The Heartbreakers (17 page)

“Thanks for the astronomy lesson, Galileo,” I said, biting my lip and trying not to laugh. “But I’m still confused.”

Oliver grinned and propped himself up on his elbow so he was facing me. “Basically you’re looking at Hercules’s torso. He’s got a head and arms and legs too, but I’ve never really been good at visualizing them,” he said. “Oh, and if you look a little more to the left, you can see Pegasus.”

I studied his face. “Where’d you learn all this?”

“My uncle. He’s into astronomy and that kind of stuff.”

“So you do have a family,” I said, half joking.

At this, Oliver looked away from me and rolled onto his back. “Of course I do,” he said, his tone suddenly tight. Apparently something I said had sucked the good nature right out of our conversation, something that struck a nerve and made Oliver clamp up. When the roles were reversed, he’d pushed me, so I decided to push back.

“Then why aren’t they here?”

“How do you know that they’re not?” he asked, and his voice was restrained, like he was trying to hide any emotion that might come across.

“Oliver,” I said, shooting him a pointed look. “If they were, wouldn’t you be down at the party?”

He pushed himself into a sitting position and yanked his hair back, as if it would help sort out whatever matter was currently wrecking havoc in his heard. “Look,” he said, releasing his tight grip. His bangs flopped back into place. “Can we just talk about something else?”

I sat up next to him. “Like what?”

His eyes flickered across my face, examining every inch of it. It was one of those long, intense stares that made my heart start to skip, and finally a tired smile relaxed his face. “Do you know that ‘Stella’ means ‘star’ in Latin?” he asked. Then he reached up and cupped my cheek with his hand. “There was this sixteenth-century poet, Sir Philip Sidney, who created the name for a collection of sonnets he wrote called
Astrophil
and
Stella
.”

“I know what you’re doing,” I said a little breathlessly as his thumb started to move in soothing circles just beside my ear.

“Yeah,” he said. “And what’s that?”

“Trying to distract me.”

He leaned in, slowly running his tongue over his lips. “You’re wrong,” he said, and I could feel the warmth of his breath as he spoke. “If I were trying to distract you, I’d do this.”

I knew what was going to happen, but before I could pull away, Oliver wrapped his arm around my waist and tilted his head. As soon as his mouth was on mine, I knew this wasn’t like our first kiss. That one was thrilling, filled with the excitement of exploring someone new. This one was aggressive, as if Oliver had been waiting too long for something he desperately wanted, and now he couldn’t hold back.

It didn’t take long for me to feel completely out of breath, and I pulled away panting. “Oliver, stop,” I said, but I kept my forehead pressed against his and my arms around his neck. I didn’t want to stop, but I’d made the decision not to do this with him. “We can’t do this.”

“Why?” he asked. I closed my eyes as he brushed his hand up my arm and across my collarbone. “I know you’re feeling the same thing I am. I can tell by the way you’re out of breath and the flush on your cheeks, and how you can’t even look me in the eye because you know I’m right. So, tell me again not to kiss you and I won’t, but you’d better give me a damn good reason.”

I could still feel the way Oliver’s lips had felt on mine a moment ago, how they tasted like the lemonade Mrs. Morris made, and I knew he was right. I wanted this even though I had a hard time believing he did too.

Oliver didn’t give me long to answer before his lips found mine again, kissing my mouth, my neck, my shoulder. He took control quickly, moving his body over mine and guiding me down onto my back. The rough shingles scraped against my bare shoulders, but I hardly noticed. I ran my hand over his arm and down his torso, enjoying the feeling of the tight muscle beneath his skin.

“You know, people can see you up here.”

Oliver and I both shot up at the sound of JJ’s voice and smacked our foreheads together. He was hanging out the window, a sly grin on his face.

“God, JJ!” Oliver said, scowling and rubbing the sore spot on his head. “You’re such a creep. You know that, right?”

“Creepy would be watching without saying anything,” JJ responded, and then he shook his head in disbelief. “Sex on the roof? That’s way more dangerous than dangling our feet over the edge. My mom would have a heart attack.”

“We were not going to screw on the—”

“Just remember, kids, use protection,” he said, cutting Oliver off as he waved a finger at us. He started to duck back into the room but stopped to add, “And don’t even think about moving to my bed!”

• • •

When he was gone, Oliver sighed and rolled off me. “Well,” he said. “That wasn’t awkward at all.”

“Nope,” I responded, sitting up and brushing myself off. JJ’s surprise appearance had shattered the moment, and now that I could think clearly again, I suddenly wished I was anywhere other than alone with Oliver.

