I stared at her, dumbfounded for a moment. “Huh?”
Mia blinked as she gave her head a quick shake. She looked at me, as ifmyreaction was confusingher. “Dude, you were just in a huddle with the Saints number eight.”
She was either ignoring my obvious question, or she was so used to guys hitting on her that she was now oblivious. I would probe later, I decided. I looked around and saw Jett and Gray talking to Wade, and I pointed them out to Mia. “He wanted to meet Wade.”
Lame, lame, lame . . .lame!
“But you didn’t introduce him,” Mia said to me in confusion.
“Ladies, how did you like the set?” Alex asked as he came up to us.
“You were great,” I told him truthfully and smiled when Shane joined us, handing a bottle of water to Alex.
As Mia talked to the guys, I couldn’t help but track the Santos as they spoke to Wade. Wade looked like his usual self, and he was talking happily to them. There was no universe that existed where Wade and the Devils were in the same orbit. What on earth were they talking about?
“That okay with you, Ava?” Shane asked me, and I turned back to them.
What? “Of course,” I agreed.
He smiled at me, and then both guys were heading back to the stage.
“You have no idea what you just agreed to, do you?” Mia said to me, her voice heavy with amusement.
“Tell me,” I urged as I watched the Santos leave the bar. Jett didn’t even look over his shoulder or in my direction at all. It was as if I didn’t exist. He had held me to him and hadn’t let me go when I tried. What did that mean? Did any of it mean anything?
“It’s nothing to worry about, we’re going to hang back at the end and then go to Orchard together.”
I nodded and flinched back when her hand appeared in front of my face.
“Now, are you going to tell me why you were all up in Jett’s space?” Mia asked me curiously.
“I was?” I asked her incredulously. “Did you even see the way you and Ash reacted to one another?”
Mia looked around the room. “Ash?”
“You’re ridiculous,” I murmured as the band began to play, and the music made it impossible to speak anyway.
Mia and I helped clean the tables when the music was over, and Sheryl was delighted with our help. When the band was all packed up and the bar had its normal Thursday night clientele, we waited outside for the guys to load the van.
“Who’s ready to party?” Wade cried when we were all in the van, and I laughed as he waggled his eyebrows.
I felt my shoulders relax as we got ready to leave the bar. I was looking forward to the party.
Chapter 19: Ava
“It’s a Thursday night, it’s hardly going to be an all-nighter,” I reminded Wade.
“Why? I got no classes until twelve tomorrow,” Wade said smugly as he started the van. “We played really well tonight, and I’m up for gettinglit.”
“And Sticks doesn’t go to class on a Friday,” Shane said with an amused look over his shoulder at the drummer.
“You have no classes on a Friday?” Mia asked him in surprise. “Lucky.”
“I have class,” Sticks told her as he twirled a drumstick in his hand. “I just don’t go, ain’t got no time for that shit, it’s Friday.”
Mia looked at me, and I giggled at her expression. Sticks once told me he lived to the beat of his own drum and no one else’s, and although I was sort of impressed at his own self-awareness at the tender age of twenty-one, I also knew he was stoned when he told me. In fact, Sticks was usually stoned.
“So, Wade, you got Devil groupies?” Mia teased as we drove, and my heart almost stopped in my chest at her complete lack of discretion as she just blurted it out.
