Sacha's gray eyes shot over to me as he tossed his backpack inside his bunk. His facial expression softened and he shook his head. "Don't worry about it." His cheeks pulled up into that crooked smile that made my insides turn to goo and the sensation made me feel weird. What the hell was going on? "It was worth it,” he continued.
I shoved the gooey feeling aside and focused on him and what he’d done. "It was pretty awesome," I laughed. "Thank you."
He lifted a shoulder but kept those hypnotic eyes on me. "Anytime,Streetfighter."
I snorted before closing the distance between us and throwing my arms around the middle of his chest, hugging him. It took him all of two seconds to realize what I was doing before he wrapped his arms over my shoulders, squeezing me to him tightly. I didn't care that he was sweaty, that his undershirt was drenched and clinging to him like a second, wet skin, and obviously he didn't care that I'm sure my hair smelled like it could use a wash, because he hugged me for a minute that seemed to stretch ages and eons. This was my friend, my friend who got into an argument with people he had a more important relationship than the one we had, and he didn't care.
I hugged him even tighter.
It was in that moment, when I was hugging him as if my life depended on it, that I recognized the strange, gooey emotion that had been floating around in my belly the last portion of the night.
I liked Sacha.
Chapter Nine
“Let’s play Twister.”
“No.”
“C’mon, Gaby.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?”
I sighed. “Fine.”
“Naked?”
Isetmy book of the moment on my lap and nodded over at Mase with a straight face. “Okay. I’ve always wanted to see what a hermaphrodite’s body looks like.”
Gordo snickered from his spot across the living space from his bandmate and me. We had a day off for the first time in nearly three weeks thanks to a twenty-hour drive between cities. At the eighteenth-hour mark, the cabin fever and boredom was beginning to reach epic proportions. Not even Mario Kart could ease the hysteria bubbling up through all of us—or at least those of us who were awake.
“You know I’m a man,” Mason objected, yanking on my earlobe in retaliation.
I smirked in his direction, eyeing the black hair that was in need of a good washing. “If it looks like a woman and screams like a woman—it’s probably a woman.” Tapping the tip of his nose as he scowled, I smiled slyly. “You sure sounded like a lady when you screamed bloody murder when that rat ran across your foot yesterday.” I pinched the tip of his nose.
In all honesty, I had screamed too, and the rat hadn’t even gotten within ten feet of me. The point was that Mason had pulled a horror movie actress on us and screeched like he was auditioning for the role of the hot, horrible-decision-making, half-naked girl in a bad scary movie. Only he, Gordo, Carter and I had been outside when it happened. If Eli had been there, every person on Ghost Orchid’s Facebook page would have known about what happened. Eli had a knack for filming things that ended up going terribly. Like at Rafe’s college graduation, when a girl walked off the stage. Sure she could have hurt herself but she didn’t, so it was okay to laugh at the video about a dozen—or five dozen—times.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
Those blue eyes that I loved in a brotherly way glared at me. “That mutation was the size of a possum.”
“I’m pretty sure it might have been a mouse,” I corrected him.
“Potatoe, potato, shut the hell up, Flabby,” he huffed. “You would have done the same.”
Gordo leaned forward on the couch, resting his elbows on his knees. “Bro, I’m surprised you didn’t start crying.”
Mason scowled before going on a rant about how much of a girl Gordo was because he got teary-eyed when we’d watchedThe Blind Sidea few days ago.
I sat there listening to them go back and forth until Sacha came out of the bunk area a few minutes later. The man slept so much it bordered on being a coma. His face was soft, a little puffy and creased as he made his way through the kitchen, bumping knuckles with Mason and Gordo before he plopped down on my other side. “Morning, Jean-Claude,” he yawned, slouching as his legs fell open. One hairy knee relaxed against mine. The shorts he slept in were bunched up high on his thighs.
I tried not to think about the realization I’d come to the night before—the stupid one—but it was a lot harder to do than I expected. The only rationalization I could reach was: Who wouldn’t like Sacha? He was handsome, funny, kind and incredibly talented. Wouldn’t there be something wrong with me if I didn’t like him?
