Riot (12 page)

“TOASTER!” he yells when I free his mouth to pry his hands from my sides, and everyone looks at us like we’re crazy as we laugh and wrestle until we’re both falling out of the chair.

For the rest of the night, Joel acts like learning that I’m ticklish is better than Christmas coming early. He makes it his mission to discover all the places I’m sensitive, and I’m contemplating biting his fingers off, when someone brings up the flyers I’ve posted all around the festival about the auditions we’re holding next weekend.

“I was actually wondering about that,” Van says, his eyes glassy from one too many beers. Rowan and Adam have already gone back to the bus, but the rest of us are still hanging out under a sea of twinkling stars.

Van takes another sip of his beer and adds, “What happened to the little guy?”

“Wasn’t his name Cody?” someone else says, and the name sends a cold shiver crawling up my spine.

“Yeah!” Van says. “I never liked him.”

Joel’s fingers stop exploring my sides to tighten around me reassuringly, but it’s a pointless effort. This weekend has been make-believe. I should’ve always known I’d have to wake up sometime.

“Creative differences,” Shawn offers dismissively. He’s sitting on the edge of a cooler with a guitar on his lap and a fan club at his toes. His thick black hair is wild from the humidity, and his cargo shorts are a tattered mess. He doesn’t even glance at me, his expression schooled and impassive.

“I heard it was a girl,” a random guy says, ignoring Shawn’s explanation. I feel Joel tense behind me.

“Who told you that?” he asks.

“Cody,” the guy answers. “He said some psycho groupie was all over him but she started saying he was trying to rape her or something and you guys bought it.”

All eyes turn to me and Joel, and it takes everything in me to make sure the heartbreak in my chest doesn’t appear on my face.

“Cody is a fucking liar,” Joel snaps, giving voice to the fight no longer left in me.

Cody is a liar about some things, but not all of them.

“He just doesn’t want to admit he’s a shit guitarist,” Shawn says.

“My dead grandmother could play better than he could,” Mike adds, and Shawn nods his agreement.

“He’s lucky we kept him as long as we did.”

I love the guys for lying for me. I hate myself for putting them in a position to have to.

“Did you seriously beat him up?” the same someone-from-before asks Joel, and I can’t listen anymore. Each question is a memory unburied. This weekend at the festival, it’s been easy to pretend that what happened with Cody was a lifetime ago, that it happened in a distant place to a different girl.

But I’m not a different girl. I’m the same
psycho groupie
who lured a guitarist to a bus and made sure to seduce him where his band mate would find us. I’m that same jealous, selfish, stupid girl. The same girl who started a fight she couldn’t finish. Who played a game and lost.

“I’m heading to bed,” I interrupt, standing up and giving the group a weak smile. I know they’ve all probably guessed that I’m the girl in question—it’s written in my empty eyes, my forced smile, my broken voice. There’s nothing I can do about it except hide until tomorrow and hope I never see them again.

I don’t get far into the dark before Joel’s fingers clasp with mine, firm and supportive.

I don’t pull away, but I want to.

On the bus, I climb into the darkness of the upstairs level and kick my shoes and shorts off next to my bunk. Then I climb under the covers and try to disappear.

“Move over,” Joel says. He starts sliding in next to me, leaving me no choice. I scoot toward the wall, too numb to argue.

He said some psycho groupie was all over him but she started saying he was trying to rape her.

“Those guys didn’t know what they were talking about,” Joel says, his hand coming to rest in the curve of my waist. We’re facing each other with worlds of distance between us, and still it feels too close.

“I saw you turn that girl away tonight,” I say. It sounds like an accusation, and it is. When I saw him turn her down, I had felt the glow of pride in my chest. Now, it’s shadowed by something else. Something heavy.

“I didn’t know you were watching.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I’m here with you.”

He says it so simply. But the Joel from a week ago wasn’t the type of guy to give girls thoughtful gifts, or to go away with them for the weekend. And he definitely wasn’t the kind of guy to turn down a pretty girl regardless of where he was or who he was with. None of this is simple.

“Joel, last Saturday with Cody . . . I was trying to make you jealous.”

“I know that.”

If he really knew, he wouldn’t be denying that I’m a “psycho groupie” just like Cody said. He wouldn’t be lying in bed with me right now. He wouldn’t be trying to make me feel better.

“I asked him to come to the bus with me,” I continue, “because I knew you’d be there soon. He wanted to take me upstairs, but I insisted on staying downstairs. Do you know why?”

Silence.

“Because I knew you’d catch us there. I knew you’d see us making out, and I was hoping it would make you so jealous that you’d realize you wanted me more than anyone else.” As the words leave my mouth, a horrible realization dawns on me, and I let out a humorless chuckle. “And you know what? It worked. You brought me to this festival, and you’ve given me all your attention, and you turned down another girl when you didn’t even know I was watching. This is exactly what I wanted, Joel. Don’t you get that? That’s how fucking crazy I am. Cody got that part right.”

