Only With You by Monica Alexander

lived through the past few months not having her in my life. I couldn’t do that again. Maybe over time it would get easier to be around her. Maybe not, though. I figured I’d just have to learn to deal with it like I had been for the past seven years.
    “Yeah, totally,” I said, nodding my head.
    The she smiled again, that same heartbreaker smile that got me every time. “In fact, we should do this again tomorrow night,” she suggested.
    “We should?”
    I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. Seeing her twice in three days had been tough enough, but a third night and the fact that her hot, boy band boyfriend was coming to town would just make it harder. I wasn’t ready to see yet another guy’s hands on her. It was bad enough seeing her flirt with Paul, and she wasn’t even dating him.
    “Yeah, absolutely. You can come to the show in Jacksonville. Bring Jake. I’ll leave two tickets for you at Will Call.”
    “I don’t think–” I started to say, not sure Jake would be up for another concert, even though he had offered to go with me earlier in the night.
    Sydney’s hand came up to cover my mouth , making the rest of my protest muffled and incoherent. “No buts. I want you there, front and center, so I can have a cute focal point while I’m on stage.”
    Cute? Did she just call me cute?
    “I’m sure Jake’s not too hard on the eyes either,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “It might be nice to have two of the hottest guys in the place to stare at all night.”
    Huh? What the hell was that? But, oh, hell no. I was definitely not bringing Jake. Not if she thought he was hot. But, then she’d just said that she thought I was hot. And she had a boyfriend. I was massively confused all of a sudden.
    “Uh, okay, yeah. Sure.”
    What was I saying?! What the hell was I agreeing to?
    Sydney jumped and clapped her hands a few times. “Yay! Awesome. We can totally hang out after the show, maybe do something low-key like go to a diner and get pancakes?”
    She raised her eyebrows, and I couldn’t help but smile. That actually sounded pretty great to me.
    “I’m sure Dillon and Jake wi ll get along. Dillon’s such a nice guy.”
    Oh look, the other shoe just dropped.
    I’d completely spaced on the fact that it wouldn’t just be Syd and me hanging out after the show. Her boyfriend would have to come too. She couldn’t exactly ditch him – not that she would even want to. That sucked, and now it seemed like a black cloud would be hanging over the whole next day. I didn’t really want to go to the concert, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I’d already said yes, and the last thing I ever wanted to do was let Sydney down.
    “Can’t wait,” I told her.

 
     
     
     
     
    C hapter Nine
    Sydney
     
    I needed to be on the bus in twenty minutes, but I didn’t feel like leaving my hotel room to go down and meet everyone else. I’d likely head down at the last second, f eign a hangover and slide onto the couch with my headphones and sunglasses on. I’d been crying the night before after everyone had left my suite, and my eyes were puffy. Things with Ryder had been so awkward. It had just made me sad.
    I’d gone out on a limb when I invited him to the concert that night. It was a vain attempt to see if we could get back to normal, to the way things were before, but I wasn’t sure that could happen. Things were so weird between us. It was like there was this tension that I couldn’t pinpoint. It had been almost five months since we’d kissed, but it seemed like what had happened that night was still looming over us. And I didn’t know how we were supposed to get past it.
    He’d been polite and cordial the night be fore, but it was nothing like how he used to be. The easy banter, playful joking and gratuitous touching weren’t there. We were formal and unnatural around each other. But maybe this was what happened with childhood friends when you grew up. Maybe our lives were so different that we