I didn’t know if I was more humiliated or angry with myself. Kissing Oliver felt so freeing. Like I’d been stumbling around in the dark, and then everything was suddenly in sharp focus. I wanted so much to believe what he’d said, that he felt the same thing I did, but just as his words started to make sense to me, I remembered the girl from rehearsals and the entire situation got all blurry and out of focus again.

“We should probably head back to the party,” I said and started scooting backward toward the window.

Oliver wrapped his fingers around my ankle. “Wait,” he said. “Why are you leaving? I thought we would talk.”

“What is there to talk about?” I don’t know what made me say this. There was so much to talk about, especially considering what just happened, but the words left my mouth like an instant reaction.

“About us,” he said, and from the look on his face, he didn’t understand why I hadn’t come to the same conclusion. Still, I didn’t move, so he sighed and added, “Just come back over here and I’ll do the talking, okay?”

It
wouldn’t hurt to hear him out, right?

Answering with a small nod, I slid back to my original spot on the roof. Oliver didn’t say anything at first, and we sat silently for a full minute as he rubbed his chin and squinted into the night. Eventually he nodded his head to himself and glanced at me.

“I was trying to think of a good way to say this, but there isn’t one, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. I don’t want to be friends with you. It’s not working for me.”

His confession completely caught me off guard. I knew our relationship had started out a bit bumpy when I first joined the boys on tour, but I thought our friendship had improved so much over the past few weeks. There was a painful stitch in my chest, like someone had dug their nails deep into my heart, but I kept my face perfectly still. “What do you mean it’s not working for you?”

His eyes searched mine for a moment before he responded. “I tried to keep my distance because that’s what you wanted, but that’s not enough for me,” he said. “Call me selfish, but I don’t want to just be friends.”

Whoa. I mistook his meaning completely. “You want to be with me?” I said slowly, making sure I understood exactly what he was saying.

“Is that so hard to believe?” he asked, his mouth slacking.

“A little.” Actually, a whole lot more than a little, but I refrained from saying this to him. “I thought you didn’t date.”

“I don’t. I mean, I didn’t.” He shook his head and yanked his dog tag up and down on the chain. “What I’m trying to say is that I want to now.”

A sudden shriek cut through the air, followed by a string of laughter, and down in the backyard a group of kids chased each other around the fire. I watched them for a moment, tugging on my lip in thought. “What about that other girl you were kissing?” I asked, turning back to him. “The one in Atlanta.”

His brows pinched together as if he had no idea what I was talking about, but then his face flushed as he remembered. “I never kissed her, I swear!” he said in a rush. Then he sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. “Look, she didn’t mean anything. I didn’t even know her name.”

I laughed, but it was sharp and tight. “No offense, Oliver, but if you’re trying to reassure me, you’re doing the opposite.”

Oliver grabbed a huge clump of his hair as he looked back up at Hercules and Pegasus. “Listen,” he said, his jaw clenching. “I know it was stupid, but I thought you were into me and then out of nowhere you weren’t. That just pissed me off because I didn’t understand why, and I needed something to take my mind off you.”

It took me a minute to absorb everything he’d said, so I focused on the fire down below. The group around it had grown by a few camp chairs, and I could see Alec and Vanessa sitting on the far side of the circle. Oliver needed something to take his mind off me?

“I was never not into you,” I finally said. “I thought it was the other way around.”

“What? What’d I possibly do to make you think that?”

“During that radio interview,” I said, my voice a whisper, “you mentioned another girl.”

Oliver blinked before laughing, the sound hysterical. “I was talking about you, dork,” he said.

Again, he left me speechless. How was I supposed to respond when I finally heard everything I’d been hoping Oliver would say all along? “Then why didn’t you just say that?” I asked after letting the truth sink in.

If he’d really felt something for me, why didn’t he just go for it instead of shuffling around the edges with half-truths like it was some big secret? Then we could’ve avoided this whole confusing mess. Oliver had never been shy before, and the first time we met, he was so straightforward and assertive.

I watched him draw in a breath as some emotion I couldn’t pin down spread across his face. Regret maybe? “The media has a nasty habit of scrutinizing my entire life, Stella. Did you really want to become their next story?”

“Oh,” I said, realizing the implications. While I had been worrying about Oliver hurting me, he’d been trying to protect me. “I feel like an idiot. Like, the biggest of idiots.”

Oliver smiled at me like this was the best thing I could say. “Then is that a yes?”

“Wait, what?”

