a good student. I don’t have a single athletic bone in my body…” I shrugged. “I can act.”
I felt his gaze on me, but he didn’t say anything. “If you’re already good at it, do you really need to go to college for it? Why not just…I don’t know, take a bus to New York. Start living your dream.”
I shifted because…the thought was terrifying. “I’m not as good as I could be.”
He gave a little huff of amusement. “You’ll never be as good as you could be. Any art is a work in progress, right?”
I stared at the side of his face, his features flickering in and out of the shadows and making me realize that…I didn’t know this guy.
I mean, I did. But I didn’t.
Just like he knew nothing about me.
And whose fault is that?
“I guess,” I said. “I just know that I need to improve if I want to succeed. I’m close…I think. But I’m not content with where I’m at. I feel like I’ve hit some barrier or something.” I clamped my mouth shut and shook my head, irritated by my own babbling. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Hopefully in time to nail my audition for the acting scholarship.”
“When is it?”
“Not until April, but I need to find a new contemporary monologue.” And that was how it started.
A normal conversation.
A real conversation about art and my acting and his music and our dreams and…
Weird.
It was weird. But what was really weird was how weird it wasn’t.
Did that make sense? Maybe not. But it was the truth. By the time we reached the outskirts of town we were fully engrossed in the kind of real, genuine, totally honest conversation I typically only ever had with Hannah.
Speaking of…
I groaned when I looked down and saw that Hannah still hadn’t texted back. Any second now I’d have to give him directions, tell him where to take me and I…didn’t know.
Man, how sad was that?
As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, Jax looked over at me. “Want to tell me why you can’t go home?”
I pressed my lips together. No. Not really. But, when he phrased it like that…I sounded like an abandoned cat or something. I didn’t want him leaping to the wrong conclusions, either. I cleared my throat. “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “My mom just has a date and…” Ugh, so gross. “He’s spending the night.”
Jax winced. “That sucks.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is.”
He arched a brow. “Your mom told you to stay away? ‘What it is’ sucks.”
I gave a snort of laughter. “Fine. It sucks.” I shrugged again, flashing a smile that I didn’t feel. “But it’s not unusual and I don’t really care.”
His head fell back with a groan.
“What?”
“Do you know you managed to go a full half hour without doing that.”
“Doing what?”
He sniffed and tossed imaginary hair as he flashed a horrifying grimace that was clearly supposed to be a smile. “It’s fine. Everything’s great. I’m Rose Parson and my life is perfect.”
He sang that last part in a ridiculous falsetto that had me laughing even as I punched his arm. “I don’t talk like that.”
“No but you do act like that.”
I opened my mouth and nothing came out because…yeah, I totally did. It was just that no one called me out on it being an act.
No one ever despised me for it.
“Fine. Maybe I do,” I said. And for some reason I could never explain, I blurted out, “It’s nothing personal.”
He slowed the car and for a second I thought he might be stopping, but he just turned on his blinker and made a right.
We were not heading toward my house. Or Hannah’s. We were heading in the opposite direction. “Where are you taking me?”
“My house.”
I blinked. I realized I’d never been to his house before. I didn’t even know where he lived. “Wait, your house? I told you, I—”
“Relax,” he said. “You can just hang there until you hear from your friend. And if she doesn’t get back to you, I’ll take the couch.”
I wanted to argue. I really did. Except…where else was I supposed to go?
He pulled into a driveway in front of a house that was small and weathered. The lights were all off. “Is everyone asleep?” I asked.
“Let’s hope so,” he muttered under his breath.
I remembered what he’d said earlier about how he’d become friends with Simone. “Your parents are still together?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Happily?” I hedged.
He shot me a cute little smirk that made