Aralie screams down the hallway, and I knock over a bowl of pink beads in the process of jumping up. Emery’s eyes widen, but I don’t stop her from following me. Clothes fly around in the hallway as soon as we step out of Emery’s room.
“Who do you think you are?” Aralie screams. “I’m not your mom or your maid or whatever you have on tour!”
Jules tumbles backward out of her room. Two T-shirts and a pair of jeans fly out of her door and smack him in the chest.
He regains his composure and leans back toward her room.
“You said you were doing laundry
,” he says.
Is he really that stupid?
A pair of black boxers and a blue T-shirt fly from Aralie’s room into the hall. I keep Emery back and don’t dare venture forth myself. Jules is on his own. The wrath of Aralie is a force not to be messed with.
She screams about his laundry, the smell of his cigarettes, the fact that he clearly dyes his hair black to look like a badass because his eyebrows aren’t as dark, and there’s mention of his tattoos before Mom and Godfrey make it upstairs.
Even through Aralie’s protests, Mom continues saying, “I’m sure this was just a big misunderstanding.”
Godfrey gathers Jules’
s clothes while Tate does his best to calm Jules down. Emery was right – Tate laughs at everything. He’ll learn quickly enough not to laugh when Aralie is pissed or he’ll be on the receiving end of her verbal slaughter, just like Deacon and Jules. She’s two for two today. Tate shouldn’t push it.
I slip away from Emery, disappear into my own bedroom, lock the door, and tuck my headphones into my ears so I can drown out the world with the screams of Sebastian’s Shadow.
My bedroom light blinds me when I open my eyes. I bury my face into my pillow and feel around for my phone. 12:37 AM.
One message from Aralie
:
You missed supper. Jules is an ass.
One message from Emery
:
U miss food. Aralie hates Jools.
I’m surprised my parents let her keep her phone. Then again, the only numbers she has are ours and Godfrey’s. That phone isn’t much of a threat.
Aralie and I have to tell her how to spell everything anyway, so we know what she’s texting.
One message from Mom. It’s the longest of them all. And it’s
disheartening.
I decided not to wake you. I’m sorry your summer hasn’t turned out as planned. Don’t let Deacon and those other guys get to you. You’re a beautiful girl with so much ahead of you. I don’t want to see you slip into a depression over a boy. Things will get better. Food is in the fridge if you wake up.
I’m officially starving, and Mom thinks I’m depressed. Great. I’m far from depressed over Deacon. Humiliated, yes. Pissed off, yes. But depressed? No. That boy isn’t getting any more of my tears. I push myself off of the bed, shake my hair around until it looks half-decent, smear my eyeliner around evenly under my eyes, and then venture downstairs. Hopefully everyone else is asleep and no one will see this zombie-ish makeup job I have going on.
The fluorescent light above the kitchen sink hums when I flip it on. I dig through the fridge, but nothing sounds good. Nothing but milk and Oreos. I open the cabinet, grab the cookies, and settle in alone at the
adjoining dining room’s table. Benji’s tattoo magazine stares up at me, so I flip through the pages looking for cute, easy designs that I could draw later.
Between the sleeve of Oreos and the flipping of the pages, I never even hear footsteps until he’s in the
dining room, standing across the table from me.
“Well, good evening
, Ms. Branson,” Milo says. “Is this a private party or may I join you?”
Be witty. Be cute. Be something but don’t just sit here with your jaw dropped!
“Are you always so formal, Mr. Grayson?” I ask.
I amaze myself with how steady my voice is. I was certain I’d stammer through that.
He scrunches his mouth to one side, glances down at his T-shirt and sweatpants, and looks back at me.
“If I were wearing khakis, I’d say yes, but in this case, eh, not so much,” he says.
This boy is so beautiful that I’d take him to a five-star formal restaurant in swim trunks and flip flops. He’s modest, though, which makes him even more likable. Damn him.
“Well, this isn’t much of a party, but you’re definitely welcome to join,” I say.
I look down at the clover tattoo staring up at me from Benji’s magazine. I hope
Milo doesn’t plan on staying down here for too long because I’m not sure my pounding heart can hold out. It might literally thump out of my skin and onto the table.
“That’s where you’re wrong,”
Milo says.
He leans down onto the table, propping up on his elbows
. His figure shadows the little bit of light in the room so I’m forced to look at him.
