“I’m not a waitress.” Angela shakes her head.
“Bartender?” I ask, no longer feeling quite so jealous.
“Dancer,” she replies. I blink.
She gets to her feet and strikes a pose, which is when I finally notice her outfit. Her hair is tied back in a ponytail and a red rose sits by her left ear. Her red blouse is lined with ruffles and shows off her bare arms and collarbone. It’s cropped just above her navel, revealing her dancer’s build, and she’s wearing a matching scarlet skirt that explodes into countless layers of ruffles. She’s even got dance shoes on—red and sparkly, with low heels—and she looks like she belongs on stage. Meanwhile, I don’t belong anywhere.
“Okay, what is it?” Angela asks, sitting back down.
“Your outfit is gorgeous,” I tell her with false cheer, but she just shakes her head.
“Go on. Spill.”
“It’s a lot of things, Ange. I don’t even know where to start.”
“How about the beginning?”
“Or the end,” I mutter, because that makes a lot more sense. “I went by the house and grabbed my stuff.”
I take off my backpack and drop it on the table. Then I fill Angela in and show her my damaged laptop and broken phone.
“Father found me a job, but I couldn’t do it,” I tell her, my face falling.
“Of course you couldn’t.” She shakes her head. “You’re much better off staying with the guys.”
And that’s when the tears start to fall. Angela pulls me into a comforting hug, and then rushes around Bailando grabbing a bunch of stuff: a glass of water, tissues, and then two bowls of ice cream that she somehow managed to scrounge up.
“We get full access to the kitchen,” she says, handing me my spoon. “Now tell me, what happened with the guys?”
I filled her in on Marcus the RA, and the fact that Charles was the one who asked him to kick me out.
“Why would he do that?” she asks, eyes wide. =
“Because I kissed him.”
Angela’s brows furrow.
“I mean, I kissed all of them. Tate, Charles, JJ at the same time, and then—”
“How can you kiss three guys at the same time?” Angela frowns. “Like, how would they even fit.”
“It’s more like they took turns,” I laugh, but it sounds hollow. My heart squeezes tightly in my chest, and the thought of never getting to kiss the guys again hurts so much I can barely hold it together.
My fairy tale will never have a happy ending. I’ll be the sad, lonely princess who—
“Isn’t kissing all three of them a good thing?” Angela asks, and then her face hardens. “Wait, did they pressure you into it? Did they make you do something you weren’t into? Because I swear—”
“They didn’t. They’d never do that,” I vow. “They just... they broke up with me.”
“They what?”
“Well, they didn’t really break up with me. I’m not even sure we were together, together. But they saw me kiss Silas and then they got mad and...”
“You kissed Silas? The jerk you kept texting me about? The one you kicked in the balls?”
“Accidentally kicked in the balls,” I correct as I describe what happened in the practice room.
Angela shakes her head. “It sounds more like he kissed you.”
“I kissed him back.”
“Well, you already kissed three guys. What’s one more?” She shrugs.
“It doesn’t work like that.” I drop my head on my hands.
“Why don’t you text them, anyway? See if you can work it out?”
I pull my broken phone out of my pocket and drop it face up on the table. Angela picks it up, tinkers with it, and sets it back down.
“You can use mine, then. I even have Tate’s number from the massage booking.” She starts to get to her feet—presumably to grab her phone—but I shake my head.
“You didn’t see them, Ange. They completely freaked out. They started fighting and... it was horrible! Now they’ll never win the competition, and they want nothing to do with me, and I’ll probably end up living on the street and...”
“You’re not going to end up living on the street,” Angela snaps.
“Yes, I am! I don’t have a job or anywhere to go or...”
“You do have somewhere to go,” she says. “You can come stay with me. For as long as you need, Roonie. I mean it.”
Chapter 28
It turns out that Angela still has half a work shift left before we can leave. She helps me connect my dented—but thankfully still functional—laptop to the club’s WiFi and brings me a huge tray of comfort food from the Bailando kitchens.
I watch her and the other dancers rehearse, but my mind keeps drifting back to the guys. How much I miss them. How angry they looked after I kissed Silas. How I’ll never see them again.
I push those awful thoughts away and try to lose myself in fairy tales. I hum some of my old songs under my breath, then make up a few new ones, which helps pass the time.
When Angela’s done her shift, she changes into jeans and a t-shirt and grabs us dinner from the kitchen.
“Are you performing tonight?” I ask her as we eat, but Angela shakes her head.
“Students prefer clubbing music on weekends, so we only do performances on weekdays,” she explains. “Let me know when you’re done and we’ll head out?”
I help her carry the dishes back to the kitchen, follow her to grab her bike from the back, and then set out to her house on foot.
“I’m so sorry about this,” I say about a half hour into our walk, when we find ourselves slowly trekking alongside the edge of a highway. “I should have gone back to the house to grab my bike.”
“Not worth the risk.” Angela shakes her head. “So tell me, what was your mom like?”
We trade stories from our childhood, which keeps me from obsessing about the guys. It also helps pass the time as we walk.
When we reach Angela’s street, my feet are blistered in my designer sneakers, my muscles ache, and the sun’s starting to set. I don’t ever want to think about walking back to campus, but it’s not like I have any reason to go to LUV Academy. Not anymore.
“This is it,” Angela says, pulling to a stop in front of a one-floor bungalow that has seen better days. The mailbox is tilted at an angle, one of the windows is boarded up, and the garage door moans and groans when Angela puts her bike away.
“Look, there’s something you should know,” she says as she’s about to unlock the front door. She looks worried, which makes me worry, too.
“What is it?” I ask, a bunch of worst-case scenarios going through my head. Her father is actually still alive, and he’s no better than mine. She has a drunk boyfriend, and I’ll never feel safe living here. She changed her mind, and she doesn’t want me to stay here after all.
Angela hesitates, and just as I start to really panic, she finally says, “I may have forgotten to pay the power bill.”
“That’s it?” I ask in relief.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Angela grins and unlocks the front door. “There’s no hot water, and the lights and heat and stuff are out, but we can pretend we’re camping.”