Chapter 21
“WHAT ARE WE DOING, SIMON?” Dez asks later that night as the two of them trudge uphill in swirling snow, heading for the ski lift behind the dining hall. “I told you I’m never going back to that bar.”
“But it’s Friday night, and Villains is the only party on campus. You can’t permanently swear off the only social venue in the vicinity. Besides, Jet invited us. He said everyone’s going to be there.”
“Jet invited you,” Dez corrects him. Her own mentor, meanwhile, hadn’t breathed a word about this campus-wide soiree. Not when Dez had been in his arms in the data storage center abyss. Not when he was kissing the back of her neck inside her Lens.
Simon tightens the strings on the hood of his parka so that Dez can only see a two-inch radius around his nose. “Jet mentioned you by name. Said you missed the first Eye for an Eye meeting yesterday.”
“I was working on my film.”
“Well, you’re not working on your film tonight. You’re getting wasted with your favorite roommate.”
“I didn’t know Yael was coming,” Dez deadpans.
Simon bumps her with his shoulder. “Rafe will be there, too.”
“I see Rafe enough.”
“Ooh. Decode that tone for me.”
“A little goes a long way with him.”
Dez can still feel, in the dampness of her lace thong, how little Rafe had given her that afternoon. She’d had to make herself come, alone, again, twice, after he fled her Lens.
She wonders if it scares him how hot it is when they kiss. It definitely scares her. But she handles it by needing more of him. Whereas Rafe handles it by running away.
“Hold up.” Simon stops walking, thrusting a hand in front of Dez. “Isn’t that the ski lift?”
There are no streetlights, only the waning artificial moon, but they’ve been walking long enough for their vision to adjust.
“And isn’t that … a bunch of idiots hanging from the cables?” Dez squints up above the chairs where it appears a handful of last-years have climbed atop the chair lift and are swinging from the steel wire.
“That’s Jet,” Simon says, obvious awe in his voice. His mentor whoops maniacally, swinging and letting go, catching random cables like a suicidal gymnast.
“Forget the party, I’m not doing that,” Simon says.
“Just because your mentor’s doing it doesn’t mean you have to,” Dez says, pointing at a crowd of first-years waiting in line to board the chair lift like regular people, like people without a death wish. Every one of them stares up at the last-years on the wire like they’re crazy.
Which they are.
Speaking of which, is Rafe there? Dez can’t see him on the wires yet, but she wouldn’t put it past him to show o? like these unhinged lunatics.
She and Simon join the line behind Alice Quinn, Paul Rowan, and other first-years. They nod hello, but everyone seems nervous, wound tight with the anticipation that they might soon let loose.
Dez doesn’t feel right about being here. How can she go out to a bar when her brother’s in the hospital, fighting for his life? And besides, the last time she’d come to Villains, all she’d done was humiliate herself, then black out.
“Please don’t leave me,” Simon says. “You’re getting that look in your eyes like you’re about to bolt, and I need a wingwoman tonight.”
“You’re finally going to go for it with Esther?”
Simon nods. “I’ve gotta shoot my shot. It’s getting ridiculous.”
“The school year just started, and Esther’s not going anywhere. But I support you shooting your shot. Just support me in not getting wasted. I don’t want a repeat of last time.”
“’Tis a deal, m’lady.”
“Don’t talk like that to Esther.”
“T’will not.”
“That’s not even correct.”
“Fucketh off and sit thine ass on the ski lift.”
Dez and Simon both squeal as the chair lift scoops them up, carrying them toward the distant chalet at the top of the mountain.
“Back home in Oklahoma,” Simon says, “the local dive was in my cousin’s trailer. He used to buy Milwaukee’s Best at the Food 4 Less and charge double the price. Then I read online how to build a thermal immersion circulator, and voi-fucking-la, Golden Eagle Moonshine was born.”
“The last bar I went to,” Dez says, swinging her legs, watching the snow pass distantly beneath her, “was in this beach town called Ventura. I’d just finished shooting the film that got me into Acheron. And I took the cast and crew to celebrate. All two of them.”
She smiles at the memory. She can still see Asher at the bar, beers on the table between them, the moment he reached out and ran his thumb across the back of her hand.
“Oh,” Simon says. “You were into one of them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve literally never seen that expression on your face. What is that, a smile?”
“I was into one of them,” she admits. “His name’s Asher. But I’ll probably never see him again.”
“I think you will,” Simon says.
A noise behind them makes Dez duck. Jet and his fellow last-years swing through the air, grabbing hold of the wire over their heads. She and Simon stare at each other, incredulous.