“It’s after midnight, and I’m alone with a pretty girl and Oreos. That’s definitely a party,” he says. “The only thing I’m missing is a glass of milk, so if you’d point me in the right direction, we can get this party underway.”
Oh. My. Saturn.
He’s totally flirting with me. This is flirting, right? Maybe I’m over
-thinking it. Maybe he’s just being nice. Ugh, why does Aralie have to be sleeping when I need her to decipher weird boy code for me!? Then again, if she was in here with me, the alien from Saturn, and the Oreos, I’d have to admit to her that I’m so craving him more than I’m craving these cookies.
I manage to point in the direction of the correct cabinet and avoid eye contact while he takes it upon himself to pour some milk. Then he settles in across from me at the table.
“Word of unsolicited advice,” he says, reaching across the table and tapping Benji’s ink magazine. “Tramp stamps are trampy. Butterflies are boring because all girls get them. And never use ‘it was cute’ as an answer when someone asks why you decided on a certain tat.”
His hand moves from the magazine to the tray of Oreos. He chooses the third cookie from the left, leaving a gaping hole in between the Oreos.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I wasn’t planning on inking myself any time soon.”
“I’d hope not,” he says. “I doubt you’ve had the proper training to ink yourself.”
He smiles, drops his Oreo into his glass of milk, and lets it sink to the bottom. He reaches back over and picks up the cookie that had been in front of his sunken treasure, leaving one Oreo teetering out of orbit in the pack.
“So, exciting day?” He changes the subject. “Sounded like it from your sister’s checkout line story. She was dramatizing it, right?”
I wish she had been. Aralie has always had a flair for the dramatic, but even as she acted out Deacon’s goofy facial expressions and squawked out Benji’s last name, I’m sure she performed a stellar reenactment of how it went down. Thank God I didn’t have to see it.
“Afraid not,” I say. “It was just as awful as she probably said it was, if not worse.”
He dips his Oreo into his milk and takes a bite of it. I reach toward the tray and debate if I should grab the lone cookie he left behind. Maybe he has a good reason for leaving it. I grab a different one, leaving the outcast to flounder.
I flip the page in the magazine and focus on a tattoo of a maple leaf. I bet Milo wishes he could be back home in his own
house in Canada right now instead of trapped here.
“But your life is probably a lot more dramatic than mine,” I say.
I’d much rather not talk about Deacon right now – especially with a gorgeous boy from Spaceships Around Saturn.
Milo laughs. “It has its moments,” he says. “Sometimes fans can get a little crazy. Paparazzi does too. We don’t get much sleep. But that was definitely the first time we’ve ever been shot at before.”
“Maybe you guys will be able to catch up on some sleep while you’re here,” I say.
God, Chloe. Lame much? They don’t care about sleep. They run on caffeine, adrenaline, Oreos, and magic boyband juice from Saturn. They would rather be on a sleepless tou
r than a sleep-filled lockdown.
“Doubt it,” he says. “Well, the other guys will sleep, but I’m nocturnal. And – no offense – but it’s hard to sleep late with the little Saturnite running through the house.”
I shouldn’t smile at Emery’s expense, but I can’t fight it.
“No kidding. I live with her fulltime. I have to stay up late to get anything done. But it’s still weird to see teenage boys crash before midnight,” I say.
Milo looks away from his half-eaten Oreo and scrunches his mouth to one side again, like he’s puckering up to kiss someone next to him without turning his head.
“You really don’t know your Saturn trivia, do you?” he asks. “I turned twenty in November, thank you very much.”
That explains his maturity level. He’s so level-headed and clean-cut and every parent’s dream of what kind of guy a daughter should bring home. Not to mention he’s brunette and super hot on top of that. He’s the all-American non-American guy. All-Canadian maybe?
“And Jules will be twenty in about a month,” he says. “Not that he acts it or anything. Benji and Noah are nineteen. Tate’s the baby, eighteen.”
I wonder if Emery even knows how old they are. In her mind, they’re probably all sixteen, and she’ll stand a chance with Benji when she’s older. Hopefully they’ll be out of here before Jules’s birthday. I’m pretty sure he’ll be pissed if his venture out of teenage-hood is spent on lockdown with the Branson sisters.
