Page 43 of The Significance of Moving On

Why? That sounds like a great evening. “You could eat hot pockets with me. Then I wouldn’t be alone.”

My idiot brother rolls his eyes. Apparently kidnapping me after work and heading to some bar seems to be more his scene. Tal went through the trouble of cooking me breakfast, and left the gift that I haven’t had the chance to thank her for.

I miss hanging with Tally. She’s who I should be hanging out with tonight.

Demetrius clicks on the blinker and turns into a parking lot. Not to some bar, he brought me to a damn strip club. I huff out a breath. He knows I hate this place.

“C’mon,” he says. “Everyone’s waiting for us.” My pace quickens when he says ‘everyone’ until I come to my senses. No eighteen-year-old woman is waiting for me inside. She’s out living her life and I don’t know who she’s with or what she’s doing. We haven’t actually talked yet, about what I told her. I don’t know how she feels about it or me, only that she didn’t come to the hospital. My brother pulls the door open and pushes me inside.

Chapter Nineteen

Loud music. Whistles from horny customers. The place is packed for a Tuesday night, I think. But then again, maybe places like this are always packed on Tuesday nights. The room is dark with stage lighting shining too brightly on the topless girl grinding her thong-clad hips against a metal pole.

D leads me to a section of tables occupied by Daniel, CJ, Nick and Chris. They have a happy birthday, Casey centerpiece in the middle of the table sitting next to an open laptop. Jesse smiles at me, congratulating me and talking something about how he wanted to be here in person, but webcam would have to do.

We have to yell to hear each other talk over the music or to place an order with our waitresses, a beautiful, voluptuous woman but not at all whom I want to be looking at right now. Not that I’d tell them after everything these guys have done for me. To take my mind off her I forget about my medication and start slamming back shot after shot of whatever one of my buddies decides to put down in front of me while stuffing dollar bills by the handful down stripper thongs.

I end up wasted and slumped in my chair when a beautiful blonde comes over introducing herself as Amber. She straddles my lap, shaking her ample breasts in my face. She begins wriggling, hovering just above making contact with my jeans. I should be enjoying this but I just want to go home.

“Not having a good time, baby?” she asks.

“Huh?” My vision has gone blurry and my head feels fuzzier than plain old alcohol fuzzy. It just hits me that she’s talking. “Oh, sorry. Distracted…” The rest of whatever I was about to say comes out in an unintelligible mess.

She laughs at me. “Well how ‘bout you tell me what you like. I’ll do it.”

“No, it’s fine… really.” I garble.

“Honey, they already paid. I’m yours until the end of this song.”

“No. Just go.”

“But I can’t they already paid. I could get fired.”

“It’s okay,” Demetrius’s voice carries over the music in the background. “Go ahead and get that drink.”

I make sure and tip her before she leaves.

D gets in my face. “What’s wrong with you, man? She was damn fine.”

“I feel sick.”

“Shit. You on something? You’re sweating.”

“My meds from the doctor—but I take those as prescribed.”

“Can you drink on those?”

“Nope.” I’m so high that I pop the P at the end.

The room starts to spin and I see two of Demetrius pulling a phone from his pocket then he fuses back to one person as he presses a button and puts the phone to his ear. When I try to stand, he pushes me back down into the seat. “Not going anywhere, brother.”

A new song and a glittery new dancer takes the pole. I watch her for a while. Her breasts don’t jiggle. I wish they’d jiggle, that’d be fun.

“Casey.”

I sigh. My name sounds nice coming from that voice and I turn to smile at her. “Tally. D, look, it’s Tally. Hi, beautiful.” I say and like a fool sling my arm around the waitress’s shoulders, point to Tally and tell the waitress, “Prettiest girl in the room.”

“That’s nice,” she says back and ducks from under my arm.

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