Aimee and the Heartthrob (8 page)

“Bet she did.”

“Shut up, dude.” His tiny breakthrough had nothing to do with Aimee. Okay, so maybe he’d felt inspired to write about a girl with brown hair and brown eyes, but that was half the female population on the planet. He hadn’t been writing about Aimee. Or her eyes.

Tonight’s concert was no different than any of the others, but Miles felt extra excited and energetic. He told himself that wasn’t because he’d spotted Aimee in the wings, right where she’d been last time.

After the show, it was another drive-straight-through-to-the-next-city kind of night. Miles was already tired of being soaking wet on the way to the bus, but he was happy he had time to get back to writing. He was still hyped up from earlier today, and knew he had more songs in him.

But the second he was alone in his bunk with an open notebook, his mind went blank.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. What was on his mind was a girl with brown hair, brown eyes, and a smile with the power to fuel a rocket, just begging to be sketched into a love song.

He shook his head, trying to clear away the image. For the next hour, all he did was stare down at a blank page. How had he gone from being so inspired to having zilch? After a while, he wandered out to the front of the bus to join Trevin in front of the PlayStation. If nothing, killing man-eating alien zombies would take his mind off where it shouldn’t be.

Chapter Seven

Aimee waited around the breakfast room long after she’d finished eating. Not to see Miles, but every time the door opened and it wasn’t him, her stupid heart sank. It had nothing to do with how hella-fine he’d looked onstage last night, or those six times he’d made eye contact with her, or how sexy he’d looked in that wet T-shirt during the finale.

Holy nut-burgers, was he beautiful.

No! It was nothing like that. But okay, she did want to hang out with him, ’cause it had been really cool—interesting and educational—to watch him write yesterday.

Just as she’d decided to go off on her own, back up to her hotel room or see if Deb needed help setting up the makeup, Miles strolled in. And her stupid heart did a stupid backflip.

“Hey.” His blond hair was tousled and he wore a bright blue T-shirt with the Superman logo across his chest. And she almost whimpered at his cuteness.

“Hi.” Why did she feel faint with nerves? It was just Miles. Her
friend
Miles.

“Did you already eat?”

“Yep,” she said. “All done. Just heading back to our room—I mean
my
room.”
Stop talking, Aimee.

Miles pulled back a smile and ran a hand along the back of his hair, messing it up. “So you’re not epically bored or anything?”

“Not at all.” She pictured the virtual stack of books to read and review for her vlog, not to mention that other stack she was supposed to read for next year’s AP English class.

“Oh.” He pulled at the neck of his T-shirt. “I was hoping you were bored so I could rescue you.”

Dammit, why is he so hot?
“What do you have in mind?”

Not that she’d object to hanging with him as friends. And how seriously cute did her friend look in the morning?

“I think I might want to write some more. But if that sounds boring—”

Boring? As if. “Um, sure, that’s cool.”
Yeah, try not to act too excited, Aimee
. “Do you want to eat first?” She gestured at the trays of food.

“I already did. I just came in here to find you.”

She tried exceptionally hard not to feel all hyper-euphoric at his words as they walked out the door in silence. Instead of heading to the conference rooms like yesterday, Aimee followed him outside toward his bus.

“I have to grab my guitar. Be right back.”

She watched him climb the stairs of
The One
. That perfect, cute boy butt. She was still curious about what kind of things were aboard that bus. The high tech gaming and whatever. Maybe if she stood on her toes and… Before she could get even a peek, Miles came down the stairs, guitar case in one hand, notebook in the other.

“It’s warm outside,” he said, squinting into the sun. “Since I’ve been living like a vampire lately, do you mind if we stay out here?”

“Good idea.”

So he didn’t want to be all alone in a room with her like yesterday. Could he sense she’d been excited about seeing him, so now he was trying to head off any feelings she might have? After all, he’d been oblivious to her crush before, maybe now he was being hyper-sensitive so he wouldn’t hurt her feelings again.

That was nice of him, even though she
didn’t
have feelings.
Shut it, pounding heart.

They walked past the line of buses, across the parking lot, and to a picnic area under a tree. Surrounded by semi-trucks, she couldn’t see any fans, though every once in a while, she’d hear screams, reminding her that they were there. Miles didn’t seem to notice as he lowered himself onto the grass across from her, sitting cross-legged with his guitar.

“I recorded that song yesterday, right after we finished.”

“Do you think it’ll be on your new album?”

He held a pick between his lips and adjusted the nobs on the guitar neck. “Dunno. I really like it—well, such as it is, but that doesn’t mean the world will.”

