Riot (15 page)

Joel’s gaze swings up from my notebook, and when I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, he gives me a one-sided grin. “Not prettier than you.”

I roll my eyes at him, trying to control the smile threatening to bloom across my face. “So you think she’s pretty,” I challenge, giving my attention back to my laptop.

“I prefer heels over combat boots.”

“So you noticed what she was wearing.”

Joel laughs and leans forward to close my laptop. “I think if you want to have make-up sex, you should just say so instead of picking a fight.”

“You’re an ass,” I say.

“You’re a—”

I flick a threatening finger into the air, and he grins.

“What, are we not fighting anymore?”

I glare at him, and he chuckles, settling back against the opposite arm of the couch as I open my laptop back up.

“I was going to say ‘a goddess among men.’ ”

With my attention back on my screen, I snort out a laugh. “By all means, continue then.”

“A rose in a garden full of weeds.”

“What else?”

“A . . . plum . . . on a tree full of . . . bananas . . .”

I chuckle at my laptop. “Maybe leave the songwriting to Adam.”

“Made you smile,” he teases, and I quickly whitewash my expression. “Still smiling,” he says again, and I shoot him a look, rolling my eyes at the way he’s grinning at me, but he’s right—there’s no disguising the smile on my face and it’s pointless for me to keep trying.

Joel and I fall into a comfortable silence while I type my paper and he divides his attention between his phone, the TV, the cookies on his lap, and my notebook. Eventually, my paper-writing is interrupted by him asking, “Did you draw this?” He holds my notebook out for me to see, and I pale when I realize he’s stumbled onto one of the high-fashion designs I sketched during class. I never intended for
anyone
to see those—him least of all.

“Yeah,” I answer, all of my energy concentrated on
not
freaking out.

“Dee, this is really good.” He continues flipping through the pages, and my fingers itch to yank the notebook out of his hands. It’s like he’s reading my freaking diary right in front of my face, but I know doing anything about it will just make it an even bigger deal than it already is. “Damn . . . this one is hot.”

Too curious to resist, I peek over at him and say, “Which one?”

Joel turns the notebook toward me again, and this time it’s open to a sketch I did of a dress. It’s basically just a slightly longer and more fitted version of the shirts I’ve been making, but it would require some measuring and sewing, neither of which I’ve ever really done before with the exception of those last-minute birthday capes and a sixth-grade home sciences project that can’t even count because Rowan did most of my work.

“You should make this,” Joel says.

“I can’t.”

His brow scrunches. “Why not?”

“I’ve never made a dress before.”

“That’s a shitty reason to not try something.”

When I don’t respond—because how can I?—he goes back to flipping through pages, and my stomach coils into another knot with each and every sketch he looks at.

“Aren’t you still trying to pick a major?” he asks with his focus still glued to my notebook.

Guessing where he’s going with his question, I answer, “Fashion isn’t a major at my school.”

“Then maybe you’re at the wrong school.” When he glances my way, I’m nibbling on the inside of my lip, wondering if he’s right and trying not to wonder about it. “I think there’s a fashion school here in town, actually. You should apply . . .”

“Know what I think?” I ask, and he flashes me a smile since he knows I’m going to say something smart. “I think you think too much.”

Joel gives a little chuckle and says, “I’ve also been thinking about what to draw you for your birthday. Am I allowed to think about that?”

“It’s over a month away . . . but yes.” If all he ever thought about was buying me presents, we’d be a match made in heaven.

“What do you want me to draw?”

“I don’t know . . . something special.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Make it a surprise.”

“I think I can do that,” he says with a soft smile. I go back to typing, and he adds, “You’re going to miss me so much while you’re gone.”

I am, but that’s for me to know. “You’re going to miss me more.”

Chapter Seventeen

T
HE ACHING IN
my chest starts about an hour into the six-hour drive back home. The feeling is foreign and uncomfortable, and if I could physically claw it out of my heart, I would. The entire ride, my ears are half tuned in to Rowan and half tuned in to my phone, listening for text messages that never come. I drop her off at her house and finish the drive to my dad’s, parking in the driveway and double-checking to make sure my phone isn’t on silent. When I verify that it isn’t, I huff out a disgruntled breath and climb out of the car.

My dad opens our front door even before I step up to the porch, and I set my overstuffed suitcase down to give him a big hug.

