“Like what?”
I spin toward him and hold the drumsticks up for him to see. Then, when I have his full attention, I start spinning them between my fingers. Five years of baton twirling has prepared me for this moment, and I twirl my freaking heart out. The sticks pick up speed, blurring as they spin between my fingers. I stand up and walk to the center of the garage studio, where I throw the sticks up, spin around while they’re in the air, catch them in my fingers and immediately start spinning them again. “Got it?” I ask, echoing what Mike asked me earlier, and he laughs.
“No way. You win.”
I grin and show off by tossing the sticks into the air again, planning to catch them behind my back this time, but when my phone rings in my pocket, they both clatter to the ground.
Chapter 20
It’s difficult keeping up with Dee and Rowan on a regular basis, but on a three-way call after the day I’ve had?
Dee: “You’re going to fuck his brains out tonight, right?”
Rowan: “Dee—”
Dee: “He’s single!”
Rowan: “She doesn’t want to be a rebound!”
Dee: “Who’s a rebound? He’s in love with her!”
I step outside into the freezing air, because I would rather die a slow death of frostbite or hypothermia than have Mike hear any of this ridiculous conversation.
“Hailey,” Rowan counsels, “you know you can take turns staying with me and Dee to finish out the semester, right?”
I don’t get a chance to answer before Dee scolds, “Don’t tell her that! She’s living with Mike now!”
“Guys—” I start, but in their bickering, they don’t hear me.
“Dee, that’s too fast!”
“You did it!”
“Guys—” I try again.
“That was different! I—”
“How was it different? You—”
“GUYS.” Dead silence stretches on the line, and I take a deep breath. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m going home to Indiana tomorrow.”
More silence.
“Guys?”
After a moment, Dee: “Why would you do something so stupid?”
And this time, Rowan doesn’t rush to my defense.
“What choice do I have?” I ask as a night breeze nips at the tops of my ears. I’m standing outside Mike’s front door, illuminated by his porch light and a sky of October stars. “I can’t afford to stay here.”
“I can probably get you a job waitressing at the restaurant where I used to work,” Dee suggests. “The job sucked major ass, but—”
“And next semester?” I counter. “When Danica gets her dad to stop paying my tuition, I’ll have to drop out of school. There’s no way I can afford it on my own.”
“But this semester is already covered, right?” Rowan asks, and I know she has a point. A semester at Mayfield University is more than I would have been able to hope for just a few months ago, and I know that leaving now would be a waste of all the hard work I’ve done over the past two months. A waste of my uncle’s money. A waste of each time I bit my tongue while Danica made me earn every cent of that tuition.
But I don’t want to be a burden on Rowan and Adam, or Dee and Joel, or Mike. I know they would let me stay with them for the two months left in the semester, since they’re my friends, but it’s because they’re my friends that I don’t want to let them. They didn’t sign up to be donors to my charity case of a life . . . This is my problem, not theirs.
“Can’t your parents help you?” Dee asks while I’m lost in thought, trying uselessly to figure another way out of leaving.
“If they could, do you think I would’ve spent the past two and a half months living with Danica?” I sigh and squeeze my eyes shut, already feeling the sting in my heart from saying what I need to say next. But they need to understand—they need to understand that none of this is that easy. My voice is quiet with confession when I explain, “I don’t wear thrift-shop clothes because I’m eccentric . . . You two realize that, right?”
“Hailey,” Rowan immediately cuts in. “First off, you’re beautiful and your clothes are amazing, so shut up with that crap. And second . . .”
When she doesn’t finish, I ask, “Yeah?”
“Well . . . I don’t really have a second thing yet. Let me think.”
The three of us stew in silence while I sit down on Mike’s front porch. The cold bites through my back pockets, and in the green Ivy Tech hoodie he rescued for me the first night we met, I wrap my arms around myself.
“I’m going to research scholarships,” Rowan finally decides.
“Me too,” Dee agrees.
I anchor my stare on the moon, helpless as the world turns round and round and round toward tomorrow. “There’s no point,” I tell the two girls I’ve grown to consider close friends. “I’ve already researched them all.”
“Hailey, becoming a vet is important to you . . .” Rowan starts, but I can’t think of that right now. I can’t because there really is no point. I can’t because it hurts.
“I know, but—”
“I’m researching them anyway,” Rowan insists, and Dee echoes the plan.
“Me too.”
I want to tell them I’ll miss them when I leave—I’ll miss coffee with them at school, I’ll miss their insane phone calls I can’t keep up with, I’ll miss Dee’s crazy texts and Rowan’s silly laugh.