Chapter 14
I wake on Sunday morning to an email from Miles asking if we can reschedule, saying he’ll be out this way in two weeks if
I’m available. I immediately feel sick about it when I think of the shoebox shrine for me in his closet. If we uncovered anything
last night, it’s that Miles is undoubtedly obsessed with me. Whether or not he’s a murderer is still yet to be determined.
pull on a sweater and lounge pants, brush my teeth, and leave for the cafe. Both of them are already in our usual spot when
I arrive. I barely have time to sit down with my coffee when Annica begins to interrogate me.
She cocks her head to the side when I sit and asks, “Where were you all day yesterday?”
Her accusatory tone catches me off guard, but I look her in the eyes to lie to her face nonetheless. “I was up at Ivy Gate
visiting Ty. I told you guys that yesterday.” I sneak a glance over at Dani but she looks down at her coffee.
“Well, Ty posted that she was in New York City this weekend with her mom. So what is the real reason you bailed on my birthday dinner?” Annica asks.
I didn’t even think to check with Ty about what she was really doing. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes
out. The two of them have no idea about the journal pages or Miles or the fact that I’m running around playing detective with
Asher. But I know what I have to say.
“Fine, I was in Boston,” I say. “With Asher.”
Annica looks as though I slapped her. “With Asher?” Her eyes narrow at me like she still doesn’t believe me.
“Yeah.” I shrug, playing it off like it’s no big deal. “If you don’t believe me just ask him.”
“Wait, so are you two, like, a thing now?” Dani asks.
“You blew off my birthday dinner for Asher?” Annica says again.
I realize if I have to lie, then I might as well go with the one we were already planning on telling. I just didn’t think
we’d get here so soon.
“We had it planned already; I just didn’t tell you guys because . . . I was embarrassed.” I think it’ll earn me pity to say
it and make her less pissed about me bailing, but it doesn’t.
Annica shakes her head. “You should be.” Dani smacks her arm. “What?”
“I think Sloane can like whoever she likes!” Dani smiles. “Maybe Asher is nice to her.”
Hardly, I want to say.
“It was nothing serious, really. Just two friends out on a day trip to the city.”
Dani smirks. “So like a date?”
“No,” I say quickly. “Not a date. We’re just, you know, feeling it out.” It’s gross to even say it. Now that the buzz of last night has long worn off, I don’t want to feel anything out with him.
“Have you guys . . . ?” Dani wags her eyebrows at me.
I have to stop myself from saying “ew” before I answer with “No.” But the question makes me think of the two of us in the trunk, and what he suggested in the dim
light of Miles’s empty town house.
“Well, when you do, let us know how it is—I’m curious.”
Annica nearly gags. “Ugh, Danielle, gross.”
“What? I’ve heard good things!” Dani says, and I almost want to ask her what she’s heard exactly but Annica speaks first.
“I just hope you know what you’re doing.” Annica sighs. “This could get messy. It could potentially—”
“Ruin the friend group?” I finish for her. “Do you really think after this long the guys would abandon all of us over a relationship
gone bad?”
“Well, let’s not test it out.” She gives me a look that means business. “Anyways, Pembroke’s Halloween weekend is in two weeks
so how about less feeling out Asher and more feeling out our costumes. Sloane, maybe you should go as a lobotomy patient,
since you clearly need one.”
I only sigh.
By the time we leave the Bean we’ve decided to be the girls from the nineties movie Clueless. I had to fight Annica to be Cher; it made sense since I’m the blonde here. She caved, saying she’s only doing it because
she feels bad that I have to put up with Asher.
I know I need to talk to him today so I make my way to the boys’ house next to let him know of our new relationship status.
Charlie and Jake are in the living room watching football when I walk in.
They don’t even turn around to see who just came into the house.
I could be anyone—a cop, a burglar, a murderer—but they don’t even spare me a glance.
Thank god they aren’t in my journal; they would be goners.
