#Kissing (Rock and Romance #1) (9 page)

Chapter 23

Niko meets a guy in a crappy apartment and after a few minutes of chatter, they go to check out a guitar in a back room. My foot taps impatiently on the dirty floor. I can't stop thinking about the subway ride. JQ's blue eyes and his expression haunt me, reminding me of all that I left behind.

Afterward, we meet up with the others at a club Jill insists we have to check out. I want a bath, bubbles, maybe some champagne, a movie and popcorn. I'm getting tired, more tired than I've ever been. Maybe everyone living this lifestyle feels that way and that's why they resort to drugs, merely to keep up.

Kat slinks up and down the stripper pole in the VIP area. I sit next to Mitty while Slade has a word with Niko.

"Polerina," I mutter. "She could stand to leave something to the imagination."

"Then again, we're both watching," Mitty says smartly.

"Yeah, curiosity? She's totally not our type."

Mitty laughs. "She was a stripper before. That's where Niko met her. Belgium or maybe Berlin. I forget now. Before we came to America."

"They were together before?" I ask hesitantly. I'm not sure I really want to know more, but the devil is in the details, as they say.

"Kinda. See those nails?"

They're long, pointy, and purple as she flexes them around the metal pole.

"They're actually talons." He claws the air. "Once she gets them in—" He shakes his head. "It's over."

Mitty and I chat late into the night until Niko coaxes me away from a story about a jam band he was in and how they braided tinsel into their hair, saying they were too cheap to buy wigs.

"Thank goodness this guy—" Mitty draws a line in the air between Niko and himself, "rescued me from a life of embarrassing head gear," he says before Niko and I leave.

He rescued me too.

The city sounds keep me up. Or maybe it's the blue-eyed image of not-Niko from the train making my brain hum.

I create complex reverse choose-your-own adventure plots in which my life categorically goes in different directions based on decisions I could have made.

If I didn't destroy my high school experience, I could have followed the path to a pleasant home life. If I'd gone to college, the path to success, I'd nearly be graduating. I also ruined several important friendships. I #suck. A knock on the door interrupts my mental wandering.

Niko snores softly. Through the peephole, Kat shifts uncomfortably in her heels and her eyes dart around. She looks small and uncertain. I fling the door open, hand on hip, already losing patience.

"I got locked out of my room," she says.

"The front desk is downstairs."

"I didn't lose my key."

"Not my problem."

"Slade—he's pissed at me."

"I've seen Slade drunk, peevish, sullen, wounded. I've never seen him pissed."

She exhales irritably. "Do you mind if I crash in here tonight?"

"I do."

Niko slides behind me, running his hands along my arms, and breathing me in. "What's going on, babe?"

Kat explains.

He blinks his eyes sleepily. "Of course, no problem, come on in, babe."

I grind my teeth to keep the words
she's not your
babe
from breaching my lips. He's never called anyone else babe. Maybe he's not only physically tired, but tired of me. I suddenly feel peevish, sullen, and wounded. Also pissed. Very pissed.

I slam the door and the framed print of Central Park hanging on the wall tilts.

Kat lights up a cigarette.

"Put it out," I demand.

"Niko, I didn't know she was such a goodie goodie. Are you afraid the management is going to kick us out for breaking the no smoking rule?" Now that she found her way in, she turns from a pity-case to caustic. But she stubs the cigarette out anyway.

"I'll just make myself comfortable. Hope I didn't interrupt anything," she says, reclining on one side of the bed.

Niko lies back down in his spot, in between the two of us.

"Wait, were you guys actually sleeping?" She
tsks
. "Oh. I expected—" She snorts. "Well, never mind."

Niko stares at the ceiling.

"Kat, sleep on the couch. Good night," I say, stuffing the pillow under my head.

She rustles around for a moment. I don't even want to hear her breathing.

"If you were doing something sexy, I wouldn't mind joining you," she lowers her voice to a husky taunt. "Niko can handle two girls."

"No, Kat, but you can watch," I spit.

That silences her, and I turn off the light.

But I can't sleep, not with her in the room. Niko breathes softly beside me, his heart keeping a beat I'd like to dive into like music.

I creep to the door, following the emergency escape route toward the roof.

Up here, on top of the city, I draw the deepest breath I can, but it still comes up short.

