Chapter 14
14
FOSTER
Before…
The third shot in twenty minutes goes down, and I’ve barely swallowed when Chase sets another next to my beer.
“This is what we’re doing?” I say over the club music. “Going the blackout route? Because I’d rather not?—”
He blows fucking glitter at me from his palm. “Fairy God Pirate of Halloween says quit your bitching.”
I hate everything about this moment, but I still crack a smile while glaring and shaking my head. “You are the fucking worst.”
The asshole winks at me, shoves the shot to my lips, and starts tipping. I catch it before it ends up everywhere and throw it back. Chase nods, like he seriously accomplished something. He takes his own before returning the tricorn hat to his head. I’ve opted for a red bandana tonight and a black mask over my eyes rather than an eyepatch like him, but we both have on black billowy shirts with undone laces at the tops, black jeans, and cuffed boots.
A lot more chest on display than the original look. But we have a lot more to give.
The pirate costumes became a given a long time ago. We wore different versions three years straight as little kids for trick-or-treating. After that, it was a joke, and by this point, it’s pirate or no costume at all. And Halloween in Prague with Chase requires a costume.
I get a reprieve from another shot when Chase plants a hand on the hilt of his fake sword and swaggers off into the crowd of monsters and skin. Fog covers the floor from machines and creeps up to our thighs, and I have to dodge a few LED spiderwebs. The DJ is decked out in a giant pumpkin head and currently playing the Ghostbusters theme blended with a techno beat.
I’ve pulled back on the nightlife the past few days. Shockingly, passing out every morning after drinking all night can lose its appeal to a twenty-one-year-old college dude. Not Chase—who almost seems to be going harder to make up for me. But I missed quiet. I missed exploring the city. I missed brooding over lyrics and strumming aimlessly, chasing what feels like magic.
It just so happens the spellwork lately includes auburn hair and a sexy voice and a restless desire to fill in the rest. The wandering often involves all that, too.
Tonight, though, I would have come out regardless of Chase threatening to knock me out and carry me out of the flat. Even if my pirate companion has twice now managed to find glitter somewhere.
I’m handed a green drink once we break through the throng of people. Chase is already downing his and on the move again toward three lifeguards, huddled off on the edge of the dance floor. He opens with an, “Arr, lasses, we’re here to plunder yer booties,” and maybe I needed one more shot.
The bikini-clad tourists fall for it hook, anchor, and cannonball, so he catches me around the neck and pulls me forward to join them. But rather than offering the chicks my sword, I’m playing up Chase tonight. Unlike him, I can fucking wingman.
“What’s your favorite part of Prague?” one of the two brunettes yells at me.
A wolf howl breaks into a house mix of Monster Mash while I tip my cup at my best friend. “Chase has taken me so many places. I can’t pick.”
She moves closer. To me. “Maybe you can show me a few.”
“Nah.” I scrunch up my face and clap Chase on the shoulder. “If you need a guide, he’s the better man.”
Chase chuckles, and then he slaps me on the back. “Foster’s just being shy. This sexy man loves giving tours to hot women. Especially of our flat.”
He adds a wink. I shoot him a look to knock it off, but he just pinches my cheek.
It switches after that to me constantly dodging. Suddenly, Chase is bound and determined to get me to fuck one of them—even pulling out the eleven-inch dick guitarist shit. The relentless pushing starts to piss me off. I told him before we threw on the costumes I’m not hunting for buried treasure tonight.
When they all empty their drinks, they decide we need shots. Chase throws an arm over my shoulders, bringing me along. We stop at one of the drink stations set up around the club. They have different themes, this one a vampire’s lair. The bar top looks like a coffin with candelabras and skulls for decoration.
The lifeguards and Chase order two rounds of “bloodlust” shots, which end up being rum and raspberry syrup, but I wave off the second.
“I’m good,” I tell him.
He rotates away from the lifeguards on his other side toward me. The redhead touches his arm and pouts, but he puts the shot down in front of him on the coffin, not paying attention. She realizes he doesn’t care, so she returns to giggling with her friends.
