Thrall (A Vampire Romance) (4 page)

“I need a nap,” I yawned.

“Nap?” Andi laughed. “Nap? Girl, we’re only here for two nights. We have to make the best of it.”

Two more days. We would be back in Philly late Friday night, and then the big day.

Something was happening, something important and I was more interested in that than I was this stupid vacation. I resented her for dragging me here when I had something bigger coming up, something I’d been looking forward to for years.

I was so excited and nervous about that, it made Las Vegas a foggy dreamworld. Yes, even the rental car counter. Andi slipped the attendant a twenty and he looked at it in confusion but pocketed it anyway, and checked us in. The sky was blue and beautiful and the heat kissed my skin when we went outside to pick out a car, but I wanted to go home. This vacation was something to be suffered through. An obligation.

I looked at Andi and tried to make myself feel better about this. We were like sisters. When her mother left her father and left Andi too, she practically moved into my house.

When I saw how happy Andi was, my frustration faded. Pretty soon we would drift apart as we started our new lives. She would be moving. Andi was engaged to an engineer and they were heading out to Silicon Valley for his job in a few weeks, but she delayed as long as she could manage for my big day.

That was the other side of the coin. My youth was ending. I was willingly giving it up for the future’s sake and it put butterflies in my stomach. I was so distracted I just stood there until Andi poked my shoulder again and I tossed my bags in the trunk of the Mustang she picked out, a gaudy red convertible.

“As your attorney,” Andi chirped, “I advise you to rent something fast and red with no top.”

Ah, the Fear and Loathing references had started. I rolled my eyes and got in. Andi put the top down immediately and pulled out of the garage, into the blinding sun, her hair streaming out behind her.

It was somebody’s poor
 
decision to put the famous Welcome sign past the airport, so all I saw of it heading into town was the back, the part that says Drive Carefully.

The sky was huge. I just kept staring up, marveling at the blue as much as the buildings. I lived most of my life in a city, so I was used to tall buildings, but the sheer mass of the Strip casinos was unbelievable. The Luxor was across from the airport, gleaming black and ominous in the sunlight, its pyramid shape a blade of gleaming onyx.

There were fake statues and fake Venetian villas and sidewalks twice as wide as I was used to, and all of it teeming with people. People in suits, people in shorts, hawaiian shirts and dudebros in polos and a guy in a foam rubber suit that looked like a cartoony Michael Jackson and had to be as hot as hell.

People paid other people to take pictures for them or with them and people shouting and handing out papers advertising strip clubs and escorts. Andi honked the horn as a billboard bearing a half naked woman rolled by us in the next lane over, drawn by a beaten-down pickup truck.

A Jeep full of boys our age hooted and hollered and I had to grab Andi’s arm to keep her from flashing them.

“Oh, calm down,” she shouted, waving at them as the light turned and we started moving.

“We’ll get arrested.”

“B-b-but Andi,” she whimpered, mocking me, “We might get in trouble.”

“Andi,” I groaned.

“Baby, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. This is your last forty-eight hours of freedom. We are going to enjoy it.”

“Let’s just get to the hotel alive, okay?”

“Pussy,” Andi snorted, and floored it.

For a few feet, anyway. Traffic was deadlocked, between the sheer volume of cars and all the people crossing the street at the intersections. It took us an hour to drive about five miles, from the airport to downtown. Freemont Street, the other section of town devoted to tourists and gambling. Primarily, I mean. There were slot machines in the airport. The whole place was devoted to gambling.

Looking around, I didn’t feel like we were in a den of iniquity. It felt like any other city, even with all the surreal sights like a fake Eiffel tower and a fake Statue of Liberty and the Stratosphere, a giant tower hefting a flying saucer far into the sky. I craned my neck to stare up at it as we passed under, and wondered why we weren’t staying there. Andi planned all this. I just hoped she knew what she was doing.

The bizarre part was the section of town we drove through next. The huge casinos, bright lights and glamor all just disappeared, and it looked like any other low-rise urban sprawl. It looked like a nice town, at least in daylight. Finally Andi turned off and pulled up to the valet parking at the hotel.

