. “So are we doing this, then? Am I finishing this semester and then moving out to LA?”

He looks like he’s trying to keep from grinning at this notion, but he’s failing. “Is that what you really want?”

“It is,” I say. I pick at my own food with my fork, pushing the meat around in the crazy-delicious-smelling sauce. “I’ve spent so much time feeling stuck, but I think I’ve been keeping myself that way. I mean, my health has been a problem, yeah, but I think I’ve let that be an excuse for not doing anything that scares me, anything that’s a risk. And because of that . . . I think I’ve been avoiding really living, you know?” I look across the table at him, at this incredible man I know so well and want to spend the rest of my life getting to know even better. My eyes tear up. “I want to start living my life. And I want that life to be with you.”

His own eyes are shining with tears now, too, his smile so soft, so incredulous. He swallows. “Yeah, then. We’re doing this.”

We both just grin at each other and then laugh, and I don’t know that I’ve ever been so happy. We manage to actually eat our food, our conversation turning to less weighty things—though he definitely gets impassioned talking about the latest Bachelor pick—and we laugh some more and order cannoli to go, even though there’s a Cinnabon nearby that we’re also going to order from.

We’re going to need a lot of sustenance for later, given our plans back at his hotel.

We walk out of the restaurant, and it’s there, finally, that he pulls me into his arms and we kiss again. The heat of his lips against mine and the perfect safety of his arms around me and our bodies pressed together—it’s like everything magic and wonderful in the world has all condensed into this moment right here, into us.

I don’t know exactly where the track leads; the truth is, I never really did. But for the first time, the unknown doesn’t seem like such a scary thing. It feels . . . free.

Because I’m with Kevin. We’re in this together.

And that’s the only certainty I need.

Acknowledgments

There are so many people we’d like to thank for helping make this book a reality. First, our families, especially our incredibly supportive husbands Glen and Drew, and our amazing kids. Thanks also to our writing group, Accidental Erotica, for all the feedback.

Thanks to Michelle of Melissa Williams Design for the fabulous cover, and thanks also to Amy Carlin and Dantzel Cherry for being proofreading goddesses. We’re also grateful to Hannah Ekren, Anh Ly, Stephanie Holman, Keri Lockhart, and everyone else who read and gave us notes throughout the many drafts of this project.

And a very special thanks to you, our readers. We hope you love these characters as much as we do.

Janci Patterson got her start writing contemporary and science fiction young adult novels, and couldn’t be happier to now be writing adult romance. She has an MA in creative writing, and lives in Utah with her husband and two adorable kids. When she’s not writing she can be found surrounded by dolls, games, and her border collie. She has written collaborative novels with several partners, and is honored to be working on this series with Megan.

Megan Walker lives in Utah with her husband, two kids, and two dogs–all of whom are incredibly supportive of the time she spends writing about romance and crazy Hollywood hijinks. She loves making Barbie dioramas and reading trashy gossip magazines (and, okay, lots of other books and magazines, as well.) She’s so excited to be collaborating on this series with Janci. Megan has also written several published fantasy and science-fiction stories under the name Megan Grey.

Find Megan and Janci at www.extraseriesbooks.com

Other Books in the Extra Series

The Extra

The Girlfriend Stage

Everything We Are

The Jenna Rollins Real Love Tour

Starving with the Stars

My Faire Lady

You are the Story

How Not to Date a Rock Star

Beauty and the Bassist

Su-Lin’s Super-Awesome Casual Dating Plan

Ex on the Beach

Chasing Prince Charming

After the Final Slipper

The Real Not-Wives of Red Rock Canyon

Su-Lin and Brendan Present: Your Wedding

All-Night Dungeon

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Turn the page to read the beginning of Beauty and the Bassist

One

Shane

When I get out of my car at the UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, I lock the car doors, and then unlock them again before walking away. I always used to yell at our lead singer, JT, for not locking the doors to the van, and he used to yell at me for locking them so obsessively when I knew he had a tendency to leave his keys inside.

