Riot (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

P
ACKING AWAY MY
glassware was our first mistake. Forgetting to buy Solo cups at the store was our second. Now, everyone is passing around a collection of liquor bottles and soda cans. We’re all sitting on the empty hardwood floor of my apartment, boxes of pizza in the middle of our circle and a cake Rowan won’t let me stick my finger into hiding in the fridge.

“To getting an A on that marketing final,” Shawn says, toasting a bottle of tequila in the air.

“To fashion school,” Leti adds, toasting a bottle of vodka.

“To drinking straight from the bottle,” Adam quips, toasting a bottle of whiskey.

I chuckle, and Rowan toasts a hard lemonade in the air. “To Dee.”

I smile and steal the tequila from Shawn, holding it out toward Adam. “To Adam, for being the only not-corny person here.”

He laughs and clinks his bottle to mine, and we both take big gulps.

“To everyone who bothered to work today,” Mike adds, and Rowan laughs and toasts her lemonade bottle to his beer bottle. Adam laughs too because he knows Mike is referring to him. For the most part today, Adam did a miraculous job of looking like he was helping without actually doing anything.

“How many pairs of shoes do you think you own?” asks Kit. She somehow ended up sitting next to Shawn, but he’s doing a remarkable job of not acknowledging the bombshell at his side, and Kit is doing a remarkable job of being extra bombshelly. I wonder what would happen if they accidentally rubbed elbows. Would they glare at each other and show their teeth, or would sparks fly and lead to a whole lot of clothing being ripped off right in the middle of this room?

“Easily a thousand,” Leti answers, “judging by how much those boxes weighed.”

“You should see my closet at home,” I say, and then I laugh and add, “and the basement, and the guest bedroom.”

Rowan nods. “It’s true. When I lived at home, I almost never needed to buy shoes because we’re the same size.”

“What size are you?” Kit asks.

“Seven and a half,” Rowan and I both answer.

“I’m a nine,” Kit replies. “Your feet are tiny.”

“Yours are just big because you’re tall and built like a freaking supermodel,” I point out, mostly for Shawn’s benefit.

Kit smiles but shakes her head at the compliment. “Everyone in my family is tall. My older brothers are huge. They’re all over six foot.”

“So are we,” Shawn says of himself and the rest of the guys.

“Yeah, but you,” Kit says, pushing her finger into his bicep, “are scrawny. You don’t look big at all.”

Shawn stiffens, and I nearly burst out laughing. Kit just smiles that warm-cold smile of hers, making me wonder what happened after they slept together in high school. It must not have been pretty.

“Are you ready for cake?” Rowan asks to diffuse the tension.

“I’m ready for presents,” I say, eyeing the stack piled in the corner of the room. It’s always so easy to tell which were wrapped by boys—loose edges of wrapping paper and extra tape everywhere.

“You know the drill,” Rowan says. When she pushes off the floor, I attempt to follow her to the kitchen, but she shoos me back out to the living room. “Don’t look.”

“I hope it’s vanilla,” Kit says, and I shake my head.

“It’s going to be chocolate with chocolate icing.”

The lights cut, and Rowan starts the birthday song. Everyone joins in, and in the dark, a lump forms in my throat. I’m going to miss them. Every single one of them. I try to clear my eyes before the candles illuminate my face.

“Dear Deeeeee,” everyone sings, “Happy birthdaaay to yooou.”

“Make a wish.” Rowan holds the cake in front of me, and I think about making one. I could wish to get accepted into fashion school. I could wish for the T-shirts to make me famous. I could wish for Joel to appear in my doorway. He’d tell me he still loves me and ask me not to go. When I realize that’s what I want most of all, I blow out the candles without wishing anything at all. Rowan smiles, my friends cheer, and I pretend to be the kind of girl who still believes in wishes and who still bothers to make them.

“We
did
buy plastic plates and silverware, right?” Rowan asks, and everyone looks at each other.

“Not it,” Adam calls, initiating a frenzy of not-it calling and nose touching. In the end, Mike and Shawn take a road trip to the grocery store. They return with plates and silverware, and when Rowan asks them why they didn’t get cups too, since we still need those, they simply shrug and tell her because she only told them to get plates and silverware.

“Alright,” I say, licking a fourth swipe of icing off my finger as she huffs at them, “someone give me a present.”

Rowan cuts the cake and begins handing out slices as Leti slides the pile of gifts in front of me. I open them at random, getting a gift card from Kit, a scented candle from Shawn, a kickass perfume from Leti, and a second scented candle from Mike, who I suspect brainstormed gift ideas with Shawn. Rowan and Adam give me a ridiculously expensive sewing machine that almost makes me cry, and then she gives me a second present which is a set of the coolest-looking pairs of scissors I’ve ever seen—with sparkly purple handles and lots of differently shaped edges.

“Who’s this one from?” I ask as I tear open the final gift. It doesn’t have a tag or a card, but it’s neatly wrapped in a plain dark purple paper, so I suspect it’s from one of the girls. When I glance at them, they both look just as curious as I do. I finish unwrapping a long poster-tube and open it up, pulling out a sturdy piece of paper and unrolling it.