Joel’s hand remains motionless and heavy on my side. When he finally pulls it away, I brace myself for the emptiness I’ll feel when the rest of him is gone.

“Do you know which part of that is the craziest?” he says in a soft voice, and I steel myself for his answer. He tucks my hair behind my ear and says, “That it took all of that for me to realize I always
did
want you more than anyone else.”

His words sink deep beneath my skin, and I pray that in the dark, he can’t see the tears welling in my eyes. I want to accept what he said, without reservation or argument, but clearly I haven’t said enough. If I had, he wouldn’t still be beside me.

“Do you know why I
wanted
you to like me?” I continue. “Because everything between us was just a game I wanted to win.”

Sleeping with Aiden. Leaving Joel at the grocery store. Making out with Cody. Every outfit I bought, every fingernail I painted, every perfume I wore. All of it was a game, a stupid game played by a stupid girl who was way out of her league.

“I didn’t actually want you to keep you,” I confess. “I wanted you just to throw you away.”

Joel’s voice is quiet when he says, “Is it still a game?”

His thumb traces the curve of my jaw, and I manage not to shy away. “No.”

“Good,” he says softly, “because I’m done playing.” He rolls onto his back, tucking his arm under me and pulling me against his side. And maybe I am different from the girl I was last week, because instead of resisting him, I rest my cheek against his chest and let him hold me.

We lie like that for long, stretching minutes, until his voice breaks the silence. “My mom is a drunk.”

I keep still, my breathing steady. I don’t know why he’s telling me, but I know there’s a reason, and the girl I’m becoming wants to hear it.

“She always has been. My grandma helped raise me, but she had a stroke when I was in high school and has been in a nursing home ever since.” He trails off, and then shakes himself free of unvoiced thoughts. “Anyway, after that, my mom and I moved, and I started going to school with the guys. I heard they had a band, so I made them listen to me play guitar. One of the guys my mom dated had played, and when he split, he left his guitar behind and I taught myself to play.” Another pause, more silent memories. “Most days, my mom was trashed and belligerent, so I stayed at Adam’s house. Even when he wasn’t home, most nights I slept on his floor just because I never wanted to be at my own house. I drew a lot back then. I got better at playing guitar. And you know what? I was happy. Those were the first years of my life when I felt seriously happy.”

I never wondered about how Joel had grown up, about how he met the guys. I never wondered about him at all. Now, he’s all I can think about, and I want to know everything. I want to know the answers to questions I haven’t even thought of yet.

“Maybe that’s why I don’t have a car or an apartment or anything,” he continues. “I like sleeping on Adam’s couch because that’s what I was doing the first time I ever really felt like I had a family. The guys were my brothers, and their moms bought me clothes and cooked me dinners . . . When I was little, one of my mom’s boyfriends bought me birthday presents one year—he even bought me this awesome Hot Wheels Dragon racetrack I really wanted—but my mom turned around the next week and sold them all for booze money.” Joel sighs, his chest rising and falling beneath me. I rub my hand over his downy-soft T-shirt, and he says, “I guess I just got used to not having anything.”

After a long, long while, I say, “Joel . . . why’d you tell me all that?”

When he doesn’t answer, I think he must be asleep, but then his quiet voice says, “Because I want you to know.” His arms hug me closer, and he adds, “And I’m starting to think that maybe having nothing isn’t such a good thing to get used to.”

Chapter Fourteen

W
ITHOUT ALL THE
people in it, Mayhem looks strangely smaller. The ceiling seems a little higher but the walls appear a whole lot closer, like they’ve recovered from stretching to fit the flood of bodies that pours between them each and every weekend. We’re here on a Saturday, but it’s early afternoon—the line outside won’t start forming for at least a few hours, when this husk of a building is brought back to life with the magic of too-bright lights and too-loud music.

The screech of a floor-cleaner echoes from somewhere behind me.

“Next!” I shout, and Leti leaves the cavernous room to bring in the next auditioner. So far, most of them have been airheaded groupies here for pictures or autographs. I may or may not have lost my temper on one of them and threatened to shove her Sharpie somewhere no one would find it.

There are six of us sitting at a long foldout table facing the stage. Joel is on the left, next to me, Shawn, Adam, Rowan, and Mike. Before the festival, I wouldn’t have felt like I belonged at this table. Now, I can almost believe that I do.

Last Sunday morning, after spending the night wrapped in Joel’s arms, I woke up early, hopped into my shorts, and went downstairs to make a pot of coffee. Shawn was already standing in the kitchen with mussed hair and a steaming mug in his hands.