God speed, buddy, I think as I walk through the automatic glass doors.

From behind me, I hear JT laughing. “Dude,” he says. “I can walk through car doors now. I’m dead.”

I don’t look behind me, but I know he’s there, wearing his ratty Sex Pistols t-shirt and the Converse shoes that fell apart back in high school. I know better than to react to him in public. No one else can see him. Instead, I smile at the cute nurse behind the reception desk and walk back to the rehabilitation center.

I’ve been on our lead guitarist, Kevin, for weeks to tell me how his physical therapy is coming. When the pickup truck crashed into our van two months ago, Kevin was driving. He was wearing his seatbelt, but that didn’t stop the frame from crushing his left arm, metal and glass fully severing his tendons in three different places.

“Dude,” JT says. “At least it wasn’t his skull.”

I put on my sunglasses as I walk beneath the fluorescent lights. They hurt my eyes these days; plus, I don’t want to be recognized. Used to be I’d have girls hanging on my arm, whispering low in my ear, asking me to sign their arms and breasts and thighs. The only thing I’m going to be asked about if I’m recognized here is the accident.

I don’t want to talk about it.

Kevin told the people in reception to expect me, and they clearly recognize me even with my glasses, because they wave me back to a room where Kevin is sitting on a long padded bench with his hands held out in front of him, a hot girl with dark braids, a skin tight shirt, and yoga pants sitting next to him.

“You think Kevin is banging his therapist?” JT asks. “I sure as hell would be.”

Kevin looks up at me as his therapist walks him through opening his left fist, then folding his fingers and thumb down at the top knuckles, then clenching them into a fist. Kevin’s fingers don’t straighten all the way and his face contorts in pain as he goes through the motions.

He’s not sleeping with her, unless he and Maya have eased up on their hardcore monogamy.

“Okay, last rep,” his therapist says. “Good! That’s getting much better. Take a break and then we’ll work on range of motion.”

Kevin groans and leans his head back against the wall. “Do we have to?”

“Oh, come on,” JT says. “I could have turned that range of motion thing into a hundred different pick up lines. I guess he’s serious about hanging up his schlong. More for you, I guess.”

Ha. Not that I’ve been taking advantage of it. Not since—

The therapist looks up at me. “Hey, I’m Tori. You must be Shane. Kevin told me you were coming. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Hey, today could be the day. I turn on my best charming smile, hoping Kevin has done me a solid and told her the good stuff, but then I notice that Kevin is wincing and shaking his hand. His fingers curl naturally, like he’s got hardcore arthritis.

“Dude,” I say. “How’s it going?”

Kevin looks up at me. “How does it look like it’s going? I’ve lost fifty percent of the feeling in my fingers, and that may never come back. My range of motion sucks, and I can barely straighten my fingers.”

Tori looks between the two of us and stands. “I’ll give you guys a couple minutes,” she says. “Do a few more reps while I check the rest of my schedule, all right?”

She bounces out of the room, and JT takes a good look at her ass while she goes. “Dude. Tight.”

JT was a lot of things, but not subtle.

Kevin takes a deep breath and does another rep of his exercise. “So, there you go. You’ve seen how it’s going. Happy now?”

I stare at him. He obviously can’t play like this. “Hell, no, I’m not happy. Dude, how long is it going to take for you to—”

Kevin glares at me. “I’ve told you, Shane. I’m not coming back. It’s over. The band is done.”

My palms start to sweat, and I cross my arms and wipe them on my shirt. “Come on, man” I say. “I know you’re frustrated, but you can’t give up. Do you think JT would have wanted—”

Kevin swears at me. “Who cares what JT would have wanted? JT is dead, okay?”

“Ha,” JT says. “He’s right. Who cares about me?”

Kevin, of course, doesn’t hear him. “And Lando found another band already. Dude, he was halfway out the door before all this. I can’t play, and I may never play again. Maya and I are thinking of moving out to Denver, you know? Going back to school.”