“If you plan on playing it for females, believe me, it’ll be a solid gold hit.”

Miles stopped strumming and looked at her. “You think?”

“I
know
.”

He smiled and rested his arms on top of the guitar. “I tried to write last night after the show, but it was the damnedest thing, I couldn’t. My mind kept spinning back to…” He paused purposefully and shifted his sitting position.

“Back to what?”

He looked down at the grass blowing in the wind. “Nothing. Anyway, I couldn’t write, so I hung out with the guys, played way too much Grand Theft Auto, ate way too many Pop-Tarts.”

“Is that your secret rock ‘n’ roll private bus party food?”

He dipped his chin and laughed, turning a page in his notebook. “
Very
secret.”

“What kind of song do you want to write today?”

“Not sure. I was thinking of something sad, like a breakup song.”

“I guess those are necessary. Can’t have all happy on an album.”

“Nope. Gotta mix it up.”

“Do you write from personal experiences?”

“I try to. It’s easier that way, to not fake the feelings. Though I don’t really feel like going all T-Swizzle and tapping into personal experience to write a sad song.” He strummed the chorus to another Prince song, “Raspberry Beret.” “Here’s an idea, why don’t you tell me a tragic, brokenhearted story?” He laughed. “Be my inspiration again.”

Aimee’s mouth went dry, then tasted sour. “No thanks, I have too much experience with that.”

Miles stopped playing. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean about me.”

She laughed and threw a handful of grass at him. “I didn’t mean about you either, Miles. Try to keep that ego in check.”

“Sorry.” He glanced down and smiled. “But…you do have other experiences? A bad breakup?”

She so didn’t want to talk about it, but she’d opened this can of worms. “My boyfriend last year. He was the first guy I really, really liked—oh, I mean, except…” She could only nod at Miles, too mortified to say the words. But he nodded in return and let her go on. “He was an exchange student.”

“From where?”

“France.”

“Figures. The guy was a literal Romeo, eh?”

“Romeo was from Italy. Don’t your private tutors make you read Shakespeare?”

Miles chuckled. “Damn, girl.”

“Anyway. I was really happy with him.” (
And happy to finally be over you
, she could’ve added.) “He was sweet and funny and really cute—”

“About the breakup,” Miles interrupted.

Aimee pushed her hair back. “Yeah, well, Jean-Luc had to leave Pali High at the end of the semester, in December, but he wanted to come back. He swore he’d try, he promised me and he said he loved me and…” She paused to control her breathing. “I believed him, but he didn’t come back.”

“That could’ve been for a lot of reasons. Maybe he didn’t have a choice.”

“Then why did he promise me? I know how the world works, and when you’re fifteen you can’t just
announce
to your parents you’re moving to another country. But I believed him and I was hopeful…and so brainless to believe him.”

“Aimee, that’s not really fair to the guy.”

“I’m not finished with the story. Anyway, a few days before we went back to school after Christmas break, Becky called me and was all ‘Have you checked Insta?’ When I did, it had totally exploded with pix of him and another girl. It was his girlfriend in Paris. They weren’t even broken up when we were together. Freaking cheater, and he’d been lying to me the whole time.”

“Wanker.”

“Yeah, he was. And I’d been so excited ’cause someone I liked finally liked me back. Anyway, it taught me a lot about myself, that I’m insecure.”

He snorted under his breath. “No, you’re not.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know how you can be when you’re so beautiful.”

Aimee’s breath froze in her chest, and she didn’t know what to say. Miles thought she was beautiful.

He went back to strumming his guitar, tunelessly, no more Prince. “I mean, what do you have to be insecure about?”

“How about everything? How about making mistakes and falling for the wrong guys and trusting when my gut told me I shouldn’t? That has nothing to do with the way I look.”

“Okay, okay. I get what you’re saying. What else did you learn about yourself?”

She inhaled then pushed out a deep breath. “I’m not going to fall for the wrong guy again. If there’re warning signs or red flags, that’s it, peace out. Just because love isn’t always supposed to last forever doesn’t mean I should let myself get hurt on purpose. It was too hard and I was too sad for too long, and I just never want to have my heart broken like that again.”

“How do you know if you’re falling for the wrong guy?”

“Well, for starters, I want him to actually
live
in the same city as me, let alone the same country.” She looked up when Miles stopped playing. “What?”

“Nothing. It’s just… I guess I can’t blame you for wanting that. Especially after that guy lied and hurt you and moved ten thousand miles away.”

