The doorbell rings the instant my bare feet touch the hardwood floor of the foyer. Perfect timing. I don’t bother to wait for Godfrey. It’s probably government agents or someone Dad sent here to check on things. I peek through the glass, but the muscle man in the black V-neck is definitely not an agent.
“Good morning,” Tank says as soon as I open the door. “I’ve been asked to personally delivery this to Milo.” He holds up a guitar case.
“C’mon in,” I say, motioning him with my arm.
I haven’t been up long enough to know where Milo is, and really, after last night, I’m not ready to see him. It took hours and a lot of sleep deprivation for those butterflies to settle down. Now that they’re finally asleep, I don’t want to wake them.
“I knew I heard your voice!” Benji sprints past me and attacks Tank in a massive hug. “What are you doing here?”
Tank pushes the blonde superstar off of him with one arm and holds up the guitar case with his other hand. Benji bombards him with a million questions about the investigation and when they’ll be free and about what people are saying on the outside, but Tank doesn’t provide many answers. He almost sounds rehearsed when he tells Benji that the United States government is “working on this night and day.”
I glance outside. A black SUV sits in our wraparound driveway. I wonder if Tank is wearing a wire. I wouldn’t put it past them. They could’ve sent an agent to deliver Milo’s guitar, but they sent Tank to ease the guys’ nerves and give them a familiar face. It’s one of the more obvious tricks. Dad’s told us that before.
“Sorry, my man, I gotta jet,” Tank says much too quickly for Benji’s liking. “They got me on lockdown too.”
Tank pulls back on the V of his shirt and points to the wire. Seriously? What the hell do they think we’re doing in here? I’m scared to sign online or use my own cell phone now.
They’re probably watching everything that happens in our house. I may be showering in the dark from now on. At least until the lockdown is over.
Benji takes Milo’s guitar, and I motion him back before letting Tank walk outside. They’ll know that Benji talked to him, but for Benji’s sake, I don’t want the agents to get a glimpse of him. They’ll assume we let him peek outside all the time.
The SUV circles around the drive and exits through the gate. There’s no way they can keep a watch on this entire place. We live in a freaking mansion with more guest rooms than a bed and breakfast. They should trust my dad more than that. He’s taught us well. We may not like lockdown, but we sure as hell don’t argue.
I stroll into the dining room behind Benji. Noah sips on strawberry milk while Emery talks about painting coffee cans for Mom to plant flowers in. Aralie and Jules sit at the other end of the table
. Aralie plays on her phone while Jules stares at her as if he could burn holes into her skin with his eyes.
No sign of Tate or Milo aka the
bromance of Tito aka the lamest bromance name I’ve ever heard. Maybe Milo is actually sleeping. Maybe he’ll sleep all day, and I can avoid him.
Jules looks away from Aralie long enough to notice the guitar case.
“Who brought that?” he asks.
“Tank,” Benji says. “He wasn’t himself, though. Agents brought him. They made him wear a wire. This is some bullshit.”
Emery’s eyes pop from their sockets, and Benji takes instant notice.
“Sorry, Emery,” he says. “I’m going to have to get you some in-ears, like what we wear when we’re on stage. Then you can sing to yourself and block out all the other noise, like my cursing.”
Emery slips off of her chair next to Noah and walks around to where Benji and I stand. She’s wearing her serious face, and she clutches that friendship bracelet with the blue frayed ribbon in her hand.
“You can’t say that word or my mom will get mad because I told her you were my best friend, and best friends can’t say bad words,” she says, all matter-of-fact.
Then she laughs. Oh God, why does she have to laugh? She never had this crazy hyena thing in her eyes until Spaceships Around Saturn showed up, and now she looks demonic and clown-like every time she laughs or smiles.
“But I won’t tell Mommy you said a bad word if you wear my friendship bracelet,” she says in a sing-song voice.
