Page 15 of The Music of Us
No, she seemed to say.But his boots smell like really fancy Italian cow. You should take a whiff.
“Sylvester as in Stallone or the Looney Tunes cat?” I asked sarcastically.
“As in a musician, actually. He’s an old, famous guitarist.”
Well, that tracked; Jake always loved guitar. Though a musician using another musician’s name to go undercover seemed ironic, I decided not to argue Jake’s choice of aliases. His choice of disguises, however? That I would argue. Clothes were my domain.
“Is this supposed to be your incognito look?” I asked, giving him a once-over. “You literally just added a baseball cap to your normal outfit.”
“Hey, they’ve used this disguise in at least three Marvel movies,” Jake protested. To support this piece of trivia, he pulled the hat out from where he’d stuck it in his back pocket and put it on. Next, he reached inside his jacket and retrieved a pair of oversized black sunglasses.
It looked like the outfit Amber’s sister wore when she returned from spring break, hungover from drinking too many margaritas. She had on a giant hat that shaded her faceandthe biggest, darkest sunglasses I’d ever seen, yet she’d still puked in her front yard’s fuchsia bush.
Amber’s mom had made all three of us sit down for a forty-five-minute lecture on alcohol.
Jake took in my skeptical expression, then glanced down at his outfit. I didn’t know how he could see it in his sunglasses. “You don’t think this works to check into a motel?”
“They’re going to see your obviously fake name and think you spent the night partying and underage drinking.”
“I thought of that.”
“Of partying and underage drinking?”
“Ha, ha,” he said, the laugh coming out in a dry, unamused staccato. “I meant I thought about my name on my credit card. I went to one of the ATMs in LA and got some cash, so I have that in case anything goes wrong.”
My eyebrows went up. “You’re turning up out of nowhere, checking into a motel under a fake name while wearing shady sunglasses and a baseball cap, and carrying a duffel full of cash?”
“Okay, I’m beginning to realize I fit the criminal profile perfectly.”
“One might even say you’re a Usual Suspect.”
Jake took off his sunglasses to send me a flat look. I smirked.
Then, to my surprise, he asked, “Do you want to meet up tomorrow?”
“To discuss the café promo?”
“I don’t know what else we have to talk about.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t really have much in common with Teen’s Choice award winners who ‘accidentally’ set off fire crackers at their manager’s Beverly Hills pool party.”
He cocked his head. “But you have things in common with the winners who don’t?”
I ignored this. “I don’t have to be here until eleven tomorrow,” I told him, getting back on track. “I can meet you at your motel at nine. You know, if they let you check in.” Jake threw me another look. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I slid past him, his hand reached out but then pulled back at the last minute, fingers curling inward.
“Listen,” he said softly against the brick wall around me, and something in my chest caught. “Lucy...”
It was the first time he’d used my new name. “Yeah?”
I didn’t know what Jake wanted to say, didn’t know whatIwanted him to tell me. I was scared he’d say he missed me, scared that he didn’t at all.
“I just wanted to say,” he continued, “I really—”
And then Mittens threw up a hair ball on his designer boots.
Chapter Five
