Page 24 of Our Moon (JACT #1)

“Shh,” I whisper, and she giggles again. “Ally,” I say, firmly this time.

“That tickled,” she laughs. We had family dinner tonight, and I hid out in the backyard after driving my car around the corner, waiting for Ally to slip out. Evidently, it tickled when I grabbed her as she rounded the side of the house.

“Not was I was going for, baby girl.” A heated look comes across her face, and she pushes me against the side of the house and plants her lips on mine.

Her arms wrap around my neck, and my hands go to her waist. When she pulls me in tighter her shirt slips up and I feel skin. I groan. “Baby girl, we gotta stop.”

She shakes her head, telling me no, but I pull away. “Chase,” she whines.

“Ally, you really test my control. You know that, right?”

She smirks and lifts up onto her toes to kiss me again. I give in, because she tastes so damn good; it’s too hard to resist, and I pull her body into mine. She moans in approval, and it takes all I have, literally, all I have, to pull myself away from her.

She has the most adorable pout face. Too bad she overuses it.

“Sorry, baby girl. You need to go back inside, it’s a school night.”

She rolls her eyes. It’s her typical response when I mention school. “Whatever.”

I kiss her on the tip of her cute nose and hug her close. “I’ll miss ya until I see ya.”

“Me too,” she whispers. I pat her on the ass as she walks away, and I certainly don’t miss the glare she shoots me before she rounds the corner.

I lean back against the house and wait a few minutes before heading around to the front of the house. Just as I break from the tall hedges that line the house, I bump straight into Alex .

“Shit! You scared the hell out of me.”

“What are you doing back here?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

“Thought I heard something,” I lie.

“Didn’t you go home?”

“Forgot my keys.”

“Was Ally just back here?”

“I didn’t see her.” The lies come out too easily. I feel like such a jerk.

“I just saw her come from this way,” he presses.

“Maybe that’s what I heard then?” I offer. I think I’m playing it cool on the outside, but internally I’m freaking out. “But I didn’t see anyone when I got back there.”

He looks at me questioningly for another moment, then nods. “Yeah, okay.” Sadly, he has no reason to think I’d lie to him. I’m the worst kind of friend.

We both turn and walk to the front of the house. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, see ya, Chase.”

That was close. Too close.

** *

It’s a Friday night and I’m in the garage with the guys, practicing a new song to play at our gig the following night.

“Where’s Ally?” Trevor asks. She’s been a staple around the garage during practices again, so it’s unusual for her to be missing.

“Out with Lucy,” I answer.

“How do you know?” Alex asks, and I still. Shit. I know because she texted me. I know because I know everything she does, just like she knows everything I do. I know because I can’t keep my mind off of her for a minute. But I can’t tell her brother that. I can’t tell my best friends that.

“Heard her mention it yesterday,” I quickly cover.

He nods in acceptance, and I feel like a total asshat. Like Alex, my best friend has no reason to think I’m lying to him. I never have before. We’re as close as brothers, as close as he and Alex are. As close as he and Ally are, maybe even closer since she’s a chick and all.

“Yeah, they’re going dress shopping or some shit. They were talking about it at lunch.” Alex adds, giving me an odd look. To be honest, I’m a little nervous around him after he almost caught me and Ally the other night.

“Dress shopping?” Why don’t I shut my big fat mouth? But I can’t help it, she didn’t tell me she was dress shopping .

“Yeah, for graduation,” Alex says.

“That’s still two months from now,” I say.

“How the hell would I know? Girls do weird shit.” Alex says. “I’m going commando under my gown.”

And he says girls do weird shit. Joey laughs while Trevor and I shake our heads. “That’s a visual I didn’t need, bro,” Trevor says.

“Let’s take it from the top, boys,” Joey says, starting us off with the beat for the first song on our set list.

We have about a dozen original songs, and the rest we do are covers of bands like Three Days Grace, Theory of a Deadman, and some of the softer Stonesour hits.

Our set list consists of about half and half.

We’ve tossed around the idea of cutting our own demo to sell at our shows and send off to labels, but we decided to wait until after Alex graduates so we have the time to dedicate to it without pulling his attention from school any more than being in the band already does.

Mr. and Mrs. Monroe have been supportive of the band, and we don’t want that to change.

We play through the set list one last time, and I rush out of there, eager to get home and talk to Ally.

** *

“I almost slipped up today,” I tell Ally when we’re talking on the phone later that night.