It takes about five seconds for Benji to get that blue and green bracelet tied around his wrist. He tells her he’ll keep it forever and promises to wear it during their first show back on tour. She asks him if he’ll post a picture of it on Twitter, and she then tells me to retweet it when he does.
Jules rocks back in his chair as Benji, Emery, and I find a seat at the table.
“So, Emery, where’s my friendship bracelet?” the bad boy asks.
Aralie sets her phone on the table. “You don’t get one because no one wants to be your friend,” she tells him.
His chair rocks back and forth. If he loses his footing, it’d be the ultimate win for Aralie.
“I have fans all over the world. A lot of people want to be my friend,” Jules argues.
Aralie laughs. “Oh, right, your 6.9 million Twitter followers. You do realize that Benji has 11.3 million, right? Those are real time numbers. I just checked.”
Jules slams his chair onto the floor.
“That’s 6.9 million people who love me and would gladly do my laundry,” he says. “You’re the envy of 6.9 million people, and you can’t even appreciate it.”
Noah smirks behind his strawberry milk. I guess the rumors are true about how he doesn’t speak until after he’s had his strawberry milk each morning. Weird.
I decide to speak up in Aralie’s defense.
“Actually, you’re wrong,” I say. “I’m one of those 6.9 million people, and I can’t say that I love you, and I definitely don’t want to do your laundry.”
Luckily, for everyone’s sake, Mom enters the room just in time to intervene and end what could’ve been round two of Aralie vs. Jules. She loads the dishwasher before coming back over to the table. She has the sympathetic Mom-face on.
“Girls, it’s probably a good idea for you guys to skip Lauren’s party tonight,” she says. She holds up her hand to stop Aralie before she bursts into objections. “I know you’ve had this planned for a while, but your dad called this morning and said he’d just feel a lot better if you guys stayed here tonight. There’ll be other parties.”
Really, there won’t be. These are my post-graduation parties that’ll only happen once because I’ll only graduate high school once. It sucks, yeah, and I don’t like it, but I think Aralie is more upset than I am – and she doesn’t graduate for another year.
My sister jumps up from the table and follows Mom back
into the depths of the kitchen.
“What are we supposed to say?
” Aralie asks. “It’s not like I can say, ‘Sorry Lauren, I’m hiding a boyband in my house’ or something like that.”
Mom sighs. “Tell her Emery is sick with some flu virus, and it’s contagious. You and Chloe have been exposed, and your parents won’t let you leave the house. Blame Dad
and me.”
I lean past Benji to glance into the kitchen. Aralie leans back against the fridge.
“It’s not fair that I have to miss out on
my
life because someone wants to shoot Jules. Really, I can’t blame them!” Aralie yells before pushing off the fridge and running upstairs.
Two hours later, I’ve sent all the appropriate ‘Sorry, Emery is sick, and we’re contagious’ texts. I got roped into it after Aralie’s tantrum. I have yet to see Milo today, although I know he’s downstairs. He and Tate didn’t bother getting out of bed until long after I was back in the safety of my bedroom. I’m tempted to go downstairs just to see what he’s wearing. Probably a T-shirt. But those T-shirts hug his body like I wish I could.
Yeah, definitely not going downstairs after a thought like that.
But that doesn’t stop Emery from coming upstairs. Her footsteps are fast and swishy, so I know it’s her. I race to my door and pull it open before she has a chance to bang on it.
“You’re getting faster,” she says. She smiles a normal smile, thankfully, and looks around the hallway. “Are you
gonna watch the premiere with us?”
I rack my brain for whatever premiere she’s talking about, but I’ve got nothing. She knows it too because she opens her mouth immediately.
“For ‘Music Up, Windows Down!’” she shouts in my face.
“Oh! Their new song!” I’m almost as excited as she is when it clicks.
I can totally play this cool. I can pretend I’m watching it because Emery made a big deal out of it and begged me to. It’ll be a good way to break the ice again after last night. Thank God for my little Saturnite.
“Yeah, I guess,” I say, practicing the whole ‘play it cool’ thing.
