The Orclind’s Biggest Party
The Orclind’s Biggest Party
It was supposed to be the party of a lifetime. That’s what he’d been told. That’s what everyone said.
Go to Boulder, people told him. The Moonset festival is the biggest party in the UTA!
But no one fucking told him that you could get altitude sickness by just being in the damn place.
Crash groaned. The cool tile of the hotel bathroom helped soothe a little bit of his discomfort, but not much. The nausea was like a wet blanket draped over his whole body, pressing him down into the floor and leaving him kinda damp all over.
Outside, the sounds of fireworks and pounding music heralded the festivities he couldn’t attend. Thousands of people from all over the world were gathered in the streets, drinking, eating, and hunting for someone or someones to spend the night with. He’d had so many grand plans to be among them.
Every single one was shot straight to Grim’s riverbank when he woke up that morning in a cold sweat, unable to catch his breath and about two seconds from chucking his guts into the toilet.
“Seemed like such a good idea,” he whimpered to no one. “Why did this seem like a good idea?”
Because Cece talked about it.
Crash pressed his face into a rough hotel towel, half-hoping he could smother himself into passing out and forgetting all about his ex.
It didn’t work. Not much did, besides getting absolutely obliterated or finding someone to bash him over the head with a pipe.
Cece was just one of those girls a man didn’t forget.
He wasn’t surprised when she broke it off with him.
He’d known from the moment they met that she was too damn good for a piece of shit like him.
Smart, funny as shit, more confident than a vampire at midnight, and so beautiful it hurt to look at her, Cecilia Warren was a taste of the good life he didn’t deserve.
They’d had fun together, sure. He’d tried to treat her right, in all the ways a rough-edged orc who didn’t always fall on the right side of the law knew how, but in the end, they both knew it wouldn’t last.
She wasn’t his mate. He wasn’t a good fit for a ray of sunshine with a good life ahead of her.
But he was still fucking sad, and he fucking hated being fucking sad, so he bought a stupidly expensive last-minute ticket on an m-jet to Boulder, grabbed his bag, and set off to lose himself in alcohol for at least twenty-four hours.
Cecilia had mentioned to him once that she wanted to go to the legendary festival, so he supposed it’d been lodged in his head and came up again as some pathetic way to reconnect with her — kinda like a parasite or one of those tumors with teeth.
It figured that it was a disaster.
The universe didn’t want them together. It didn’t even want him thinking about her, apparently, because it’d struck him down with the most pathetic sickness he could imagine.
“I’m an orc,” he whined into the towel. “We’re built for mountains, for fuck’s sake!”
As if on cue, the universe responded with its own fuck you in the form of a disrespectfully loud pop and shatter of fireworks over the hotel.
A shudder wracked him as another wave of nausea crested. Pushing himself onto his hands, he pulled himself across the tile like a sweaty green seal. Crash slung his muscular body over the bowl of the toilet and hung his head, waiting for the inevitable.
When the deed was done, he thought, Well, I guess this could’ve been worse. If Cece was here, I’d be humiliated. What woman wants an orc who can’t handle a little altitude?
A hoarse laugh escaped his scorched throat as yet another round of fireworks seemed to indicate the universe agreed with him. Heartbreak sucked, but at least he had his pride. Or what was left of it, anyway.
“Aw, fuck.” He staggered upright to rinse his mouth. Stumbling back into the main room, he collapsed into bed.
Crash groped mindlessly for his phone, hidden somewhere in the sweaty knot of blankets, as the colorful lights from the fireworks shone through his window. Squinting at the screen, he pulled up the airline’s app to change his ticket.
He should’ve never come, and he didn’t intend to spend another hour in the wretched city if he didn’t have to.
He wanted his own damn bed in his own damn apartment in his own damn city, where he didn’t feel like his brain was being squeezed in a vice and memories of his ex came up as regularly as vomit.
Heartbreak, it turned out, couldn’t be fixed with a party. Even if the party was legendary.