Page 47 of Them Bones

“I’ve wanted to talk for days, I was just being stubborn.”

“You? Stubborn? Never.”

She laughed and leaned back on her bed.

“What’s that noise?” he asked.

“Party,” she grumbled.

“Oh.” A pause. “Can I come?”

“Yes,” she said. “But… Cary is home.”

“Is he… preoccupied?”

“The last time I saw him he had his tongue down Sarita’s throat.”

“So… I’ll come then?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They stayed on the line for a while.

“Laney?”

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t wear leather.”

She barked a laugh, and they hung up.

I need to change.

SHANE

Shane’s heart was pounding in time to the music. He was a bit wasted, okay a lot wasted, having just smoked several bowls of Jerry’s hash and chased it with two large glasses of Jerry’s “good whiskey” when Laney called.

Shane thought it tasted the same as all his other whiskey.

Jerry called him a disappointment.

Linette clearly knew how to entertain. He’d never seen Cary’s troupe look so put together, or so relaxed. It could have been courtesy of the dwindling piles of drugs, but really it seemed to be the heady cocktail of energy that Linette whipped up and stirred like a flare bartender.

She was currently in the living room with her hands on some woman’s waist, their bodies close enough together that her ample bosom was pressed right up against the other lady, and she was whispering in her ear with a gleam in her eye.

The woman was blushing, and every man in the room had their eyes on them.

She smacked her red lips against the woman’s cheek before blazing off through the throng of bodies, leaving her flushed and the men scowling like the porn channel had just gone static.

Jerry had driven and was unusually fidgety. He seemed to be looking everywhere but at Linette.

Shane said nothing, focused on scanning for Laney. And Dustin. With school out for the holidays, he hadn’t even had the excuse of driving him every day and found he was really missing him.

He separated himself from Jerry and made his way through the people chattering on the landing to the basement. It was just as full, people sprawled across the furniture and leaning against the walls, one guy tucked into a bean bag chair and staring at the ceiling holding on for dear life.

Mushrooms, probably.

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