In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(53)

“I don’t know the protocol here, do I close this? Or…will your dad knock me out with a bat if I do?” I chuckle.

Her eyes grow wide for a second and she starts wringing her hands, then swallows.

“Oh, uh…well…I guess you can close it? I mean…yeah, just close it,” she says, straightening her posture mid-speech and shaking out her nerves with a flit of her hand.

I smirk and look at the door handle, then back to her. Her eyes are wide on it again. She’s nervous about being alone with me, which is either really good, or really bad.

“You know what? It’s your parents’ house, and out of respect…” I say, letting go with the door about six inches from closed. I see her exhale.

“Thanks for coming with us, and for what you said to Lane,” she says.

My eyes find hers like magnets, and I hold them as long as she’ll let me, eventually blinking, her long lashes sweeping over her freckle-dusted cheeks as her gaze falls to her lap and her teeth pin her lip in this perfect grin. Her smile is like her songs.

“Your brother is a really neat guy,” I say.

She giggles. “Ha…neat. That’s…that’s just a really strange word to see come out of your mouth,” she says.

My mouth twists as I raise my eyebrows once.

“I just meant…you’re like…cooler than the word neat,” she says, her tongue all nervous, the words having a hard time flowing.

I glance up and run my hand through my hair, holding it out of my eyes, and she remembers that she has my hat.

“Oh, yeah…” she says, standing and pulling it from her pocket. She hands it to me. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“Thanks,” I say, sliding it on and moving to the opposite wall of her room, sliding down with my legs out in front of me.

There’s a short period of silence, and at one point, we’re both chewing at the inside of our mouths and staring at each other.

“It’s a neat hat,” she finally says, giggling lightly and blushing at her joke.

I kick my foot forward into her toe and she glances up.

“You’re neat,” I say, which only makes her blush worse.

Satisfied, I lean forward and run my thumb along the spine of a few of her music books. I stop when I reach a thin booklet labeled THEATER PHOTOS. I pull it out halfway and look to her for approval. I already stepped over the line stealing her songbook, which I’m glad I did. I saw the one about last night at the club with me. But I didn’t want to embarrass her. I meant what I said, too—the last song I flipped to, the one at the beginning, hit a nerve. She should put music to it.

Murphy shrugs, so I pull the book out, flipping through scrapbook pages of her in many of our high school productions. I recognize some of them from the yearbook, but there are others that are just of her with friends behind the scene. In a few of them, she’s being held by a guy I faintly recognize. I bet he was a nice guy. I hate him.

“Boyfriend?” I ask, quirking a brow and touching the photo in question.

“Hookup,” she says, holding my gaze. I wait for her to say she’s f*cking with me. She doesn’t, so I widen my eyes and mouth okay. She laughs once as I gaze down.

“Like you can judge,” she says once my eyes are no longer on her.

Her response stings, but I keep my eyes on the pictures in front of me and give her that one, because she’s right—like I can judge. Though, since I heard her song, I haven’t done any hooking up. Nobody seems to be able live up to the temptation Murphy already is.

I flip to another page and she lets out a heavy breath, so I look up.

“Yes, boyfriend,” she says. “I don’t know why I said hookup. I just wanted to seem cooler than I really was, and now I feel stupid,” she says, hooding her eyes and lifting her fingers one at a time to peek at me.

I give in with a half smile.

“It’s okay. And…” I look down again, flipping through more pages, “I liked it better when he was just a hookup. Not really crazy about boyfriend.”

When I glance up again, her eyes are waiting, and her mouth is shut. She isn’t blushing, but she’s understanding a little more. Yeah, Murphy…this is about more than music. You aren’t just neat.

Her book is in my lap, and her body is in front of me, and all I want to do is toss it to the side and sit up on my knees to touch the real thing, but then there are those little digs she takes. I’m pretty positive that Murphy wouldn’t trust me if I did.

I don’t really blame her.

“I stuttered,” she says, breaking the silence. Our eyes are still locked as she speaks, her pupils dilating with her honesty. I can see the panic coursing through her veins, and I can tell her heart is beating harder. “You asked about Helen Keller. Earlier. I…I stuttered. I loved theater, and I wanted to be on stage, but I couldn’t…I still can’t…get the sentences out.”

My eyes fall to her hands, which are twisting again.

“It was really bad when I was younger. My mom homeschooled me until high school, but I wanted to have friends and to have that high school experience. Totally overrated, by the way,” she chuckles.

I smirk, because I understand. I lived the life of the party, and I said yes to everything and everyone in my circle of friends. I did it because I had nowhere else to be. If I went home, it was suffocating, unless nobody was there, which was most of the time. When my father was home, the questions came fast and my answers were pointless. Make sure you test high in AP. Did you ask for college credit? See if your counselor has scholarship packets. Did you say you wanted to take music? That’s a waste of time. Don’t waste time. Frivolous. Pointless. Useless.