We were at Decadence. It had become our favorite club, because Cory worked there, and Frankie worked in the building. We’d been hanging out with her and Jared a lot, nearly every night.
I was chatting with Jared and Frankie. We were ganging up on him, trying to talk him into making the band play more gigs. Yes, I’d started using the word gig. When in Rome…
Tristan had made a trip to the restroom. I saw him heading back to us. The pink haired rocker chick that had opened for them at their performance stopped him with a hand on his arm.
We kept running into her. Her name was Rosette, and she hit the clubs at least as much as we did, and I was almost positive they’d slept together just by the way she looked at him.
I glanced at Frankie, who always told it like it was. “Have they slept together? I mean before he and I…”
I could tell before she opened her mouth that she knew that they had.
“That’s a question for Tristan. I really can’t say for sure, but he got around a lot…before.”
I thought about how before was only a couple of weeks ago as Rosette clung to his arm, even to the point of following him as he made his way over to the rest of us.
He was smiling at something she said, though it did look like he’d tried to tug his arm away.
She wasn’t budging, and my drunk mind took that very personal. At least, I tried to tell myself it was the alcohol that made me so crazy.
I didn’t go crazy right off the bat. It wasn’t quite so bad as all that. Her hand on his arm was not enough to do it on its own.
It was her second hand, reaching up to grip his bicep, measuring it. She bit her lip and gave him what I thought was a very s.l.u.tty smile. “You have the best arms, Tryst. So big. In fact—“ she leaned into him, her chest against that arm, stood on tiptoe, and started whispering into his ear.
“You know he has a girlfriend, right?” I called out to her, feeling mad enough to spit.
She turned her head slowly to look at me, her eyes telling me clearly that she knew I’d been there all along. “I heard about that.”
“So you just get a kick out of hanging all over someone else’s man?”
“You’ve been dating for like two weeks, right? That has to be a record for Tryst. How far past breaking his own record do you think he’ll get before he falls off the wagon again?”
Tristan shook her off, looking annoyed. “If you can’t be civil to my girlfriend, you can f.u.c.king walk away.” He pointed, as though to show her which way she could walk.
I loved it.
She didn’t.
She turned a scathing glare on him. “Dean told me you were p.u.s.s.y whipped, and I didn’t believe him. I see I was wrong.” She made a whipping motion in the air with one hand, accompanied by the universal sound effect for ‘p.u.s.s.y whipped’.
“f.u.c.k Dean, and f.u.c.k you,” Tristan shot back, going from annoyed to p.i.s.sed.
“We already did that, honey.” Rosette’s voice was all sweet venom. “Lots of times, in fact. Does your girlfriend know about that? Does she know that we f.u.c.ked right before I went on stage at our last performance?”
That had been the night we’d reconciled. So only hours before that he’d been with this s.k.a.n.k…
One look at Tristan’s wince, which told me she wasn’t making it up, and I almost had another ‘dish throwing’ moment.
The only thing that stopped me was a well-meaning Jared.
He must have seen the murder in my eyes, because he grabbed me from behind in a gentle, but very firm hold.
“She’s not worth it, sis,” Jared said near my ear.
He’d taken to calling me that lately, and I secretly loved it.
As soon as Tristan and I had officially become a couple, the brothers’ tension had seemed to ease where I was concerned, as though putting a name to it gave them such clear rules on how to act that it became a non-issue.
I adored Jared. He was the sweetest guy, and we’d spend hours talking on the phone some days. We could talk about nothing and everything, just how I could with Tristan, but the vibe with Jared had turned very brotherly, which I loved. He was one of those people that I couldn’t sing enough praises about.
And yet, he worried me. It was a persistent but elusive sort of worry. Frankie and I discussed it often, how he was just a little too careless with life. He didn’t take anything seriously, nothing at all. For instance, he was a horrible mess of a driver, and there was no drug he hadn’t tried. I didn’t see it first-hand, but Frankie had described his days long binges, where he’d reappear gla.s.sy-eyed and a little less himself.
He seemed to be completely himself tonight, and he always made good company like this, though I could have wished he wasn’t quite so quick to hold me back from slapping a b.i.t.c.h.
I fought his hold like a maniac, especially when Rosette just smirked at me, her arms folded across her chest.
I’d never done it before, never even thought about, but my go-to move was to reach for a heel, throwing it at her stupid face.
Unfortunately, I missed.
“Come on, sis, we’re taking a walk,” Jared said, having to lift my feet off the ground to get me to move.
He had me out of the club and in the casino before I’d calmed enough to be set down.
“You can let go of me. I’ve got it under control now.” I told him, when he just kept an arm around my shoulder.
I had to pull off my other shoe to walk, carrying it in my hand.
He patted my shoulder. “Let’s walk. Talk about it.”
