Four Doors Down (11 page)

C
harlie grabs my hand and pulls me out of his car, telling me to hurry up as he tugs me along behind him.

He’s so cute.

After a lot of stress and despair (on my part), Sam finally convinced me to get Charlie tickets to see The Red Rhinos
for his birthday. I’d never heard of them but Sam told me Chris had mentioned them and they were an up and coming British band that were touring the States. When I saw the look on Charlie’s face when he opened his card with the tickets inside, I knew Sam had been right. He loved them.

We make our way up to the entrance of the small club and I’m suddenly nervous, thinking I might get carded but the bouncer barely looks at us and when we make our way in. The room is swamped. Like literally filled to capacity. You can barely move. I look around and I’m suddenly apprehensive. I love going to gigs and I love live music, but it’s usually chilled and open mic nights. Not like this. This place is crazy. You can’t take a step without bumping into someone. The crowd in here seems a lot older than us. Everyone’s got a drink in their hand and seem to be shouting at the people in front of them. I automatically feel myself step closer to Charlie.

He wraps his arms around me and when I look up at him, his eyes are shining. He bends down and kisses me quickly on the mouth and my grin spreads. He’s happy. He loves it and that’s all that matters. This night is about him and as long as he’s happy, then I don’t care about anything else.

He leads me over to the bar and orders us a couple of drinks while my eyes scan the venue behind us. I check my phone; Sam and Chris are coming too and are supposed to meet us here, but I haven’t seen them yet. I take the drink that Charlie offers me and attempt to not screw up my face when I taste the liquor in it. I still haven’t forgotten how hellish I felt after that Madison party and I do not want a repeat performance of that.

“Charlie?”

My head turns and I see a tall blonde standing a little further down the bar looking our way. Charlie steps out in front of me blocking my way. She comes over and hugs him in greeting, and I see her eyes sweep to me in interest and I wait for him to introduce me, but he doesn’t. I step closer to them, trying to listen to their conversation, but they’re leaning into each other and talking quietly. That coupled with how loud it is in here means that I can’t hear a word of what they’re saying. Someone knocks into me from behind and I drop my purse on the floor. By the time I’ve managed to pick it up in and amongst all the different legs, the blonde has disappeared.

“Who was that?”

Charlie glances down at me. He replies but I can’t hear him over the sound of the warm up act on the stage. I shake my head indicating that I can’t hear and see him glance down the bar again. My eyes follow him and the blonde is standing down there with a couple of other girls, and they’re all looking over at us.

Suddenly Charlie grips my hand and starts pulling me through the crowd, shoving people out of our way and tugging me to move faster. He doesn’t stop until we’ve reached the other side of the bar where it’s marginally quieter and then when he does it’s so sudden that I bang into the back of him. I look up at him in confusion.

“What’s wrong? We were supposed to wait over there for Sam and Chris.”

He smirks down at me and looks around him quickly.

Now I’m confused. Who was that girl? Why was he so eager to get away from the bar? And why is he looking at me like that? “Charlie, who was that girl?”

“Just some girl from my old school.”

“Your old school? So why didn’t you introduce me?”

“Because she’s a nobody. Just some bitchy gossip.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “You were worried about what she’d tell me?”

A slow smirk crosses his face and his eyes flash with amusement. “Becca, she knew me when I was just a pimply little kid, and if she told you all my secrets you might not let me do to you what I want to.”

“What? What do you want to do?” I’m confused and keep getting distracted by the people brushing past me. I glance behind me, trying to spot Sam in the crowd, but before I know what’s happening Charlie grabs my wrist and is pulling me into a hallway that looks like it leads to the bathrooms. Before we reach them, he pulls me down a hallway that leads off from the one we’re in and takes a sharp left and then a right so that we’re facing a dead end with just a fire exit at the end. Just when I think we’re about to go outside, he pushes me up into the corner and when I turn around, he’s stepped in front of me, blocking my view with his body only inches from mine.

My heart starts hammering in my chest, and when I look into his eyes, they’re already boring into mine, a glint of mischief in them. His hand drops down and brushes my bare thigh, just under the hem of the dress I wore especially for him. I hardly ever wear dresses, it’s not usually my style, but I wanted to look good for him, so I pulled on a midnight blue shift dress that skims the top of my thighs and matched it with black high-heeled boots. My breath hitches as his hand brushes the hair out of my face and my eyes dart behind him, looking at the dark hallway behind us.

He drops his head so that it’s level with mine, a small grin on his face, and his lips brush mine. I jerk my head away from him and shake my head slightly. “What if someone walks past?”

He grins at me and glances quickly behind him. There’s no one there, we are pretty sheltered here and unless you wanted to use the fire escape, then it’s pretty unlikely that anyone would come down here. He turns back to me and the look he gives me flips my stomach and I feel myself leaning into him despite my reservations.

“Thanks for the birthday present,” he whispers before covering my mouth with his, and then just like always, nothing else but Charlie matters. I’m totally consumed by him and forget about everything else. Just like always.