Somewhere below, JQ sleeps under or sits on top of his own roof, gazing up at the stars, at Josephina 303, my namesake but with an
E
instead of an
A
. My father, an astronomy geek, made the concession so my mother would agree. It's an asteroid hurtling through space. Through this life. I guess I've always had stars in my eyes.

It was a major tragedy: a death and a broken heart that detoured me from the honor roll, the honor society, the AP scholarship, the presidential scholarship, and basically all of the accolades.

It was both a slow and a sudden undoing. I should have seen it coming.

Everyone should have.

Looking back, it was also boredom. Maybe a little exhaustion. They thought I was ok after Bubbie died. I thought I would be someday. We were all wrong.

Something inside came loose, and I've been hanging by a thread ever since.

It started on the kind of night when stars burn through unconsciousness, illuminating the core of inner truth. My hair went first.
Snip, snip, snip
in the bathroom at one in the morning. An entire foot of hickory corn silk on the tile floor. I left it there for my mother to find, but I was out the door before she returned from a conference in Boston. My dad probably would have said I looked pretty. When what I wanted to hear was fierce, unchained, bold. I was tired of being pretty, the winner of praise, and the keeper of smiles. It's since grown back and has been black, bleached, and the color of hellfire.

Sometimes I feel like I'm acting like a spoiled toddler. These are first world problems, I know. A mother who's a driven, career-minded role model. A father in whose eyes I can do no wrong. But the problem is that they see what they think they want to see. Which isn't always the same as reality. So what started with a hair trim, lead to... me modifying reality. Making life itself a mood-altering substance.

Then the gnawing hunger inside me drove me to curiosity about lips and dicks and sex and liquids and elixirs too. Then everything started to
slip, slip, slip
away.

The cold night blankets these frigid thoughts. When I slide back into bed next to Niko. I flip my pillow over to the cool side and pass out.

Chapter 24

We have breakfast at lunchtime. It's a group affair, and I can't help but study Kat's asymmetry. The way her nose hooks to one side. The way the left side of her lip dips into a frown. How one of her breasts is slightly smaller than the other. Is that what happens when life is out of balance? Right now, is one of my eyes shrinking, an arm lengthening, a foot widening?

I hush the questions with vodka and soda. The waitress, dressed like a cat for Halloween, takes our order. When Niko asks for a burger and extra pickles, her eyes flash.

"Are you—" She taps her pen against the order pad. "No way. If I'd known, I would have dressed like an angel or a devil. Are you playing around here?" She should be asking if he wants fries or onion rings. Her questions continue, rapid fire, "Are you dressing up? Angels? Devils? Sondra, she's one of the girls here, she dressed up like a slutty angel last year. I wonder if she still has the costume. I could borrow it maybe. Where'd you say you were playing?"

"Get her a ticket," I tell Slade.

None of us are angels, but I'm good at coaxing and mischief—or at least making this girl's night worthwhile after waiting on assholes like us all day.

I meet Kat's glassy eyes and lift both sides of my lips into a perfectly symmetrical smile. Yes, I suppose I do have power. To punctuate this fact, if only for myself, I slide my hand up Niko's thigh, curling my fingers between his legs.

He smiles at his drink, wiggling closer to me. I continue to tease my hand there, groping his cock as it fights against the denim hidden under the table.

I release a laugh, but less because something is humorous and more because I hate humanity. No, not true. I love puppies and old ladies, morning dew and long walks on the beach, honestly. It's just that I'm a bitch. I admit it. I've perfected the
I don't give a flying fuck, languorous, heroin chick attitude
, minus the heroin. And my laugh has many qualities. There's a sneering laugh, a bubbly laugh, a warning laugh, a flirty laugh, and the laugh as sharp and deadly as a knife. This is the one I make sure Kat hears.

Niko and I promptly return to the hotel. Still turned on from my teasing under the table, he kisses me in the elevator, making a middle-aged couple distinctly uncomfortable as they gaze intently at the lit up number panel. Perhaps, when they get off on their floor, they'll find themselves unusually excited and make use of the Jacuzzi in their room. This is my hope—to spread peace, love, and debauchery.

Niko kisses me in the hallway. He kisses me against the door. He kisses me as we fall through the doorway and onto the floor. His lips never leave mine as he tugs at my clothes and gropes at my skin. His breath is heavy, wanting. My skin is hot, tingling.

