The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(65)

“Oh, my dad’s a card-carrying capitalist all right,” Ames said and shook a tiny pile of coke out onto the counter. “Don’t know how he and Lehrer can stand each other. Mutual interests, I guess.”

“Only your father pushed through a whole lot of anti-Atlantian legislation last year,” Noam said. “Not exactly Lehrer’s style.”

“I suppose you’d know,” Ames said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing.” She drew a couple short lines—with her fingers, not a razor. “Anyway. Dara thinks you’re cool, which means I think you’re cool. So be cool and do a line with me.”

“Dara thinks I’m cool?”

Ames rolled her eyes dramatically and hunched forward. The first line disappeared up an elegant metal straw she seemed to have produced from thin air. “Oh Jesus. Don’t go all pathetic. I know Dara can’t help it—he just transforms gay boys into these drooling stalkers by existing in proximity, but I don’t want to start puking this early.”

“Okay, well, I’m not gay. Must be your lucky night.”

“Noam. Come on.”

He kicked his heels against the cabinets and smiled at her.

Of course, now he wanted to know about these pathetic gay boys. He wanted to know who all Dara had been kissing. If Dara kissed a lot of men. If Dara kissed only men.

“Dara and I aren’t together, in case you were wondering,” Ames said, straightening up. When she met Noam’s gaze, arms crossed over her chest, it felt like a challenge.

Noam pushed himself back to his feet. He moved closer to Ames, one step, then another, until he could lift his hand and brush a bit of white powder off the tip of her nose. A part of him braced for her to flinch the way Dara had, as if Noam carried some deadly disease.

“And I meant it when I said I wasn’t gay,” Noam said.

Ames looked disbelieving, but she didn’t pull away.

Noam smirked. “Bisexual isn’t gay.”

At last Ames laughed. Her hand came to rest on Noam’s hip, and his fingers skimmed over the line of her cheekbone, past her ear and into short-cropped hair. She had brown eyes the calm color of cedarwood and smelled like cigarette smoke.

She was beautiful, but she wasn’t who Noam wanted. Not at all.

“Hope I’m not interrupting.”

Noam took a sharp step back, blood turned to ice water.

Reflected in the mirror, a bladed smile cut across Dara’s mouth. He lifted a glass of whiskey and took a sip.

“Don’t you knock?” Ames snapped.

Noam twisted around to meet Dara’s gaze properly, but Dara wasn’t looking at him anymore. He’d fixed Ames with that same strange expression on his face, head tilted toward the doorframe.

“I can’t believe,” Dara enunciated slowly, but his words slurred all the same, “you would leave me alone down there.”

Ames looked a little guiltier than was strictly warranted, in Noam’s opinion. She snatched the whiskey out of Dara’s hand and set it on the sink, then grasped both his shoulders, propelling him out the bathroom door and into her room. Noam trailed behind them like an afterthought.

“Sit,” Ames demanded.

Dara dropped back on Ames’s bed and stared up at the ceiling. Noam sat next to him, a bit gingerly; his weight dipped the mattress so that Dara’s hip leaned against Noam’s. For a moment that single warm point of contact was all Noam could think about.

“Are you okay?” he asked Dara, bracing a hand against the headboard.

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t look fine. He closed his eyes, lips parting as he exhaled. His lashes were like a smudge of charcoal against his cheek—Noam wanted to touch him. If he did, he imagined Dara’s skin would be fever hot.

“Do you need to puke and rally?” Ames asked him.

“No.”

“Want to do a line, then?”

“I’m all right.” Dara opened his eyes again and pushed himself up, that brief vulnerability so thoroughly erased that Noam might’ve thought he’d imagined it. Would have, if not for the way Ames still looked at Dara with her brow knit, like she thought Dara was two heartbeats from breaking apart.

Noam got the distinct sense Dara had swallowed something else with all that whiskey. His pupils were dilated.

But no matter how fucked up Dara already was, it didn’t stop him and Ames from digging out the tequila hidden in her underwear drawer. Somehow, over the next fifteen minutes, they all ended up sprawled over Ames’s unmade bed—Noam’s legs slung up against the wall, Dara’s head on his stomach, Ames’s feet hitched over Dara’s knees. Noam lost count of how many rounds that bottle of tequila had made in their little circle, but he knew it was a lot. His whole body was pleasantly overwarm, the bottle was half-empty, and Dara’s head was practically in his lap, oh god. Noam never wanted this moment to end.

“How many blow jobs do you think my dad’s managed to give Lehrer by now?” Ames asked between swigs, and Dara laughed.

“I’m just imagining Lehrer down there, on his seventh bottle of scotch, wishing he could actually still get drunk enough to make it through this evening.”

“Lehrer can’t get drunk?” Noam asked, propping himself up on his elbows and sending Dara’s head shifting a few inches lower on his torso.