When the strap of her messenger bag slid down her arm, Simon pushed it back up absently, his fingers lingering at the bare skin of her shoulder.
She stared at him until he dropped his hand.
They were on their way to get Java Jones, a perfect outing for fall. She needed the warmth from the coffee she was about to get. It wasn't that she minded the cold, she loved Autumn, the leaves had already begun to change colors, but her jacket was old, worn, with a hole in one of the elbows. She knew if she allowed herself to shiver, Simon would immediately drape his own coat around her shoulders, and she didn't want that to happen.
He would have been cold, and if he gave her his jacket...
It could have meant something.
Something that had no meaning. They were friends, best friends, definitely nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
"So." She said, in attempt to break the sudden awkwardness she felt. "What's up with the band? Anything new?"
She had to use the word band so loosely; Simon had started it at the beginning of the year, along with his friends Eric, Matt and Kirk. Despite the months of practice, always faithfully in Eric's basement, they lacked...
They lacked talent, not that she would ever tell him that.
Simon's face lit up.
"Things are great!" He said. "Matt knows someone who could get us a gig at the Scrap Bar. We're talking about names again too."
"Good." Clary mumbled under her breath. She had lost count at twenty.
The band had never produced any music; mostly they sat around, fighting about potential names and band logos. Sometimes, she wondered if any of them could actually play an instrument.
"What's on the table?"
"We're choosing between Sea Vegetable Conspiracy and Rock-Solid Panda."
She tried not to cringe. "Those are both terrible."
"Eric suggested Lawn Chair Crisis.
"Maybe Eric should stick to gaming." Clary suggested.
Video games were the main reason he never turned his homework in on time.
Simon frowned. "But then we'd have to find a new drummer."
"Is that what Eric does?" Clary asked, feigning surprise. "I thought he just mooched money off you and went around telling girls at school that he was in a band in order to impress them."
"Not at all." Simon sighed. "Eric has turned over a new leaf. He has a girlfriend. They've been going out for three months."
"Practically married." She joked, stepping around a couple pushing a toddler in a stroller.
The little girl wore yellow plastic clips in her hair, and clutched a pixie doll with gold-streaked sapphire wings.
Out of the corner of her eye Clary thought she saw the wings flutter.
She turned her head hastily.
"I'm the last member of the band not to have a girlfriend." He grumbled. "Which, you know, is the whole point of being in a band. To get girls."
"I thought it was all about the music."
She stepped off the curb just as a car zoomed past them.
Simon yanked hard on her arm, pulling her back into him. Clary moved away from him.
"Who cares if you have a girlfriend, anyway?"
"I care." Simon replied. "Pretty soon the only people left without a girlfriend will be me and Wendell the school janitor. And he smells like Windex."
"At least you know he's still available."
He glowered at her. "Not funny, Fray."
"There's always Sheila 'The Thong' Barbarino." She offered.
Clary had sat behind Sheila in math class in ninth grade; every time she dropped her pencil, which had been often, Clary was treated to the sight of the girl's underwear riding up above the waistband of her super-low-rise jeans. Not a pleasant sight.
"That is who Eric's been dating for the past three months." Simon responded, and she wondered how she hadn't known that. "His advice, meanwhile, was that I ought to just decide which girl in school had the most rockin' bod and ask her out before midterms."
"Eric is a sexist pig." She told him. She didn't want to know which girl in school Simon thought had the most 'rockin' bod.' "Maybe you should call the band The Sexist Pigs."
Simon seemed unfazed. "It has a ring to it."
Clary made a face at him. They were almost to the coffee shop now, trying to maneuver past the crowded sidewalks of Brooklyn. A boy on a skateboard brushed past her, and she would have face planted had Simon not been directly behind her.
"Whoa." His set her upright. "Careful there, Klutzy."
Clary glared at him. "Don't call me that. Ever."
Simon held up his hands in surrender. "Sorry..."
Why she had gotten so angry over the nickname, she didn't know. She sighed, giving his arm an apologetic squeeze.
"What's that?" He asked.
It suddenly dawned on her that there was a flyer, balled up in her fist. Carefully, she unfolded it, her eyes scanning the page.
"It's for a Halloween party." She read aloud. "With a costume contest... At some place called Pandemonium."