His lips find my ear, my shoulder, and the space between my breasts. He travels down to my thighs before coming up again. His pulse throbs against mine as I undo his belt, letting his jeans slide to the floor. I work my hand up and down his shaft, heat building to an ache between my legs. I exhale a short breath and then he pushes me onto the bed before sliding between my legs.

My back instantly arches and he kisses my breasts, sucking a nipple and thrusting. I tell myself that I want it fast and hard. I rock my hips, bucking and grinding against him. I pull his chest to mine.

He trembles and says, "Babe."

He called Kat
babe
. I will her from my mind, begging myself back to the moment.

I obliterate thoughts with his lips and his tongue winding in my mouth. We find a rhythm, a steady pulse of up and down, in and out, fucking, fucking, fucking. It's wet and sloppy, and I'm so, so, so close.

He strains, bracketing himself against the bed, thrusting one last time and then it's over as he lets out a shuttering breath.

It doesn't happen for me. I don't fake it, but inadvertently release a laugh.

"I love your laugh," he says.

If he knew why I'm laughing, he wouldn't.

A smile, red lips, and laughter hide a multitude of sins.

Chapter 25

The Halloween show is a huge event with people in costume and glowing decorations covering the walls. An abundance of angels, devils, and hybrids of the two stand beneath the stage. There are also slutty nurses, pirates, zombies, and just straight up sluts. On the more clever side, someone wears a cardboard cassette tape, another is a gumball machine, and inexplicably, someone carries an umbrella.

The band dresses as zombies. I go, not ironically, as myself, circa a couple of years ago—I need to do laundry and this outfit, an old favorite, is all I have clean. It might be useful to remember where my headspace was when I started this bold adventure with the Halos.

Niko and I fell in love hard and fast. It was a whirlwind. We thought only the two of us existed on the entire planet and sometimes we still do. We also learned how to bring each other to our knees with pleasure and pain: during sex and when revisiting childhood wounds respectively.

But there's a lot he doesn't know about me.

When the Halos go on, I find my old self in the crowd, singing her heart out to mostly the same songs, equally as mesmerized and entranced, and full of oxygen and hemoglobin and that excited thrill that means I'm not dead like Bubbie.

I sing along, chant, whoop, and clap the aching feeling of missing her away. I lose myself in the rhythm, in the pulse of the music and energy of the crowd. It's wild. I am too.

As usual, the party rages long after the band does an encore. I drink like I'm 19, talk with people like I've just come off a four-year exercise in denial, and laugh like I mean it. I do, mostly.

Jill shares her whisky with me, suggesting she doesn't hate me as much, which reminds me it actually isn't last year. I scour the crowd for Niko, not wanting tonight to turn into a seventy-two hour party. We're verging toward exponentially increasing the time spent not sleeping, which seems dangerous.

Mitty sits on a couch in the corner of the bar with a guy wearing a Jedi costume and glasses.

Kenji's surrounded by gorgeous vampires, each one of them renditions of Twilight characters.

Kat, dressed as a slutty cop, plays with some unfortunate guy by a defunct phone booth.

The cop part is ironic because she's probably just into the dude because of his access to drugs. The pair make out, getting heavy, and I watch, transfixed. I'm more sexy ingénue to her slutty porn star. She snakes her way downs, angling to the side. Her big fake boobs, threaten to burst the buttons of the uniform.

My mouth hangs open.

It's Niko, and he's smiling, enraptured, wasted, but still he kissed her back, and his belt is open.

She flashes a sly, lopsided grin. The familiar clink of Niko's belt falling draws my attention back into focus. She kisses him once more, whispers something in his ear, and he slouches against the wall.

Option one: Laugh like the devil and pull out my claws.

Option two: Leave and never look back.

Option three: Drink until I forget this day. Or all three.

Kat saunters over. "Don't be mad. I was here long before you came along, and I plan to stick around long after you break. This is the rock and roll life, Josie. Take it or leave it. I suggest you leave it." Her words slither and hiss.

I step closer to Niko, whose eyes flutter shut, before letting out a big-bellied laugh loud enough to wake the dead. My atoms and molecules come apart, spinning me away. I keep laughing. I want it to be the last thing he hears and instead of making him happy, forevermore he'll associate the sound with the pain of my absence. I might not make the music, but I damn sure keep it alive.

#Fuckthis