Havoc:Mayhem Series #4(33)

"Until I get tired of hearing your voice."

I sigh, and I'm not sure if it's because that was such a perfect thing  to say, or because of how hopeless this all is. I like Mike, he likes  me, and Danica hates us both. If she knew I was talking to him right  now, all hell would break loose. I'm extending a personal invitation to  the very nightmare I've spent the past thirty-six hours trying to avoid.

Two years. It's going to take me at least two more years to finish my  bachelor's degree, which doesn't even include my plans for my doctorate,  and Danica plans to be here for just as long. Talking to  Dee-licious-andra on the phone in hushed conversations isn't going to  cut it for that long, but anything more will land me back on the farm.

Either way, I lose. Danica makes the rules, and no matter how I play the game, I lose.

"How have things been since you left?" Mike asks, and I decide to start with the good.

"Dee and Rowan helped me clean up my room."

"That's good . . . What else have you been up to?"

"Pretty much just working on all the homework that was due today so I can turn it in tomorrow."

"Danica hasn't been giving you any trouble?" Mike asks, and I find  shapes in the pattern on my ceiling. A snowman. A dog. A three-headed  Hell Beast with long, sharp teeth.

"She said you only like me because I'm broken."

It feels like a confession, so I say it extra quietly. I'm acknowledging  I remember what Mike said. I'm asking him to tell me if Danica is  right.

"What?" he asks, the word a gust of disbelief. When I don't reply, he demands to know, "How are you broken?"

Instead of naming a thousand ways, I simply say, "I don't know."                       
       
           



       

"You're smart. You're in school. You're working hard for your dreams." I  can hear the anger in his voice. It's like a bold underline beneath  every word he says. "You're beautiful. You're funny. You're kind. You  work at an animal shelter, for God's sake. Everyone loves you. How the  hell are you broken?"

Beautiful. Smart. Funny. Kind. I let his words comfort me, not wanting to argue.

A sigh of frustration cuts across the line. "Look, Hailey, Danica is  going to say lots of things to you because she's upset. She hasn't  stopped texting me all day-"

"She's been texting you?" An unfamiliar pang of jealously flares in my chest, but Mike douses it in an instant.

"Not since an hour ago. I blocked her. But listen, just . . . don't let  her ruin this, okay? You're not broken, and that's not why I said what I  did. If anyone is broken, it's her, and that has nothing to do with  either one of us."

I know he's right. I know he has to be right. "Okay."

A moment of silence passes, and I find more shapes on the ceiling. A hippopotamus. A sunflower. Half a heart.

"I want to take you out," Mike says, and my pulse quickens. "Tomorrow. Can I take you out to dinner?"

He's asking me out. On a date. A real date . . . Oh my God. "I have a lot of homework to catch up on," I stammer in a panic.

"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?"

"So, you know girls. No more Deadzone, no more arcade, no more fun."

I clear my throat. "Not all girls are like that."

"Sisters don't count," Luke counters, and before I can argue, he says, "Hey, did you know Mike broke up with Danica?"

I almost choke on my tomato-lettuce-mayo wrap. "What?"