A penciled image of myself stares back at me. She’s lying on her back with her hair lying in thick pools around her smooth face. The sky is dark and full of stars that the pale wall behind her tries to catch. She smiles at me, and the love in her eyes is so clear that my breath catches.

It’s a memory preserved on paper. And even though I’m smiling at myself now, I wasn’t smiling at myself when I was in that pool.

“Who drew this?” I ask, unable to tear my eyes from the sketch in front of me. When no one answers, I lift my gaze and demand to know, “Who brought this?”

“What is it?” Shawn asks, and I turn the sketch around for him to see. It steals everyone else’s breath just as it stole mine.

We all know who drew it.

“I just grabbed all the presents that were on the table,” Mike says.

“I thought it was one of yours,” Adam adds.

“Shit,” Shawn breathes.

I look back inside the tube—for a card or a note or
anything
—but there’s nothing else inside.

“Why would he do this?” I say to myself, angering when no one answers me. “Why the fuck would he do this?” I ask Rowan.

It’s been three weeks since he fucked me against a bathroom wall, four weeks since he yelled at me at his mom’s, over a fucking month since he told me he loved me, and now he sends me this drawing? Why, just to remind me of a time when I was actually fucking happy?

“Where does he live?” I snap, rolling the sketch back up and stuffing it into the tube.

“Dee,” Rowan says in that voice she sometimes uses to charm the viper inside me. “I think you should just—”

“Where. Does. He. Live?” I growl again, barely containing my calm. I’m saving my anger for Joel. Every fucking shred of it.

Again, no one answers me. They’re all sitting around me in a shell-shocked circle, staring at me like I’m a grenade with its pin pulled. I’m glancing at Rowan, at Leti, expecting them to tell me, and when they don’t, I look to Adam, Shawn, Mike. More looks, more silence. Betrayal courses through my veins like burning poison, and I’m about to tell every single one of them to go to hell, when Kit is the one who speaks.

“Adam and Shawn’s complex,” she says, and all eyes swing to her. “First floor . . . I can’t remember which number.”

I thank her and grab my keys off the counter with all intentions of busting down every single door on the first floor if that’s what it takes to find him.

I’m almost out the front door when Rowan shouts, “C!” I glance over my shoulder at her, and she gives me a worried but apologetic nod. “C. He’s in 1C.”

I close the door behind me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

O
VER THE PAST
few weeks, I’ve thought more than a few times about what I would say to Joel if I ran into him. I’d smile, I’d ask how he’s been, I’d exaggerate all of my good news, and I’d walk away first.

“What the fuck is this?” I ask when I burst into his apartment. I hold up the poster tube as evidence, and from his position on the couch, he stares at me like I just broke his door down—which I would have if it had been locked.

There’s a guitar on his lap and an amp at his feet. With no shoes, no shirt, and a single earbud dangling from his ear, he calls to my heart in a way that makes it want to open wide.

“Joel?” a girl asks, popping her head out of a room in the hallway.

And then the poster tube is flying right at his head.

“What the hell!” he barks, barely getting an arm up in time to prevent the tube from hitting him in the face. It bounces off of his forearm and ricochets onto the hardwood floor.

“What’s going on?” a second girl asks, poking her head out of the second room in the hall.

“Why the fuck would you send me that!” I shriek. I sound hysterical. I
am
hysterical. Two fucking girls? TWO?! “Is a slut going to pop out of the coat closet next? Should I not look in the fridge?!”

“Who are you calling a slut?” the first slut asks.

“YOU!” I shout down the hall. If I had more poster tubes, I’d be launching them like rapid-fire ammunition.

She takes a step toward me, I take a step toward her, and Joel steps between us. “What are you doing here?”

“Ruining your fucking orgy since you ruined my fucking birthday!”

He puts his hand on my arm, and I knock him away. Fully aware that we have an audience, I glare up at him—hating him for hurting me and hating myself for letting it happen—and then I turn on my heel to leave.

“What was I supposed to do?” he asks in a cold voice that snakes after me. “Be miserable forever so you could finally be fucking happy?”

My fists clench at my sides, and I whirl on him. “You think that’s what I wanted?” When he just stares at me, a silent affirmation, I shout, “I went to Mayhem to tell you I wanted to be with you, Joel! And you fucked me in a bathroom and left with some stupid bitch two seconds later!”

The angry mask dissolves from his face, revealing a slack expression. Shock. Confusion.

I lean to the side to speak to the girls in the hall. “Congratulations, ladies, you’ve caught yourself a real winner!”

I turn away again, needing to get the hell out of Joel’s apartment before I snatch the poster tube off the floor and literally impale someone with it. I make it to the door, I wrap my hand around the knob, and then my feet jerk off the ground.

“Get out,” Joel orders with his arms tight around me.

He spins me away from the door, and I scream at him to put me the fuck down.