“To not being just friends anymore.” Oliver wasn’t really giving me any time to think about this, and I was so overwhelmed that all I could do was nod my head. “Are you absolutely sure? I was serious when I said they’ll make a story of this. They’ll dig through your life and pull out all the unpleasant parts that you’d rather have left alone.”

He said this with so much animosity that I wondered what unpleasant part of his life they’d dug up and displayed for the whole world to see. I didn’t have any dark secrets to hide, but then I wondered… “What about Cara? I don’t want her dragged into this. She doesn’t need any more stress in her life.”

“That’s fine,” Oliver said a little too quickly. “I totally get it. We can just keep this between us.”

“Well…” I started to say. Of course I didn’t want Cara to be affected by anything that happened between Oliver and me, but was he talking about having a secret relationship? “I guess?”

“Good,” he said and nodded his head. “It’s none of their damn business who I date.”

I wanted to talk about it more, because the thought of dating Oliver in secret somehow didn’t sit right with me, but his jaw was set and there was a blazing look in his eyes. It wasn’t demanding, like he wanted me to accept his decision without question, but one of fierce protectiveness, like he didn’t want to let me go and nobody, not even the media, was going to stop him. I suppose some girls might have found that romantic, but it only made me worry. What had happened to Oliver that had made him this way, so possessive and distrustful?

The concern must have been clear on my face, because Oliver unclenched his jaw, smiled, and said in a light voice, “I never finished telling you about the sonnets.”

I blinked. “Huh?”

“
Astrophil
and
Stella
,” he said, taking my hand. “The name ‘Astrophil’ is derived from two Greek words that, when combined, mean ‘star-lover.’”

“So what does that mean?”

Oliver tilted his head and looked back up at the sky. “That Stella is the star of his love.”

Oliver and I went on our first official date later that week. Of course, he failed to mention we were going on a date until two hours beforehand.

“Special delivery from the Love Doctor,” JJ said, and plopped down right on top of the desk where I was working. Okay, so I wasn’t actually working. I was reading through the mass of comments I received on my latest blog post, but his intrusion was annoying nonetheless.

“Hey,” I complained, craning my neck to see the computer screen. “You’re in my way.”

“But I have a present for you,” JJ said, waving a folded up piece of paper in front of my face.

I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think I want any presents from the
Love
Doctor
.”

JJ scoffed. “It’s not from me. It’s from your
lover
.”

“He’s not my lover, you perv,” I said as my face heated up. “And who says lover anymore? That’s creepy.”

I had yet to officially tell the rest of the band about my relationship with Oliver, not because it was a secret—I doubted that Oliver would care if I told his closest friends—but because it was safe to assume they’d already gathered as much.

“Ah,” JJ said, wagging a finger at me, “but you knew exactly who I was talking about, didn’t you?”

“Just give it to me.” I snatched the paper from him and unfolded it.

Stella,

6 p.m. at 137 North Higgins Street. Dress nice.

—Oliver

“What’s this?” I asked after reading the message.

“Instructions from Oliver,” he said. “Duh.”

“I got that. What are they for?”

Although it registered in the back of my mind that Oliver was probably taking me on a date, I was too caught up in all the little details to freak out. It was already four o’clock, which barely left me any time to get ready, and on top of that, I didn’t know what to wear.

He shrugged. “Just the delivery boy, Stella, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has something to do with what I caught you two doing on my roof last weekend.”

I ignored his jab and scanned the note again. “But what do you think he means by ‘dress nice’? Are we going somewhere fancy?”

JJ raised an eyebrow as he looked me over. “It probably means that you should shower and change out of those sweats.”

“
Thanks
,” I said, pushing my bangs out of my face. As if I needed him to tell me I looked greasy. “What I meant was how nice? Semiformal? Formal? He didn’t give me any specifics here. What if I show up too fancy?” Worse, what if I was underdressed?

“You’re the girl, not me. How am I supposed to know? A sundress, maybe? You’re making this a bigger deal than it should be.”

JJ clearly didn’t understand the crisis I was experiencing, so I decided to use what little time Oliver had given me to tear through my suitcase. I didn’t own any dresses, but I’d packed a silver sequin top I stole from Cara. After tucking the shirt into my black skater skirt and pairing it with black heels—also Cara’s—I decided the outfit was as date-appropriate as I could get under such short notice.

As it turned out, Oliver wasn’t entirely senseless. He arranged for a car to pick me up outside our hotel at a quarter to, and fifteen minutes later the driver pulled up to the curb in a chic part of town where the streets were lined with fancy restaurants and posh boutiques.

“Hello?” I said, pulling open the door at 137 North Higgins.

