In Real Life (21 page)

“Oh, no worries,” I say with a shrug. I'd forgotten about that completely, to be honest, but I don't tell her. “He wasn't even pissed, really.”

“Hm.” She crinkles up her forehead. “Well, I owe you a drink, anyway.” She links elbows with me and walks me back to the group. “What do you want? My treat.”

Aside from the drink of Grace's I sucked down earlier, I've never had alcohol before. Someone usually needs to be the DD, and it's certainly never going to be Lo, so I have no idea what people even drink at a bar. Beer? A mixed drink? A cocktail? Are those even different things?

I look at the glasses scattered on the bar table. “Uh, what are you having?”

“Luis, he's the bartender here, he turned me on to orange-flavored vodka with Sprite. It's so good. You want to try mine?”

I nod, and she slides her drink across the table. I take a quick sip from the skinny straw and cough as it trickles down my throat. The alcohol taste is harsh in my mouth, but the lemon-lime of the Sprite cuts it a little bit.

I shudder. “That's … good.”

She walks me over to the bar and flags down the bartender. “Luis, this is Hannah, she's another one of my friends from California.”

Luis nods at me. “Nice to meet you, Hannah. How're you liking Vegas?”

“It's, uh, interesting.”

“Sounds like there's a story there. What can I get you?”

“She'll have my regular,” Frankie steps in. “And put it on my tab.”

“ID?” Luis asks. For the second time, I fumble around in my wallet for my fake ID and I hand it to Luis. He checks it out and smiles, then hands it back to me. I realize as he gives it back that the ID says Kristy but Frankie introduced me as Hannah. I hope that smile doesn't mean he's pressing some button on the bottom of the bar, alerting the authorities that I'm illegally drinking. Getting arrested would be the cherry on this fan-freaking-tastic day.

Instead he makes the drink for me, complete with an orange slice balanced on the rim, and slides it across the bar with a wink.

I walk with Frankie back to our table. “Why does he do that? Let us drink when he knows we're underage?” What spell does Frankie have over people? I swear.

“Luis is an old friend. He takes care of me, and I take care of him.”

“Er…” Does Nick know about this?

“Not like that, you dirty girl. I talk him up on the blog. I let my readers know when he's working. I tell them to come here and ask for him. He makes piles of cash in tips every time I give him a shout-out, so he hooks me up. It's a nice little arrangement.”

“I thought your blog was for underage Vegas.”

“It is. But why do you think it's so popular?” She winks at me. “I blog about all kinds of hookups.”

Everyone at the table shifts around to make room for our return. “Hannah, over here,” Lo says, jerking her head toward the open spot she made next to her. With Jordy on the other side of the opening. The little sneak.

I walk around the tall table and slip in, but my focus is on Nick. He's down the table a bit, and Frankie has snuggled in next to him. He's watching me closely, his face giving nothing away, and I look back at him. Right when there has been just enough eye contact between me and Nick, I turn back to Jordy, who leans over and rests his elbow on the table, then his head on his hand. Damn, Hannah. That was pretty smooth.

“I'm glad you're back, Hannah. I've hardly had a chance to talk to you tonight.”

“Oh, well, you know.” It looks like my smoothness is gone as quickly as it arrived. I'm not very adept at this talking thing. “I was out seeing the sights.”

“Is it your first time?”

I'm trying to turn slightly to see if Nick is looking, but Jordy's question snaps me back to attention. “What?”

“In Vegas? Have you been here before?”

He launches into the typical getting-to-know-you chitchat, and I realize pretty quickly from his questions that, although Frankie and Alex and Oscar all know about me, Nick has never once mentioned my name to this guy.

I try my best to keep myself from turning around to see what Nick is doing by flirting and laughing and focusing on how unfairly attractive Jordy is. Messy blond hair, piercing blue eyes. I'm not usually one to pay attention to eye color, but he has eyes that force themselves to be noticed. He has a killer smile, too, and one dimple on his right cheek. The more he talks to me, the closer he leans, so his leg is practically wrapped around mine after ten minutes of conversation, and I don't mind one bit.

