“I got you a Coke.” Dale sat, not across from me, but next to me, unpacking the food, sliding a Styrofoam tray of orange chicken and noodles in front of me. My stomach growled its thanks, and I grabbed a plastic fork, digging in happily. I hadn’t eaten like this in a long time. Not that any of it, the pizza and the fries and the Coke and Panda Express, were good for me, or anyone for that matter. It’s just that we never ate out. There was just no money for it. Not even McDonald’s. Food like this was exotic and painfully delicious to my palate, all the salt and sugar and fat concentrated in every bite. This stuff was like a party in my mouth when I was used to granola bars and peanut butter and jelly and dry cereal because the milk had run out and we didn’t have the money to buy more.

Most importantly, my body seemed to know it was Dale who was feeding me and rejoiced with every bite, was like it was turning this junk food into fuel for the fire I already had burning in my belly for him.

“So Aimee’s at the academy because she was in treatment last year?” Dale picked up our conversation where we’d left off, spooning fried rice into his mouth at a dizzying pace.

“Yeah.” I frowned, remembering. “Our friendship almost ended over it. I was the one who told her mom. Aimee forgave me… eventually.”

Dale nodded, chewing thoughtfully. “You did the right thing. She’s obviously better now.”

“Better, yes.” I shrugged. “Not completely, maybe not ever. She still has her issues with food and dieting and stuff. But she’s not eighty pounds anymore.”

He gave a low whistle. “That’s emaciated.”

“She was pretty sick,” I agreed. I didn’t like to think about it. She’d fooled everyone for so long, wearing big clothes to hide it. If I hadn’t walked in on her in the bathroom one morning after a sleepover—she’d locked the door, but it hadn’t closed all the way and had just pushed open—she might have ended up in the cemetery instead of a treatment center.

“So how did you end up at the academy?”

I couldn’t tell him even though I wanted to. He wasn’t asking because it was perfunctory. This wasn’t just making casual conversation. He was genuinely interested in me. He just wanted to know. But I still couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t reveal something so dark, so sinister. Not to this bright, dazzling, amazing guy sitting across from me. What would he think of me then? It would ruin everything.

Some part of me said, “Go ahead. Tell him.” That part of me wanted to sabotage the fragile bud beginning to bloom between us. If I told him now, he’d never talk to me again. Then I would be free once more to pursue my crazy but persistent obsession with Tyler Vincent. I could move to Maine and go to college there without any guilt or remorse. Telling him would force him to reject me. I knew it’s what I should do. It’s what my head told me was the smartest, most logical thing in the world I could do.

“You tell me first,” I said through a mouthful of noodles, grabbing my Coke and taking a long sip.

“I dropped out in my senior year. Three years ago.” Dale sipped his Coke too, looking at me over the rim. He had a way of seeing into me that was disconcerting. I felt naked in front of him.

“Let me guess? You wanted to make it in the music business?”

“My parents were having problems.” He sat back in his chair, picking at his food. “My mom left. Me and my dad moved to Seattle. That’s when I really started getting serious about music.”

“And your dad was okay with you quitting school?”

He snorted. “No. But I didn’t give him a say. I moved out.”

“So how did you end up here?”

“I told you. He got a job at Rutgers.” He seemed far away now, distant. I didn’t like it.

“But you weren’t living with him?”

Dale shrugged. “He asked me to come with him. Said he’d pay for everything, let me live with him, and I could pursue my music as long as I was working on getting my diploma.”

I nodded. “So the academy is your compromise.”

“Well, I knew about the Battle of the Bands before we moved.” He flashed me a brief smile. God, that dimple. “MTV did them last year in New York, and I had it on good authority they were going to do them again this year. I figured I’d have time to put a band together and give it a shot.”

“Well now that I’ve seen you, I think you’ve got a pretty good one,” I said honestly. That was an understatement. I couldn’t imagine anyone beating them.

“You think so?”

I nudged him with my knee under the table. “I think you know it.”

“I still like to hear it.” He turned to look at me, his eyes searching. “Especially from you.”

I smiled, reaching over and taking his hand, giving him exactly what he’d asked for. He deserved it. “You’re very good. You’re an amazing singer. You’re an incredible performer. I’ve never seen a crowd go crazy like that for someone they’d never seen before. I mean, celebrity takes time. Exposure. I think you’re one of those people who draws other people in. Like a magnet. You’re going to have people following you around, no matter what you do. For the rest of your life.”

He was actually blushing. “Why do you say that?”

“Because that’s how you make me feel,” I confessed, biting my lip, almost wishing I hadn’t said it.

“Hm.” He made a little noise in his throat, turning my hand over in his, tracing the lines in my palm with his fingertip like he was following a road map. “How do I make you feel?”

