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“What are you doing?” she asks, frozen in place.
I don’t know why she’s being weird about this. “I want to know what song it was.” I position my guitar, but as soon as I’m situated, I realize why she’s acting like she has stage fright. I haven’t been this close to her since the first day of class, and it’s starting to make me uncomfortable, too.
It’s like seeing her in HD. From here, I can see a small freckle on her bottom lip I never noticed before, and her eyes are brighter—more captivating than I remember. My heel bounces against the dorm room floor, and I slam it down to stop it.
She snaps her laptop shut. “Okay, fine.”
Her hair is up, but a few pieces fall around her face and at the base of her neck. My eyes trail from her neck to where her oversized T-shirt has slipped, exposing her bare shoulder. My gaze snags on the black lace strap of her bra, and I can’t tear my eyes away.
It isn’t until she clears her throat that I remember why I came here in the first place.
I have a feeling I know which song she’s talking about. Of all the songs I’ve played tonight, one has an opening riff anyone would recognize. It’s a great way to open a song, and there’s a good chance she’s heard it before. Sometimes people notice what subconsciously sounds familiar. As soon as I start strumming the opening chords to Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know?” her face lights up.
“How did you know that was the song?”
I let out a breath of laughter. “Because you’ve heard it before.”
She pulls her head back, looking at me with a furrowed brow. “No, I haven’t.”
I stop playing. “Yes, you have. It’s from their most popular album, and that riff has been used everywhere. It’s overplayed.”
“I’ve never heard that song before.” She speaks slowly like I didn’t understand what she said the first time.
Setting my guitar aside, I shrug. “You should hear it with the drum track. It’s better than me playing it.”
“I’ll look it up. What’s it called?”
She opens her laptop, but I close it. “You can’t listen to it on those shitty speakers.” Getting up from her bed, I say, “Come on. I’ll put it on, and you can wear my headphones.”
Her eyes jump from me to the open door across the hall like it’s a terrible place she swore she’d never go. She hesitates before saying, “Sure. Okay,” and cautiously gets up to follow me.
After being in Margot’s tidy, put-together dorm, I’m blatantly aware of the mess mine is. Matt’s side looks like it could be used in a brochure for the college, but mine looks like it should come with caution tape. I’m messy, not dirty—there’s a difference. No one will find a half-eaten sandwich under my pile of clean clothes I haven’t put away yet.
I quickly shove those clothes off the bed so she can have a place to sit.
She eyes the pile on the floor and then the bed, and with that face, I know she’s regretting following me, but I’m too hellbent on playing her this song to care. Hesitantly taking a seat on the bed, she waits. I get the song ready. I hand her my headphones, and she pauses before slowly putting them over her ears.
I hit play.
Margot’s eyes snap to me as soon as the song starts, a smile teasing at the corners of her mouth. “You’re right!” she practically yells. I wince but can’t help laughing, and she drops her voice before continuing. “The drums take it from good to great.” She looks down, her head moving side to side with the sound of the intro, and even though I’m not, I feel like I’m listening to it with her. So, when her eyes widen again, I know it’s because Alex Turner started singing. She gasps and whispers, “I love his voice.”
My mouth quirks. Of course she does. We lock eyes, and as much as I want to look away from her, I can’t. There’s something magnetic about the way she looks as she listens to one of my favorite bands, and nothing could have prepared me for it.
“What’s going on in here?” Matt says from the doorway, and he already looks like he’s enjoying this more than he should.
You’d think the headphones electrocuted Margot with how fast she pulls them off and tosses them on my bed.
Rae stands next to Matt in the doorway, holding a to-go container and staring at Margot with a baffled expression.
“How was the date?” I ask before either of them can say anything annoying about Margot and me sitting here.
Rae and Matt glance at each other before both saying their own version of “It was good.” I try to read through the lines, but neither of them gives much away. Rae eyes us with a little too much amusement. “How was your night?”
Turning off my stereo, I shrug. “As good as can be expected when you live next to Margot.”
Matt laughs and looks at Rae. “And here I thought they were getting along for once.”
Margot gets to her feet, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she looks wounded by what I’ve said. But that doesn’t make sense. This is nothing new between us. This is what we do.
