"I saw you." Eli waggled his eyebrows.
I tried to control my face so that I wouldn't give myself away completely, but then again, this was my brother. Not just my brother, my damn twin. We pretty much had ESP. But… "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh no? You weren’t just standing there checking out his ass?”
I blinked and I scoffed but couldn’t hide the stupid grin on my face.Busted.“No. I just thought he had a stain on his pants.”
Even Mason snickered as Eli pushed at my shoulder. “What? Kissing Julian wasn’t enough?”
“What?” I croaked out, knowing I hadn’t told him about what happened because I hadn’t spoken to him since before the game. Once we’d gotten back to the hotel, I’d gone straight to my room.
“Yeah, you were all over TCC’s fan page. Somebody posted a picture of y’all on the Jumbotron at the game yesterday." He laughed from deep in his big barrel chest.
The blood drained from my face. If being on the Jumbotron period wasn’t bad enough, being on The Cloud Collision’s media page was so much worse. They weren’t exactly a new band. "Seriously?" I choked.
Familiar green eyes glittered at me in amusement. "Oh yeah. Their fan totally posted that shit for all four hundred thousand of their followers to see."
The idea of so many people seeing and judging me… no thanks. Once, a couple years ago, Eli posted a picture of him and me on their Ghost Orchid page. Needless to say, the comments had flattered and insulted me at the same time. Since then, I’d tried to stay away from having my face plastered on the Internet for everyone to see. Some people were cut out for criticism from strangers. I wasn’t. "He just kissed my cheek, Jesus Christ. He didn’t stick his tongue down my throat,” I argued.
Eli made kissing noises as he pursed his lips together like the baboon he was. "Flabby and Julian, sitting in a tree—"
"Shut your mouth," I groaned, knowing he was just trying to be a pain in the ass. While Julian was attractive, I felt nothing toward him except friendship or something close to it.
It was Mason who threw an arm over my shoulder, leaning almost too much weight onto me considering he was almost a foot taller. “You should look at the pictures.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why?”
He squeezed my shoulder. “Just do it.”
“But why?” I asked again, knowing he didn’t have it in him to be cryptic longer than a second.
The breath he blew out of his mouth told me I was right. “Somebodydidn’t look exactly happy.”
My eyebrows went up on their own, remembering the exact face he was referring to. Sachahadlooked disturbed, maybe even angry, and that was a surprise. In a month and a half, I hadn’t seen him more than marginally frustrated. He was incredibly even-tempered and almost always had a smile on his face. With last night being the exception.
But Mase was right.
When I’d turned around after the Kiss Cam and seen the expression on Sacha’s face, I’d frozen and taken a second to absorb it. In the blink of an eye, he’d wiped the look off and smiled tightly. He’d kept smiling tightly the rest of the game. From that moment, all the way up to him getting in line behind me to go through security minutes before, he’d acted a little strangely.
I didn’t let myself think about it. What was the point? Maybe he thought I was a floozy for letting his friend kiss my cheeks. As soon as the thought entered my brain, I pushed it away. That wasn’t like him. It was dumb.
“Who knows what he was thinking. It doesn’t really matter,” I said to him with a shrug.
My friend squeezed my shoulder in return as we made it to the gate and went to a vacant seating section where we plopped down.
I glanced at my ticket before slipping it into my backpack’s zipper. “Is one of you sitting next to me on the flight?”
“Why?” Eli asked.
“Because…”
He leaned back and eyed me. "Let me guess, you’re going to sit someplace else?"
When I nodded, Eliza started howling and thrust his hand out in Mason’s direction. "You owe me twenty, bitch."
"Damn it, Gaby," Mase grunted, already reaching into his pocket for his wallet.
"You assholes bet?"
