“And oh so humble,” I snorted.
“It was a joke, bonehead. Seriously, I think I want to explore your feelings for me. Aren’t you even the littlest bit curious as to how that might go?”
I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at her point blank. It took a few seconds for my mouth to catch up to my thoughts.
“No,” I said succinctly.
“What?” She asked, her chin dropped to her chest.
“No, I can honestly say I am not in the least bit curious.” I noticed and stared at the stop light ahead of me. The light turned green just as the truth of that hit me. “Huh. That’s funny.”
“What is exactly supposed to be funny here, Callum?”
“I don’t want you anymore, Sam.”
“Uh! What? That can’t be, Callum. You don’t stop loving someone just out of nowhere like that.”
“I think what I felt for you was more lust than love, Sam. How can you truly love someone who harbors no real interest in you? I may have been pathetic but I knew I was worth more than the way you treated me. Besides, it wasn’t meant to be. Trust me, it just wasn’t meant to be.”
I started walking towards Cherry’s but she pulled my sleeve hard and I almost lost control of the bag I was carrying.
“Callum Tate, I’m giving you a chance. I think we both know you’d be missing out if you didn’t take it.”
“Ah, and there’s that winning charm. You may still be a sort of sweet girl, Sam, but you really have no idea what humility is nor do you know what really matters in life.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Oh come off it, Callum!” I didn’t acquiesce and that made her visibly angry. She tucked her hands at her side and leaned her head back. “And I suppose this Harper chick, she knows what’s important in life? I already know how humble she must be seeing as her simple looks have probably already instilled that little life lesson.”
I dropped the bag I was carrying and instinctively got closer to her face, my blood boiling underneath my skin. “If you ever talk badly about Harper again, Sam. You and I will never speak again.” I picked the bag back up and started to walk off quickly but stopped and threw over my shoulder, “You and I both know that her simple looks are a little more complex than you’re implying. In fact,” I said, turning and walking back to Sam, to drive the point home, “I’d go so far as to say she’s the most complex girl I’ve ever come across and that includes even the most illustrious version of you, Sam.” I stared her down and it took her quite awhile to remember to blink. “See you tonight.”
When I walked in to Cherry’s, Cherry and Harper were cuddled up next to one another laughing like they’d known each other their entire lives.
“What are you guys talking about?” I asked, already laughing.
“Oh, Cherry was just telling me about the time you were at one of her shows and were dancing with a girl with bright orange hair, lost control of yourself, then fell through the bathroom doors.”
“Oh God! Cherry! You told her that?”
“Yeah, but I forgot the part where you...” I had already dropped breakfast on the nearby coffee table and was on top of Cherry, my hand covering her mouth, before the rest could come out.
“Don’t even think about it, Cherry Bomb!” Both the girls were laughing so hysterically at me that I couldn’t stifle the grin threatening the corners of my mouth. “Seriously, Cherry, if you tell her the rest, I’ll never talk to you again!” She nodded but the laughing tears in her eyes told me otherwise.
I slowly unwound my hand from her mouth and she jumped up, running to the other side of the room.
“And then,” Cherry said, betraying me, but she stopped talking just in time to escape my chase. She finished her story as I chased her in circles, as if I wasn’t humiliated enough. “He couldn’t stop the momentum and...”
“Don’t do it, Cher, I beg of you!”
“He tripped face first into the urinal on the wall!”
I gave up the chase and fell to the ground, my back on the floor, and covered my face in utter embarrassment. “You did it. You told her.”
“And the worst part is someone had their camera out and caught it all on film,” Cherry finished, sucking in a labored breath.
Harper was laughing so hard, she couldn’t breathe.
“Why is my life so hard?” I asked the ceiling.
“Oh my God, Callum. That is the best and worst story I’ve ever heard!” Harper said, falling to her back on the sofa in amusement. She sighed loudly, like she’d just caught her breath.
“I’m going to die of embarrassment,” I said.
Cherry started to rummage through the bags, chuckling to herself. Harper stood up and laid down next to me. She wound her arm with mine and I let my hands slide off my beet red face to the floor. I turned my head to stare at her.
“You can’t die of embarrassment, trust me.”
“Can I die of humiliation?”
“No,” she said, taking in my flushed face. “Well, maybe,” she teased.
I elbowed her, then stood up before taking her hands and bringing her to her feet. Her body came dangerously close to mine as she stood and I had to shake my head to regain composure. All I wanted to do was attack her face and neck with my lips.
I walked over to the bag. “I’m going to kill you, Cherry.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, plopping herself on the sofa and taking a long swig from her coffee. “Ah, the nectar of the gods.”
“You know,” I said, removing my own coffee from the carton and setting in next to Cherry, “Harper doesn’t drink coffee.”