“Like I would follow you anywhere,” I whispered.

He lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my palm, closing his eyes briefly, and I noticed how long and dark his lashes were before he looked at me with that intense, blue gaze, telling me more with one look than either of us could ever say in words.

“When I saw you in the audience today, I don’t even know how to tell you what it did to me.” He shook his head, twining his fingers with mine.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were performing?”

“Because I didn’t want that to happen.” He gave a short laugh. “I didn’t want to be distracted. I wasn’t supposed to let myself get distracted…”

“That’s it!” I snapped my fingers. Now all the dirty looks made sense. “Your band thinks I’m your Yoko Ono, don’t they?”

“You kind of are.” He met my eyes, the emotion in them so strong I felt it before he even said the words. “Sara, I don’t think you understand what you do to me.”

“What do you mean?” Now it was my turn to ask him.

“I couldn’t think,” he confessed. “Thank God the song was over, because the minute I saw you… I was done for.”

“Oh please.” I smiled, teasing him. “All those screaming girls. I’m surprised they weren’t throwing panties at you.”

“Sometimes they do.” He grinned. “But that never mattered to me.”

I blinked in surprise. “What does matter to you?”

“Now? You.” He squeezed my hand in his, that was all, but the sensation shot up my arm with a jolt that nearly knocked me off my chair.

“Dale, do you realize how crazy that sounds?” I whispered, glancing around like someone might overhear us. “We’ve only known each other for a week.”

“Sometimes the best things in life are crazy.”

I laughed. “I can’t argue with that.”

It was crazy.

It was all crazy.

Me and Tyler Vincent.

Me and Dale Diamond.

But somehow the latter had fully eclipsed the former in my mind—and my heart—at least in the moment. There wasn’t even a ring left around that sun.

CHAPTER TEN

I didn’t see Aimee and Matt while we were standing in line buying tickets and popcorn, but I spotted them once we were in the theater. Dale wanted to sit near the back and he picked our seats, letting me in first and sitting on the aisle himself, but Aimee and Matt were up near the front—where she and I usually sat, so we could see Tyler Vincent up close and personal. For some reason, with Dale next to me, I didn’t regret not being any closer.

Aimee saw me and waved. So did Matt. But when he turned back to the front, she mouthed, “Call me!” with her thumb and finger up to her ear like a telephone. I had a feeling she didn’t want to talk about the movie we were about to see, and strangely enough, neither did I. Dale smiled, tipping her a wave and she waved back, turning around and talking to Matt again.

“Popcorn?” He tilted the tub toward me and I took some, although I was still full from Panda Express. “I can’t see a movie without popcorn. It’s like listening to a Walkman with only one headphone.”

“I always have to finish it before the movie. Too much noise and distraction otherwise.”

“No problem there.” Dale tossed a piece of popcorn up and caught it in his teeth.

“Show off.”

“So tell me something…” Dale tried his popcorn trick again and missed this time. “How long have you been a Tyler Vincent fan?”

I shrank from the question, knees up, down in my seat—the same position I’d met him in, I realized, tucked behind my desk, trying to hide myself behind a notebook.

“Oh I don’t know, a while.” I sipped my Coke, looking around the theater, trying to sound casual. Most of the audience was female, some in groups, others with their boyfriends or, if they were bit older, presumably, their husbands. This was Tyler’s third movie in five years. His first ever was a romantic comedy, which had done okay at the box office, his second an action/thriller that bombed, so they’d obviously decided to go back to what worked.

His fan base was undeniably mostly women, some who started listening to him in their teens, way back in the late sixties when he first hit it big, singing long-haired, silly love songs like Paul McCartney and the Beatles. But the Beatles had broken up and stopped singing. Tyler Vincent just rolled with the changes, reinventing himself. When MTV had debuted music videos in 1981, when I was about fourteen, his had been one of the first they played, a single from his new album.

And suddenly Tyler Vincent was a star again in his mid-thirties, with fourteen-year-old girl screaming at his concerts and a brand new fan base to run and see him on the big screen. They didn’t do close-ups—he was in his early forties now—but they still loved filming him shirtless, which made all the girls in the theater go crazy. Not that his age had ever mattered to me, then or now.

“Well you’re not alone—obviously.” Dale offered the popcorn to me again and I took a handful this time, just to keep my mouth full and avoid talking. “Probably twenty years’ worth of fans sitting in this theater.”

“True,” I agreed carefully. “Not many rock stars can say that.”

Dale shrugged. “Aerosmith’s making a comeback. What’s old is new. At least it’s not New Kids on the Block. I couldn’t stand it.”