Rhythm, Chord & Malykhin Page 79
He bumped me again. "I did, don't worry."
“Does it run in your family?"
"Yeah. My grandma, my mom, my oldest sister and I are all diabetic.” He hit my hand with the back of his. "I'm gonna use the bathroom; meet you at the gate?"
"All right." He shot me a little smile before turning to go toward the restroom. I stood there and watched his butt for possibly ten seconds. He was wearing sweat pants—like most of us were in preparation of our two-day travel itinerary—and his just happened to magnify his butt perfectly. Ha-lle-lu-jah.
Stop. Stop it, Gaby.
The clearing of a throat had me turning in a different direction. My brother and Mason were walking toward me, both of them smirking like they knew something I didn't. Damn it.
"What?" I asked after joining the two of them.
"I saw you." Eli waggled his eyebrows.
I tried to control my face so that I wouldn't give myself away completely, but then again, this was my brother. Not just my brother, my damn twin. We pretty much had ESP. But… "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh no? You weren’t just standing there checking out his ass?”
I blinked and I scoffed but couldn’t hide the stupid grin on my face. Busted. “No. I just thought he had a stain on his pants.”
Even Mason snickered as Eli pushed at my shoulder. “What? Kissing Julian wasn’t enough?”
“What?” I croaked out, knowing I hadn’t told him about what happened because I hadn’t spoken to him since before the game. Once we’d gotten back to the hotel, I’d gone straight to my room.
“Yeah, you were all over TCC’s fan page. Somebody posted a picture of y’all on the Jumbotron at the game yesterday." He laughed from deep in his big barrel chest.
The blood drained from my face. If being on the Jumbotron period wasn’t bad enough, being on The Cloud Collision’s media page was so much worse. They weren’t exactly a new band. "Seriously?" I choked.
Familiar green eyes glittered at me in amusement. "Oh yeah. Their fan totally posted that shit for all four hundred thousand of their followers to see."
The idea of so many people seeing and judging me… no thanks. Once, a couple years ago, Eli posted a picture of him and me on their Ghost Orchid page. Needless to say, the comments had flattered and insulted me at the same time. Since then, I’d tried to stay away from having my face plastered on the Internet for everyone to see. Some people were cut out for criticism from strangers. I wasn’t. "He just kissed my cheek, Jesus Christ. He didn’t stick his tongue down my throat,” I argued.
Eli made kissing noises as he pursed his lips together like the baboon he was. "Flabby and Julian, sitting in a tree—"
"Shut your mouth," I groaned, knowing he was just trying to be a pain in the ass. While Julian was attractive, I felt nothing toward him except friendship or something close to it.
It was Mason who threw an arm over my shoulder, leaning almost too much weight onto me considering he was almost a foot taller. “You should look at the pictures.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why?”
He squeezed my shoulder. “Just do it.”
“But why?” I asked again, knowing he didn’t have it in him to be cryptic longer than a second.
The breath he blew out of his mouth told me I was right. “Somebody didn’t look exactly happy.”
My eyebrows went up on their own, remembering the exact face he was referring to. Sacha had looked disturbed, maybe even angry, and that was a surprise. In a month and a half, I hadn’t seen him more than marginally frustrated. He was incredibly even-tempered and almost always had a smile on his face. With last night being the exception.