Under the Lights

“You did indeed come through for me, my flesh and blood.” I clap him on the back, then nab the one-hitter and take my own puff. “Looks like the Chester last-minute-party-throwing genes have extended your way.” Never mind that everything from the alcohol to the weed to the girls were supplied by me and my guys; Wyatt’s supplied something I can’t these days — his little house in Burbank where Chuck and his fucking asshole staff of stalkers won’t and can’t follow.

I take one more puff — just enough that Wyatt’s proud face will stop pissing me off — and pass it back. I pull up the redhead and breathe the smoke into her mouth.

She giggles and stumbles into me, and it’s all so fucking predictable I could kill myself. But she isn’t K-drama, which is sixty-nine points in her favor.

“You wanna go somewhere?” she asks breathily in my ear.

Ugh, the thought of getting up right now is not appealing. “Not really, but it’s cool. We can just stay here. No one’s watching.” I have no idea if that’s true or not, but I don’t really give a shit. It’s a town of fucking voyeurs anyway. They wanna watch my life? Let ’em watch. I cup her hip and pull her closer — the universal sign for “straddle me now”—and admire her tits while she gets herself into position.

“You sure about that?” she asks.

“Yeah. Sure.” I nod toward my junk, impatient for her to get started.

She looks around, all shifty-eyed. “Um, I think people are—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, forget it.” I jerk my hips to the side to throw her off me, my hard-on already disappearing. “Wyatt!” I yell out, searching for wherever the hell my degenerate cousin disappeared to. “Bring me back that piece!”

“Ratcheting up the charm to a thousand, Chester, huh?”

My head whips back and I drop my jaw. “Liam Holloway, back to grace us with his presence. No fucking way.” I slap him five, right into our bro handshake, and he laughs.

“Gracing the peons with my presence,” he jokes. “I’m off ’til noon tomorrow. This is the most I’ve been able to breathe in months. Decided there was no better way to spend it. At least until Ally wakes up.”

Just like that, my buzz goes south. Liam’s my best friend, but hearing about how he has fucking everything right now — dream roles he’s actually excited about, a girlfriend he’s obsessed with, and so much money he could wipe his ass with it for the rest of his life and still buy my house — is the last thing I need. The reminder from earlier that he’s already had K-drama, even if it was in bullshit capacity, is just the icing on the shit cake.

“Yeah, well, thanks for slumming it, bro.” I peel myself off the couch and walk off in search of Wyatt or anyone else who might have weed or a shot handy.

“Hey! Chester!” Liam yells out, but I don’t bother turning around. I don’t need to hang out with Golden Boy right now. I need to hang out with someone who can get me obliterated. Liam’s always been crappy at taking a hint, though, and he runs up behind me. “Dude, I was kidding.”

“Yeah,” I snap, spotting a stray bottle of vodka with blurry Russian letters on the label. I grab it and keep walking, hoping Liam will back off, but knowing he won’t. “Except you’re not. Boo-fucking-hoo that you have too much work and a girlfriend to get back to. Don’t let the rest of us stand in the way of all your important shit.”

“What the hell?” He spins me around, and I’m so dizzy I almost fall on my ass. I grab on to the nearest thing for balance, which turns out to be some chick’s boob, and quickly grab my hand back with a muttered apology, because even I’m not that big a dick. “You’re pissed at me now? For getting jobs you don’t want and a relationship you shit on constantly, even though you happen to love my girlfriend?”

“Yes.” I screw off the cap on the vodka and take a long drink. “You gotta problem with that?”

“No, that’s just fuckin’ dandy.” He sounds disgusted, which is even more annoying. Because he has every right to be. But it’s not gonna stop me from being pissed off.

This time, when I walk away, vodka pleasantly burning its way down my throat, he doesn’t stop me.

* * *

Half the bottle and a bathroom blowjob from some groupie later, I teeter back into the party, looking for whoever’s got Wyatt’s bong, TamTam. I find it surrounded by a bunch of dudes, and I think one’s Paz, so I walk over, then realize it’s not him at all. The guy who isn’t Paz is looking at me funny, and I can’t figure out why I think I know him. But apparently he knows me, because he hisses “Josh Chesssster” in a way that makes me wanna punch him in the face.

I’m about to ask who the hell he is when he follows up with, “Heard you’re fucking my main man’s girl. Not cool, bro.”

For Christ’s sake, that’s who this loser is — Jase Taylor, another one of the Wonder Boys, which probably means he and Zander are screwing on the DL. I’m getting pretty tired of this shit with K-drama. If I’m gonna take this much crap for fooling around with a girl, I’d like to actually get some ass out of it. This is just the worst of all worlds.