“What is there to talk about?” I asked. I could hear the sullen tone to the question, and just hearing how whiny I sounded, helped me put it in check.
“Are you mad at him? That night she was talking about…I know that’s the night you guys got back together.”
I hitched up my shoulder in a shrug, finally giving in to his hold on me and leaning into him. It felt good to lean on him. He was just that kind of guy.
“I don’t know. I’m…hurt, though that night was when we got together, not back together. Before that, things were…casual.”
“Casual? Now that I don’t believe. I didn’t see it at first, but he’s been crazy about you from the beginning. I’ve never seen him like this, Danika. You’re special to him. He’s fallen for you.”
“I doubt that, but thanks for trying to make me feel better. You’re a good brother.”
Whatever Jared tried to say in response was interrupted by his big brother approaching from behind, and grabbing him around the neck, wrenching him away from me. Tristan took merciless knuckles to a squirming Jared’s head.
“What was that all about, little brother? Why’d you take off with my girl?”
“You know why!” Jared choked out, finally wresting free of the bigger man. “Damage control. You should be thanking me.”
Tristan had my other heel, and he handed it to me. I took it, backing away from him.
He followed me and tried to put an arm around me, but I was in no mood.
I jerked away, glaring.
“What, boo? You mad at me?”
“I don’t want to talk to you right now. How about you give me some s.p.a.ce?”
I could see he didn’t like that by the storm gathering in his eyes.
“I don’t like s.p.a.ce. We can go home if you want, but I’m not doing s.p.a.ce. If you have beef, that’s no way to squash it.”
“It is for me. Go hang out with Cory and Frankie. Jared and I want to take a walk.”
His jaw clenched, and he looked like he wanted to argue with me, but he seemed to think better of it. He pointed at his brother. “Take care of her.”
“Of course.”
Tristan started to turn away, but suddenly turned back, and I saw a playful twinkle in his eyes as he looked at me again.
I saw his tactic. He was fond of using charm to get his way.
“He’s my brother, so don’t go getting him to take your side,” he told me with a small smile.
In a way, his tactic worked. I’d gone from wanting to get a voodoo doll of him and stick pins into it, to wanting to tease him back.
“He’s my brother now, too. Just ask him. He’s started calling me sis.” As I said the words, I realized how bad I wanted that, to be part of this family. It was an acute sort of yearning, and one I hadn’t realized I sought with such desperation until I was staring directly at it. I’d always wanted a family, and I loved everything about having Jared as an adopted brother.
He seemed to agree, smiling at me, and moving close to take my arm. “Well, if I have to choose, I choose Danika. She doesn’t pick on me.”
Tristan waved us off, but his smile was big now, his dimples taunting me. “Fine. Go have your walk and talk about me. I’m going to go complain to Frankie about how crazy women are.”
“Good luck with that,” I called to him, Jared already tugging me away. “She’ll take my side, too.”
“Not if I let her give me another tattoo!”
“Ha! That’s what you think. I’m letting her give me one, too, and I have no ink, so that’s a much bigger thrill for her. And if I have to, I might show her a b.o.o.b.”
That had him turning on his heel and following us. The ink part more than the b.o.o.b.
“What do you mean? You’re getting ink? Where and what? And when did you decide this?”
I smirked. “s.p.a.ce, my friend. All good things come to those who give me s.p.a.ce.”
“I’ll get it out of Frankie!”
“You won’t. She’s already been sworn to secrecy, and she won’t risk me backing out just to appease your curiosity.”
“You’re an infuriating woman, you know that?”
I gave him the mature response for that one, sticking my tongue out at him as we walked away.
“Talk to me, sis,” Jared began, as we finally lost sight of his brother.
I sighed, leaning into him again. “I’m just upset. It’s not the kind of upset anything can be done about.”
“So vent. You’re a venter, right? It helps. Let me hear it.”
I was a venter. I don’t know why, but saying things out loud almost always made me feel better, even when the saying didn’t change anything.
“What Rosette said back there, about the night of the performance. Well, obviously that stung. I mean, I had pretty much already guessed that they had a past together.”
“I wouldn’t call it that. She was a random hook up, Danika. That was his MO for a long time, but trust me when I tell you that he’s completely different with you.”
I nodded, giving him solid eye contact. “Well, I had already guessed about the hooking up, and he’s always been painfully honest with me about things like that, and we weren’t together when it happened, but later that night…we were, and I thought it was a really special night, and now, thinking that it so wasn’t, I just feel, I don’t know, bereft. I love being with him. He’s so great in a lot of ways, but he never expresses his feelings verbally, and so I have to take the special moments and treasure them. I just feel so sad, because I was robbed of one of the best ones. I feel like we lost something tonight, and I just need some time to process it. I just want to go somewhere and nurse my wounds, yanno?”