Revelry (Taint #1) (30 page)

His lips purse and he breathes rapidly in and out through his nose. “Why does everyone automatically assume I’m a fucking mute?”

“Because you never fucking say anything,” Deb replies, toying with her phone. She hasn’t even looked up since I entered the room.

“So, DP, huh?” Zed asks, nodding his head and grinning like a fool. I glower, and his lips twist into a grimace. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Oh ewww! That’s my brother you’re talking about. I do not need to hear this shit,” Deb says, covering her ears, while Ash leans forward in his chair.

“Really, Zed?”

He shrugs. “What? It’s not like I’ll ever have the chance to know.”

I roll my eyes and he sets a plate of food in front of me. “Yeah, it kinda hurts, but in a good way. Though I have no plans to do it again.”

“Why not?” Levi says, his cup pausing midway to his mouth.

I glare at him. “Because it was a one-time thing.”

“What was a one-time thing?” Cooper asks, shaking out his wet hair as he walks towards us. He flops down on the seat beside me.

“Levi … and you … and I … together.”

“Really?” Cooper cocks his head to the side to look at me. He stretches one arm across the back of the booth and the other bounces in his lap in time with his leg. He smells so good right now: leather and soap and the spice of his cologne. Cooper lowers his voice and asks, “And this morning, was that a one-time thing?”

“Oh my god, I cannot be here for this,” Deb says, and she stalks to the back of the bus, but none of us have bothered to clean the room yet and it more than likely still smells of sex. She turns around, setting her steely-eyed scowl on us, and then throws herself onto her bunk, pulling the curtain firmly closed.

I look at Coop. “You really wanna do this here? In front of everyone?”

“Yeah, I kinda do.”

“Okay, then I don’t know what that was. It was nice—”

“Oooh,” Zed says, at the same time that Levi drops his spoon on the table and Ash screws up his face.

“What?”

“Nice?” Coop asks, looking for validation.

“What’s wrong with nice?”

“Dude, it’s like saying, ‘Well, the gig was okay’,” Zed says around a mouthful of bacon. “It totally means it was shit.”

I laugh. “No it’s not, it means it was nice. This morning was nice, that doesn’t mean it was bad—it was just different from last night …” I trail off because from the dejected look on Coop’s face I know I’m only making this worse. I sigh and stand up, making him shift off the couch in order to let me pass.

“I’m gonna go catch up on some sleep.” I smile, though it feels forced. “Coop?” I say, and I wait until his gaze meets mine before I open my mouth. I know everyone on the bus, including James, can hear it, but I feel like it needs to be said because I can’t have him thinking this morning was average or mediocre. It wasn’t. “For the record, I’ve never had nice. I’ve had bored, and I’ve had hurry-up-and-come-already-so-I-can-roll-over-and-forget-that-you-were-a-complete-jerk-off, and I’ve had holy-fuck-what-the-hell-just-happened? But I’ve never had nice. I kinda like nice.”

“I was totally that second last one, right?” Levi says with a smirk. I roll my eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” Ash says. “We could write a billboard fucking hit with the amount of lovey-dovey shit circulating this room right now.”

“Then do it, and we might get a private jet to fly around in instead of this crappy tour bus.” I wink and climb into my bunk, pulling the curtain closed behind me. I cover my face with my hands and fight the urge to squeal or kick my legs into the mattress like a fucking overexcited five-year-old.

D
raped only in a towel, I waddle from the bathroom and down the aisle to Deb’s bunk. I can’t ask for Coop or Levi’s help with this problem.
How embarrassing would that be
? No, I need another female, possibly someone who has been through something this humiliating before. I whisper her name, pulling back her curtain, but she’s not there.
Shit
. I limp a little farther, and locate her at the very front of the bus, making coffee in the kitchen, her head bent over a gossip mag. Zed is sitting in the booth seat across from her, eating a mountain of a sandwich. His eyebrows shoot skyward when he sees me, little bits of food falling from his open mouth. Mercifully, the others are nowhere in sight.

“Deb, can I talk to you?” I venture.

She whirls around at the sound of my voice. Her eyes drift over my near-naked body and she gives me a quizzical expression, “Sure. Only I’m not my brother, so if you could put some clothes on first that’d be great.”

“That’s kind of the problem.”

Deb glares impatiently at me over the edge of her magazine. She sets it down on the table and I notice yet another article speculating over why two members of the band Taint are leaving different hotels in Vegas with the same mysterious redhead.
I can’t believe she buys that shit
.

“What’s the problem?”

“Well, I sort of decided to try my hand at waxing and let’s just say Mr Miyagi was a lying arsehole because this certainly wasn’t a ‘wax on, wax off’ kind of scenario. I’m … well, I’m sort of stuck.”