Oliver was waiting just inside. He was wearing a slim black suit, no tie, over a white dress shirt with the top buttons undone, and his usual messy brown waves had been styled back. “You came.” There was an amazed smile on his face, almost as if he’d expected me to be a no-show and I’d surprised him.

“How could I not?” I asked.

His mouth parted like he was going to respond, but then he took another look at me, a head-to-toe look, and said, “Stella, you look perfect.”

“You think?” I asked, and had to look away from his stare. “I was worried that—”

“Perfect,” he assured me. I felt myself blush, and Oliver took my hand. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

He pulled open the inside door, and we stepped into a very long, very empty room with wooden floors and industrial-gray ceiling rafters. The walls were painted stark white, but every few feet a piece of art hung on display, a spotlight shining on each one. When I arrived, I’d been so nervous about what I was wearing that I didn’t notice we were meeting at an art gallery. I stepped away from Oliver and walked to the middle of the room, and then I turned in a slow circle, taking everything in.

“Do you like?” Oliver asked. He was standing where I had left him with a satisfied smirk on his face.

I did. I’d never given much thought to what would make a perfect date, but now I was struggling to think of anything better than being here. This wasn’t just your regular movie and dinner—it was special, because Oliver had considered what was important to me. We walked from piece to piece, stopping to talk about each one, and he decided an oil painting by some artist called DeBuile was his favorite. A silver fork and knife were glued to a canvas filled with random splotches of bright color. Oliver said he liked it because it reminded him of a food fight.

“Where is everyone?” I asked. We’d made it halfway through the gallery before I even noticed we were completely alone.

“The owner is in the back,” he said. “I rented out the place for the night so we could have some privacy.”

“Oh, right,” I said. He didn’t mean that kind of privacy. He meant so we could keep our relationship a secret.

“Look over here,” Oliver said before I could give his previous words much thought. He pointed to the end of the row of art, and I instantly recognized a vibrant photograph on the wall. “This is why we came.”

I stared up at one of Bianca’s pictures. It was the original print, but I was more stunned by the fact that I was looking at my favorite of all her pieces, something that Oliver never could’ve known. It wasn’t the first photo of hers I’d seen when introduced to her work, but it was the one I found most inspiring.

The subject was so simple: a little girl, maybe five or six, who was playing in the street during the middle of a summer shower. Her feet were bare and the look on her face said that nothing in the world was better than being covered up to her waist in mud. In her smile, I’d recognized the sort of carefree spirit that Cara, Drew, and I all had as kids. I hadn’t felt that way since Cara’s first diagnosis, and I realized I wanted it back, if only for the shortest of moments, so I could capture the feeling with my own camera before it was forever gone.

“I…” I started to say. I wanted to tell Oliver what this meant to me, but I was breathless and I kept thinking there was no possible way to finish my sentence, to use words to explain. They weren’t enough.

“You like it?” Oliver asked. “I was trying to decide where to go tonight, and then I read somewhere that this gallery had a Bianca piece. I called just to make sure.”

“Yes,” I said, finally able to speak. Oliver was oblivious to the fact that this particular picture was one of the special few that had inspired my passion for photography.

“Good,” he said like that was the only explanation he needed. “I’m glad.”

• • •

Dinner was at a local place called Amber India three doors down from the art gallery. They let us sneak in through the back, and there was a private dining room normally reserved for large parties where we could eat in peace. Before the waitress arrived with our food, I excused myself to wash my hands. When I was leaving the bathroom, I noticed a commotion at the front of the restaurant.

“Ladies, please!” The hostess was attempting to push back a group of twenty or so girls. “If you’re not here to eat, then you need to leave!”

I rushed back to our table. “Oliver,” I said, waving him over to the door. “You’d better come see this.”

“Crap,” he said after peeking out into the hall.

“How did they find you?” I asked in disbelief. It was like the girls had materialized out of thin air.

“Anyone in the restaurant who saw us could have tweeted about it,” he explained. He pulled out his wallet and dropped a few bills on the table. “It happens more often than you’d think.”

“Okay, so what do we do?”

“Hopefully we can still sneak out the back.”

We weren’t that lucky. Oliver tried to hurry down the hall, but he was easily spotted by his fans. When the hysterical screaming began, he grabbed my hand and we started to run.

“Hold on,” he said, pulling up short of the rear door. He poked his head around the corner before quickly pulling back. “Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. As adrenaline started to pump through my heart, I wondered if our relationship would always be like this: secrets and chases and drama.

“There’s a whole bunch of paparazzi. We need to go a different way.”

“What other way?”