“What?” Cherry asked. “Get out of my house.”
I laughed. By this time, Harper had started going through the bag.
“You got me strawberry jam? Oh! And extra sugar! I think I’m in love with you, Callum!”
Customarily, a statement like this would be passed over as exaggerated but an uncomfortable silence filled the room and Cherry took it as some sort of hint. Harper just stood with her back turned toward me, pretending to fiddle with the lid to her tea.
“I’m gonna’ hop in the shower,” Cherry said, winking at me and making me blush.
As Cherry, left the room, the silence grew so thick I could almost reach out and grip it in my hands.
“Harper,” I said, clearing my throat. “I, uh, wanted to...”
A loud knock came at the door. Damn it!
“I’ll get it,” Harper said, setting down her tea but I realized who it might be and jumped up quickly.
“No, um, let me get it,” I said, practically cutting her off.
When I swung open the door, Sam stood there again and Harper came to stand behind me.
“Oh, hi, Sam,” she said, leaving the door way. I turned to see her attending to that darn lid.
“What’s up, Sam?”
“Oh, nothing,” she lied. “I just needed to talk to Cherry about tonight is all.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and clenched my teeth but opened the door anyway. It wasn’t my home to kick her out of and she was in the band with Cherry. I walked to the coffee table and picked up the bag. I watched Harper through the corner of my eye as Sam came in and closed the door behind her. Sam swung her arms as she sauntered toward the sofa and plopped down on top.
“It’s so freaking hot outside,” she said, removing her short jacket, revealing only a tank top underneath.
I rolled my eyes but Harper didn’t catch it. She was too busy watching Sam. Before long, Harper’s gaze flitted back to me, then back to Sam one more time. I sat in Cherry’s arm chair, hoping Harper would make eye contact so I could tell her to squeeze in next to me but she wasn’t paying attention and sat on the opposite side of the sofa from Sam. Another awkward silence filled the room. Cherry came out from the bathroom dressed but her hair wrapped in a towel.
“What’s up, Sam?”
“Nothing really. I wanted to go over the set list.”
“Oh, yeah. Cool. Let me grab my bag. I think I left it on the washer,” Cherry said before leaving the room for the small kitchen.
Sam turns toward Harper without missing a beat, revealing the true reason she came. “So, Cherry tells me that you and Callum are getting an apartment together?”
Harper turned the palest shade of white and gulped audibly. She looked at me, tears welling in her eyes.
“Yes, we are,” I told Sam but looking intently at Harper. “We had a slight hiccup. It’s not a big deal but we will eventually get an apartment together.”
“Isn’t that a little weird? I mean you guys barely know one another. Are you, like, that kind of girl?” Sam asked Harper with more acid than I felt necessary.
She wasn’t even pretending to be nice and she was implying that Harper was not classy or something. I couldn’t stand for that.
“No, Sam!” I said. “We’ll have two separate rooms. We’ll be proper roommates.” I sat back in my chair, feeling satisfied that I defended Harper’s honor.
Harper
Any doubt I had that Callum may have liked me, completely vanished the instant he insisted to Sam that we were strictly roommates. I felt like such a complete fool. He liked Sam. And who wouldn’t? Sam was gorgeous.
She was tall, well taller than me, with bright beautiful blonde straight hair that tapered down her back. She had light blue eyes and a body that could rival Brooklyn Decker’s. Who, by the way, I finally realized she looked exactly like. I believe I was close to the exact opposite of Sam. Bigger hips, bigger eyes, bigger lips, bigger hair. Everything about me was bigger than her except for my height, of course. I had coppery hair and gold eyes which I’d always thought were sort of my best features until, that is, I met Sam, now I wasn’t so sure.
Yeah, she was prettier than I was, maybe, but that didn’t bother me. It never really bothered me to meet girls prettier than I was. I was jealous of Sam for a completely different reason. She had Callum’s attention. I thought, at first, that he was getting annoyed at her but then I realized that he was probably annoyed with her. She belonged to Charlie and she was untouchable. That would be enough to drive anyone insane.
“Harper?” I heard but Cherry said it in such a way that it made me think she’d been trying to get my attention for awhile.
“What? I’m sorry. Did you need me?”
“I was asking if you wanted to borrow any clothes for the concert tonight.”
“That’s really nice of you to offer but you’re like six foot tall, Cherry. I doubt anything would fit.”
At that, Cherry only laughed. “Come on, girl. Just check out my closet. I think I may have a few mini’s in there that would fit you. Any of them would look chic with a pair of combats,” Cherry said, winking at me.
She picked me up by my arm and dragged me to a closet set deep within the wall. She opened the doors and an unbelievably amount of clothing practically burst out.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” I said, in shock. “How do you even close the doors?”
