Page 24 of The One Decent Thing

“They really okay to get home?” Aidan was sprawled on the couch, occupying all the space he’d taken up before, plus the cushion Chris had crowded onto next to him. “Lucas only had one beer, right?”

“They’re fine.” It came out a lot more curtly than I liked.

Aidan sat up, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

Dammit. Why was I so easy to read? “Just drunk and tired.” I tried to smile. I couldn’t show my — not jealousy. Anyway I couldn’t show it. “Chris is kind of a handful.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” Aidan was smiling too, and it didn’t look like it took any effort. Why the hell was he smiling? Everyone always thought Chris was just so fucking charming and cute. Even straight guys, apparently.

Chris, God dammit. First he’d had to charge out to the back of the house and interrupt me and Aidan when it looked like Aidan had something important to say — when he was standingright there, so close that I could feel his breath on my lips and my heart was beating away like I was having a panic attack. Only it was the opposite of a panic attack. An excitement attack?

Except that he’d forgotten whatever it was he wanted to say as soon as Chris started chatting him up. First he’d made me feel like the most important person on the planet, and then switched right over to my best friend. My irritation spiked, spilling over out of my mouth before I could stop myself. “Looked like it. You two were really cozy. Do you, like, get off on being a tease or something?”

The smile faded off of Aidan’s face in slow-motion, and his brows drew together. “What the fuck does that mean?” he demanded. “Atease?”

Oh God, I’d screwed up. I’d so screwed up. Aidan was furious, I could see it in the set of his shoulders and hear it in that edge to his voice. I swallowed hard against a fresh wave of dizzy nausea. No backing down now, though. I always backed down, but this time I was drunk enough to stand my ground.

“Chris was all over you, and you just sat there and encouraged him. So either you’re setting him up for some kind of prank, or you were enjoying it.” I put a sneer into the last few words, knowing how crappy I was being but still not able to stop myself.

His face turned an ugly shade of red, the color seeping from his neck up over his cheeks, and he stood up. Slowly. Deliberately. He rounded the coffee table, and I involuntarily staggered back a step.

Aidan ignored me completely, bypassing me to stuff his feet into his shoes and grab his jacket off the hook.

My whole body vibrated as my heart rate shot up like a rocket, and my vision blurred. “Where — where are you going?”

“Out,” Aidan said, keeping his stiff back to me. He flung the door open and shrugged on the jacket. A second later he slammed the door behind him, and his quick footsteps retreated down the walkway.

Aidan

Santa Rafaela wasn’t exactly a big city, but it did have a university — and a university meant students, and students meant bars.

Not the kind of bars my mom had always fucked off to, either, where I’d had to go and get her some nights in high school when she was too sloppy to even get off her barstool without falling down and breaking something.

The one I ended up in after walking the mile or so downtown from Sebastian’s house was a club, not the kind of dingy dive I’d been used to going into as a teenager.

Being in a bar legally was a new experience, full stop. The guy at the door barely glanced at my ID, though; I knew I looked a lot older than I was, but it kind of sucked having it confirmed like that. At least he didn’t turn me away, even though I didn’t fit in with the crowd. Maybe he thought I would add local color.

Heavy bass and some shrieking pop star’s shrill vocals hit me like a sledgehammer as I stepped through the door, and a drunk dude careened off my shoulder and veered off into a wall, shouting something over his shoulder at another equally drunk dude in a backwards baseball cap. The dance floor in the center pulsed with scantily clad college girls, their glittery makeup and jewelry catching the flashing blue and white and pink lights and scattering them into glints and flashes that blinded me as I looked the crowd over.

Fuck, that dark-haired chick by the edge had the nicest smile and an incredible body. I skirted around the edge between the dancers and the bar, squeezing past everyone stacked up waiting for a drink. Bathroom first, to piss away the beer I’d had at home and splash some water on my face after booking it down the hill, and then I’d get my own drink and try to blend in. Enough to get a girl interested, anyway.

The bathroom was just as bad, with both stalls occupied with people making loud sniffing noises and laughing. That was new, too — no one at the bars my mom went to could’ve afforded coke.

The normal lighting was a shock after the bar. I looked in the mirror as I washed my hands, and the guy staring back at me was almost a stranger. I couldn’t seem to make myself smile. My cheeks and chin were dark with prickly stubble, the furrow between my eyebrows wouldn’t smooth out, and my eyes looked — cold.

A thug. That’s what I’d appear to be to anyone here, all these happy fucking college students who hadn’t lost the years between being a kid and being an adult, who hadn’t just been accused of — what the fuck exactly had Sebastian accused me of? I wasn’t sure. Setting up his friend for some kind of sick fucking joke? Wanting to fuck Chris, or maybe being willing to let Chris think I wanted to fuck him so I could get my ego stroked? Or get something else stroked, maybe, depending on how desperate I was.

I was almost that desperate. And that was why I’d meant to go out tonight anyway.

Fuck Sebastian, and fuck that. I was going to get laid, with a woman, and then I was going to go home and tell Sebastian how much I’d enjoyed it, and love every second of the expression on his face when I gave him all the details.

I grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser to dab the water off my jaw, dodged a stall door as it opened to disgorge three whooping guys who looked like they might have gotten in on fake IDs, and shoved the bathroom door open.

Sound hit me like a wall, sound and light and acrid mist from the smoke machine, the stink of spilled liquor and sweated-out liquor and too many bodies. Down the hall. Back to the bar. My palms were clammy and the back of my neck prickled with heat. The bass thudded through my bones and rattled my teeth, and now little drops of sweat were beading at my hairline.

A flash of golden-brown hair caught my peripheral vision, and my head swiveled to follow like it was on a string. A guy stood nearby, his head thrown back in laughter, his pink lips curved in a smile and the line of his pale throat smooth and long and…it wasn’t Sebastian, and all of a sudden, my stomach churned.

I don’t know how I got out of the club, but I probably crushed a few toes in my headlong rush for the door. It thumped behind me and cut off most of the clamor, though the heavy thud of the music still echoed through it, and I sucked in a deep lungful of cool exhaust-scented fog and slumped against the wall.

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