The Fake Boyfriend Experiment(38)

Rafe froze and stared at me. “What?”

Oh, good God, had I really just said that? Did I have absolutely no control over my mouth? He looked totally shocked, like he’d just realized that some blood-thirsty vampire had just leapt out of the shadows to suck him dry.

Crud! I’d blown it! I’d crossed that line of friendship and he was going to have to let me down easy. I would be so embarrassed that I’d never be able to look at him again and everything would be awkward around us forever and ever and everyone in the band would be able to tell and they would know that I’d thrown myself at him and he’d had to ditch me. I was such an idiot! “Nevermind. Forget it.” My cheeks burning, I ducked under his arm and bolted for the rehearsal room.



He didn’t try to call me back, and he didn’t run to catch up.

Yeah, okay, that pretty much said all I needed to know, given that he’d already made a habit of chasing me down when I took off on him.

I was already playing the keyboard when he walked in. Was he going to say something? Was he going to say that he’d like to go? I mean, it was out there now. He could pick up on it if he wanted to. I peered at him from beneath the shield of my hair.

He glanced at me, and my heart skipped a beat. What was he going to say? His cheeks were flushed and he looked a little nervous. Unsettled. Oh, man. He was going to tell me he was going to go, wasn’t he?

He took a breath. “You ready to learn some tunes?”

“Tunes?” I echoed. Tunes? He really wasn’t going to acknowledge that I’d sort of almost asked him to go to my semi-formal dance with me? He was simply going to leave it hanging in the air like that?

“Yeah,” he said, his voice strained. “Today’s about learning the music, remember?”

I’d just asked him to my semi-formal, and he wanted to talk about music.

My life was over.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


Erin called me at eight thirty that night. She got right into it. “So? Did Les call?”

“No.” I was lying on my bed, listening to JamieX. I should be practicing the songs for the band. Or doing my homework.

But I couldn’t. All I could think about was how awkward the entire practice had been with Rafe. He’d barely looked at me and he’d made sure not to touch me, even accidentally. It was horrible. I couldn’t believe I’d been stupid enough to blurt out that half-garbled, sort-of-invite, like a complete idiot.

“Good,” Erin said. “I think you should ask Rafe again to see if he can go to the semi with you. He’s so hot. MTV? Are you kidding? He’s going to become the next superstar! You think your parents will let you go on tour with him? I mean, that would be awesome. I could come visit you and—”

“I asked him. He can’t go.” Oh, boy, had I asked him. At least I didn’t need to lie about that, though I doubted that I’d ever come clean and admit that after I’d asked him, Rafe had acted like I’d turned into a leper-zombie freak trying to kill him. Yeah, that had gone well.

I sighed and propped my feet up on the wall beside my JamieX poster. Even JamieX wasn’t as cute as Rafe, and now I didn’t even have Rafe as a friend, let alone a boyfriend. It was kind of impressive how I’d managed to screw everything up so badly, actually.

“Wow,” Erin said. “That’s too bad. So, then it’s Les, huh?”

I sighed. “He hasn’t called.” So, big surprise there. He’d probably decided that even the fact I had a boyfriend couldn’t make me interesting enough to make him want to spend an entire evening with me.

“Oh, he’ll call. I was talking to Keith tonight, and he said Les couldn’t stop talking about you after the party. He loved your belly button ring. Said it rocked.”

I eyed my toes. I should redo them. Maybe black. Yes, black would be good. No cheerful colors for me tonight.

“Lily? Did you hear me? Les has the hots for you.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t have black toenail polish. Maybe if I combined blue, purple and green, it would make a muddy, vomitous brown that would match my mood. That might carry me over until I could buy some black.

Call waiting beeped, and my heart jumped. I took the phone away from my ear and looked at the display. M. Jespersen. Please let it be Rafe, not Miss Jespersen. “Rafe’s beeping in. I gotta go.” I clicked over even as Erin was ordering me to let her know after Les called me. “Hello?”

“Hey, Lily. It’s Rafe.”

My heart did a little flip. “What’s up?”

“I forgot to tell you that we don’t have practice tomorrow night. I’m going out with Paige. I kinda gotta do that since I’m not seeing her at practice anymore.” His voice was very cool and reserved, like he was calling the dentist to make an appointment.