InHap*pily Ever After (Incidental Happenstance) (62 page)

            “Good evening,
Dylan Miller,” the taller of the two said. Her voice was smoky and had a heavy
Swedish accent. “My name is Sonja.” She put both her hands out to Dozer who
took them and brushed her cheeks with air kisses. When it was Dylan’s turn, she
connected with the kiss and breathed into his ear, “I’ve been a fan for a long
time.”

            “Thanks,”
Dylan said, shaking the other girl’s hand across the table. “This is Dozer
Cane.”

            “Melena,” the
second girl smiled, her accent just as heavy. She turned to Dozer. “I know your
work. Reggae, right?”

            “Da only true
music,” he teased, poking Dylan in the arm. “I also have a clothing bran name.”
He tilted his head and squinted at the ladies. “Are ya models? You look kind of
familiar.”

            “We are
actresses,” Sonja said, tipping her head and looking up at them through thick
dark lashes.

            Dozer’s
expression didn’t change. “Dat mus be it. What movies?”

            “We make adult
films,” Melena smiled, biting the corner of her lower lip. 

            Dylan closed
his eyes and rolled them behind his lids. He took a sip of his drink while
Dozer smiled wide and looked them slowly up and down. “Ya mon I tink I’ve seen
you in action. Didn’t recognize you with your clothes on.” 

            “We maybe can
fix that,” Sonja grinned as the girls stepped closer and leaned seductively
over the table in almost perfect unison, giving the boys an excellent view of
their ample cleavage. Dylan inhaled some of his drink and nearly choked, and
Dozer gave him a good slap on the back. He took another slug to ease the cough
and shook his head.

            “Oh, wow,”
Dozer said, shaking his head. “It’s too bad, but you see, you’re too late for
both of us.” He held up his left hand. “See, I’m marry, and he’s engaged, so
it’s not good timing right now.” 

            “That is not
important,” Sonja said seductively. “We fuck lots of married men. Engaged,
too,” she added, running her tongue slowly over her upper lip while locking her
gaze on Dylan.

            Dozer opened
his mouth to speak, but his phone suddenly started playing something that could
only be described as a reggae lullaby. His eyes went wide and he yanked the
phone from his pocket, staring at it in disbelief. “’Oly shit,” he breathed.
“Da baby’s comin’!” His eyes darted around the room, but he didn’t focus on
anything; he hopped from foot to foot, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

            “Congratulations,
mate!” Dylan exclaimed, pulling him into an embrace.

            “I’m going to
be a fadda!” He lifted his drink for a toast, and they both drained their
glasses.

            “Best get to
it then, eh?”

            “Oh. Oh yeah.
I ‘ave to get ‘ome!” He gave Dylan a hug, planted a big kiss on Melena’s cheek,
and headed for the door.

            Dylan turned
back to the table and gripped the sides for support. A sudden wave of nausea
and dizziness took hold of him, and he shook his head to try and throw it off.
His brain was suddenly swimming and his eyes refused to focus. He looked at the
empty glass on the table—only his third the whole evening. They were making
them strong, sure, but still…his knees went weak and he squeezed the sides of
the table harder and looked at the girls. “These must be going to my head,” he
slurred.

            “You should
sit down,” Sonja said, taking an arm. Melena grabbed him from the other side
and they led him through the door at the back of the room. “I know just the
spot.”

            Dylan looked
around once for Bo but didn’t see him in the crowd. He remembered walking
through two sets of doors and sinking into a couch, and then nothing.

            Tia was asleep
when the text came in. She hadn’t gotten anything from Dylan in a couple hours,
the last being a picture of him and a man with long dreads and deep wrinkles in
his dark face tapping his glass against Dylan’s in a toast. She reached over in
the dark and grabbed her phone, catching the time on the digital clock as she
did. It was only past midnight in Seattle, but it was after two in Chicago, and
she forced her eyes to focus on the backlit screen as she pulled up the
message. It took only a couple seconds for it to register and for her to sit
straight up in the bed, her heart pumping wildly and her consciousness at full
alert. It was a picture of two women—beautiful women—lips together in a sensual
kiss as they looked at the camera seductively. The message beneath the picture
read,
dude look what I found!
She tilted her head and clicked off the
picture, her breath catching when she verified that it came from Dylan’s phone.

