She's Got the Rhythm

Chapter Thirteen: This Means War

            “Alrighty, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Candace said over the noisy machine. She was making copies of flyers to hand out for the winter show.

            She took out another stack from the copier and handed them to me. “Count and make sure there’s twenty in that one,” she instructed.

            I did as I was told, and looked at the flyer. It was designed beautifully; our band logo was wrapped in Christmas lights and it had the date and location of the show. We were going to play at The Grill Bar in Tempe again. At the bottom, Candace had also put “Wear your ugly Christmas sweater for a free hot cocoa inside!”

            Haha, I wasn’t exactly sure if there was going to be hot cocoa but it was a good promoting technique.

            “Okay, I counted twenty,” I handed the stack back to her.

            “No, you can keep those, hand them out at school today, I’m gonna make some more and then you can give them to the guys to hand out,” Candace explained.

            “As if,” I muttered.

            “Hey, how’s it going?” Ryan came over and put his arm on my shoulder.

            “Pretty good,” I answered as I stacked the fliers.

            “Awesome, almost done sis?” he asked.

            “Yeah,” Candace gathered the last stack from the copier and handed them to Ryan. “Here, give it to the other guys and tell them to hand out as many as possible. I ran out of ink but I can go to Kinko’s if you guys need more.”

            “Thanks, we really appreciate it,” I said and grabbed my bag off the floor.

            “See you later,” Ryan called.

            “Bye,” I said as we walked up the stairs.

            Once we were upstairs, I could feel Ryan staring at my back side.

            “What?” I glanced over my shoulder to see if anything had gotten on the back of my shirt.

            “Oh, it’s nothing. Your butt just looks really good in those jeans,” he gave me a mischievous smile.

            He was such a flirt.

            I could feel my cheeks turning pink.

            “You have an eyelash on your cheek,” Ryan told me when we got in the car.

            “Oh,” I tried to wipe it off but was unsuccessful. Instead, Ryan reached over and brushed it off. It was the most intense, intimate feeling-the feeling of his rough hand over my soft skin.

            We stared at each other for a moment, like they do in movies as if preparing for a kiss and what I hoped wouldn’t happen did. Again.

            He kissed me passionately.

            It’s not that I didn’t want it, it was just wrong. I thought we were going to take it slow not keep it a secret from everyone.

            It seemed like Ryan didn’t even want to talk about it with me either. At least we were somewhat of a couple but we couldn’t even hold hands at school cause someone we know could see and then tell the guys in the band. Which I kinda wanted to happen, but the band was going so well, I didn’t know how they’d react, would we have to break up? I hoped not.