In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(57)

My phone buzzes with a call, so I stash my pen in my mouth and tuck my notebook under my guitar strings, sitting on a crate and resting my instrument on my leg so I can talk.

“Hey girl. I’m bringing some of the office people. I hope that’s okay. They’re dying to see my famous friend,” Sam giggles. I pause, taking note of the male voices in the car with her.

“How many?” I ask.

“Just Cam,” she says, her voice trailing up on the end, which signals that it is not just Cam. He’s the guy she’s been flirting with at work. He’s kind of her boss, and it’s wholly inappropriate, but when I tell her she just giggles. Sam and Cam—that alone should be a deterrent for her. “And then his best friends work a few buildings over and they usually commute together, so I invited them.”

“How many friends?” I shouldn’t be nervous. They aren’t anyone to me, and Paul’s is familiar. But they’re unfamiliar. And I’m not sure what that will do to the vibe here—my shelter.

“Four?”

She says it like a question.

“That doesn’t sound like a very big number, Sam. Surely you can count that high,” I say, and I’m being a bitch. But Sam knows my issues. She’s known me since high school. She’s the other half of the Helen Keller picture—she was my f*cking Annie!

I hear the phone rustling, and I can tell that she’s covering it with her hand and trying to move to a more private place. I thought they were in a car, though, so I don’t know what that place could be.

“They’re good guys, Murph. And they’re excited to see you. I talk about you all the time when we go out to lunch. When they found out Cam and I were coming tonight they just sort of tagged along,” she whispers. I hear a whistling sound in the background and that all-encompassing round of masculine laughter that comes along with a frat party.

“Are they drunk?” I ask. I can already feel my pulse racing.

“No…not…not really,” she giggles.

“What the hell, Sam! Are you drunk?”

“No,” she says, and her effort to hold in her chortle loses and she snort laughs. “Okay, okay. We got a party bus.”

“What? A f*cking bus?” I’ve set my guitar on the ground in my case and am now hunched over, rubbing my head and thinking of a good place to throw up.

“It’s not really a bus. That’s just what they call it. It’s more of a limo, actually. It’s fully stocked. Cam paid for it. It’s fun; you should come out with us after you’re done. Oh…hey, we’re almost there. I’ve gotta go!”

My mouth is held open when she hangs up before I have a chance to tell her not to bother coming. It wouldn’t matter. This disaster snowball is already rolling.

My arms are sweating. And I can feel the saliva overtaking my tongue. I lean forward more and spit, which is gross and totally ungirly, but it’s better than retching.

My phone buzzes against my leg, and I consider tossing it into the garbage bin across the alley. I pinch the bridge of my nose instead, feeling a migraine threatening to break through and turn this evening into the most awesome nightmare ever when I focus on the text message that kicks off a whole new conflict of emotions in my belly.

It’s Casey.

I need to talk to you.

That’s it.

I need to talk to him too. I’m not going to. I just need to. I need to tell him to quit f*cking with my head, and to not leave me hanging after saying things like I’m beautiful and special and…he called me beautiful, goddamn it!

“Murph? You out here?” I hear the smack of the door around the corner and soon my friend Steph is standing under the lights of the neighboring restaurant back entrance.

“I’m here,” I say, raising a hand and palming my phone. “I was just working out a few new things.”

“You look like you’re getting sick,” she says. Steph has seen my not-so-great performances. She just thinks its stage fright. If that were my only demon.

“Yeah, that too. I’ll be all right, though. I’ll be in in a few minutes.”

Her feet shuffle in the gravel and I plaster a huge smile on my lips to look at her, because if she comes over to check on me, I’m not so sure that the fake grin will do the trick close up.

“All right. Well, your friends are here,” she says.

My stomach rolls.

“Awesome,” I say, holding up a thumb.

She chuckles and turns toward the door, her guitar hung around her back all Johnny-Cash style. Steph is hip like that. She looks like Joan Jett, but sings country. Maybe I can convince Sam to lie and tell her crew of boyfriends that Steph is really me on stage. Knowing that won’t work, I bend forward and spit one more time, saying a quiet prayer that the contents in my stomach stay put, then close up my guitar case and head inside to Paul’s. At this point, my performance is going to be whatever it’s going to be. I shove my phone into my back pocket and pretend I never saw Casey’s message in the first place, because really? I can only handle one hot mess at a time.

Almost an hour passes between Steph’s session and the one right before mine. I’ve been hanging out in the back, pacing between Sam’s table of misfits and the line of performers for the night at the bar.

I’ve never met Cam before, but he hugged me. So did his cousin Ted—I think that was his cousin. They look nothing alike, so they may have been messing with me. I’m pretty sure Ted isn’t even his name. It doesn’t matter really, because I don’t care who any of these guys are. I’m hopefully never going to see them again. I’m most certainly never going to hug them again.