Chapter 12
I don’t hear him coming, and that should be impossible given that Mike is constantly making some sort of noise.
But one second, I’m staring at my laptop, engrossed in a paper I’ve been putting off for two weeks, and the next, there are arms around my shoulders that cause me to damn near jump out of my skin.
“What the hell!”
“Whatcha doing?” He asks, completely unapologetic.
“What does it look like? I gotta finish this essay.”
His chin hooks over my shoulder, and he looks at my screen, his eyes roaming over the paragraphs I’ve written so far on the most boring topic on earth. “How much more do you have?”
“A lot. Go away.”
“Do it later.”
“I can’t do it later, it’s due at midnight.” I make an attempt to shrug him off, but he holds on tighter. “Mike.”
“We’re going out,” he announces, ignoring everything I said.
“I can’t. I just told you—”
“I have a show.” He kisses my neck, and my train of thought derails completely as goosebumps go all the way to the top of my head. “I want you to come.”
“You always have shows.”
“This one’s different.” Another kiss, open mouth this time, and I have to fight the sound threatening to come out. “I wrote you a song.”
“You—” I turn my head to look at him, a mistake because his face is right there and he doesn’t move. “You wrote me a song?”
“Mhm. I’m playing it tonight. I want you to be there.”
“I—” I face forward again, staring at my laptop screen without seeing any of it. Mike wrote me a song. He wants me to come and watch him play it tonight.
I’m having a hard time not reading into that.
But I do what I always do and try to ignore the feelings bubbling in my chest. “I have three pages left. And the intro took me forty minutes, so.”
In the middle of my sentence, he must get bored, because he starts to kiss me again, trailing up to my ear, nibbling on my earlobe.
And I didn’t realize my ears were sensitive, but they definitely are. “Stop,” I say, going for forceful, but it comes out helpless. “I’m trying to concentrate, man.”
He does it again, his breath puffing against me in a way that makes me squirm, and I know he notices, because I can feel him smile.
That’s it.
I reach back and shove him away hard enough that he stumbles back with a laugh, catching himself on my bed. “You suck.”
“You know it.” He counters, standing up to lean against my desk, arms crossed, grinning down at me with that face that has caused me nothing but trouble since September. “Come to my show. Please.”
I look down at my essay. Three pages due in five hours. And I already have plans to go out tonight. Ryan won’t be happy if I cancel on him again.
“I really can’t come, Mike. I already have plans with Ryan.” His nose scrunches up, the way it always does when Ryan comes up.
“He can come, I suppose.”
“Fine. I guess I can stop by for a little while,” I relent because there was no chance of me getting out of this to begin with.
“Yay,” he exclaims with a little clap that I do not find adorable. “You’re not allowed to run out in the middle of the set this time either,” he adds, pointing at me.
Oh.
I forgot about that.
He raises his eyebrows, and I realize in that moment that he remembers everything.
“I had a reason,” I mutter, looking down at my lap.
“What reason?”
I don’t respond. I’m not going to.
“Alex.” He steps forward, running his hand through my hair, pulling enough to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “What reason?”
“I was hard.”
“You were hard,” he repeats, making my cheeks heat up even more.
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“Watching me on stage made you hard.”
“Yes. Can we move on?”
He nods, but he’s still smiling in a way that makes all of me light up inside when he lets my hair go. “We leave at nine. Finish your essay.”
He’s almost out the door when I call after him. “It better be a good song.”
“It’s the best song I’ve ever written.”
“I still don’t get why we have to go to this,” Ryan complains for the tenth time tonight.
“He’s my roommate. And he’s letting me rent the room for basically nothing. The least I can do is go to one of his gigs if he asks.” It’s not the full truth, but it sounds better than he wrote me a song.
The bar they’re playing at tonight is packed. And I’m regretting not coming with Mike the way he wanted, because now it’s five minutes until ten and we can barely see the stage through all of the bodies in front of us.
I don’t let my jealousy get to me this time.
Yes, I wish I could be up there, and it sucks that I’m never going to be able to, but that doesn’t mean Mike shouldn’t. Mike’s dad taught him how to play guitar when he was five. It’s the way he connects with his parents, even when they’re gone, and I want that for him.
But I wish I could be up there with him.
“This place is packed,” Ryan says beside me, even though he’d never care any other time. “And it’s loud. Are you sure you don’t wanna go back to your place? We can play some video games while we know he won’t be lurking around.”
