Rock All Night(29)

We exited through an alleyway where a limo was waiting. The boys all piled in, Miles shoved me in next, and the big bruiser threw Riley in like a wailing, scratching cat. Miles came last and shut the door behind us, and the limo took off.

“You stupid little FUCKER,” Riley raged at Miles. “I was having a f*cking good time, and you had to go ruin it like you always – ”

Miles thrust a bottle of Jack Daniels in her face. “Suck on that an’ shut the f*ck up.”

She grabbed it and immediately chugged.

“Like a baby to a bottle,” Miles muttered grimly.

This time around I was sitting next to Ryan. He looked over at me and smiled. “Did you have fun?”

“Um… I guess?” I said hesitantly. I’d been an onlooker rather than a participant, so it hadn’t really been ‘fun’ so much as informative. And occasionally shocking.

“Crazy, huh?” he asked.

That was the understatement of the evening.

“Hey Blondie,” Riley slurred the second she took the bottle out of her mouth, “wanna f*ck?”

“…uh, NO.”

“Too bad,” she giggled, and leaned over and put her grubby little hand on my knee. I tried jerking away, but she just slid it further up my thigh.

“Keep your f*ckin’ hands to yourself,” Derek barked from two spots over.

“Fuck off, D,” Riley sneered. “Just cuz you can’t seal the deal dudn’t mean I can’t.”

Derek looked like he was about to leap across the limo and strangle her when Ryan simply reached out and placed his hand lightly on hers.

“Riley,” Ryan said, his voice soft but full of warning.

As soon as he did that, Riley looked him in the face – and let go of my leg.

“I was just playin’,” she said petulantly, like a child who had been scolded.

“Wait till the hotel and play with somebody who wants to play.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Sorry, Blondie.”

I suddenly flashed onto a scene from 16 Candles. Molly Ringwald is being slobbered over by a nerdy little dweeb, and she forcefully rebuffs him. He sheepishly and dejectedly apologizes. She feels bad for him, so she says consolingly, “It’s fine…”

…whereupon he launches back in, thinking she meant ‘It’s fine to kiss me.’

I did SO not want a reenactment of that scene, so I just said, “Apology accepted.”

“Didja f*ck him in the shower?” she asked without missing a beat.

“Riley!” Ryan snapped.

“NO, she didn’t,” Derek answered for me.

“Ha HAAA,” Riley snorted at him. Then she looked at me and wiggled her eyebrows. “I’m a whole lot better in bed than he is, FYI.”

EW.

“Drink,” Miles said, tipping the bottle up towards her face.

She went back to chugging it down.

“Like a piglet at the teat,” Miles grunted.

She popped the bottle out of her mouth. “I’m not Piglet, I’m – I’m TIGGER.”

In answer, he just tilted the bottle back up, and she went back to chugging.

“Aren’t you afraid you guys are going to kill her one day?” I whispered to Ryan.

“Relax – it’s so watered down, it’s like drinking wine,” Ryan whispered back. “Bad, but not 40 proof at least. Miles does it after every show. She’s so plastered she can’t even taste anything anyway.”

“Hey Riley, tell Kaitlyn how you came up with the band name,” Derek said.

“OH, OH!” she cried out, sloshing watered-down Jack all over her wifebeater. “Yeah, I named the band – did you know that?” she asked me like an overexcited kid.


“That’s what Derek said, yeah.”

“You know why it’s called Bigger?” she grinned.

“No, why?”

“Cuz that’s what Derek says every time he gets another cock in his ass!” she howled. “Bigger! Bigger! BIGGERRRRRR!”

And then she collapsed against Miles in a drunken fit of laughter and tears. Miles looked both disgusted and wearily stoic, like the most beleaguered dog you could imagine as the family’s toddler crawls all over it.

I looked over at Derek. He gave me a half-grin. “I couldn’t take that simple joy away from her.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You really want me to publish that in Rolling Stone?”

He laughed. “I don’t give a f*ck what you publish in Rolling Stone.”

“Okay, okay, no, that’s not the real story,” Riley said, suddenly sitting up and rejoining the conversation. “Here’s the real story. So we were sitting around in Derek’s house in Athens tryin’ to come up with a name. And they’re tossin’ out stupid f*ckin’ shit like – what were some of those stupid-ass band names you idiots came up with? Like, Dharma and Greg – ”

“Dharma House,” Killian corrected her as he plinked away at his guitar.

“Yeah, Dharma House,” Riley snorted.

“Shelter,” Derek said.

“Shelter! What the f*ck is that?!” Riley hooted.

“It’s from ‘Gimme Shelter’ by the Rolling Sto– ”