Rowdy Boy

Well, it worked.

I glare at Cole, who doesn’t say a word to me. One simple look, that’s all he gives me.

One soul-crushing, searing look.

“Fuck you all,” I say through gritted teeth.

The girls laugh. The boys laugh. Everyone laughs. Except Cole.

But they got what they wanted. They got to me.

They made me remember why I came here. Why I ran.

They made me break down.

And I hate that I let them, so I turn around and march off even though I can still feel Cole’s coal-hot eyes burning into my back.

I won’t glance.

I won’t turn around.

I won’t even grace him with my middle finger.

Because even though he’s not worth a tear, they still made me shed one.

Cole

The hallway is filled with rumors and chatter, people whispering about how bad this whole scene was, but none of them take a stance. None of them dares to speak up.

Just like me.

I was dead silent while my boys and the fans following us tried to fall in line as though they had to protect me from imminent death. Ridiculous. They made it a big deal, made her feel uncomfortable … and then made her cry as a final nail in the coffin.

“Yeah, run, little girl!” Michael calls after Monica.

I immediately grab his arm and turn him my way. “Stop.”

“What?” he growls, jerking himself free.

The look on his face makes me want to punch him, but I refrain because he’s my bandmate, and I need to be on good terms with all of them. Otherwise, we’ll never succeed in chasing our big dream.

But at what cost?

“You’re beating a dead horse,” I say as he looks around at all the girls eyeballing him. There are not as many as who usually follow me, but enough to make him want to show off. That much is obvious.

“So what?” he scoffs. “I was just having some fun. Besides, she ran into you, remember?”

I shake my head. “I don’t fucking care.” And I turn around and yell at the crowd, “Party’s over.”

The girls pause and stare at me for a moment; almost all of them hanging on my every word.

My pupils dilate, and I make a shooing motion with my hand. “Scram.”

Finally, they leave us alone. But it still doesn’t chill the fire blazing in my heart.

“Really, Cole? Chasing away fans?” Michael says.

“They’re not fans; they’re groupies,” I growl back, turning my attention toward him. “Don’t ever try to protect me again, got it?”

He makes a face. “What’s your problem?”

I don’t want to fight. But the way he behaved makes me want to punch his jaw.

I’ve never felt this way toward my bandmates, and it terrifies the living shit out of me.

So much so that I turn around and walk away.

I don’t know what to do with this turmoil snaking its way through my head. This isn’t me. I never used to care about anything, let alone one silly girl.

Yet I can’t stop thinking about Monica and the look in her eyes the moment Michael mentioned her running away from her old school. They flickered with a kind of fear I’ve never seen before.

Something … vicious … and feral.

As though it would kill her to remember.

One moment she was feisty and ready to defend herself, but that one question knocked her off her axis. Why?

And why do I care so much that I want to know the answer?

Ruminating, I go up to the teacher’s area where there’s a private unisex bathroom that I’m allowed to use to escape the fans. The teachers don’t want me going into the regular bathrooms to prevent a traffic jam from everyone hoping to snap a dirty pick of my visits. It surprised me too that people would really sink that low …

Not as low as me, though, when I hear sniffles coming from the teacher’s bathroom.

I pause. Who is in there crying?

My hand instinctively hovers over the door handle because I’m curious to know who it is.

Right then, the noise stops, and the door opens right in my face.

A girl comes full stop right in front of me.

And not just any girl …

Monica.

She has access to the teacher’s bathroom too?

Interesting.

Standing in the door opening, she stops mere inches away from me, her body frozen to the floor as though she’s seen a ghost.

I can’t take my eyes off her, can’t focus on anything else but the sparkle in her reddened eyes, the fleeting happiness that has now been whisked away. I can’t look away. Can’t do anything but stare at her as she stares right back at me for a few seconds, before her fingers reach for her eyes, and she briskly wipes away any trace of her tears.

“What are you doing?” she asks. “Did you follow me?”

My lips part, but I don’t know what to say, so I say the first thing that pops up into my head. “I needed to take a leak.”