“How are they doing that?” Dez asks.
“Booze would be my guess,” Simon says. “I did lend Jet my flask at dinner.”
“What if they fall?”
“Stuff like that is ninety percent balls. I get the feeling Jet has enough to spare.” He points ahead, where the chair lift ends and loops around to go back down the mountain. “Oh shit. We’re getting off. Do you remember how—”
“Not exactly—”
“We’re dead,” Simon says, squeezing Dez’s hand as she labors to raise the bar, assuming the position of someone ready for any of this. They plant their feet on a patch of pure ice, which sends them on their asses down a slope that ends abruptly at the porch where Dez first met Yael.
“Just like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in Road to Utopia,” Simon says, mounting the stairs and swinging open the door. “I’m Bob Hope, by the way.”
A gale of stale beer and Chappell Roan filters out from Villains as Dez follows Simon inside.
She feels the dark, seductive energy of the place swallow her up as it had once before.
The bar is packed, the crowd is last-year heavy, laughing, glamorous, everyone drinking jewel-toned cocktails in whimsically shaped glassware.
There’s no naked dancer on the banquette table this time, but looking around, Dez still gets the distinct vibe that they’ve stumbled into an orgy.
“Um, wow,” Simon says, edging past a pair of first-year women dry humping in the doorway. “Good for them, right?”
Fuck Dez’s intention to stay sober. There’s only one way to participate in a bacchanalia.
“We need drinks to catch up,” she says, stepping around another quartet of students, the women’s sweater minidresses hiked up as they dance.
She spots Yael in a booth—having her toes sucked on by the emo last-year who works in the ski shop.
Alice Quinn hovers over them, looking like she’s taking a complicated drink order for Yael.
Like a magnet, Dez’s gaze alights on Rafe in the center of the room. He’s seated at the bar next to Jet, with Esmeralda and Kitty on their respective laps. Rafe’s talking, laughing, regaling everyone in earshot as Esmeralda nibbles his ear.
A flicker of heat courses through Dez, followed by a grinding rage.
The last time she saw Rafe, he was hiding his erection, hurrying out of her Lens.
Not like he owes her anything. He’s made his boundaries clear.
But she can’t subdue the tidal wave of jealousy as Esmeralda tries to lure him somewhere more private.
He shakes his head, playful but firm, which only makes the woman more committed.
Dez thinks of how, only hours earlier, she’d dropped to her knees in the Vault before Rafe, imagining an exhibitionist scene not unlike this one. In her fantasy, people were watching her worship Rafe’s dick.
“This is a fuck frenzy,” Simon says, sounding alarmed. “I’ve got to find Esther before someone else does.”
Dez nods for him to go. “Good luck,” she says, just as Rafe meets her eyes.
She freezes. He winks. She holds his gaze, raising an eyebrow, long enough that Rafe looks away first.
Back to Esmeralda, still begging on his lap.
Dez reads his lips. Okay. Let’s go.
And then, without looking back at Dez, Rafe stands up and lets Esmeralda wrap her hand around his tie like it’s a leash and pull him out the bar’s back door.
Dez can think of only one thing to do next. Drink.
She cuts through the unfolding orgy toward the bar. She wants something stiff and spicy. On her way, someone bumps into her, sending her backward into Alice Quinn, whose tray of drinks topples onto the floor and shatters.
“Alice,” Dez says, crouching down to help. “I’m sorry—”
“Yael’s gonna kill me,” Alice mutters.
“We’ll get more drinks. It’ll be okay.”
“No. I can’t do anything right. Can’t even finish one film.”
“Alice—”
“Leave me alone!” Alice says, near tears. “Everyone’s looking now. You’re making it worse.”
“Okay,” Dez says, and rises guiltily, backing away from Alice.
She turns to the bar, planting her hands on its waxed wood surface to regain her composure.
She wonders what kind of pressure Yael is putting on Alice in the Vault.
Would it have helped if Dez had told her she’s nowhere near finished with her first assignment either?
“Hello, Desdemona,” the bartender says, like they’ve known each other for twenty years. Did they meet before? Dez’s hazy first night here? She feels like she’d remember this woman’s long, electric-blue hair and the spellbinding hummingbird tattoo on her cleavage.
“Have we met?” Dez says.
“Not officially. I’m Eri.” The bartender smiles and dips her head in a nod. “How’s your film going? You got assigned that poet, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“I tend the only bar on campus,” Eri says, pouring simultaneously from several bottles into a cocktail shaker. “I’m praying for you.”
“Thanks.”
Eri adds ice to her tumbler, caps it, and shakes. “I’m praying for your brother, too.”