“I told him I’d come, Ryan.”
He shifts beside me, stretching his neck to see around the person in front of him. “I don’t get why he couldn’t have mentioned it earlier. I might’ve had other things going on tonight.”
“You just said you wanted to go home and play Xbox.”
“That’s not the point.”
I look over at him. He’s got his arms crossed and his jaw set, scanning the room with a frown, and I know that look. I’ve seen it at the gym when someone’s on the machine he wanted to use. He’s not going to say it, but he’s decided to let everyone know he’s not having fun.
“Can’t you try to have a good time? Please,” I ask, a little desperate, because I really don’t want my best friend to hate my—
Mike.
An emotion I don’t have time to name flickers across his face as all the lights but the ones over the stage dim, my heart picking up in anticipation.
Mike’s friends settle in behind the drums and the bass, and the guy I’ve only seen the last time Mike’s band played comes out with the expression of someone who takes himself very seriously.
The girls cheer louder for him, so it must be working for him.
When Mike walks out, though, the crowd reacts immediately.
Cheering and pressing closer. He takes it all in with the smile of someone having the time of their life.
He’s wearing black jeans and a shirt I’ve never seen before, dark and fitted with his band logo, and his hair is styled differently.
Slicked back, making his painted eyes pop.
My mouth goes dry.
He steps up to the microphone, scanning the crowd. “Hey everybody,” he says into the mic, earning another cheer from the crowd. Somewhere in front of me, a girl shouts his name, and that makes his smile even brighter.
Ryan leans over. “People really like this dude.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They do.”
I watch the girl who shouted his name. She’s pretty. All of her friends are. Everyone around the bar is looking at Mike the same way that I’m trying very hard not to.
But I don’t let that bother me.
He wrote a song for me. He’s coming home with me tonight.
I watch them play and let myself feel proud about that just this once, where no one can see me.
Three songs in, Mike steps back from the mic and reaches for the acoustic guitar I recognize from our living room.
“Okay,” Mike says, tuning the guitar while he talks.
“I’m gonna do something a little different.
” He plucks a string, adjusting it again one more time before he deems it okay.
“I wrote something the other day. And I haven’t played it live before, so be nice.
” He glances up and meets my eyes, like he knew where I was this whole time.
He smiles.
“I wrote it for my roommate,” he says into the microphone. “Who is very sexy and will remain anonymous tonight.” The crowd laughs. Someone calls out tell us who it is and Mike shakes his head with a grin, strumming his guitar. Unbothered.
Me, on the other hand?
Very much bothered.
Beside me, Ryan goes very still. But I can’t care about that when Mike starts to play.
It’s simple and unhurried, the tune I’ve heard him play on the couch, but never knew the words. The bar goes quiet, as all conversation stops. Leaving only Mike and the guitar and the lights reflecting the rings on his fingers.
And then he starts to sing.
He doesn’t talk much, but I hear him anyway.
I could find him in any crowd.
He doesn’t take his eyes off of me the entire time. He’s not scanning the room. He’s not performing for the crowd. He’s looking right at me, like no one else is here.
Prettiest frown I’ve ever seen.
Don’t get me started on that mouth.
He laughs on that line, a little puff of air into the microphone, and all I can do is match his smile.
The bar erupts, people cheering, shouting, they love him. And he takes it in with his head down, but when he looks back up, he finds me again.
I don’t even try to control my face this time. I’m staring at him like an idiot in love, and I know it.
“Who’s his roommate?” I hear a girl behind us say to her friend.
Beside me, Ryan turns to me with a look on his face that I don’t like. “What was that?” He asks, his voice gone cold.
“It was nothing,” I brush off, hoping my laugh doesn’t sound so forced. “He was messing around, you know how he is.”
“Nothing,” he repeats, and the way he says, I’m not sure he believes me. A little too controlled. But he turns back toward the stage and doesn’t say anything else.
Once Mike’s set is finished, I don’t hang around to see him. Ryan and I go back to the house, mostly because I don’t want Ryan to think too hard about what happened tonight. He’s happy now that we’re here and playing a game on the TV.
I expect Mike and his friends to be out most of the night, the way they always are after a show, so when the front door swings open, it startles the hell out of me.
They file in one by one, in the middle of a very loud conversation, the tattooed guitarist closing the door behind them.