“How?” she asks nervously.

“At practice, Trev asked where you were and I told him you were shopping. Alex asked how I knew, and I freaked. I told them I overheard you mentioning it yesterday.”

She laughs. Laughs. I gave myself a minor heart attack earlier, and she thinks it’s funny. It’s the same reaction I got when I told her about my run-in with Alex the other night. Apparently she had gotten the same line of questioning from him, and fortunately, somehow, our stories matched up.

“Not funny, baby girl.”

“It’s kind of funny.”

“Wouldn’t have been funny if he beat my ass.”

She sighs, “We’re going to have to tell them eventually.”

“But I like my face,” I whine.

“I like your face, too, baby. But you know the longer we wait, the worse it will be.” She’s got a point, but that still doesn’t mean it’s going to be good when we tell them.

“I know, baby girl. I just wish we could stay in our little bubble forever. ”

“I don’t,” she says sassily. “I want to shout from the roof tops that you’re my man.”

I laugh. “And I want to shout that you’re my girl.”

“Swoon.”

“Did you just say ‘swoon’?” I laugh.

“Shut it, Baker.”

I laugh harder. “You’re such a girl sometimes,” I joke because we always tease her at practice when she acts like a girl because she’s always been one of the guys. She’s not ‘one of the guys’ to me anymore, but I still have to pretend.

“Yeah, but you like me as a girl,” she flirts.

Ain’t that the truth? “That I do.”

“And I like you as a boy.”

“Man.”

“Same parts,” she says flippantly.

“Bigger parts,” I return.

“Can test that theory?”

I groan. She’s killing me. “Yes.” I hear her gasp. “Which is exactly why you shouldn’t.”

I hear her huff. “One day, Chase Baker. One day. ”

I don’t know if that’s a threat or a promise, but it feels like both.

***

It’s rare that Ally and I are ever alone together when we’re not hiding behind a corner or in the dark. Sneaking around isn’t fun, especially when you each spend about seventy-five percent of your free time with the people you’re trying to sneak around on.

But Mr. and Mrs. Monroe took Trevor and Alex to Guitar Center to get some accessories they needed.

Usually Trevor and Alex would go alone, since both are clearly old enough to drive and shop without their parents, but I think Mr. and Mrs. Monroe tagged along because they want Alex to point out the guitar he’s had his eye on, so they can get it for him as a graduation or birthday present.

I play guitar in the band, and Alex sings, but he’s always been interested in learning the guitar and, personally, I think it would be cool to have a second guitar in the band.

Alex insists he doesn’t want to play on stage, but we will see what happens.

So Ally and I are alone. In her room. No brothers. No parents. Just us.

Just us.

And Ally is wearing skimpy little boy shorts with a skimpy little tank top.

Fuck my life .

“Ally,” I groan. “Will you put some pants on or something?”

“It’s hot,” she says as she shrugs one shoulder.

“It’s hot,” I mimic in a high pitched voice that doesn’t sound anything like her.

She laughs as she fiddles around with her iPod. She finally finds what she’s looking for and pops the gadget in the docking station, allowing music to pour through the speakers.

“What’s this?” I ask. She usually listens to hard rock, and this isn’t hard rock. It has a sexy, bluesy sound.

“Mazzy Star,” she says. “‘Fade into You’ is the name of the song. I heard it in Starship Troopers, and loved it.” She’s walking towards me slowly, swaying her hips back and forth. She stops about two feet in front of where I’m sitting on her bed and motions for me to come to her with her finger.

Because I absolutely can’t resist her, I stand up and take the one step necessary to be standing right in front of her. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and rests her head on my chest. “What are you doing?” I ask.

She removes her arms from my shoulders, grabs my hands, and places them on her waist. Then she puts her arms back on my shoulders and rests her head on my chest again. “We’re dancing, ya big goof. ”

I smile and wrap my arms all the way around her waist to pull her closer to me, resting my cheek on top of her head. We move back and forth at the foot of her bed for the length of the song and a few other similar ones that follow it.

“I like this,” I admit.

“Me too,” she says.

“Everything okay, baby girl?” I ask.

“Everything is perfect,” she tells me.

I want to tell her I love her because I do.

In this moment, I’m certain that I’m in love with this beautiful girl I’m dancing with.

But I don’t tell her. I can’t tell her. This is all so crazy.

A whirlwind even. A year ago we were just blips on one another’s radar, and now? I don’t think I could live without her.

And everything about that is wrong.