“Yeah. So, do you think that’s enough fodder for a sad song?”

“Definitely. But I’ll never have the heart to write about it.”

…

“No more sad love stories,” Miles added after Aimee had finished talking. Seriously, what kind of dick was this French guy to purposely hurt a girl like her? And
Jean-Luc
? What a douchebag name, anyway. The look in her eyes as she’d told her story, she was still broken, even though it had happened last year. It obviously hurt enough that it affected her today.

Miles got that. Hell, his split with Kelly was longer ago than that, and it was still influencing his decisions, whether to trust or not.

“But without sad love stories, how will you get depressed enough to write a breakup song?” Aimee asked with a smile.

He chuckled and strummed his guitar. “Oh, I’ve got plenty of depressing stories.”

Aimee snorted—an adorable snort. “Like what?”

“Okay, how about the high school Christmas assembly, the first time I performed live by myself in front of an audience bigger than my mum’s living room. I thought I was the shit and it was an epic fail.”

“That’s not true.”

“Well, the first half was awful. And how would you know? You were still in middle school, so you weren’t there.”

Aimee dropped her chin and tugged at a chunk of hair. “Yeah, I was. I begged Mom to pull me out of class that day so I could go. The night before, I heard you and Nick talking about it.” She shrugged and ran her hand along the top of the grass. “I knew you were super nervous, so I thought you could use some…friendly support. I even made these signs and passed them out.” She shook her head. “So stupid. You didn’t even see them.”

“Yes, I did,” Miles said, straightening his spine. “They were way in the back. Why did you do that?”

“I thought if you knew you had fans out there, people who loved you, it’d make you less nervous.”

“Aimee, I…” He hesitated, feeling something hot and heavy push against his heart, slowing everything down. “It did help—a lot, actually.” He rubbed his chin. “I remember looking out at the crowd, everyone was talking or checking their phones. But then in back, I saw like ten signs with my name
. Go Miles! We love you, Miles!
I thought it was something the art class was forced to do. But it was…”

For a second, he couldn’t go on. A flood of memories flashed across his mind. Standing on that stage under a solo spotlight. All the cocky swagger he thought he’d had was nowhere to be found. He’d never felt so exposed or rubbish or alone. Halfway through his amateur rendition of Prince’s “1999,” he’d spotted those signs. And suddenly, he’d felt respected and not so alone.

“That was you?” he said.

Aimee nodded, just as a breeze picked up her hair, moving it around her shoulders, knocking Miles absolutely breathless. The simple act of seeing those glittery signs at the back of the school auditorium had totally changed the momentum of that performance. It gave him confidence and encouragement. It had made him want to be a singer for the rest of his life.

And it had been Aimee.

“I don’t know what to say.” But he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to take Aimee Bingham in his arms and kiss her.

She pulled back a half smile. “It’s okay.”

Too many words clogged Miles’s brain, words of gratitude and wonder, tangled with a desire he couldn’t squelch. “Thank you,” he finally managed to get out. It was weak and ridiculously insufficient, but it was all he had. He stared at her face, her mouth, fighting back that blinding impulse. Because it could never happen.

Suddenly, that painful realization knocked him breathless again.

Aimee lifted a full smile now. “You’re welcome.”

They fell into silence. He tried to write, jotting down lines and lyrics that sounded catchy, then scratching them out because they were lamer than deadass-lame. That flicker of inspiration from yesterday was gone again. How could he get it back?

When he glanced up, Aimee was on her stomach, stretched across the grass, barefoot, sliding a finger over the face of her phone every few minutes, reading her Kindle app. He watched her for a while, totally absorbed in the way the wind blew through her hair, how she nibbled her lip, how the bottom of her dress shifted across the backs of her thighs when she stretched.

Hoping to redirect his craving, Miles flipped a page of his notebook and started writing. Words poured out, almost faster than he could get them down. After filling three pages of images and phrases and a few R-rated ways to demonstrate his cravings, he exhaled and wiped his palms on his jeans, his heart beating hard in his chest like he’d been running sprints or participating in another physically draining exercise. With Aimee.

Damn. He’d really let his mind go too far this time.

“Got anything good?” She rolled to her side, her elbow propping up her head, dark hair spilling down her back.

Miles swallowed, instantly picturing what he’d just imagined. “Yeah, I…” He glanced at his notebook. Aimee’s name wasn’t written on the pages, but she was definitely all over them.

She sat up and smoothed her dress over her long legs. Her toenails were painted pink. He shouldn’t be looking at her legs, not after what he’d just been imagining.