I walk upstairs and stop short at the bottom of the next set of stairs that leads to Asher’s room in the attic.
The door is ajar and through the crack comes the faint echo of keys on a piano.
I put my ear closer to the door, drawn in by the sound.
The melody is light and slow, perfect for a Sunday morning, and I just can’t picture anything so pure and good coming from Asher’s hands.
Opening the door farther, I sit at the bottom of the stairs.
I’ve heard Asher play the piano only one other time last year, when Dani and I were up here in Sam’s room hanging out with him and Charlie.
Sam said they always knew when Asher had a girl over because they’d hear him play on the keyboard he had in his room.
“And that actually works?” I laughed.
“Every time,” Charlie said. “We know because not long after the music stops you’ll start hearing the headboard smacking against
the wall.” The boys grinned at each other in the way boys do. Dani and I only crinkled our noses in disgust.
I close my eyes to listen as each strike of the keys seems to bounce down the stairs and land in my lap. The melody quickens
and then slows again. I almost don’t realize when it’s over. I open my eyes and there is silence. I quickly but quietly rise
from the stairs and shut the door behind me before I have to listen to what Charlie said would come next.
I join the boys in the living room and it isn’t until halftime that Charlie looks over and realizes I’m there.
Eventually Sam and Wes both come home and join us, but Asher is still upstairs.
I ask them all questions about the football game because I never bothered to pay attention to it in high school and they love to mansplain it, so I indulge them.
After a handful of questions Wesley speaks up. “Weren’t you a cheerleader?” he teases.
And when I finally ask a question that has him stumped, I say, “Weren’t you a football player?” He smirks and lobs a pillow
at me. I toss one back, and it hits him in the face.
“Oh, you’re going to pay for that.” Wes playfully pins me down. Sam and Charlie don’t even glance our way.
A door shutting upstairs has Wes sitting back, until a petite girl with jet-black hair traipses down the stairs and out the
door, without so much as a hello or goodbye to everyone in the living room. It takes everything in me to stand up in front
of the guys, in front of Wes, and go upstairs to Asher’s room right after another girl just left it. I knock twice from downstairs,
and I hear him say, “Come up.”
He’s shirtless, digging around in his dresser across from his bed, when I get to the top of the stairs and I clear my throat
to let him know I’m there. He looks over his shoulder, genuine shock on his face to see me in his bedroom. He puts a sweatshirt
on and I try to block out the image from my brain of what he just got done doing with the small, raven-haired girl. Does he
prefer girls with dark hair? Why am I even wondering?
“What’s up?” he asks.
I walk around his room, marveling at how large it is compared to the other boys’ rooms. It’s carpeted and even has a private bathroom.
I see the piano on the far side of the bedroom, below the one window.
It isn’t a little keyboard like I had imagined in my head, but more like an actual piano.
A dark rosewood digital one, and all I want now is to witness him playing it.
“Just came to regroup, remember?”
“Right,” he says. “You should’ve texted me. I would’ve come to you.”
I sit down at the piano bench. “Why? So I wouldn’t have to wait for a girl to leave before I can talk to you?”
Asher runs a hand through his hair. “Something like that.”
I turn the piano on and mess around on the keys. Don bought Sofie a piano when she started taking lessons, so I’m not unfamiliar
with it. I had taught myself some basic melodies but nothing as complex as what I had heard him play.
“Aren’t you going to play something? I hear that’s a thing you do when you have girls up here.”
He huffs a laugh and walks over to the keyboard. “Girls I’m trying to sleep with, Sawyer. Not ones that I’m trying to catch
a murderer with. Where’d you hear that anyway?”
“Your roommates.” I hate that I feel disappointed that he won’t play for me.
He crosses his arms and leans against the wall. “What else did they tell you?”
“That it works every time.” I look up at him. “Though I find that hard to believe.”
When I finish playing through everything I know, which isn’t much, nor is it impressive, he says, “Who taught you those? A
five-year-old?”
