The Girl I Was Before (Falling #3)(14)
Casey is an engineering student, but he’s sort of made a name for himself deejaying for some of the hotter bars around the college. His parents aren’t real hip over the idea of him moving into sound engineering, but it’s hard to argue with two thousand dollars for a night’s worth of work.
“What’d you say this event was again?” I ask, pulling myself out from under the table, moving to my laptop, which I’ve loaded all of Casey’s programs onto.
“Some frat house is having an end-of the-year party,” he says, his fingers practically twitching while he waits for me to get out of his way. I step to the side when I get everything pulled up, and he starts testing mixes and sound.
“This school has a lot of parties,” I say.
“Yeah, like you’d know,” he laughs.
“Har dee har,” I say. Casey twists his head in my direction, pulling his sunglasses down to look at me—sunglasses he doesn’t need, because we’re inside, in a very dimly lit bar. “What?”
“Har dee har? You sound like an old fart,” he snorts, pushing his glasses up and moving through a few more screens on the computer.
“Yeah, well you look like a tweaker in those sunglasses, so f*ck off,” I say. He raises his right hand and flips me off, never taking his eyes away from his work. Of course, maybe he did look at me. I can’t tell, because the douchebag is wearing sunglasses inside.
Casey spends the next thirty minutes pre-loading a series of songs, mixing them into each other, overlapping and coming up with a pretty cool vibe. What he does is really damn impressive, especially to a guy like me who can’t even sing along with the car stereo. I wish his parents saw it that way. Casey’s parents are both mechanical engineers at a big oil and fuel company in Oklahoma City. Casey has been bred to follow their footsteps, and while that’s what his degree is for, his heart is for something else. His father cut him off last year, dropped his tuition payments, and told him he couldn’t live at home. That’s when he started taking the deejaying seriously, and so far, he’s been able to pay his bills. He’s finishing out his degree because he’s only two semesters away.
“You want something to drink, man? I’m buying,” he says, pausing in front of the stage, a twenty in his hand.
“Just a Coke,” I say, and he rolls his eyes.
“One day, I’m going to get you drunk, just like the old days,” he says over his shoulder as he walks to the bar.
“Yeah, well I was sixteen in the old days,” I say to his back. He doesn’t hear me, but I flash to those simpler days for a few seconds. High school was so much better than being twenty-one. I had no idea how much five years would change my family’s life.
Besides, Casey’s gotten me drunk since then—a few times over the last year. That usually ends with me waking up somewhere I don’t belong with a bellyache made of guilt and remorse. I think I’m capped out on regret for the year.
The bar isn’t very crowded, and there’s an old country song on the jukebox in the corner. It’s funny how the bars near McConnell shift throughout the day, catering to the old-timers until the late-night crowd of college kids starts to stream in. I can tell we’re on the cusp when a Taylor Swift song plays next.
There are a few old men shooting a game of pool in the back room. I look at my watch and kick away from the stage, picking up my Coke from Casey on my way.
“I’m gonna get a game or two in. What time do things start?” I ask.
“They start paying me at ten,” he says. I nod and head over to the pool table, introducing myself to the guys and calling the next game. They’re playing for money, but when they ask me if I want in on the action, I turn it down. I’m rusty, but I would probably still kick their asses at nine-ball. Something doesn’t quite feel right about taking twenty bucks from sixty-year-old men, though—even if I could use it.
“Make sure you have the good shit on tap. We’re not paying for that piss you usually serve!” I’m fairly confident I recognize the voice without turning around, so I don’t bother. I wait for him to say something else, because if it’s that guy who Paige is seeing—Carson, I think?—I know he won’t be able to shut up. My suspicions are confirmed when, after a short-lived five seconds without having to hear his voice, he begins singing loudly with the country song finishing on the jukebox.
“Dude, get this shit off! You—isn’t it time for you to start playing the real music?” I turn around to see him snapping his fingers at Casey, who only glances up for a second, looks down at his watch, then returns to Carson’s attention shaking his head no. Casey comes from a large Italian family, and I’ve seen his dad work him into a corner, screaming at him and threatening to hit him. He never did, but Casey’s four older sisters would take over, smacking him until his skin was practically pink all over. Carson may be large, but the worst thing he could do is punch Casey and knock him out—and in Casey’s world, a nap isn’t so bad.
“What the f*ck. You’re fired!” Carson’s moving closer, and as funny as it is to watch my small friend sit there, finishing his sandwich—as if the Neanderthal yelling at him were invisible—it’s also almost ten at night in the middle of the week. If I’m out right now, I need to be getting paid for it, which won’t happen if Casey gets fired from this job.