I wish I was still in that corner by the fire exit. We made out for a good ten minutes and I was ready to forget about the gig and get out of there, but then we heard over the speakers that The Red Rhinos
were starting and Charlie pulled us back out into the main room. Although I tried to stop him and was trying to tug his arm back, he pulled us right into the middle of the crowd, getting practically to the front of the stage. He positioned me so that my back was up against his chest and although that was okay at first, making me feel semi-comfortable, the crowd around us soon started jumping to the rock songs the band is blasting out. I try to join in, but I don’t recognize the music and even in my heeled boots I still feel really small compared to those surrounding us. Pretty soon the whole area had turned into a mosh pit and when I look around, Charlie had been swept closer toward the stage.

My panic begins rising. I hate big crowds. Absolutely hate them. I hate being the center of attention in the middle of a crowd and I hate being surrounded by people in a confined space. I’m definitely claustrophobic, there’s no doubt about it. I shouldn’t have let Charlie pull me into the middle of all these people, but I’d wanted to please him and not make a fuss. Now I don’t know what to do.

I take a step to the side and get pushed back again; someone’s beer sloshes against my back and I feel a hand swipe at my legs. I have no idea if the hand swipe was intentional or not but it just raises my anxiety levels even higher and I start trying to inch my way out of the crowd.

“Excuse me,” I say, trying to weave my way out of the crowd but I can’t get anywhere. I look around and realize that I’m surrounded by guys. Drunk guys who are jumping up and down into each other as they sing along at the top of their voices. Someone pushes into me and I go flying into the guy beside me who pushes me away; I feel like a human pinball machine getting ricocheted in between them. This is a total nightmare and I can feel the panic start to peak within me, and I feel like the crowd is closing in on me.

Suddenly someone grabs my arms and pulls me hard out of the group. I’m pulled through the crowd until we break through to the end and reach the front of the club. That’s when I realize the guy who grabbed me is Luke Masters, a guy from school. He turns around to look at me, giving me a reassuring smile as he pulls me to the door that leads to the exit. As soon as we break free into the cool air, I breathe a sigh of relief, and Luke leads me over to some tables that are set up outside where people are standing and smoking. He sits me down on a chair and instructs me to stay there, and then he disappears for a couple of minutes before returning with a bottle of water for me. I guzzle the water greedily and eventually my breathing starts to return to normal. That was horrible, absolutely horrible.

“You okay?”

I nod and offer Luke a small smile. “Yeah, thanks. I just…” I trail off. I don’t know what that was, I just know that I had to get out.

“It’s cool. My sister gets panic attacks. I know how scary it can be.”

I guess that’s what it was. A panic attack. I’ve only ever had one before and it was in a similar situation when I got separated from my mom on a busy street in LA when I was younger, but I’ve not had one since then.

I smile gratefully at Luke. He’s a really nice guy. He transferred to our school sophomore year and is in a ton of my classes, and we always got along really well. In fact, at one point I was pretty sure he was going to ask me out on a date. He definitely hinted at it, then he joined the football team and all but stopped talking to me. Ryan probably told him I was a social leper that should be ignored at all costs. Looking at him now he seems genuinely concerned and I’m reminded of what a nice guy he is. “Thanks, Luke.”

“You sure you’re okay? You looked pretty scared in there at one point. Want me to call someone for you?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“You sure? I could call Jackson for you? I’m sure he’d come right away.”

Jackson? Ryan Jackson? The only way he’d come would be to laugh at my freak out
. I shake my head. “It’s fine. I’m with my boyfriend, but we got split up.”

Luke nods and grins at me. “Maybe best to stay near the back next time?”

I grin back. “Hell yes.” I reach into my purse and check my phone, expecting a message from Charlie wondering where I am, but there’s nothing. He’s clearly enjoying the band too much to notice I’m not there. There’s just a couple of messages from Sam asking where I am and I quickly fire off a text telling her my location. Luke keeps me company until she finds me with Chris in tow.

Sam and I spend the rest of the evening outside leaving the boys to enjoy the band inside. She feels the same as me; it’s way too busy and sweaty in there. We laugh at ourselves for thinking that we were cool enough to attend a rock gig and instead order wings and fries and wait for the boys who come out a couple of hours later, their faces shining with excitement and I realize tonight wasn’t such a washout after all. Charlie clearly loved the band, so that’s all that matters.

I
plop down in my seat opposite Sam for lunch. We’ve sat at the same table for the full three years we’ve been at this school and it’s always the same crowd. No, we’re not the most popular and some of us could even be described as geeky, but I love my lunch crowd. It’s my favorite time of the day.

I glance down the table and see Erica already in full-on story mode. Erica cracks me up. She has the most active love life out of anyone I’ve ever met and somehow weird stuff always seems to happen to her. She lifts her hand in greeting at me but doesn’t even slow down the pace of her story. Seriously, she should be on stage. She takes a breath, pausing for dramatic effect, then literally freezes, her mouth gaping open slightly.

What’s happening
? Everyone else has gone silent too. I turn around to see what’s happened, finding Ryan standing next to me. He’s wearing a tight white t-shirt, which shows off his tan, and when he lifts his backpack onto the table, you can actually see his muscles clenching. His hair’s all stuck up like he’s been running his hands through it and his eyes are glistening with amusement.

Okay, even I’ll admit he looks good today.

The cocky smile on his face tells me that he’s well aware it’s his presence that has caused the open mouths and silence. It’s pathetic but that’s the kind of power Ryan holds at this school. People pay attention to him and he doesn’t exactly swing by our table often.