“What about Friday?”
“I have to work at the shelter.”
“Saturday?”
“Saturday is your music video.”
“Breakfast the next morning?”
My heart is hammering in my throat, pushed there by the unease thrashing in my stomach. If I say yes, I’m risking everything. And for what? Even if I ignore the fact that Mike is way out of my league, that he is my cousin’s ex-boyfriend . . . he is still a freaking rock star. It’s impossible to forget the way he looked when I first saw him: covered in sweat at the back of the stage, pounding his drums under laser-blue lights for girls who giggled his name later out on the sidewalk.
And I am Hailey Harper. Farmhand. Big sister. Yard sale frequenter. Future veterinarian, if I’m lucky. I don’t belong on a stage or beside a stage or anywhere near a freaking stage.
I hesitate too long. Too, too long. Insecurity creeps into Mike’s voice when he says, “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. I just thought—”
“I want to,” I rush to assure him. “I do.” In my mind, I’m screaming, You have no idea how much I want to. Sleeping in my own bed is never going to cut it again after last night!
“But?”
I scramble for something to say. I search the shapes on my ceiling, but come up with only an overweight dolphin, a crescent moon, and a potato.
“Hailey,” Mike says, “I didn’t mean to throw all that at you today. It’s okay if you just want to be friends. I never expected—”
“Your arms,” I blurt, and absolute silence replies.
“Huh?” Mike finally says.
“When you asked me what I thought was so hot about you.” I take a deep breath and close my eyes. “Your arms . . . And your eyes. And the way your left cheek dimples when you smile. And your laugh. And how good you are at the drums. And the way you carried me through the woods when I hurt my leg at the pond.”
With my eyes still squeezed shut, I throw my covers off, burning up. I’m having a goddamn hot flash, I am so completely embarrassed. And when Mike doesn’t respond, I lie there dying. I’m dying. “Are you still there?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, his heated voice making the temperature in my room spike even higher. “But I wish I was with you instead.”
I am officially breaking out in hives. The implication is clear in his smoldering words, and I am stripping my shirt off just to keep from self-incinerating into a pile of ash. Why is it so goddamn hot in here?!
“There’s no way I’m leaving on tour before I see you again, Hailey,” Mike promises while I practice for my audition as the Human Torch. “Come to the video shoot on Saturday, okay?”
“Okay,” I agree, mostly because if I don’t get off the phone soon, it’s going to be a nonissue. My parents won’t even need to bother cremating my remains because I’ll just blow out the window where it’s nice and breezy and cold.
When Mike chuckles, it’s a miracle I manage to form a more-than-one-word reply. “What are you laughing about?”
“I can hear you blushing,” he says while I’m in the midst of kicking my pants off. They’re made of silk, but I swear to God, they might as well be a woolen-polyester blend right now. My legs are melting, melting.
“Shut up,” I scold, and he laughs even harder. “I’m getting off the phone now!”
I can hear the dimpled smile in Mike’s voice when he says, “Sweet dreams, Hailey.”
And in spite of everything—Danica’s threats, Mike’s upcoming tour, my clearly malfunctioning thermostat—I smile too, because for the past week, I’d missed those words and the sound of that smile. I take a deep breath, I let it go, and I grin at half a heart on my ceiling. “Sweet dreams, Mike.”
Chapter 27
There are good days, and there are bad days. There are days when you wake up with Mike Madden on your pillow, when you realize your dreams might not be crushed after all, when you fall asleep with butterflies in your stomach. And then there are days when your professor won’t accept your late homework, when you get chewed out by the shelter director for missing a shift, when you realize you forgot to log on to Deadzone to play with your little brother at the appointed time.
“I am so sorry,” I grovel on Thursday, but Luke is unfazed by my pleading.
“That makes two,” he counts. “Two times you’ve forgotten about me.”
“I haven’t forgotten about you,” I assure him as I unwrap a chickenless chicken wrap in the parking lot of the Mickey D’s closest to the shelter. When faced with eating in the parking lot, making my bedroom smell like French fries, or having to talk to Danica while I eat my dinner, I’ll choose parking lot every time. “I’ve just been busy,” I continue. “But I miss you.” I pause with the wrap an inch from my mouth. “Like crazy.”
Ever the pragmatist, Luke asks, “How do you have time to miss me if you’re that busy?”
I’m chewing a mouthful of thousand-calorie goodness when I answer, “I’m going to show you how much I miss you when I squish you in front of all your friends.”
He snorts. “What friends?”
“What happened to Jimmy?” I ask with more concern in my voice than I intended, and I can almost hear Luke’s eyes roll.
“He got a girlfriend.”
“So?”