Our place was at the far end of Freemont Street, next to the gigantic Golden Nugget. It was a smaller hotel, called the Freemont Star. The valets helped us with our bags, paying particular attention to Andi. She bathed in the attention, strutting around and thrusting out her chest.

I wanted to hide behind my ring. She gave them a tip, I guess to park the car close to the door so we could get it ourselves. Then we checked in, and again Andi greased the clerk at the counter. I was starting to think she had a stack of bills dedicated to passing out to random people.

I’d never been in a casino before. I was just barely old enough. While Andi and Kelly (who’s Kelly?) bantered with the lady at the counter, I wandered over and stared out at the casino floor. Every surface either had a flashing colored light or was brightly polished to bounce the lights around the room. There was so much motion.

Moving lights, moving people, dice flying through the air, roulette wheels turning. It was a little intoxicating, even if it did make me want to curl up in the hotel room with a book. I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to this. Crowds and places like this were never my cup of tea, but it was important to Andi. I stood there and wished I could turn time forward and get home for my big day. I couldn’t think about anything else. Andi tapped me on the shoulder.

“Come on. I got us a great room.”

I sighed. I wanted my room at home.

“Cheer up!”

Fine. I rode the elevator in sullen silence. My phone beeped and before I could check the text, Andi snatched it out of my hand.

“Hey!”

“I answered him and I told him it was me, relax. This is your last forty-seven hours of freedom. I’m keeping count. You’re off the leash until we get back.”

“Andi, give me my phone.”

She turned up her nose. “Nope.”

I sighed, and the elevator door opened. The place was super plush, and I wondered how Andi was able to afford this. The room was incredible. There was a sitting room as big as a regular hotel room, a kitchen and a huge bedroom with a hot tub and giant, floor to ceiling windows showing a spectacular, two angle view of the strip and Freemont Street. There was a big metal superstructure over the street itself, which was closed to cars for pedestrian traffic.

When it got dark, that huge roof would light up with thousands upon thousands of colored lights in a spectacular show that ran from nine at night to three in the morning, and there was a stage for concerts and all sorts of people and street performers, vendors and a fortune teller in a little hut at the end of the street.

Andi came out of the bathroom in a horribly indecent green thong bikini and started filling up the hot tub.

“Somebody might see you,” I chirped.

She rolled her eyes, bent over, and mooned Las Vegas, not that the string between her cheeks gave her much coverage anyway. When the hot tub began to bubble she lowered herself into the water.

“Can I take my nap now?”

“Fine,” Andi sighed. “We’re not going out until dark anyway. I got us tickets to a show.”

Good enough for me. I freshened up and changed and claimed the bed furthest from the window, hugging a pillow as I closed my eyes. Hours and hours on the plane and the car ride and all of it just fell on me like a lead weight and I was out like a light.

I woke up to find Andi sitting up next to me in the bed, drinking a wine cooler from the honor bar and flipping channels. She stopped on Storage Wars.

“I hear this show is fixed.”

“Nuh uh,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, it is,” said Andi. “They plant stuff. Who the hell leaves Spider-Man #1 or whatever in a burning hot storage bin in the middle of nowhere and just forgets about it? You know there’s an honor bar here, right?”

“I don’t want to drink,” I said, though the last words came out all mushed up by a yawn. “I’ll be the designated driver.”

“Fine,” Andi sighed. “You’re not going out like that. Go get cleaned up and change.”

I didn’t feel like arguing. I took a quick shower and put on something a little more appropriate for the weather. It would be warm here even at night, closer to summer in Philadelphia, so I put on some capris and a loose, sleeveless t-shirt. When I came out of the bathroom, Andi was decked out in Daisy Dukes and a belly shirt with YOU CAN’T AFFORD ME written across the front in gold glitter, and flip-flops.

Andi took one look at me and rolled her eyes.

“Oh, well. I guess you’re off the market, anyway.”

I sighed. “So are you.”

“Hey, just because the store is closed, doesn’t mean they take the signs down. Let’s go have some fun.”

“Okay. Fun.”

