Kissing the Shy Guy - Stephanie Street Page 0,22

her hands.

“I’d pay money for that,” Bella said.

I hid my frown and shoved down an insane spark of jealousy.

“Yeah, but how to get him to do it?” I asked. “He’s already busy with Breakout. And what would be in it for him? I can’t see him being interested in the scholarship.” Something told me Adam wasn’t on the college track.

“Blackmail,” Lydia suggested in an offhanded way that had Bella and I staring at her. “What? You just said he had no motivation to help you. We just have to provide the motivation for him.”

Bella shook her head. “You really are terrifying, you know that?”

I shook my head. “Not blackmail.” But something. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of working with Adam.

Lydia caught my eye and pumped her brows up and down in a way that made it impossible not to understand what she meant.

I frowned. “I am not using my body to find a partner!” A girl had to draw the line somewhere, after all.

Lydia grinned. “I didn’t mean that exactly. But he is a guy, and you are super beautiful.”

“Thank you very much, but I’ll just have to think of something else.” And I would, I decided because the scene had begun to take shape in my head. Instead of Josh as Tony, the erstwhile would-be lover of Maria, I saw Adam. And now I couldn’t unsee it.

Lydia straightened and flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but I think it’s your best idea yet. Even better than that douche, Josh.”

“Anybody would be better than him,” Bella agreed.

“Good grief!” I huffed irritated. “Why didn’t you guys tell me you hated him so much?”

Both my friends rolled their eyes, and we all laughed. I wasn’t known for taking advice from anyone. I liked to think I knew what I was doing at all times. It was a good lesson to learn, however, that my friends were right sometimes. Maybe I could learn to trust them a little more.

We let my problems take a backseat to the second half of Outer Banks, staying up way too late to watch it. As much as I enjoyed looking at Chase Stokes, I couldn’t get Adam or the idea of him helping me win the DIVA scholarship off my mind. But why would he do it? I didn’t know. It would be worth a shot to ask anyway.

9

Adam

I spent the rest of the weekend after the funeral hanging out with family. Mom gave me a hard time for showing up late, but Breakout had had a gig before the funeral. I would have made it back in time if the van we used to haul our equipment hadn’t blown a tire.

I’d barely known my dad’s uncle Tom. He’d been in a nursing home for the last ten years. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d met him. Still, I would have made it on time if I could have.

Monday at school, everything was back to normal. No one would ever accuse me of being a great student, but I wasn’t horrible either. That didn’t mean I wasn’t jonesing to play my guitar by the time lunch rolled around, though. And with the tour coming up, we had some serious work to do during our short rehearsal times.

Because Asher played hockey—due to some whacked out agreement with his father—and had a girlfriend, we did most of our practicing during school, using our free period and skipping lunch to play. Jordan Parks, Asher’s girlfriend, usually sat in with us. And I’d been telling everyone about running into Jenna at the funeral which they’d all known about since I’d been stressing about being late because of the flat tire.

“Jenna was doing what?” Jordan asked as we all sat around the small practice room. It was big enough for a small drum kit, electric keyboard, and few music stands and stools.

I shrugged. “Helping with the meal the church ladies put together.” I didn’t know much about the church itself. Uncle Tom and his wife were the only ones from our family that were members.

Jordan frowned, perplexed, obviously finding it difficult to picture Jenna helping with anything. “Helping how?”

“I don’t know. Bussing tables. Refilling food. I first saw her out at the dumpster.”

Jarom shook his head. “Weird. I didn’t know Jenna had a nice bone in her body.”

I thought she had several nice bones in her body, at least