I wonder if Nick sees that.

The whole time we talk, I sip my drink. It gets easier to swallow with each gulp, and the more I have, the more I start to have fun. My insides get warm and this hot guy is here and obviously into me—me!—and not making out with his secret girlfriend right in my face like
other people
I know and all of that makes me feel pretty damn good. Maybe coming back down here was a brilliant idea after all. I have good ideas.

“Looks like you're done with that,” Jordy says, poking playfully at my drink, then again at my arm.

I give him a flirty smile in return. At least, I think it's a flirty smile. Who knows. “Get me another one? Just tell him it's Frankie's regular.”

Jordy trots off to the bar for another round, and I turn to Lo to update her on our conversation and how, surprisingly, I'm having fun talking to him, but she's deep in the zone with Oscar. I look for Grace, but she's off away from the table a bit, talking animatedly with Alex and Frankie. Loud music playing in the casino means I can't hear them very well, but I do hear the word
“Rocker”
as her arms flail around, so I assume she's pumping Frankie for story ideas. Dang, maybe my sister is kicking ass at this internship, after all.

That means Nick is at the table alone. I turn to my right and he
is
there, alone, stabbing his straw into a drink and glaring at me.

Awesome.

Welcome to my life, Nick. Now you know how it feels.

 

CHAPTER

22

“What?” I ask. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” he says, but I know every nuance of his voice. He's seen us. He's pissed.

Tee-hee.

Before I can ask more, Jordy comes back with our drinks and leans into me, so I turn around, my back to Nick again.

We keep talking and Jordy keeps leaning. Before I fully realize it, his arm is around my waist. It doesn't feel bad, his touch on me, the light pressure of his hand on my back. Not like Nick's electric touch from earlier, but it's not terrible, either. I ask Jordy about the band, about his life. I didn't realize he was several years older than me and Nick. He's nice. He bought me a drink and he's listening to me and answering my questions and he likes bad reality TV, too, and he doesn't have a girlfriend—and, man, that smile. It's pretty damn sexy.

“You're really beautiful, Hannah.” He leans over and whispers this in my ear. Honestly, though, he doesn't have to lean far, because we have scooted so close together, I'm practically wearing him like a coat. “I can't believe Nick's been your friend for so long and never made a move on you. What an idiot.”

“I know, right?” I snort. “He is an idiot.” Even Jordy knows.

“Can I ask you something, Hannah?”

It's weird the way he keeps saying my name, but I smile anyway because I kind of like hearing my name over and over. Nick rarely calls me by my name. But he does call me Ghost, and no one else calls me that. “Sure.”

“There's another bar in the middle of the casino. Would you want to go over there and maybe sit down? They have couches. We can get comfortable.”

I've done an awful lot of walking in these wedges since we arrived in Vegas, and the thought of sitting down is glorious. I nod and he grabs my hand and leads me away from the table, through the casino, and into the dimly lit bar in the middle of Planet Hollywood. I'm glad he's leading, because my head is feeling a little cloudy from the one-and-a-half drinks I've sucked down.

I want so badly to turn around and see Nick's reaction to us walking off together, hand in hand, but I think it will look so much cooler if I just saunter off like I don't care, so I let Jordy lead me.

But I think,
Please be looking, please be looking.

Now, this is more what I was picturing when I heard we were going to a bar. The room is dark and circular and the bar is in the center with plush chairs and couches surrounding it and go-go dancers on platforms on the side. It's crowded in here, but we manage to find an empty couch. I plop down on the end and Jordy sits right next to me, as close as he can get without sitting in my lap. He puts his arm around me and leans in.

“This is so much better,” he says.

“It feels good to sit down,” I say stupidly because I have nothing else to say. I've been brought to this dark bar with a hot older guy who is buying me drinks and leaning so close, I can smell his fruity gum. Crap, I should've told Lo or Grace where I was going instead of walking off with no word, but I'd been too concerned with making a dramatic exit. I pull my phone out of my pocket and send a quick text to Lo:
WITH JORDY. IN THE MIDDLE.
Hopefully she can decipher that.