He’s a few inches taller than I am, with a lean build and soft smile. He and my mom were both twenty years old when she had me, but he looks even younger than his thirty-eight years, with smoky blond hair and dark brown eyes. When I was in middle school, I banned him from chaperoning school events because all of my classmates developed creepy crushes on him, and even though he hasn’t dated since my mom left, he could have started his own phone-book company with all the numbers women have tried to give him.

With his hands on my shoulders, he pulls away to smile at me. “Alright, let me look at you.” He turns my chin from side to side. “No facial piercings.” He lifts my arms up one by one, and I giggle while he inspects me. “No tribal tattoos. Turn around.”

“What? Why?”

He spins me around and lifts the back of my shirt. “No tramp stamp. Oh thank God.” I roll my eyes, and he laughs and kisses the top of my head.

“Are you done?” I ask.

“Worrying about you? Never.”

“Being weird,” I correct as he picks up my suitcase and opens the door.

“Also never.”

He laughs at his own joke, and I try not to laugh too. I’ve missed my dad even more than I thought I would—probably because these last few weeks have been some of the messiest of my life.

“Your room is where ya left it,” he tells me. “Your closet missed you.”

This time, I do laugh. “I missed my closet too.”

I start down the hallway, and he says, “Help me in the kitchen when you’re done having a sobby reunion, will ya?”

“Be there in a minute.”

My dad disappears into the kitchen, and I start toward my room, huffing out a slow, irritated breath when I pass through our hallway of misfit pictures. Ever since I was a teenager, my dad and I have waged a passive-aggressive war where I’ve taken down all the ones of my mom and hidden them, and my dad has always found them and put them right back up. He insists that they contain memories I shouldn’t block out, and a certain person I shouldn’t try to forget. I insist that some things are better off forgotten and some people are monster bitches who don’t deserve to be displayed in our house when they couldn’t even bother to stay faithful to their husbands or raise their daughters.

I ignore the pictures and walk straight to my room, dropping my suitcase next to my old bed and flopping face first onto my royal-purple comforter. My phone beeps in my back pocket, and I nearly pull a muscle throwing my arm behind my back to yank it out. I deflate when it’s just a text from Rowan.

My parents both work tomorrow. Come over when you wake up?

I text her back to let her know I’ll be there, and then I pick myself off the bed to prevent my mind from lingering on thoughts of Joel. I wonder what he’s doing right now. Watching TV? Playing guitar? Sleeping with all the girls he’s been abstaining from for the past month while I’ve been hoarding all of his time?

“Dee?” my dad asks from across the dining room table at dinner, and I catch myself staring at my phone again, willing it to ring.

I look away quickly and busy myself with carving into my burnt pork chop. “Sorry.”

“So the guys in this band,” my dad says, reminding me that we’d been talking about the music festival, which got me to talking about the T-shirts that have been selling like hot cakes on the band’s website, which got me to talking about the capes I made, which got me to thinking about Joel, “they’re all just friends?”

“Yeah,” I say, avoiding glancing at my phone. “They’re all really cool.”

“Even this Joel guy?”

I made it a point to talk about Joel no more or less than any of the other guys. And still, my dad picked him out of a damn invisible lineup. “Dad,” I groan, “are we seriously going to talk about
boys
?”

“I’m just talking about the reason you keep staring at your phone,” he says with a shrug, stabbing his pork chop and lifting the entire burnt thing to his mouth to take a bite out of it.

I turn my phone on silent and tuck it back into my pocket, making a serious effort to spend the rest of dinner giving my dad my undivided attention. We talk about everything—work, school, friends. Soccer, lasagna, neighbors. After hours of watching TV together and nodding off on the couch, I change into my pajamas and he insists on tucking me into bed. He kisses me on the head and disappears, closing the door behind him, and I immediately grab my phone off my nightstand.

Nothing. Eleven o’clock at night and
nothing
. Not a single word.

“You’re an asshole,” I tell my phone. Still, it says nothing back.

Are you awake?
I text Rowan.

Sorta. What’s up?

Really, I just wanted to make sure my phone was working. I growl under my breath and text back,
Nothing. See you in the morning.

I want to call her and rant about how big of an ass Joel is for not calling or texting me after we’ve spent almost every day for the past few weeks together. But she already thinks I’m in love with him or something, so instead, I set my phone back on the nightstand and stare at it lying there for a few hours before I finally fall asleep.

