"What can I say?" I ask. "You're influencing me."
"I hope not," he says. "You shouldn't take anything from me."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not a good influence, Addy-girl," he says. I hear him fumbling for a cigarette, and then his face is illuminated in flickering shadows by the flame from the lighter. He looks at me, the glow of the cigarette giving him an eerie appearance. "I'm not a good person."
"Don't be a dumbass," I say, rolling onto my side to look at him. "Why did you start smoking again?"
Hendrix shrugs. "Because I'm a dumbass."
"You're not a bad influence," I say.
"Says you."
"As opposed to my mother?" I ask. "Or your father?"
"They wouldn't like this, you know," he says. "I shouldn't be here with you. On a road trip."
"So?" I ask. "We can hang out. What's wrong with it? Why shouldn't we go on a road trip?"
Hendrix turns, blowing smoke in the opposite direction, and then he faces the water, not looking at me while he sits in silence. My heart is pounding in my chest, and I sit up on the blanket, drawing my knees up and wrapping my arms around them. I think Hendrix is about to tell me we can't be friends anymore.
It feels like we're having a breakup conversation, except that you can't actually break up with someone you're not dating. The thing is, I don't want to be just friends with Hendrix. Every time he touches me, it's like electricity flows through my body. That's not normal. That's not what happens when the boys I've gone out with have tried to hold my hand, or kiss me, or...go farther than that.
And all I can think about, all the time, is how it would feel for Hendrix to touch me.
"Sometimes a road trip isn't just a road trip, Addy-girl."
"You're so annoying," I say, only because I don't know what else to say.
I can hear him exhale. "You're no picnic yourself, sweet-cheeks."
"Yet you keep hanging out with me."
"What can I say?" he asks. "I'm just a glutton for punishment."
"Now you're saying that hanging out with me is punishment," I say.
He's quiet for a long time before he speaks. "It's goddamned torture," he says. "Every moment of every fucking day I'm near you is fucking torture."
The strain in his voice is evident by the way it cracks around the edges. My heart thumps louder, and I wonder if he's able to hear it in the quiet stillness of the evening. Doesn't he realize it's fucking agony for me to be around him all the time, wanting him the way I do? "So why even hang out with me if you hate it so much, Hendrix?"
"You don't get it, Addy-girl," he says, not moving.
"Get what?"
"Being away from you is a million times worse."
PRESENT DAY
Being in close quarters with Hendrix after what happened is a form of torture -- cruel and unusual punishment. I wanted to drive myself to the recording studio, but the record label sent a car to take us to the interview with the magazine and then the recording session, as if they don't trust me to show up on my own. So now I'm stuck sitting a foot away from him, pretending as if nothing happened between us. Pretending that Hendrix didn't overhear me speak his name from the other side of my bedroom door.
Just the thought of it makes me flush white-hot.
So we sit here on opposite sides of the car, ignoring each other, Hendrix looking straight ahead and me scrolling through the messages on my phone, trying to distract myself from the fact that I can smell Hendrix's aftershave from where I sit. "You're making a face," Hendrix says.
He's not even looking at me, sitting beside me in the back of the car, so how would he know?
"This is my regular expression," I say.
"No, it's not," he says. "It's your checking-text-messages-you-hate face."
"How do you know I'm getting text messages I hate? Have you been reading my texts?" I ask, my voice going up an octave. "You can't do that!"
"Oh my God, relax, Addy," he says, laughing. "No one is reading your text messages. Well, the NSA probably is, but that's it. I was just making an observation. You've been making that face a lot lately. You need to chill the fuck out."
"Oh." I look down at the most recent text from Jared.
Srsly, A. Don't be a bitch. You knew what you were getting into. And don't put me in a fucking song.
That's message number fifteen from Jared over the past week, since I walked out on him at the club. Four in the morning and he's getting a blowjob in the bathroom of the filthy club he insisted I go to with him and his friends to celebrate his birthday. But I'm the one who's a bitch.
I press the delete button. As if I'd write any song about that douchebag. Besides, the record label is writing and approving all of my songs; they have been for years. I'm just the mouthpiece.
There's a text from my friend Sapphire.
Hey ho. Where the F have u been? Party 2nite. Call me.
"Oh," Hendrix says. "Is that the boyfriend texting you?"