Chapter 16 Pen For Your Thoughts
Chapter sixteen
Pen For Your Thoughts
Marigold Belmore
“No guy is going to talk to you if you keep scowling like that,” Paisley says while bouncing to the beat of the music.
“I don’t think I want any of these guys to talk to me.”
I frown down at my journal. The page is blank, because I forgot my pen. My only reason for coming tonight—besides appeasing Paisley—was to write down inspirations for characters.
“Would you put that away and dance with me?” Paisley yells over a new, louder song.
I slide my notebook into the pocket of my plaid dress.
All around us are clusters of people dancing, talking, and drinking.
A lot of that last one. Too much of that last one, if you ask me.
This is liable to get sloppy really quick.
My roommates were right to turn this down.
I’m starting to wish I would have stayed home to watch movies and do homework with them.
“I’m not a dancer,” I say as she grabs my hand and tugs me over to where the majority of the dancing is happening.
“Neither am I,” says Paisley as she starts to shimmy.
Her dress sparkles in the shifting colors of the tacky disco ball hanging above us.
“Didn’t you say you know how to two-step?” I ask her as I switch from one foot to the other in a makeshift dance.
“Does this sound like country two-step music?” she asks with a laugh.
The heavy bass thrumming through the bottom of my Doc Martens answers with a negative.
Paisley’s hands go above her head, the bracelets she’s wearing sliding down her wrist. She looks like she belongs on stage at the Country Music Awards with her big curls, sparkly dress, and pink cowboy boots.
Her hands lower and she grasps mine to spin me in a circle like we’re little kids.
I laugh, starting to feel a little lighter.
Maybe tonight won’t be so bad after all.
Paisley gasps and halts our spinning. I blink as my eyes adjust.
“A cowboy!” she squeals while staring over my shoulder. “I think I found my man.”
I turn around to search out who she’s talking about. Sure enough, a tall muscular guy in a cowboy hat just walked in. His head tips up, and I recognize that wicked smirk immediately.
“That’s Nash, Jameson’s friend. He’s on the hockey team,” I tell her.
Paisley frowns. “Now I feel like I have to hate him on principle.”
I laugh. “No, you don’t. He’s a good guy. A bit of a rake, but—” I shrug.
“Well, if you don’t care, then I’m going to go say hi.”
I wave her toward him. She disappears into the crowd, giggling the whole time. Once she’s gone, I start to feel awkward in the middle of the makeshift dance floor. I’m about to turn and head back to the corner I was camped out in when I spot Jameson. He must have come in right behind Nash.
My whole body freezes at the sight of him.
He’s wearing a forest-green cable-knit sweater that makes him look like he’s got a trust fund waiting for him once he graduates.
But his tousled black hair gives him an edge that hints at something dark and mysterious in his past. None of which is true, but the look makes my heart quicken nonetheless.
For the past few months, I’ve accidentally written Jameson into whatever book I was working on. And based on the way he looks tonight, I’m doomed to do it again. I can’t resist a brooding male main character.
Jameson’s gaze sweeps the party, as though he’s looking for someone. He finds me in the crowd, smirks, and begins to carve a path through the throng of students. I don’t move. I don’t think I can. He stalks toward me with a kind of purpose that turns me to stone.
When he finally stops in front of me, I have to tip my head back to meet his dark brown eyes. As I do, the song changes to something slower, with a suspicious country twang that has Paisley written all over it.
“You hate parties,” I say instead of hello.
His lips tug up at the corners.
“So do you.”
I shrug. “I came for research.”
Why did you come? I want to ask, but hold back.
“Where’s your little notebook?” he asks, his gaze rolling over me. His eyes linger a little too long, and my skin heats at the thought of him admiring me.
I push away the errant thought and pull my notebook out of my pocket.
“I forgot my pen, though, and Paisley says normal people don’t bring writing materials to frat parties.”
Jameson chuckles and reaches into his back pocket. He produces a silver metal pen.
“Writers aren’t normal,” he says by way of explanation, then holds it out to me. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Goldie.”
My stomach swoops at the low, raspy way he says my nickname. The one I should remind him not to call me. I take the pen from him, our hands brushing in a way that sends tingles up my arm.