“It’s not going back if you’ve never been,” I say.

“But I can still go,” he says. “Maya’s got her associate degree. We’ll live on student loans and my royalties for a while until we figure it out.” He points his good hand at me. “You on the other hand, need to stop wasting time waiting on me and get your head back in the game. You always talked about building a solo career.” He holds his arms out wide. “Now’s your chance.”

I drop my arms to my sides and try to look casual. I still have my sunglasses on, which I hope are hiding some of my frustration. “Dude,” I say. “It’s okay. I’ll wait for—”

Kevin shakes his head. “No, man. I’m not coming back. We’ve been friends freaking forever so I don’t want to tell you to get lost, but if you can’t stop trying to revive the band, just do me a favor and quit calling, okay?”

We stare at each other for a moment, and I want to punch Kevin in the face. Yeah, this is a setback, but it doesn’t have to be the end. “We were going to be like Anthony Kiedis and Flea, remember? We were going to play together our whole lives.”

“That was you and JT,” Kevin says, “and I hadn’t heard you talk like that since we were in high school. Come on, man. You’re the one of us who walked away from this with hardly a scratch. You’re Shane Beckstrom, man. Since we put out “I’ll Take You Back,” you’re the one who gets all the press. There are a thousand bassists who would jump at the chance to play in your band. Hell, you can keep the name, if you want, but as it was, Accidental Erotica is over.”

The lights seem like they’re getting brighter in here, even through my glasses.

“Keep it together,” JT says.

“I don’t want you to give up,” I say. But I can already feel myself breaking out in a cold sweat. I can’t stay here much longer. I have to get out, fast.

“I’m not giving up,” Kevin says. “I’m moving on, and so should you. You got a gift, man. And I don’t mean your music.”

I nod. I know what he means. JT is dead, Mikey washed up from drinking, Kevin can’t play. Out of the four of us who started the band in high school, I’m the only one who made it to twenty-eight and still has a shot.

“Fine,” I say. “But you know if you ever change your mind—”

“I’ll call,” Kevin says. He winces, and I don’t know if it’s because of his hand, or because he feels bad. “And dude, don’t be a stranger. Just shut up about the band already, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. I back up toward the door, and give him a cursory “later,” as I beat it out of there, blowing past Tori in the hallway. The lights are getting brighter and the cold sweat is starting to bead on my forehead and I’m starting to feel like I’m going to pass out.

I stumble out of the hospital by the nearest door and sit down on a bench outside the emergency area. I put my hands on my knees and try to breathe. I haven’t smoked since high school, but these last two months, all I want is a damn cigarette. I also want to put my fist through the brick wall of the emergency room, though I know both ideas are bad for my health.

Instead I grit my teeth and muscle through. I don’t know if this all has something to do with the whiplash and the resulting headaches—the only injury I suffered in the crash—or if I’m just freaking out over the loss of my buddies and my band, but I damn well can’t wait for this to stop fucking happening to me.

I wait until my head clears—it always does eventually, and find JT leaning against the brick wall with his arms crossed, staring at me with a crooked smile. “Dude,” he says. “You’re a mess. I mean not like I was. Remember how my br—”

“Shut up,” I say, and JT disappears.

I bury my face in my hands and wipe away cold sweat, then pull out my phone. I can’t drive home like this. Last week a semi honked its horn next to me when I was feeling like this, and I swerved three lanes over. It was only dumb luck that no one was there. I’m about to pull up Lyft and come back for my car later—something I’ve been doing an embarrassing amount, but haven’t been caught at yet—when I notice a missed call from Parker, our agent.

My agent.

I dial him back. “Park!” I say, with far more gusto than I feel. “What’s up?”

“Shane,” Parker says with equal enthusiasm. “How’d it go with Kevin?”

I take another deep breath. I do not want to go all soft in front of Parker. He’s the only one left who’s still on my team, and if he knew I was losing it under the pressure, he might decide I’ve peaked and find himself another guitarist. One who isn’t losing his goddamn mind.