“An eleven-year-old actually,” I say back, thinking of how sometimes Sofie would try to teach me the chords.
I stare back up at him from the seat until he gives a resigned sigh and tells me to move over.
I scoot to the edge of the seat so that he has more room and bite the inside of my cheeks to stop from smiling.
Asher places his hands over the keys and pauses, likely thinking of something to play. When his fingers begin to move, the
sound is slow and melancholy. Not like what I heard a few hours ago, but the opposite. This one feels like rain, and loneliness,
and it makes me ache for something, though I don’t know what. When the melody picks up and his fingers move across the keyboard
with ease, it sends chills all over my body. I’m thankful I’m wearing a sweater so that he can’t see it. I watch him in awe;
I have never seen someone play a piano like this before, and it’s extraordinary, beautiful, and somehow so sad. And when he’s
done he looks over at me but I don’t have any words, only the resolute understanding of why any girl would jump into his bed
after witnessing that. He starts to give me that knowing smirk and I’m certain he can hear my thoughts. I take a breath and
stand, needing to make space between us.
“See?” I say. “It doesn’t work every time.”
“Okay, Sloane,” he says, still grinning. He turns himself around on the bench, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking
up at me. “Let’s regroup, then.”
Still feeling a little flustered, I smooth out my top. “I mainly just came to tell you that Annica and Dani think we’re full-on
dating now.”
“And why would they think that?”
“Probably because I told them that.” He arches a brow at me and I continue on. “They were grilling me about where I was yesterday and I couldn’t really tell them I was breaking into Miles Holland’s house looking for my journal, so.”
“So you told them we were on a date.”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Okay, that’s fine, I was thinking we needed to accelerate things anyway. Wesley clearly feels like he needs to protect you
from me, so the more we’re together the more he’ll try to get between us.”
“Right . . .” I say apprehensively, because I still don’t feel great about lying to Wes, but I guess if we’re going to lie
to some of the group we might as well lie to them all. “Well, if we’re going to be together now, you’re going to have to stop
bringing girls here. Go see them at their houses. The guys won’t believe it if you have a parade of girls coming through here.”
“Really? Because I think it’ll piss off Wes even more if I have a— What was it? Parade of girls coming through here?” He laughs.
“Okay, well, my friends aren’t going to buy it if you do that. They’re going to think my standards are so low.”
“Well, I mean—”
I glare at him. “Don’t even say it.”
He stands from the bench and walks toward me. “No boys over your place either then, Sawyer.”
“I only want Wes. I’ve decided I’m not sleeping with anyone else until I have him.”
When he’s right in front of me he looks down at me. “You’re sleeping with me, though.” He grins again and I want to slap the
smirk from his mouth.
“No, I’m not.” I cross my arms.
“Well, my friends definitely aren’t going to buy it if you say that,” he says, mocking what I said first. “They’ll start to think I have standards.”
“Fine, we can say we’re sleeping together.”
Asher puts a hand over his heart. “I am honored to be added to that list, even if in name only.” I roll my eyes. “So is it
a big list?” He is such an ass, I can only scoff at his arrogance.
“Not as big as I’m sure yours is.”
“Mine is rather big,” he says with a playful smile, and I start to think he’s no longer talking about the list of people he’s
slept with.
I flush and walk away, toward the middle of his room. “There’s something else I came to talk about. Miles wants to reschedule
for next weekend, in Pembroke.”
“Okay, and?”
“And it’s PC Halloween,” I say. “It’ll be a madhouse on campus: It would be the perfect time for him to get to Bryce. Everyone’s
in costume, there’s fake blood everywhere—it’s like a classic scary movie murder setup.”
“Right, right, we’ll just have to up the security on Peterson. And we should probably both be sober.”
“Sober . . . Okay, I can do that.” But could I?
He rubs his hands together. “All right, then let’s get this son of a bitch.”