She bursts into peals of laughter, and I glare between her and Zed, his head cocked to the side, his gaze firmly fixed on my crotch, which is thankfully covered by the towel.

“When you say stuck …?” Zed ventures, and I ignore him in favour of hissing at Deb.

“Could you keep your voice down, please? I don’t want the others to hear.”

“Why don’t you want them to hear? And how are you stuck?” Zed asks. Sometimes it’s like Zed’s brain works on a completely different level. Musical genius he may be, but a smart man he is not.

“My outer labia are stuck together, Zed, possibly my inner labia too, now that I think about it. Not only is it humiliating, but it’s also really very uncomfortable, so if we could just move past the laughter and all the questions and get my vagina unstuck, that would be awesome.”

To my absolute mortification Deb is still laughing, her eyes are wet with tears, and her face is beet red as she doubles over with her hands on her knees. Not only is that fuel enough to add to the torch I’m about to set myself on fire with but Zed sets down his sandwich, brushing the crumbs from his mouth. He stands up, places his huge hands on my shoulders and says, “Let’s get you unstuck, Ginge.”

“Not you.” I push him off and point at Deb. “Her.”

“Me?” Deb’s eyes widen and her lips twist into a grimace. “Oh, hell no.”

“Deb’s squeamish when it comes to pussy. I’ll do it.”

“Zed, I’ve already let two members of this band see my vagina. I think that’s more than enough, don’t you?”

“Zed gets to see your vagina too?” Ash says, coming up behind me.

“No. Zed is not seeing anything. Debbie, please? I know you’re not my number one fan or anything but please, I beg of you, from one female to another, please help me with this.”

“Ash, move the hell outta the way, would you?” Coop says, walking up behind Ash.

“Yeah, what’s the fucking hold up?” Levi says from behind him. “I’m starving.”

When Cooper sees me in a towel, his eyes bug out. “Ali-Cat. Looking a little underdressed, aren’t we, babe?”

“Jesus Christ, woman, if you’re propositioning Zed and Ash now, we’re going to have a problem,” Levi says.

“I’m not propositioning anyone.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t just get that shit done before we left?” Deb says, sipping her coffee.

“What shit?” Coop asks.

“Nothing,” I say

Zed says, “Ali’s vagina is stuck together.”

At the same time, Deb says, “Red here had a little waxing accident.”

“No fucking way,” Levi says.

“Are you okay?” Coop asks, and I can tell he’s trying not to laugh. He’s trying and failing miserably because his lips keep jerking up in a stupid fucking grin before he schools them back into place.

“Fuck you all.”

“Sorry, vagina makes me gag,” Deb says.

I manage to squeeze past Ash but Coop isn’t quite so accommodating. He grabs the knot in my towel and yanks me against him. It isn’t difficult, because there’s next to no room between him and I anyway.

“You didn’t want me to help you with this little problem?”

“Hell no, I didn’t want to ask you.”

“She was trying to find me, right, Red?” Levi asks, but I just glare at him.

“Actually, I didn’t want either of you to see this so I just thought I’d seek out the only other female who might have been through this same sort of thing to help me, but obviously I was wrong.”

“Hell yes, you were wrong. I’ve never done anything that
stupid
,” Deb says, and Coop gives her a disappointed look. “I still don’t know why you didn’t sort the muff-scaping before we left.”

“Because I was living in my car with barely enough money to feed myself, Deb. Brazilian waxes weren’t really high on my list of priorities.”

“Oh shit, you attempted a Brazilian on your own?” Deb asks, and she’s laughing again. “On a tour bus?”

“Brazilian?” Levi whispers, and he’s doing that growly thing in the back of his throat that makes my vagina do cartwheels.

“So right now, you have wax—”

“Everywhere,” I confirm with a nod.

“Oh you’re so fucking screwed,” Deb says, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. “No one can help you with that. You’re just gonna have to drill a little hole to pee out of and wait until that shit wears off.”

“Thanks, Deb.”

“Wait, wait, wait, there has to be something we can do,” Coop says.

“Yeah,” Levi agrees. “I mean, it’s not like you’re not going to have sex ever again until it wears off. Like, surely there’s a way to melt it off. Coop, give me your lighter.”

“No,” I shout. “No one is taking a lighter to my vagina. I’m going to need someone to pull it off. I just can’t do it.”

“What kind of wax did you use?” Deb asks.

“I don’t know. Like an all-purpose waxing kit. I just grabbed it from the chemist when I picked up my birth control.”

“You could just cut it off,” Zed says, chowing down on another sandwich.

“You know what? It’s fine. I’ve got this,” I say, and I’m pulled back once more by Cooper’s hand on my towel. He’s managed to undo the entire thing, so if I were to move away now I’d be walking completely naked, and I’m pretty sure I’ve had enough humiliation for one day, so I stay put and give him a tired look.