“You’re up early,” he noted as I poured myself a cup and shoveled into the sugar.

“Couldn’t sleep.” It was a total lie—I could have slept all day. A big part of me wanted to, as long as Joel stayed with me in bed. When he holds me, he doesn’t snore, and I sleep better than I do alone.

“Looked like you were sleeping just fine to me,” Shawn said with a smirk I deftly ignored.

I leaned back against the kitchen counter and blew tendrils of steam away from the lip of my mug. “So how did that conversation about the ‘psycho groupie’ go last night?” I asked. I said it like it didn’t bother me, like
nothing
could bother me, but Shawn’s grin slipped away.

“Honestly?” he asked, and the steam stopped wafting away from my cup. I held my breath, and Shawn said, “Mike and I told everyone about the time Cody slept with his cousin.”

My jaw nearly dropped. “He
did that
?”

“No, but if he wants to spread bullshit lies, so can we.” Shawn’s grin came back ten times cockier, and when I laughed, he laughed too.

With his chin now resting heavily on the heel of his palm beside me, he says, “This is a disaster.”

I can’t argue. We all got our hopes up when the last person Leti brought in actually had a guitar with him, but those hopes were soon dashed when the guy revealed he had no idea how to play it and only wanted it signed.

“I’m screening everyone beforehand from now on,” I say, casting a glance over my shoulder at the unmanned bar. The guys made an arrangement with the owner of Mayhem so we could hold auditions here—I wonder how mad he’d be if I deemed this an emergency situation and raided his liquor supply.

“
Driver?
” Rowan says, stealing my focus from the bottles behind the bar. At the right end of the table, she’s been buried in a textbook and homework, but now all of her attention is on the lanky guy Leti just brought in. His hair is a curly burnt-orange mess; he has something-I-don’t-think-is-a-cigarette tucked behind his ear; and . . . is that a freaking
banjo
?

“Is that a freaking banjo?” Rowan asks, and Mike groans and lets his forehead thump against the table. Adam and Joel both break into guy giggles, and Shawn lets out a heavy sigh.

“We’re not looking for a banjo player, Driver,” he says, and Joel leans in to tell me that Driver is one of their roadies and that he drives the bus when the band goes on tour.

“Hear me out, man,” Driver says to Shawn. “This shit is gonna help your sound.”

“What’s wrong with our sound?”

Driver cocks his head to the side like he’s thoroughly confused. “It doesn’t have a banjo . . .”

Adam giggles harder, and Joel buries his face in the back of my shoulder to muffle his own laughter.

Shawn keeps a straight face for a moment before he can’t help releasing a little laugh too. He waves his hand toward the stage. “Whatever, man. Do your thing.”

The frayed bottoms of Driver’s jeans drag over the dance floor as he walks toward the stage. He hops up to sit on the edge and removes the definitely-not-a-cigarette from behind his ear, fishing a lighter from his pocket and lighting up. He takes a long drag, holds it, and releases it in a thick cloud of smoke. He smiles at us, then takes another long drag.

“Driver?” Shawn asks.

“Yeah?”

“You wanna play?”

“Oh, shit,” Driver says with the joint between his lips. He positions the banjo on his lap and says, “Yeah. You ready?”

Another bout of tiny giggles sound against my shoulder and echo from Adam’s direction. Rowan smacks him on the arm and says to Driver, “Come on, Driver. We’re hungry.”

“Shit, me too. I’m
starving
,” he says, and Adam howls with laughter. Joel rests his arm on my shoulder and buries his eyes in his forearm, his entire body shaking with giggles. I bite my lip to keep from joining him.

Driver laughs too, not minding how badly the boys are behaving.

“Hurry up so we can go eat,” Shawn says with a smile on his face.

With the joint dangling between his lips and his feet hanging above the floor, Driver begins plucking at his banjo. And for a banjo player, he’s pretty damn good. Joel whoops and slaps his knee before yanking me off my feet to do-si-do me around the room. Adam joins in, hooking his arm in mine when Joel passes me along, and Rowan drags Mike and Shawn on the floor to join us. By the time Driver finishes playing, all six of us have square-danced our asses off and are laughing hysterically. I lie down on the floor, laughing too hard to catch my breath, and Joel collapses beside me, grabbing my hand and holding on.

This week, he’s spent most nights at my apartment, and on the nights he hasn’t, Rowan has told me that he’s attached himself to Adam’s couch grumbling about how he wished he was at my place. We haven’t talked about him not wanting me with other guys, and we
definitely
haven’t talked about me not wanting him with other girls, but as far as I know, neither of us has been with anyone else.

Leti, who made sure to stay out of grabbing-range during our hoedown, moves to stand over me, giving me a smug smile. “Well aren’t you two just totes adorbs.”

