The Edge of Always(98)

Damon reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet, fingering the bills inside.

“Twenty bucks a pop,” the ogre says with a grunt.

“Twenty? Are you f*cking kidding me?!” Natalie shrieks.

Damon gently pushes her aside and slaps three twenty-dollar bills into the ogre’s hand. The ogre shoves the money into his pocket and moves to let us pass. I go first and Damon puts his hand on Natalie’s lower back to guide her in front of him.

She sneers at the ogre as she passes by. “Probably going to keep it for himself,” she says. “I’m going to ask Rob about this.”

“Come on,” Damon says, and we slip past the door and down one lengthy, dreary hallway with a single flickering fluorescent light until we make it to the industrial elevator at the end.

The metal jolts as the cage door closes and we’re rather noisily riding to the basement floor many feet below. It’s just one floor down, but the elevator rattles so much I feel like it’s going to snap any second and send us plunging to our deaths. Loud, booming drums and the shouting of drunk college students and probably a lot of drop-outs funnels through the basement floor and into the cage elevator, louder every inch we descend into the bowels of the Underground. The elevator rumbles to a halt, and another ogre opens the cage door to let us out.

Natalie stumbles into me from behind. “Hurry up!” she says, pushing me playfully in the back. “I think that’s Four Collision playing!” Her voice rises over the music as we make our way into the main room.

Natalie takes Damon by the hand and then tries to grab mine, but I know what she has in store, and I’m not going into a throng of bouncing, sweaty bodies wearing these stupid boots.

“Oh, come on!” she urges, practically begging. Then an aggravated line deepens around her snarling nose and she thrusts my hand into hers and pulls me toward her. “Stop being a baby! If anybody knocks you over, I’ll personally kick their ass, all right?”

Damon is grinning at me from the side.

“Fine!” I say and head out with them, Natalie practically pulling my fingers out of the sockets.

We hit the dance floor, and after a while of Natalie doing what any best friend would do by grinding against me to make me feel included, she eases her way into Damon’s world only. She might as well be having sex with him right there in front of everybody, but no one notices. I only notice because I’m probably the only girl in the entire place without a date doing the same thing. I take advantage of the opportunity and slip my way off the dance floor and head to the bar.

“What can I get’cha?” the tall blond guy behind the bar says as I push myself up on my toes and take an empty barstool.

“Rum and Coke.”

He goes to make my drink. “Hard stuff, huh?” he says, filling the glass with ice. “Going to show me your ID?” He grins.

I purse my lips at him. “Yeah, I’ll show you my ID when you show me your liquor license.” I grin right back at him and he smiles.

He finishes mixing the drink and slides it over to me.

“I don’t really drink much anyway,” I say, taking a little sip from the straw.

“Much?”

“Yeah, well, tonight I think I’ll need a buzz.” I set the glass down and finger the lime on the rim.

“Why’s that?” he asks, wiping the bar top down with a paper towel.

“Wait a second.” I hold up one finger. “Before you get the wrong idea, I’m not here to spill my guts to you—bartender-customer therapy.” Natalie is all the therapy I can handle.

He laughs and tosses the paper towel somewhere behind the bar. “Well that’s good to know, because I’m not the advice type.”

I take another small sip, leaning over this time instead of lifting the glass from the bar; my loose hair falls all around my face. I rise back up and tuck one side behind my ear. I really hate wearing my hair down; it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

“Well, if you must know,” I say, looking right at him, “I was dragged here by my relentless best friend who would probably do something embarrassing to me in my sleep and take a blackmail pic if I didn’t come.”

“Ah, one of those,” he says, laying his arms across the bar top and folding his hands together. “I had a friend like that once. Six months after my fiancée skipped out on me, he dragged me to a nightclub just outside of Baltimore—I just wanted to sit at home and sulk in my misery, but turns out that night out was exactly what I needed.”

Oh great, this guy thinks he knows me already, or at least my “situation.” But he doesn’t know anything about my situation. Maybe he has the “bad ex” thing down, because we all have that, eventually, but the rest of it—my parents’ divorce; my older brother, Cole, going to jail; the death of the love of my life—I’m not about to tell this guy anything. The moment you tell someone else is the moment you become a whiner, and the world’s smallest violin starts to play. The truth is, we all have problems; we all go through hardships and pain, and my pain is paradise compared to a lot of people’s and I really have no right to whine at all.

“I thought you weren’t the advice type.” I smile sweetly.

He leans away from the bar and says, “I’m not, but if you’re getting something out of my story then be grateful.”