The next morning, when I don’t wake to any missed calls or missed texts or even apology roses delivered to my front door, I’m too frustrated to hold it in. On Rowan’s couch, I dig my hand into a bag of potato chips and say, “I can’t BELIEVE that asshole hasn’t even called me.”

“Maybe he’s waiting for you to call him,” she suggests while flipping through TV channels.

“Not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s the man.”

Her head slowly turns in my direction, her eyebrow reaching for her hairline. “Should he also take away your right to vote and own property?”

I toss a chip at her, and she laughs and throws it back at me. We both turn back toward the TV, wasting the morning watching everything and nothing until she says, “I almost let it slip that I’ve been living with Adam.”

I turn my head to see her gnawing on her thumbnail, and she glances my way before shifting to face me.

“I told mom and dad about Joel’s birthday party, and I accidentally said we had it at your place. And my dad was all, ‘Don’t you mean
your
place?’ And you know how bad I am at lying . . . It was cringe-worthy.”

“Did they buy it?”

She nods her head with her brows turned in and her thumbnail locked between her teeth. “I think so.”

“What do you think they’d do if they found out?”

She shrugs. “Probably throw a fit. Talk to me about how it’s too soon.”

“They’d want to meet him,” I say, trying not to laugh when I imagine Rowan’s burly, football-loving father meeting Adam, with his long hair and painted fingernails.

“The thing is, I
want
them to meet him,” Rowan says, sighing and curling her knees up on the couch. “I mean, they know we’re dating. I want them to know he’s the one . . . I’m just a little worried they won’t like him.”

“Would it matter?” I ask, and to my surprise, she smiles.

“Nope.”

“Then stop worrying about it.” I tap her thumb away from her mouth and add, “If they meet him and don’t like him, whatever. But if it helps, I think they’ll love him.” I stand up and start walking toward her bedroom. Her nails are a jagged mess I can’t stand to look at anymore. Filing and polishing them will be a better waste of my time than sitting around stressing about Joel.

“You think so?” she asks.

“Yep.”

“How do you know?”

I walk backward, giving her a smile. “Because your parents love you. And so does Adam.”

My afternoon is spent doing her nails and trying not to hate her when she gets constant text messages from Adam. I attempt to distract myself by talking to her about Kit and how weird Shawn acted around her—which Rowan observed too—but it doesn’t stop me from noticing that my phone remains painfully silent while Rowan’s beeps and dings and rings like a winning lotto machine. By the time I crawl into my bed later that night, I’m convinced that what I had with Joel was a fluke and that he’s forgotten all about me.

I don’t hear from him until three o’clock the next afternoon.

My dad and I are outside at my favorite year-round ice-cream parlor eating sundaes at a picnic table, and I’m teasing him about the way the ice-cream girls batted their eyelashes at him, when my phone beeps and Joel’s panty-melting smile flashes onto my screen. My heart does parkour off the walls of my chest, and I snatch my phone off the table.

I miss you.

Three little words from him lift an impossible weight off my chest, and my mouth curls into the smile to end all smiles.

“Who is it?” my dad asks, and I quickly slam my phone face down on the table.

“No one.”

When he doesn’t look convinced, I ask if he’s going to eat the cherry on top of his sundae, and then I steal it without waiting for an answer.

As soon as I get home, I speed-walk into the privacy of my bedroom and whip my phone out of my pocket.

Why haven’t you called?
I type, and Joel’s response is immediate.

Why haven’t *you* called?

I debate saying something snarky, something clever and insincere. Instead, I type back,
I miss you too.

I hit
SEND
before I can change my mind, and then I listen to the clock on my wall tick seconds into minutes. Hours later, long after dinner and late-night TV with my dad, I’m still waiting for Joel’s reply. I turn my ringer all the way up so that I’ll wake if he texts, and then I crawl under my covers, wondering what he’s doing and who he’s doing it with. Maybe he found someone to help him stop missing me—God knows his phone is full of plenty of numbers of girls who would jump at the chance.

I’m not sure how long it takes me to fall asleep, but when I wake up later, it’s still dark. Even though the sound that wakes me is familiar, it takes me a moment to place—because I haven’t heard anyone tap on my bedroom window since I moved away from home.