“I expected more from you,” Milo says. “My Twitter followers should at least know my age.”
“How did you–”
He cuts me off mid-question. “The aforementioned little Saturnite filled us in on your misfortune with the coin toss
,” he explains.
Note to self
: Don’t say anything in front of Emery that you don’t want the guys to know about. Obviously she likes to share stories. Hopefully she hasn’t told them too much.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if Benji didn’t have something to say every five seconds,” I reply. “You think he’ll be able to handle the withdrawals while he’s here?”
Milo shrugs. “I’m sure Emery would listen to anything Benji wants to tweet about. She could be his sounding board.”
Speaking of Twitter…
“Why the extra letters? Do you really need four extra Zs in the word ‘amazing’?” I ask.
He smiles. “Yes, I do actually. You can’t use bold or italics on Twitter. I have to make my point somehow.”
He reaches toward the tray and grabs the lone Oreo.
“Okay, this is my last one for the night,” he says. “Half it with me?”
Seriously? If I wasn’t the envy of every Saturnite in the world just by sitting across the table from him, I’m definitely the envy of them now because Milo Grayson wants to half his precious Oreo with
me
. And the thing that sucks the most is that no one knows about it to be jealous of me!
He holds the cookie up and waits for a response.
“Yeah, we can half it,” I say.
I reach across the table for it, but he jerks his arm back. The sleeve of his T-shirt hugs his bicep tightly, and oh how I wish to be that fabric.
“Not so fast,” he says. “Let’s make it interesting.”
Could this be any more interesting? Hello – you’re gorgeous and famous and sharing cookies with me! Any more ‘interest’ and I might burst like a firework.
“If you get the side with the cream, I’ll give you my honest male opinion about your checkout line drama today,” he says. “But if I get the cream side, you have to tell me, honestly, who you think the best looking guy is in Spaceships Around Saturn.”
Oh God. He’s for real. Does he know? He totally knows. He knows I’m lusting for him from behind this glass of milk and tattoo magazine. He knows that his eyes make me melt and that I clearly watch him on Twitter because I know all about
amazzzzzing. Now he wants to make me ‘fess up.
“Deal.” I say it before I can chicken out.
I can always lie and say Benji’s name. He’s the fan favorite anyway. Benji Baccarini
is
Spaceships Around Saturn for so many girls.
Milo
leans forward, positions himself over the table, and holds up that fated Oreo. I push my glass of milk aside because the last thing I want is to knock it over with my quivering nerves. Then I lean toward him, grip the cookie with my fingers, and inhale every bit of his body wash that I can while I twist my half of the Oreo away from his half.
“Damn,” he mutters.
I’ve never been so thankful for the cream in an Oreo before now. I instantly burst into fangirlish giggles, straight from Planet Emery. I can save my dignity for another day, and I didn’t even have to lie to the beautiful boy. All of my anxiety wafts away into some unknown part of the universe where silly nervousness goes to die.
“I really thought I was going to get an ego boost out of this,” he says, as if it’s a terrible defeat that he lost the cream side of the cookie.
“Apparently you don’t need it since you clearly assume that I was going to say your name,” I say.
Milo laughs. “I figured I was your type. I guess I’ll never know,
eh?”
I submerge my half-Oreo into my milk and bite into it. I can’t even look at him now. Those butterflies in my stomach probably flew back just to look at him. If I were a butterfly of nerves, I’d definitely risk the anxiety to fly back and
look at him.
“But a deal is a deal,” he says. He sighs, all defeated again. “I think you’re better off without that guy. He’s immature, has no dignity, and needs to be knocked down from his pedestal. You can do much better than a guy who clucks Benji’s last name across the grocery store’s parking lot.”
He swigs the last bit of his milk and pulls the soggy Oreo from the bottom of the glass. He pops it into his mouth, walks over to the sink to wash out the glass, and places it in Mom’s extra sink where she asked them to put dirty dishes. He’s so freaking well-mannered.
He walks back over to the table, pushes his chair in, and runs his tongue over his teeth.
“Well, Ms. Branson, it’s been a pleasure, but I need my beauty sleep or else I may end up looking like Jules, and that would be a shame for all of us,” he says. “We should do this again sometime. Good night.”
He heads toward the stairs but stops and looks back. “And from what Emery says, you’re too pretty for that jerk anyway.”