            She checked
her surroundings to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, and then tried to
rationalize the photo. Someone probably found Dylan’s phone lying somewhere and
took the picture, she reasoned. That had to be it. They must have tried to send
it to someone with a name or number close to hers and the phone automatically
inserted her as a recipient. Still, panic squeezed at her heart, restricting
its beat, and she found herself swinging her legs over the side of the bed and
shuffling to the living room to fall onto the couch. No way was she going to be
able to go back to sleep after that. It was only a minute before her phone
chirped the sound of another incoming text. Tia felt a sense of dread as she
tapped on the picture and enlarged it on the tiny screen of her phone. She
couldn’t be absolutely sure it was one of the same women, nor could she be sure
the other person in the picture was Dylan; although her brain clearly leaned
toward both being true. There were no faces clearly identifiable; one was
completely invisible, buried between the breasts that filled much of the
screen. All she could see was the hair; long, blonde, and wavy. A hand with
long manicured fingernails was pushed through it as if holding the face in
place.

            She took a
deep breath and held it, unable to look away. She stared for what seemed a long
time, and then the phone vibrated once again in her hand. She closed her eyes
and willed the next text not to be what she feared it might be. Her prayers
were not answered. The picture showed the same man lying on a couch with one of
the women straddling him. His shirt was open to the waist and her breasts were
out. One of the naked breasts was pressed into the man’s face. The message
beneath said,
between u n me man. obviously!
Tia gasped and dropped the
phone, hearing it buzz again against the floor. “Oh God,” she breathed, feeling
panic rise up to wrap around her lungs and give them a good squeeze. She gasped
for breath as the phone buzzed again and she bent down to retrieve it. She
didn’t want to look—it scared the hell out of her, actually—but she couldn’t
help herself. She clicked on the picture and saw the woman on top of the man on
the couch, his hand resting on the place where her dress had been hiked up to
expose her buttocks. The other woman leaned over his face, her lips pressed to
his. Tia’s eyes were drawn immediately to the Chinese symbol for younger sister
tattooed between the man’s thumb and forefinger. She moaned in pain as she sunk
to the floor and curled into a fetal position, her breath hitching in sobs.

            “What the hell
is going on?” Bo roared when he walked into the tiny lounge next to the
kitchen. He flicked on the light, and the women just smiled at him.

            “Want to join
in?” one of them asked.

            Bo shook his
head in complete and total disbelief. “No, I don’t want to join…I want to know
what the hell is going on in here.” He directed the question at Dylan, but
there was no response.

            “I think that
would be obvious,” a blonde hissed in a Swedish accent. “We’d be happy to
invite you to our private party if you want to join, or you can go away. Or
maybe you just want to watch?”

            “You’ve got to
be trippin’ on something,” he mumbled, pushing his way between the near-naked
women and pulling Dylan by his wrists to a sitting position. “Dylan. Are you
OK?” The only response was a low moan from deep in his chest, barely audible
over the muffled beat of the music that resonated through the open doors.
“Dude. Talk to me.” He nudged the women—who still made no effort to cover
themselves—aside and yanked Dylan up from the couch. Bo’s eyes widened when he
sank right back down without so much as a glimpse of recognition or
consciousness. Bo turned him so that he’d fall onto a loveseat away from the
women and knelt on the floor in front of him. “Shit. Dyl—look at me.” He
slapped his friend’s cheeks and Dylan opened one eye and looked at him without
focus.

            “What the fuck
did you do?” he growled, glaring at the women, who shrugged innocently.

            “He invited us
to come back here,” one of the women said.

            “Said he would
make us sing,” the other smirked.

            “The hell he
did.” He lifted Dylan’s chin and tried to get him to make eye contact, but his
eyes just rolled back in his head and then closed. “Holy shit,” he muttered to
himself. Then he turned back to the women. “Go get me some water from the
kitchen—and for fuck’s sake, put your goddamn clothes back on.” The girls
looked at him blankly. “NOW!” Finally one of them moved, and brought a punch
bowl half-full of water and a towel. He dunked the towel and squeezed the cold
water over Dylan’s head, then slapped his face again.