He begins carrying me toward the hall, and the girls there just stare at us like we’re a train wreck bursting into flames. “Get out!” he barks again, and they both blanch as they realize he’s talking to them.

“GET OFF ME!” I shout as I bat and kick at his arms and legs. He shoulders past the girl in the doorway of his bedroom to get me inside, and then he kicks the door shut behind us and pins his back against it to block me from leaving.

“Stop,” he says, lifting a hand between us when I take a determined step toward him.

“You can’t just lock me in your room,” I growl, grabbing his extended palm and throwing it to the side.

“If you wanted to be with me, why the fuck didn’t you say so? Why did you tell me to go home at your dad’s, and shrug me off at my mom’s? And not fucking say anything at Mayhem?”

“You were with . . . another . . . GIRL,” I say, getting louder and louder with each word.

His feet carry him forward and his fingers wrap tight around my shoulders. “Because you broke my fucking heart, Dee!”

I let out a humorless chuckle, and he stiffens. “That’s funny, Joel, because it only took you
seconds
to move on, but I haven’t been with anyone else in
months
.”

“You think I’ve moved on?” he asks.

I shrug out of his hold and cross my arms over my chest. I’m sure the girls that may or may not still be in his apartment—including the ones hiding in the coat closet and refrigerator—would agree with me.

“You think I’m fucking happy?” he asks, and when I don’t answer, he picks a crumpled piece of paper off the floor. Looking around, I realize the room is full of them. They litter the floor and overflow from a wire wastebasket in the corner of the room. “I drew you over and over and over again, and I could never fucking get you right,” Joel says, uncrumpling paper after paper. He pushes them at me one by one, each sketch a slightly different version of the image he gave me for my birthday. “I was terrified I was forgetting your face, and then when I finally got it, all I wanted was to give it the fuck away so I’d never have to see it again.”

“Then why bother drawing me?” I snap at him.

“Because I promised you I’d sketch you something special for your birthday.”

“You also said you loved me,” I scoff. “What’s one more lie?”

“You’re one to talk,” he snarls, and fury flashes through me.

“What the fuck is THAT supposed to mean?”

He meets my raised voice with a gaze that burns through me, his voice threatening to bring down the walls. “WHY ARE YOU HERE, DEE?!”

Every cell in my body trembles, demanding I yell back at him.

“TELL ME THE FUCKING TRUTH!” he booms, and something inside me snaps.

“BECAUSE I LOVE YOU!” I scream at the top of my lungs, watching the words hit him and nearly send him stumbling back. “I fucking love you, okay?! Are you happy?!”

“YES!” Joel shouts, the corners of his lips already tipping up in spite of the anger in his voice.

I’m so livid and confused that I just want to cry, but Joel steps forward and cradles my face between his hands.

“Yes,” he says again, softer. “Say it again.”

“No.”

“Say it again. I’m going to say it back, and then I’m going to kiss you.”

I want that so badly, my heart pulses in my chest. Once, twice, three times. He’s waiting. He’s waiting on me, just like he has for the past few months. I need to trust that. I need to trust him.

“I love you,” I confess in a quiet voice.

He doesn’t smile at me, or say it back, or even wait for me to finish. One moment, I’m saying the last word, and the next, his lips are on mine. Kissing Joel feels like drowning in a memory, a secret place where I’m always happy, always home. His kiss is desperate but soft, and I part my lips to him, needing to feel his tongue, his lips, the heat between us. My fingernails scratch over the buzzed sides of his mohawk, and he lifts me off the ground, hugging me around my waist and kissing me until the past five weeks cease to exist. Our hearts thrum against each other, and eventually, I summon the willpower to hold his head in place and pull mine away. He smiles up at me, his blue eyes bright and his lips an irresistible, thoroughly kissed red.

“You didn’t say it back,” I say, and he sets me down, smiling at me in a way that gives flight to the butterflies in my stomach. Normal girls have butterflies that flutter, but Joel stirs mine into a full-blown riot.

“I fucking love you,” he says, and he nips at my lips and kisses me again. He’s still kissing me when he says, “Dee?”

“Hm?” I say, but it comes out sounding much more like a moan than I intended.

Joel chuckles and pulls away. “There’s one more thing.” I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I wait, but not patiently. My hungry eyes are locked on those pretty red lips when he says, “I want to be with you. Just me and you.”

My gaze lifts to his.

“Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?” I tease, but those butterflies are swarming into a frenzy. I’ve asked him this question before, and his answer has always been no.

This time, he gives me a soft smile and says, “Are you saying yes?”

“Do you always have to be so difficult?”

He laughs and kisses me playfully on the mouth. “Do you?”

“Yes,” I say, and he furrows his brow at me.

“To the girlfriend part, or to the being difficult?”

“So you admit you’re asking me to be your girlfriend,” I say, and Joel laughs hard.

“Fine. Yes. Deandra Dawson, will you please for the love of God be my fucking girlfriend?”

I lace my fingers behind his neck and give him a smile only he can bring out of me. “I thought you’d never ask.”