Slipping my phone back in my pocket, I take a small breath and look back up at him. This could be completely amazing or really freaking awkward. I guess it all depends on his next move.

Jordy brushes my hair out of my face, even though my hair wasn't even in my face, and gives me a look. “You're really beautiful, Hannah,” he says again. A wordsmith this guy is not. For someone who writes such meaningful songs, he has no clue how to work it when it matters. But when I'm about to tell him maybe he should try expanding his repertoire of Lines That Get in Girls' Pants, he leans over and kisses me.

I've kissed a guy or two in the past few years. I mean, not a lot or anything, but it's not like this is my first time with a guy's tongue in my mouth. Now, Josh, Micah, and Ian have all been my boyfriends. Randomly kissing dudes isn't my style. But Lo did tell me to give Jordy a try. I'm positive she would approve of this. I hope she walks by.

Sadly, Jordy isn't the best kisser. I don't want to throw up, which, you know, is a thing I want to do sometimes. But I'm not totally into it, either, which is a bummer because he's so dang hot, and surprisingly fun to talk to. Perhaps we should go back to talking again, because his mouth on mine is the kissing equivalent of his handshake. One of those dead fish, limp handshakes old church ladies give you, but with lips and a floppy tongue, and before I realize it, I'm actually listening in on some of the conversations going on in the bar around us instead of paying attention to Jordy. Some chick has to get three more things crossed off her bachelorette party scavenger hunt. The guy across the bar wants to buy the girl on the chair behind us a drink, but she's not sure if he's attractive or not. The cocktail waitress spilled something on someone's Chanel purse, oh crap.

I'm more curious about what's going to happen with the purse—man, that girl sounds
pissed
—than I am interested in this make out session, so I sort of scoot my body back on the couch so I can get closer to the action and hear the details. Unfortunately, I end up lying back on the couch when I do this, which Jordy takes as a sign that I want to get more horizontal. He makes a grunty noise of approval and leans forward, pressing himself down on me. Yikes! This is not at all what I wanted, and the situation has ventured into creepy town, for sure. Public make out is already out of my comfort zone. Horizontal public make out is some next-level nope.

But before I have a chance to push Jordy off me and straighten up, I hear a sound that freezes me. I can't explain the noise. It's not a gasp, it's not a choke, it's not a scream, but it's some gravelly combination of all three. It doesn't matter what the noise is.

All that matters is I know it's coming from Nick.

 

CHAPTER

23

I push Jordy off me—I must catch him off guard, because he almost falls right onto the floor—and Nick and I stare at each other. He looks stunned and hurt, as if I've slapped him, open palm right across the cheek. But then his face changes, a subtle shift, and the hurt morphs into anger that pumps through his veins and seeps from his pores. I feel indignation radiating off him.

Jordy rights himself, then turns around to see what I'm gaping at. “Oh—hey, bro. What's up?”

Nick doesn't acknowledge Jordy. In fact, he doesn't break eye contact with me at all until he shakes his head, like he's trying to get a bug off his ear, and storms out of the bar.

“Hold on, Jordy. I, uh…” I don't even bother coming up with an explanation as I climb over him on the couch to chase after Nick.

“Hey!” I catch up on the casino floor right outside the bar, and I reach out and graze the arm of his jacket with my fingertips.

“What was that?” He's practically spitting at me. I thought I'd heard every tone of Nick's voice before, but I've never heard this: Fury. Hurt.

I've seen Nick mad before. He's frustrated with his brother almost every day for the endless string of thoughtless things Alex says and does to him. He's angry at his dad for not shaking himself out of his fog and living life again after Nick's mom died. He gets mad about bad grades in math or UNLV basketball losing or his phone battery dying.

I've never seen anger like this, though—deep and raw and painful.

And directed at me.

I guess we do have some parts we've never shown each other, secret sides of us we've kept hidden. We've stuffed these ugly sides, the sides full of jealousy and rage, deep in the dark corners of ourselves.