Back down to the parking garage, and the Mustang was parked by the door. We went to get it ourselves, after Andi gave another generous tip to the attendant and handed me the key. I put the top down and Andi gave me a derisive snort when I stopped at the entrance and looked both ways, and adjusted my mirrors, before pulling out into traffic.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the Strip. I’ll let you know,” said Andi, sinking into the passenger’s seat. “Just drive.”

I drove.

It was a more impressive sight at night, so much so that I had to remind myself to look at the road. Even in the distance the Strip was a flashing panoply of colored light, like a boardwalk carnival writ huge across the desert landscape. It only got bigger, and bigger as Las Vegas Boulevard became the Strip proper. We passed the Stratosphere and slowed down with the traffic to the perpetual crawl of the Strip and just stared at the sight of all that light and color. Even Andi was hushed by the spectacle, so much so that she almost missed the turn.

“Hey, here it is.”

I pulled off the road, up a ramp towards a parking garage. I started towards the self-service parking but Andi punched my shoulder.

“Go to the valets.”

Andi led the way, strutting through the garage after the attendants took the car, and slipped the ticket in her back pocket. The downtown hotels were big but this place was enormous. We walked out into a lobby that had to be four stories high, with a sky painted on the ceiling, and a twenty foot tall marble statue in the middle of a fountain ahead of us. Andi looked around and whistled.

“Why didn’t we stay here?” I said.

“Downtown is a better deal,” said Andi. “We’re gonna miss the show.”

“What show?”

Then I saw it. It took me a moment to process what All Male Nude Revue meant.

I stopped in place, I crossed my arms, and I put my foot down. Literally.

“No.”

Andi sighed and gave me a sharp look. “Chris, come on.”

“I said no.”

“Look, it’s not like we’re going to a strip club where some guy is going to grind his dong in your face. I just want you to see more than one dude’s dick in your lifetime. It’s my civic duty.”

I shook my head and my voice tightened. I was really getting mad.

“No. I’m not doing this, Andi. I refuse.”

Andi crinkled her nose. “I already bought the damn tickets.”

“No.”

“It’s just a show, Chris. Come on.”

“I said no. I’m not going. I’ll wait for you
 
out here.”

“Fine,” Andi snapped. “I paid, I’m going in. You can just sit out here and sulk.”

She stormed off, leaving no room for further argument. I watched her get in line and headed for the casino floor.

I was scared of getting my purse snatched, so all I had on me was my driver’s license and a wad of cash. After I glanced back and saw Andi enter the amphitheater to watch the show, I glumly sat down at a slot machine and fed it a twenty.

I did not want to spoil my friendship with Andi and have her move out of my life on a sour note. That’s why I was here in the first place. But, I knew that he would never go to a strip club or a show like that with naked girls, and he would view it as betraying me. I looked at my ring and knew I owed him the same.

So I plunked away on the nickel slot machine, doomed to wind down my twenty dollar bill, since I had no idea what I was doing. I just hit the MAX BET button over and over and wished Andi was there with me. She’d make a joke about who Max was and make wasting money fun somehow.

The show couldn’t be more than an hour, maybe an hour and a half, tops. Andi would walk out with some guy’s thong on her head and tell me a crazy story and we’d make up and go do something else all night until we crawled back to the room, and then it was just another day of fooling around until it was time to go the airport and I would be back home.

It was half over, and the Big Day was ticking ever closer, minute by minute. Now that everything was ready, my dress, the cake, the hall, the arrangements with the church, all I had to do was wait, and that was, for sure, the hardest part.

I looked over at the bar. I was the designated driver but I could have one, right? I was bored out of my mind. Maybe I’d just have some ginger ale and pretend it was scotch or something. I got up and wandered over, leaving a dollar in the slot machine, unclaimed. The old lady that took my spot didn’t deign to point out that my wagers were not yet finished. Part of me wished her a jackpot win on my nickel. I already had everything I wanted.

Still, when I sat down alone at the bar I felt bad for abandoning my friend. Was it really that big of a deal? An hour of discomfort to make Andi happy.

The bartender came over and I ordered my favorite drink, a screwdriver. Orange juice and vodka.

That’s when he came up to the bar.