            “Hey
Bobooooo…whassup?” The words were barely audible, and Dylan’s eyes were looking
in two different directions at once. Bo pressed Dylan’s face with his hands and
shook him.

            “What’s going
on, Dyl?”

            “My head’s tooooo
drunk. They took pictures. Bad pictures.”

            Bo’s head
jerked toward the women. “What’s he talking about?” He watched as one of the
girls tried to slide Dylan’s phone onto the table next to the couch. Bo reached
over and snatched it, tapping the photos icon and gritting his teeth at what he
saw. “Was this consensual, Dyl?” he asked, holding the camera in front of his
face. Dylan squinted, and then his eyes widened when he finally managed to see
it well enough to know it for what it was. He shook his head, and his eyes
closed again.

            “Unfuckingbelievable,”
he snarled. “You sick bitches. Get the hell out of here right now, before I
call the cops.”

            The shorter of
the two women flinched just a bit but the taller one just smiled. “Nothing
illegal about a little foreplay between adults—now either you want to join, or
you let us finish in peace.”

            “I said get
out!” Bo grabbed their bags off the couch next to Dylan and tossed them to the
floor, sending the contents of one or both skittering across the tile. He
watched a lipstick roll toward the door, a packet of condoms slide across the
granite, an assortment of pills bounce in all directions, and glass from a
compact shatter against the wall, dusting the dark squares of tile with a fine
powder. The taller of the two got to her knees, trying to scoop the contents
back into the bag as Bo shook with fury. He stood to his full height and glared
at them both, clenching his hands into fists and shooting daggers at them from
his eyes. “Right. Fucking. Now.”  The message finally registered—they left the
rest of the contents and ran from the room.

            Bo turned back
to Dylan and swung his friend’s legs up onto the couch, trying to make him
comfortable, and took stock of the situation. His jeans were unbuttoned and
unzipped, but thankfully still on his body. Bo buttoned up Dylan’s shirt and
grabbed a blanket off an adjacent chair; tossing it over him. He sat in the
chair and blew out a breath, thankful that he’d appeared to have found him
before the little orgy had gotten to the point of no return. He’d been looking
for Dyl for a while—if it hadn’t been for the flustered waitress who shot him a
guilty look as he’d walked past the door that led to the kitchen, he may have
been too late. “I didn’t want to do it,” she’d whimpered. “I don’t think he
knows what he’s doing.” She rushed off then, disappearing into the crowd. Bo
had seen the guilt and the recognition in her eyes and pushed through the door
immediately.

            “Son of a
bitch,” he muttered as Dylan groaned, and he fell to his knees and pushed his
index finger to his friend’s wrist to get a pulse. The bastard’s heart was
beating; at least for now. He was smashed off his gourd, but he was going to
live to feel the wrath of what promised to be a very nasty hangover. “Drink this,”
he demanded, holding a cup of water to Dylan’s lips and tipping it back. Dylan
sputtered and coughed, but managed to get some of the liquid down the right
pipe.

            “Sleeeep,”
Dylan hissed, laying his head back onto the arm of the couch.

            “Yeah, buddy, you
need to sleep it off all right.” He picked up Dylan’s phone and started
deleting the photos, gritting his teeth as each new image popped onto the
screen. The fury bubbled up in him as he realized how much Dylan stood to lose
if these pictures got out, and cursed himself for not smashing the bitches’
phones as they were sliding across the floor along with the rest of their bags’
contents. He’d known Dylan plenty long enough to know that there was no way in
hell he consented to any of this. Even if he wasn’t engaged he would never have
given those fake trashy whores the time of day. He deleted the last photo, shut
off the phone, and hoped to hell that he’d averted disaster. God knew Dylan
didn’t look like he was going to remember any of this in the morning. Bo shoved
Dylan’s shoes back onto his feet, led him through a back door, and somehow
managed to drag him the few blocks to the hotel.