Emery hugs me and tells me that she’s going to ask Aralie. I doubt she’ll have much luck with the middle sister, but it gives me a chance to slip downstairs and blame baby sister for making me watch the premiere.
The guys are in our second living room – the one with the huge sectional, flat screen TV, and Dad’s surround-sound system. Dad has the Xbox and all of his boy toys in here. I only use it for the flat screen.
We just refer to it as Dad’s game room.
Jules has his arm draped over Benji’s shoulder glancing through another tat
too magazine with him. I wish I’d grabbed my cell phone. That’d be an awesome shot for those goofy Jenji memes. Tate curls up to himself in the corner of the sectional.
Noah waves me over. “
Wanna squeeze in with us?”
By ‘us
,’ he means himself and Milo. Hell freaking yes, I want to squeeze in. Noah makes this way too easy for me. He slides away from his beautiful band mate and allows me to squeeze into the space between them.
“Nice seeing you here,” Milo says.
My cheeks blush, and I pray they’re not as flaming as they feel. I glance around for the remote control to flip on the TV. Milo grabs my arm and pulls me back when I reach for it on the coffee table ahead of us.
“Emery wants us to wait for her,” he says. He slips his arm around my shoulders and leans in to speak more quietly. “So you’re stuck in awkward silence with us.”
Noah leans in on my other side. “Is it awkward yet?” he whispers.
The two of them burst into laughter, as if this were planned before I even walked into the room. I push both of them away with my elbows.
“I think I’ll go sit between Jenji,” I say.
I grab onto Noah’s
knee to push myself up from the sectional because God knows I would nervously slip and grab something I shouldn’t if I were to even touch Milo. But this was a stupid idea because I still have to step over the limbs known as Milo’s legs to even get close to the Jules Rossi-Benji Baccarini bromance.
“Good job,” Noah says. “You made her leave, Milo.”
I’m one step in between Milo’s legs when he purposely trips me and purposely catches me. His arms feel as strong and warm and perfect as I imagined they would. I could seriously melt into his skin and become one with him right now.
He spins me to his right, slides over next to Noah, and pulls me into the spot between himself and the corner of the sectional.
“You can’t sit with Jenji. Emery won’t allow that,” Milo says. He looks at Noah then back at me. “I’m not used to girls running from me like that. It sort of hurts my feelings, ya know.”
He
pouts his lip, just like Emery would, and Noah does the whole fake-comfort thing. Milo buries his face into Noah’s shoulder to fake-cry. So much for maturity.
I’m saved by my sisters, who rush into the room and make Milo look up from his pout fest. Aralie whispers something to Tate, and he slides down to give her the corner spot. She pulls him back toward her and cuddles up next to him like they’re the best of friends. I think I’m missing something, but I don’t have time to worry about Aralie and her boyband crushes. I have to deal with my own. Right now he’s sitting next to me with this perfect smirky smile on his face, and I’m sort of dying here.
Emery picks up the remote, turns the TV on, and flips directly to the music channel for the premiere. As the beautiful boy next to me predicted, she invites herself to divide
Jenji in half and inserts herself into the equation.
Ten seconds later,
Emery stands up.
“I can’
t sit by you, Jules,” she says.
She gravitates in our direction and crawls into the gap between Tate and Noah.
Then she makes her announcement. “Jules smells like crushed ladybugs.”
Any tension that may have been in the room instantly falters with our laughter. I half-expected Jules to fly off the sectional cursing and screaming. Instead, he laughs.
“It’s his cigarettes,” Benji clarifies. He leans over to his bromance brother and sniffs. “Sorry dude, Emery is right.”
Jules pushes him back, but a smile stays on his face – for once – and I’m relieved.
Emery turns up the volume, and the TV silences the room. I engage my attention with the shampoo commercial on the screen so I won’t allow myself to sneak glances at Milo. Really, I don’t want to glance at any of them because they have to watch their premiere in our mini-theatre instead of being in NYC debuting this video in front of thousands of screaming fans.