“Through the kitchen?” he suggested.

We hurried through the swinging metal doors, and some of the cooking staff looked up at us in surprise. The kitchen had one exit. It led out into a tiny, fenced-in area where the Dumpsters were kept hidden from view, but there was a padlock where the fence was supposed to open, trapping us inside.

“Now what?” I was starting to worry that our first secret date wouldn’t be secret for that much longer.

Oliver thought for a moment before pulling me back into the small kitchen. He threw open the janitor’s closet and pushed me inside before stepping in after me. When he closed the door behind himself, we were shut in darkness.

“Ouch,” I hissed as Oliver trampled over my foot.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. I couldn’t see much of anything, but I was pretty sure that Oliver had shoved the cleaning cart under the doorknob so no one could get in.

“Hey!” someone in the kitchen shouted. “You girls can’t be in here!”

Squealing ensued. We waited, our breathing heavy, until the commotion outside the door died down. My heart was finally slowing and I was able to relax slightly, but that didn’t solve our current problem—we were still trapped inside a janitor’s closet.

“So how exactly are we going to get out of this one?” I asked. I heard Oliver shuffle around. A second later, there was a sudden bright light as his phone woke up, and he hit a number on speed dial.

“Hey,” he whispered when someone answered. “Stella and I are trapped at this Indian place. We need someone to pick us up.” The phone conversation lasted a few more seconds as Oliver gave whoever was on the other end the address of the restaurant. When he hung up, he said to me, “It will be about twenty minutes.”

“What do we do until then?” I asked. “Hide here?”

With his phone back in his pocket I couldn’t see Oliver, but I could hear the grin on his face. “I can think of a couple things.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me up against him. “For example…”

And he kissed me instead of finishing his sentence. At first, it was much softer than our previous two kisses. Oliver took his time, slowly pressing his lips to my forehead, cheeks, and neck. But when he finally found my lips, it was a whole different story. He backed me up against the wall of the closet and pressed his chest against mine as he kissed me feverishly. I accidentally kicked something over as we moved. It was small and metal, probably a can of cleaning spray, and a broom clattered to the floor along with it. My fingers went straight into his wavy curls and locked together as I inhaled his scent—cinnamon and laundry soap.

We made out in the closet until Aaron showed up, and when he snuck us out of the restaurant, I felt like I was part of a James Bond movie. But dating Oliver wasn’t all thrilling adventures, dangerous chase scenes, and passionate kisses. The very next night, after the Heartbreakers concert, I let the boys talk me into going to an after-party. It was at a night club a few blocks from the arena, and when we arrived, it didn’t take me long to learn that the hardest part about secretly dating one of the world’s most eligible bachelors was that nobody—nobody meaning girls—knew that he wasn’t so eligible anymore.

A crowd flocked around the band as soon as they stepped inside, mainly gorgeous girls who were dolled up for a night of dancing. I never felt self-conscious about my appearance in front of Oliver, but suddenly I felt underwhelming in my frayed jean shorts and tank top.

Our party was given a VIP room next to the DJ booth, and while it gave us some privacy from the rest of the club, we sat with a small group of fans who were lucky enough to be selected by security to join us. Three girls in particular were hanging on Oliver, all tall, golden, and nothing like me. The frustrating thing was that I couldn’t hate these girls for their shameless flirting, because they had no idea he was already taken.

I took a spot on one of the leather couches and tried to look as nonchalant as possible, playing with my phone and watching the mob of people pulse together on the dance floor. At one point, Oliver caught my gaze and looked at me with apologetic eyes, but for most of the night we stayed apart to keep up appearances.

“Hey, you okay?” JJ asked when the club was finally closing. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

“Me?” I asked, trying to sound surprised. “Never better.”

• • •

“Veggie smoothie?” Xander asked me.

I was sitting at the kitchen counter in the boys’ hotel suite working on my second cup of coffee. It was early morning and everyone was still in bed with the exception of Xander. Fifteen minutes earlier he’d emerged from his room, still half asleep, and headed straight down to the hotel kitchen. When he returned, he had a huge glass of something green and poisonous looking in his hand.

“No thanks,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I think I’ll stick to my usual bagel.”

Because of all his food allergies, Xander had the strangest diet of anyone I’d ever met. Normally all he ate were scrambled eggs, chicken, salads, and occasionally he’d mix things up with a blender. He was gluten intolerant, nut intolerant, shellfish intolerant, and there was even a list of fruits he couldn’t safely eat—I could live without the seafood, but the carb lover inside of me cried at the thought of missing out on bowls of spaghetti.