I studied his face for a few more moments. Something had been up with him earlier. “I’m glad you had fun too.”
“What time do you have to be at Cece’s house?” he asked, rubbing circles on my back with his thumb.
“Not for two more hours.” His touch was soothing and I burrowed my head into his neck.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
I lift my head to look at him. “Sure.”
Getting a pair of sneakers out of my bag in his room, I slipped them on. The weather was perfect outside. We leisurely strolled around the trendy downtown neighborhood for about an hour. He was sort of giving me a tour since all I’d seen of his neighborhood so far was the short walk between the parking garage and the apartment building. Caleb greeted a few people he knew, mostly girls. He told me he and his mom had lived here since the divorce.
When it was time to head over to Jared and Cece’s house, we picked up my bag at the apartment. Caleb eyed my bag. “You could just leave it here.”
“Well,” I said drolly, “I’ll need pajamas to change into tonight and clothes to wear tomorrow.”
“You’ll be wearing those pajamas here tonight and changing into those clothes here tomorrow morning,” he insisted.
I was holding my duffel bag over one shoulder and I noticed he didn’t offer to carry like he usually did. “Since when do you tell me what to do?”
“You’re my girlfriend. My place is wherever you are and vice versa.” He crossed his arms over his chest as if he weren’t going to budge on the issue. “And I really don’t want to have a sleepover at Jared’s house. I don’t think he’d appreciate me sharing a bed with you and Cece.”
I laughed. “You’re right, he wouldn’t. Fine, we’ll come back here, but I still need to take my bag because it has my outfit for tonight.” Why not give in? It wasn’t as if I wanted to be apart from him.
He narrowed his eyes at the bag. “Alright, I guess you’ll need to take your bag.”
“Jeez, thanks for permission, master,” I joked sarcastically. Caleb was just too funny when he got possessive. I couldn’t believe what he’d said about his place being wherever I was. It was funny how he could be sweet and bossy at the same time.
He turned around after opening the apartment door. “What are you smiling about?”
I wiped the smirk off my face. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh, sure. Let’s go, princess.” He motions for me to lead the way and locked the door behind us. He grabbed my bag out of my hand while I hit the elevator button to go down.
The whole crew was at the house. Cece came up to give me a hug. “Where were you this morning? You missed ballet!”
I looked at her guiltily. “I had a bit of a hangover.”
“What? You got drunk without me last night? How much did you drink? You never do that! Where was the party?” Cece didn’t know how to limit her questions to one at a time.
“Yes, I got pretty drunk off about five drinks, but not at a party, at a club.” I answered all of her questions in one go.
“At a club? With who? Didn’t you say you weren’t going to do that ever again after you-know-what happened? Are you okay?” Cece’s questions were beginning to give me a headache.
“Don’t worry, I was with Caleb.”
“Oh, okay.” She settled down and I guessed that was a good enough answer for her.
Jared walked into the garage and immediately spotted Caleb sitting on the couch up against the wall. Caleb smirked at him and Jared got a sour look on his face. “God, what’s he doing here again?”
“He is my boyfriend and likes to watch us practice. You guys bring your little girlfriends all the time so why can’t I bring my boyfriend?”
“Whatever, just tell him to stay out of my way.” What a big baby he was.
We practiced for the next few hours and Caleb actually fell asleep. Either that or he was pretending to sleep to avoid talking to a girl one of the guys brought. At least I liked to think so.
After we were done practicing, a group of us went to the Ramirez family’s restaurant. I loved their parents. They were always eager to feed people and I was one of their favorite people to feed. It worked out well all the way around. Afterwards, we went back to their house to change.
Cece rode with me and Caleb to the club we were dancing at tonight. Club owners paid dancers like us to show up and add some excitement to their atmosphere. Thank god for those dancing competition reality shows on television. They helped crews like us find gigs by adding to our popularity.
We did the routine we worked all afternoon on. Taye got the idea a couple weeks back for the routine while he was watching Braveheart. We all had one side of our face painted blue and were each wearing at least one piece of plaid clothing.