Page 48 of Dear Rockstar (Dear Rockstar 1)

Matt barked a laugh, waving back, and Aimee shot me a scathing look that said I was obviously in big trouble for telling Dale the bee story, all while sticking her tongue out and simultaneously flipping him off.

I laughed, reaching down to pick up my purse and the shopping bag full of clothes. Dale took my hand as we headed toward the food court, my heels clicking loudly on the mall tile floor, reminding me with every step what I was wearing. And it was getting noticed, just like I had planned—although it was Dale I wanted to notice, not the adolescent guys passing us doing double-takes and making remarks just out of earshot.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of our t-shirts looks so attractive,” Dale snapped as we neared the food court.

“You like it?” I teased.

He tilted his head at me, smirking. “I think I’d like it better off you.”

We were at the food court now and I tossed my purse and the shopping bag into a chair at an empty table, making like I was about to strip off my t-shirt right there in the middle of the mall. Dale scowled, grabbing my hands and pulling me to him.

“Hey. That’s mine.”

Mine. He actually said the word written all over his face. It went through me like an arrow. It could have pinned me right to him, straight through my heart, and I wouldn’t have cared.

“What do you want?” His eye softened as he looked down at me, and for just a moment, I inwardly panicked.

I asked myself the same question. Constantly. I had two front row seats to see Tyler Vincent tucked away in my purse like the most delicious secret in the world, and I could have cared less. What was wrong with me? What did I want? I thought I knew. Before Dale Diamond came along, I could have told you in detail what I wanted. Now I had no idea.

“Sara, you’re starving. I can hear your stomach growling. Don’t you ever eat?”

That’s when I realized he was asking me what I wanted to eat.

“You’ve seen me eat.” I felt my face turning red, embarrassed he’d noticed, but of course he had.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re not anorexic are you?”

I shook my head, deciding to sacrifice my best friend rather than tell him my own truth. “Not me. Aimee’s the one who’s anorexic. Well, she was. Anorexic and bulimic. That’s why she’s at the academy this year. She didn’t graduate because she spent most of our senior year in a treatment center.”

He nodded, thoughtful. “And you?”

“I’m not anorexic!” I scoffed. “I eat Skittles and pizza. And big piles of orange chicken from Panda Express.”

I pointed to the Panda Express in the corner of the food court, grinning.

He laughed. “Is that what you want?”

“Yep. Can I pay you back?” It was what I’d said all week long when he insisted I accompany him through the fast-food lunch line and I couldn’t resist a slice of pizza or a bag of fries.

“Stop saying you’re going to pay me back. I got it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You stay here. I’ll be right back.” Dale started toward Panda Express, stopping and looking back at me, thoughtful, and then turned around, shrugging off his black denim jacket and draping it over my shoulders as I sat at the table. He gave a short, satisfied nod and turned on his heel again, going to buy us dinner.

I sat and smiled to myself like an idiot, watching him standing in line.

I hated not having money. I hated being poor. Kensington Gardens offered cheap housing to low-income families—like mine—but I wondered why Dale and his father had ended up in such a rundown place. John, Dale’s father, seemed like a nice man, smart—he must be, to have obtained a teaching position at Rutgers. Maybe he didn’t realize when he signed the lease what type of people lived at Kensington? Or maybe he’d chosen it because it was so close to the academy where Dale would be finishing his high school diploma? His salary at Rutgers couldn’t be that bad, I reasoned.

I wished I still had the job at Dairy Queen. I’d used all my money to pay for my car and had tucked the rest away into a secret bank account no one knew about, except Aimee, for my impending trip to Maine. But my job at Dairy Queen had been seasonal, the summer before our senior year. I had worked on and off at the beginning of our senior year at the movie theater, taking tickets. That was a much better job than Dairy Queen, paid better too, and I’d put even more into savings, but then everything at home had imploded and I couldn’t work or go to school or do anything anymore.

Dale was ordering our food, and I noticed how girls noticed him. I couldn’t blame them really. He drew my eye instantly. I found myself looking at him, staring at him, unable to take my eyes off him. It was sick, but there seemed to be no cure for this disease. He wasn’t just a rock star on stage. It was like he was born to be one. People already looked at him that way, and at the age of twenty, it was disconcerting to find someone like Dale in the middle of my tiny town in New Jersey. You didn’t expect to find someone like him here. Maybe in New York, or California, where everyone was beautiful and perfect and aspired to be an actor or a musician. But here?

Dale reached into his back pocket for his wallet, giving me another flash of that sexy, studded belt he always wore. I wondered at its significance. He wore it like a talisman, all the time. Maybe it was just part of the marketing plan, the t-shirts, like the one I wore with its eye-catching logo, the tie-in of the band name, Black Diamond, with his own last name. It was all very smart.

Whatever the reason, the belt was hot. Dale wearing the belt was hotter. I couldn’t help but think about him. Somehow he had replaced my night time fantasies of Tyler Vincent. I didn’t know when it had happened in the short time I’d known him, but Dale Diamond had obscured Tyler Vincent like a solar eclipse, leaving only a faded ring, like a faint stain from a mug on a coffee table. Was what I felt for Tyler Vincent really so shallow?

I was ashamed and even a little embarrassed by my loyalty shift from the only man who had filled my thoughts for the past five years to the guy paying for my dinner at Panda Express in the mall food court. One was larger than life, on screen and everywhere, all the time. The other was in my life, here, with me, and looked at me in a way I hardly could believe was real.

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