By now, Chase is lasered in on me. “You finally come out and don’t want to drink yourself into oblivion, and now you’re cutting yourself off by midnight?” He drunkenly sighs and sets his hand on the back of my neck. “I love you, my little rock star, but you’re killing the image of being one.”
I shake my head. “I’m not your little anything. And considering I barely have a band, I think it’s safe to say I’m not a rock star either.”
“Yet. You’re not a rock star yet .” Nudging the drink closer, he says, “But you fucking will be, Foster West, so you might as well start drinking like one now. Raw dog the life you want or some manifestation shit.”
I snort. “Pretty sure that’s exactly how the saying goes, brother.” My irritation slips, and deciding fuck it, I raise the glass. “Carpe dick.”
He grins as I take the shot. “There you go, buddy. The world is your Fleshlight.”
“You’re getting that on a pillow for Christmas.” I smile, and he shakes me around until I shove him off.
Before we bro-spire the entire club, a panda and a witch pass behind us, talking about another DJ on the roof. I feel Chase refocus on me before I swing toward him.
“They have a roof,” I say at the same time as he shouts, “A fucking roof?”
We have a thing that started when I moved back to Texas at fourteen. After all the shit surfaced with my dad in New York and the way it went down, I hated everything and everyone. So, Chase would force my ass up to the roof of his house. Nobody but us. No reason to hold it all in. I could tell the person I trust most in this world whatever I needed to get out.
It became our ritual. Something shitty happens, we find a rooftop—even if we had to pop a lock for access. Hell, we go on them without a reason anymore.
It’s just what we do.
No surprise, he invites the lifeguards to go with us. Conveniently, they all have trench coats.
The closed stairwell up still has a throb of bass, but the tempo switches the closer we get to the top. Chase smirks at me before he throws the metal door open. And we walk out to a rooftop rave. Glowsticks and boomsh-boomsh and a strobe-lit dance floor under a canopy. People sprawl on glowing cubes, serving as furniture, and we might be the only ones not splattered with blacklight body paint.
Which seems like a top priority.
Chase already has a bundled-up lifeguard under each arm. “Let’s paint, drink, and then we’ll get you ladies out of here.” He nods at the brunette he’s been forcing on me all night. “Foster will give you that tour of flat surfaces in our flat with the flat of his tongue.”
I let out an exasperated, “Dude,” but don’t finish because he walks off toward the stall set up for paint.
After another douche move, I’m seriously considering bailing, but the brunette grabs my bicep and hauls me in that direction. We stop behind the other three, people everywhere, close to a speaker. The last two shots are kicking in, which has everything developing a slight haze.
The brunette shouts up at me, laughing and hanging off my arm. Her hold slides all the way down, and she links our fingers. I look down at them, entwined, my eyebrows lowering. Her hand in mine, mine in hers. It scrapes at something inside me—and as she tries to tuck herself against my side, my mind finally catches up.
I can’t detach myself fast enough. I actually have to hold her wrist to retrieve my hand. Then I walk away. From her. From the pounding music and the wasted crowd and the entire fucking scene.
None of it’s what I want right now.
Maybe that should be a glaring reason to stay. The fact I have no interest in all the things I should want. Things I was interested in until a little red dot appeared on my screen in Paris. When Remi Saint told me to stop looking at women and show her beautiful things.
I make it all the way to the opposite side of the roof before I crash down on a wicker sofa. The air feels cooler, and the music doesn’t take up all the space in my head anymore.
But someone fills in the gaps.
Digging my phone out of my pocket, I check out the view. One I haven’t seen of the city. I know just who I want to share it with.
I unlock my screen but never make it to my camera. I smile. Remi beat me, sending a video twenty minutes ago.
With no one else around, I hit play and slouch deeper into the cushions. I squint at the screen, unsure what the hell I’m seeing. The shot is dim, random shapes and harsh shadows. An eerie scream plays in the background followed by the sound of chains clanking together.
It starts to come together once I catch the curve of shimmery black fabric and a slice of bare skin toward the bottom. Two things I excel at noticing—a skirt and legs. Another part of the screen shows the same but from a different angle. She must move then because it all shifts. Once it settles, the smooth line of her arm fractures across the screen, tilted in different directions.
Mirrors.
She’s in a room of mirrors.
