Page 10 of I Think We’re Alone Now

Elle

The sunlight streamingthrough the window of the tree house in my parents’ backyard hit me right in the face, forcing me awake. The sun making its way in here at this angle meant that it was already late morning, and if I hadn’t been on vacation I would have scolded myself for being so lazy. But I was on vacation, so I was going to enjoy the moment.

My thoughts immediately flew to Travis and everything that had happened between us yesterday. My heart fluttered at the memories of holding his hand and laughing with him. Oh, and the way he kissed me. Nothing I had ever experienced felt as good as his hands and mouth on me. But then I remembered his hesitation. Had he not enjoyed yesterday the same way I had? He had to have enjoyed it some—after all, the dressing room happened. But so had the interruption from Bryan. Did Bryan say something to him that I didn’t know about? Or maybe it was Glitter. Did watching me perform turn him off?

“Uggggh,” I groaned, throwing an arm over my face. Why were boys so frustrating?

A knock at the little door of the tree house made my heart skip a beat, and I sat straight up. Travis’s face peered into the window, and he gave me a small wave. I returned the wave, unsure of what exactly he was doing here.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” he said as he let himself in. I scrambled to pull the sleeping bag up around me, suddenly very self-conscious of the well-worn oversized T-shirt I was wearing. He handed me a cup of coffee before sitting down on the other end of the full-size mattress. "This place looks different than I remember.”

I took a sip of coffee, purposefully delaying the conversation. While there was a part of me that wanted to launch into the explanation that my dad had converted it into a “honeycomb hideout”-type space for me in high school, from the “no girls allowed club” it had been when Travis and Bryan were around, I also didn’t know where we stood. It felt weird to have him up here with me. Sure, the space had been originally built for Bryan, but my Dad had gone a little over the top with it, making sure that it had windows that were properly sealed, a door that fully closed, and a real set of stairs that led to the front porch portion of the structure, all of which were still solid as the day he built it. After they had gone off to college, this became the place I visited when I wanted to escape the world. The same reason I opted to sleep out here last night rather than in my old bedroom.

“It’s now the ‘no boys allowed club,’” I said, taking another sip. “It’s under new management.”

“Good thing I’m a man and not a boy then,” he remarked.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your mom told me you were out here.”

“No, I mean here, at my house,” I said.

“Well, I’m your bodyguard now.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard if I’m at my own house,” I snapped. I could hear the attitude in my voice, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need a babysitter, and I most certainly didn’t want him here unless he wanted to be here.

“I wanted to see if we were okay,” he answered, looking at me like he was unsure of what the answer might be.

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

“You ran out of there last night pretty quickly. I guess I thought that maybe we were going to hang out, but then you just took off.”

“I was tired,” I said simply. It was the truth—I was exhausted after the show. Not just from that performance or the exciting day he and I had spent together, but in general. It’d been a long nine weeks on the road, hitting up malls in thirty-six different states. It had also been exhausting putting on an act and not being able to really be myself.

“Is that all?”

“Yes,” I snapped.

“You know they train us in the army to know when a person is lying, right?”

I heaved out a sigh, annoyed. I had no idea if what he said about the army was true, but even if it wasn’t, Travis knew me well enough he wouldn’t have needed such training. “Why didn’t you want to be my bodyguard?”

“What?”

“When Linda asked you last night if you were interested, you hesitated. And then passed it off onto me making the decision. Like you didn’t want to have to say no.”

“That’s not what I was doing, Elle,” he said, scooting closer to me and taking the hand that wasn’t currently holding a coffee mug. “I wanted to make sure that you were okay with me taking the job. I acted incredibly unprofessional yesterday. And while I enjoyed every fucking second of those unprofessional moments, I didn’t want you to think that you had to say yes.”

I sat there, stunned by his words. I wasn’t sure which ones caught me more off guard—that he wanted it to be my choice that he was my security person, or that he enjoyed yesterday as much as I did. And for many of the same reasons.

“Oh,” was all I managed to reply.

“So are we cool?”

“We’re cool,” I whispered.

“Good, because I have been dying to do this since you got off stage last night.” Lifting the mug out of my hand and leaning forward, he pressed his lips to mine, giving me an unapologetic kiss. His lips were warm and tasted like coffee, making me almost want to swallow him whole. He slipped his tongue into my mouth, running it along the inside of my lower lip. A shiver ran down my spine and shot out my toes as he did so, and I arched into him. I had dreamed of kissing him like this, in this tree house, for so many years. Now that the moment was here, it was better than I could have ever imagined.