“Thanks,” I say softly.
Our eyes lock, and my lungs constrict.
I miss him on a level I never thought I could miss a person.
If my heart was a house, every photo on the walls would have Jameson in them.
So it makes sense that in the wake of all that’s happened, I feel like I’ve been evicted from my home.
I’m worried this feeling won’t ever go away.
That twenty years from now I’ll be putting up new photos and still thinking of old ones of us.
Jameson’s lips part, but he’s cut off.
“Red, your friend is crazy,” Nash says, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “I might need you to protect me.”
I laugh, but Jameson scowls. He grabs Nash by the collar of his T-shirt and pulls him to the side until his arm drops off me. Nash stays grinning, unbothered by Jameson yanking him away.
I bite the inside of my cheek. What was that about?
“What did you do?” Jameson asks in a disapproving tone.
“Nothing!” Nash holds his hands up. “She came over to me asking about my hat and where I was from. So I told her, then I asked where she was from. She told me to guess.”
I wince. “You guessed somewhere up North, didn’t you?” I ask.
“Of course I did,” he says, like it’s obvious. “She doesn’t have an accent, and her boots look like they’ve never been anywhere other than a shelf in her closet.”
Jameson presses his lips together, holding back a laugh. I shake my head.
“Did you tell her that?” I ask, then groan when he nods.
“I didn’t mean it in a bad way, but come on, she couldn’t seriously think she was fooling anyone?”
“You probably embarrassed her!” I scold him, searching the crowd for my friend.
“I don’t think so. She told me off and then stole my hat. Who does that?” Nash rakes a hand through his hair, and it’s then that I realize he’s not wearing the hat he had on when he came in.
But Paisley is. She’s twirling around the dance floor to another country song with none other than Carson Pierce, our host for the night.
The perpetually drunk Alpha Phi president is moving with surprising swagger.
He’s got one hand on Paisley’s hip and a red cup in the other.
With her new hat, she looks even more like a country music star.
“She can dance?” Nash asks, sounding impressed. I catch him watching her with more admiration than exasperation.
“Paisley loves all things country. Boots, horses, music, and dancing. The only reason she talked to you was because she thought you looked like a cowboy,” I inform him.
Nash smirks. “That’s because I am one.”
I roll my eyes. “No, you’re an idiot who lost his hat and a pretty girl in the same night.”
“Hey!” He gapes in mock outrage. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Either way, you lost tonight,” Jameson chimes in.
“I don’t lose,” Nash says, and then shrugs his shoulders up and down a few times as if he’s preparing for a fight.
“What are you doing?” Jameson asks before I can.
“Getting my hat back.”
He saunters over to Carson and Paisley. In a move way too suave for a frat party, he steals Paisley away from Carson and twirls her into him.
When she looks up at him, disoriented, he snags the hat off of her head and places it back on his.
But he doesn’t let her go after that; instead, he picks up where Carson left off.
Carson himself doesn’t seem put out. He lifts his cup to Nash, then tips it back.
“This feels like a scene in a movie,” I say as I watch our friends twirl around the floor, neither of them looking particularly happy about it.
“Would make a nice chapter in a novel,” Jameson says.
“Good thing someone gave me a pen.”
I glance up at him and catch a flash of his smile in the hazy light.
“Sounds like a good friend.”
Friend. My heart sinks. Reminders of everything that’s happened come flooding back. I take a step away.
“I need some water,” I say quickly, and rush off before he can reply.
I head toward the kitchen, which I also know has a door leading outside. I’ve used it before, the last time I saw Jameson unexpectedly. My mind shuffles through memories like old photographs. The first to come up are ones I thought I burned.
Jameson’s lips on mine.
The way he whispered my name in the darkness.
His hands in my hair.
Fear of ruining everything.
Then the searing betrayal of finding out from his mom that he’d gotten the internship at the paper.
The words I’d yelled.
The agonizing, hollow silence that followed.
All of it overtakes me until it feels like I’m drowning in the past. I burst outside into the cold air and gulp it down, trying to relieve the burning in my lungs.
My hand grips the pen he gave me. I look down at it and notice it’s not an average pen. The silver metal has an engraving. I squint at it in the moonlight.
Goldie.