As if she’d timed how long I would take to figure it out, the shot pulls back, more of Remi visible until I have multiple reflections of her from the waist down. I have to piece them together for the full picture. Her fingers wrap around the back of a sparkly blue phone case, maroon nails to match the origination of my foot fetish. An upside-down fragment gives me the curves beneath a tight black dress. An angled view of the short skirt flares over her hips with the glimmer of iridescence in the fabric. Gorgeous legs disappear into boots with way too many straps.
“I want to try something,” she says, and I sigh at her voice.
I might be slightly drunk now, but I am just as caught up in her sober. She wouldn’t scrape. Not a chance in hell.
Everything morphs on my screen until only a close-up reflection of her shoulder and a thin black strap remain. I hear her exhale, and the mirror fogs over. A few seconds later, it starts dissipating. Then Remi’s silhouette begins to fade in. More than a sexy curve or a flash of skin. All of her. Every fucking part.
“Remi,” I mumble, a place inside me settling.
The video cuts off right before the mirror fully clears, and I groan, already typing out the message.
Why do you hurt me like this?
I blow out a breath and stand, bringing up my camera. The skyline glides across the screen while I turn a 360 to record. Not nearly as artistic, but she’ll get what she gets after that bullshit.
“You can’t be fucking serious.”
Chase’s annoyance announces him before I reach him in my rotation. I flick my eyes over to him. The colored lights from the rooftop rave swirl behind him, eye patch abandoned and his arms at his sides, lifeguardless.
Something below the surface has felt off with him all night. I’ve done my best to ignore it, chalking it up to drunk Chase. But now he’s serving me more of a scowl than I did to him earlier. Like I’m the one being an asshole. The look alone has all the irritation returning. Mix it with the contempt in his tone, and I have no more patience for him at all.
“I don’t know, Chase.” I pocket my phone and face him. “After you trying to shove my dick down a chick’s throat for the past hour, I’m not very giggly.”
“One night,” he says. “I thought I might get one fucking night with my best friend.”
“You were getting it until you decided to ignore what I said about not wanting to screw anyone.”
“Because you’ve wanted to screw anything lately? Or hell, even do anything at all?”
“It’s been a few days,” I remind him.
“Fuck off, Foster. It’s been longer, and we both know the reason.”
Running a hand over the bandana, I slide it off, scanning over the skyline before I come back to him. Outside of giving me shit, he’s never had an issue with the tours or Remi. But since the tours help pay for him, I doubt the resentment is aimed at them.
“What’s your point?”
“My point?” he asks, the words harsh. “We’re supposed to be having the time of our lives on this trip. We were having the time of our lives.” He shakes his head, stepping closer. “Now you ditch me to record the sky for some bitch you’ve never even met.”
My head shakes, too, and I step. “Call her that again and see what happens.”
Abysmal lighting aside, I catch his eye roll. “What are you going to do?” Step. “Kick my ass over pussy you won’t ever touch?”
“You’re fucking pushing it,” I grind out.
“And you’re fucking pathetic if you think anything between you two is real.”
He strikes an exposed nerve with that one, and we both step, less than a foot between us.
In all the years I’ve known him, all the times he’s been a prick, I’ve never been close to hitting him until this moment. He appears just as close to unloading on me. His fist clenches at his side and then relaxes and then tightens again, the rest of him equally tense.
We’ve never gotten here before. Nearing a point of not being able to take shit back. I can’t figure out why he’s pushed us here now, but I move the rest of the way to him. Chest to fucking chest.
“I don’t know what the hell your problem is, Chase,” I say, my tone low but even. “Or where any of this is coming from, but I’m over it. I’m over you, and I’m over this entire fucking trip.”
I stare him down while he seethes right back.
“Maybe you should leave then,” he bites at me.
“That’s the first thing we agree on all night.” Then I step again, around him, walking away.
He curses and knocks something over behind me and shouts for me to stop.
I don’t, unwilling to give him the fight he clearly wants.
Chase is my brother. Nothing could ever change it. But right now, his bullshit is on the list of things I have no interest in.
On my way down the stairwell, I order a ride, and once outside the club, I cut off the end of the video.
I send the rest to Remi.