“He says he’s out,” I say.

“Okay,” Parker says. “You believe him this time?”

I lower my head into one hand, holding the phone with the other. “Yeah,” I say. “Sounds like him and Maya have other plans.”

“Right,” Parker says. “So I heard. How about you and me get together for dinner and we can plan a strategy. I know it’s been rough since you lost JT, but—”

“Yeah,” I say, before he can slip into platitudes about how it’s time to move on and this is what JT would have wanted. It pisses me off, what I said to Kevin. He’s right. What JT would have damn well wanted is to headline our band with his kick ass voice and our combined music and lyrics until he was as withered and wrinkled as friggin Mick Jagger.

God only knows what he wants with me now.

“Sounds good,” I say. “Let’s plan on it.”

“One more thing,” Parker says. He’s always got an agenda for these phone calls, which I’m grateful for, because unlike a lot of other people, he’s not trying to pry about my feelings. “I think I mentioned this before, but JT was booked to MC a competition next week.”

“Oh, yeah!” JT says from over my shoulder. “I forgot about that.” He may disappear, but he’s never far away.

I snort. “The beauty pageant, you mean.”

“Miss California Poppy,” he says. “It’s like a week’s work. Shouldn’t be a big deal. They’re not going to hold him to it, god knows, but it might be good for PR if you’d do it. Plus, you know, you’d get to look at hot ladies, so I feel like it wouldn’t be too big a sacrifice.”

“That’s why JT was doing it. I remember him going on and on about how serious he was going to take the swimsuit competition.”

“Hell yes, I was,” JT says.

“Can I tell them you’re in?”

JT sits down next to me on the bench. I refuse to look directly at him, but I stare down at his shoes. “Dude, you have to do it. I want to stare at all the honeys.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say.

Parker sighs. “Look, man, I’m going to level with you. You’ve turned into kind of a hermit, which people understood for a while. And you’ve got a bit of time left before the rumors start, but your window is limited. It’s time to come out with your Dark Side of The Moon, you know? Your Wish You Were Here. You’ve always been good at capitalizing on what’s going on in your life, and I know this will be no exception. But you’ve got to appear occasionally in public between now and then or people are going to forget about you.”

I ball my fists. The bright lights and cold sweats are fading now, and instead of the brick wall, now I want to punch Parker right in the face. He’s right. I’ve always capitalized. JT was the singer, but I’ve always been the charismatic force pushing us forward. I’ve thrown everyone under the bus—girlfriends, groupies, other musicians.

But if Parker thinks I’m going to do that to my dead friend—

JT laughs. “Hey, man,” he says. “I’m right here. You could ask me what I think about it.”

“I’m working on the album,” I say, in my best disarming tone. “It’s one thing to churn out angry spurned boyfriend crap, but if you want Pink Floyd, you’re going to have to give me time.”

JT scoffs. “And you’re going to have to remember how to play.”

I give him a sideways look. He’s the only one who knows it, but I haven’t written a thing. I haven’t touched my guitar since—

“I know, man,” Parker says. “You got it. So you’re in for the pageant?”

I’ve said no such thing, but he does have a point. I’ve been hermiting, and I don’t have a single note to show for it, let alone this solo-sad-song album I’m supposed to be writing.

Plus, my dead friend appears to be glued to me, and far be it for me to deny him a little voyeurism.

“Fine,” I say, and we hang up.

“Thanks, man,” JT says. “You’re doing me a solid.”

“If you’re a ghost,” I say, “you could go by yourself.”

JT shrugs. “You know what I am.”

I turn away from him, thinking about what Parker said. I know I need to play. I need to write new material, give people the insight about what I’m feeling—or the fake-crap version that people want to identify with, anyway.

“Dude,” JT says, “you can write fake crap in your sleep. Get on it already.”

I shake myself, and refuse to respond. It’s only been a few months. I’ll get back on that horse. In the meantime, JT is right.

Beautiful women ought to make for a damn good distraction.

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