But I'm in no place here to tell Dax what to do with his life. It's his body, his heart, his soul.
“Like, to party or something?” Dax asks, giving Sydney a look that's half irritation, half hope. He wants to stay in the hospital, watch over Blair and Naomi, but he's also desperate to get the hell out of there.
“Yeah, I mean,” Sydney stands on her toes and peers over Turner's shoulder, “anywhere but here. Get out and do something.” We all follow her gaze and freeze when a woman walks by carrying a pair of reusable shopping bags. She gives us a look and wrinkles her nose at the cigarette smoke but doesn't say anything. Either she doesn't watch the news and has no idea who the fuck we are, or she doesn't care. Thank God. I pull out my phone again and Google myself – weird, I know – but I can't seem to stop doing it. I'm terrified my STD results are going to end up on the Internet before they land in my hands. I give a passing thought to Paulette Washington and then shake it off. No reality show, no fucking way.
“Isn't that, like, sacrilegious or some shit?” Turner asks, holding his cig in one hand and crossing the other over his belly. His eyes are faraway and his voice sounds hollow. After Lola punched Cohen Rose in the face and turned my cock rock solid with desperation for her, Turner wandered off to start making preparations to take Naomi back to the house. Not sure if that went well or not because he won't talk about it. I slide my gaze to Lola, standing to my right, her body radiating heat that makes my mouth water and my hands shake. This could very well be the longest stretch of my life without sex since I lost my virginity way back when. It hurts. Can't say I'm a fan, but I also can't fuck a woman with a gunshot wound. Let's just say, my hand is exhausted.
“How so?” Sydney says, sweeping blonde hair away from her face. “We're not dead. We're not zombies. This is life, and it never stops, not even if we want it to. You, Dax, Lola,” she gestures around the group, “you all need to get out. We don't have to do anything crazy. Let's just go grab some drinks or something. I think it'd be good for all of us.” She finishes her cigarette and crushes it out on the sidewalk with her red suede boots.
“Where are we supposed to go though?” Lola asks, her big bug eyed sunglasses in place, blocking her blue eyes from my gaze. There's a string of tension between us that's stretching tighter and tighter with each passing day. Since the day we officially met, backstage at one of our OKC concerts, we've been fucking like rabbits. The last two weeks? Not so much. “I mean, we'd get mobbed on our way to the dunny. How the hell are we supposed to go clubbing?”
Turner coughs and throws his cigarette down beside Sydney's, eyes still glazed over, voice a lot softer than I'd like to hear it. The overconfident, cocky, asshole attitude is Turner in a good mood. I miss it when he's not throwing insults and flipping everybody off, grabbing his junk and just generally being a prick. That's my brother. If you don't like it, fuck off.
“I know a place,” he says absently, but not like he really cares. I'm going to have to keep a close eye on him if we go anywhere. I won't let him screw up what he has with Naomi – not that I think he would, but it never hurts to be cautious. “I took Naomi there the night before the concert. It's called Slick's.” I take a drag on my cigarette and watch him lift his gaze up, drag a smirk onto his lips that doesn't feel real, like a mask of his usual self. I shiver despite the warmth from above.
“You've tried to drag us there before,” I tell him, thinking this must be the club with the secret bathroom entrance.
“You mean I have dragged you there before, numb nuts. You were just too high to remember that shit. We can party there with all the other riffraff that infests this town.” Turner sighs and glances at Dax or more specifically, at his dippy. I watch my friend run his tongue across his lower lip as he fights the craving and – thankfully – finds the courage to fight it back for another day. “We'll be safe there. We can drink ourselves into a stupor and dance with people so famous they almost make us look ordinary.” Turner tosses a wink at the group and gets out another smoke.
“Tight quarters, lots of people, crazy ass twerking,” I say and Lola smiles, “are you sure you're up for that?” She pauses and uses her left hand to pull up her shirt, revealing a patch of bandages. We all watch quietly as she peels them back and reveals what essentially looks like a massive scab. There are dark lines around the edges, stitches. But overall, it doesn't look too bad. I move around behind her and check the exit wound, pulling up the white gauze from Lola's back. Her body shivers as my fingertips graze her spine and my dick springs to life. Sydney sees and rolls her eyes at me. “Well, fuck me. It looks a hell of a lot better than it did a few days ago.”