I kick his ankle, and his smile widens.

“So do I get to be in the band?” Driver asks, and I lift my head off the floor to see Adam wrap his arm around Driver’s shoulder.

“No fucking way, man. But we’ll buy you dinner.”

Driver seems to consider this for a moment, answering with a shrug. “Sweet.”

At a Chinese buffet, I eat at a table with six hungry men and a bottomless pit of a best friend.

“Are you going to be able to eat all that?” Mike asks Rowan with a skeptical gaze directed at her plate.

I can’t help laughing. Rowan and I are the same size, but I swear she can eat double our weight in food. Eating ice cream out of the carton with her is like competing for digging space with a backhoe. “She’s just getting started.”

She gives me a closed-lipped grin, her mouth already full of lo mein.

“So how are the shirts coming?” Shawn asks me, and I pick at my Chinese donut. My appetite is starting to come back, little by little.

“Almost done. I’m taking pictures this weekend, so you should be able to put them on the website next week.”

“And you’re seriously cool with doing this?”

“Are you kidding?” Joel asks. “You should see her apartment. There are shirts everywhere. All she talks about is knots and slits and bows and shit.”

I chuckle and toss a piece of my donut at him, and he picks it off the table and pops it in his mouth, grinning at me.

Making the shirts has been a lot of work, but none of it has actually
felt
like work. Since talking to my dad, I’ve been more diligent about completing my overdue homework and studying for tests, since I promised him I would, but I keep catching my mind wondering to clothing designs. My college-bound notebooks are just as filled with shirt designs as they are with notes for class.

“You should see them,” Rowan says, finally having swallowed down her food. “They’re really good.”

“Like
really
good,” Leti adds.

“They’re alright,” I say. What I’m really proud of are my other sketches—the ones of skirts and dresses and sexy little tops. But those are just for fun.

“You know what I’ve always wanted?” Driver asks. He’s sitting at the end of the table, but I can smell the smoke on him from three seats away. He nods to himself and says, “A cape.”

“A
cape
?” Adam asks, and Driver nods harder.

“Yeah. With hidden pockets and shit. That way if I get stopped by the cops, they won’t be able to find anything on me.”

“Couldn’t you just get hidden pockets put in your coat or something?”

Driver’s brows pull together with confusion. “You don’t think that’d be too obvious?”

Adam chuckles, and Shawn closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You think a
cape
would be more subtle?” he asks.

“No, I think a cape would be more
cool
,” Driver says, emphasizing the last word like Shawn’s having trouble understanding.

Shawn releases a heavy sigh, and I find myself laughing quietly with Joel.

“If he gets a cape,” Adam says, “I want one too.”

“Can mine be sherbet orange with vanilla trim?” Leti asks. “Oh! Wait, no! Orange with fuschia sequins.”

“That sounds hideous,” I gripe, and Leti scoffs at me.

“Your
mom
sounds hideous,” he counters.

I shrug. “My mom
is
hideous.”

My mom was only beautiful in ways that won’t matter once her skin starts to sag. On the inside, she’s disgusting, and I pray the last seven years have taken their toll on her.

The rest of the group continues imagining their capes and arguing over whose sounds the coolest, and I find Joel watching me. He does this sometimes now—stares at me like I’m a puzzle to solve or a maze to navigate. A few times, I’ve asked what he was thinking, but since I never like the answer—because it
always
involves him asking me something personal—I’ve learned not to ask.

“You should make Joel a cape with mohawk spikes running down the back for his birthday next week,” Adam says, and my eyes dart to him before settling back on Joel.

“Your birthday is next week?”

Joel looks back to his plate and scoops the peas out of his stir-fried rice. “Yeah. It’s not a big deal.”

My heart pulses painfully in my chest when I remember the story he told me about his mom selling his birthday presents to pay for booze. My childhood was filled with princess-themed birthday parties and more gifts than I knew what to do with. I doubt Joel has ever had a themed birthday party in his life.

“Are you guys having a party?” I ask.

“We usually take him out and get him wasted,” Adam says with a laugh. “Does that count?”

Joel gives Adam a genuine smile, but I cut in with an uncompromising, “No.” The guys stare at me, and I rush to resume my usual self-serving attitude. “It’s been too long since we’ve had a party. I want to throw one.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Joel stammers.

I brush him off with a flick of my wrist. “I love throwing parties. Ask Rowan about my Sweet Sixteen. It was amazing.”

Rowan nods, keeping her eyes trained on me. She knows something is up. “It was epic,” she says without missing a beat. “She had a DJ and everything. And she had three dates, and none of them were allowed to wear shirts.”

I snicker at the memory, but Joel still looks skeptical.

“Just trust me,” I tell him. “It’ll be awesome.”