You’re a fucking idiot.
It wasn’t even that he’d been a prick so much as he wasn’t great with girls. Despite the fact that, both at their high school and anywhere they traveled for away games, girls threw themselves at him, Jack’s friends and teammates would be shocked to learn he’d never actually gone all the way with anyone.
It was his deepest, darkest secret, and his greatest shame.
Jack DeLuca, star high school goaltender and Michigan State University hockey commit, was a virgin.
It really wasn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things; after all, hewasonly eighteen. But his friends—especially his teammates—had all given up their v-cards years ago. Jack remained the lone wolf.
And it wasn’t that he didn’twantto have sex. Obviously, he didn’t plan on being a virgin for the rest of his life. But he wanted it tomeansomething. He wasn’t interested in a one-time thing with no emotional connection. He was holding out for something…more. These days, waiting was a foreign concept, a lost art to people who had everything they could possibly want or need at the tips of their fingers.
All that to say, despite the way he’d treated her, Jack had seen the way Jessica looked at him: with a fire in her eyes, like she wanted to get to know him better.
The feeling was mutual.
But he’d fucked it up, so now he had to sit and watch while she and some douchey guy who was clearly way too old for her passed a bottle of vodka back and forth.
He wanted that to be him. He wanted to press his mouth to her lips, the same way she pressed the bottle there and let it linger for every sip.
His attention was pulled away from Jessica, who giggled as the guy leaned close and whispered something in her ear, by a head appearing between his and Chad’s seats.
“Are you boys ready for this insanity?”
“What insanity?” Jack asked.
“The City. It’s the biggest night club in Latin America, and things have been known to get crazy.”
Clearly intrigued, Chad twisted in his seat to face the talking head. “How crazy?”
“The last time I was here, I saw people doing lines in the bathrooms, an incredible number of tits and body shots, and more than one same-sex couple absolutely going at it right out in the open.”
Chad’s eyebrows rose nearly to his forehead, and Jack was sure his expression matched.
With a shit-eating grin, Chad turned to Jack and said, “This is gonna be fun.”
Further conversation on the short ride to the club yielded the following information: the talking head’s name was actually Rick, and he was a Marine. He was here in Cancún with his buddy, Joe, who turned out to be the guy draped across Jessica’s lap while she poured vodka into his open mouth. They were from Mississippi and about to deploy overseas, so they wanted to blow off some steam before they left.
Jack had been right on two counts:
One, the guy with Jessica was a douche.
Two, at twenty-six, he was way too old for her.
When they arrived at the club, Jack quickly realized Rick hadn’t been exaggerating earlier when he’d used the wordinsanityto describe The City.
The darkness inside was illuminated at regular intervals by flashes of strobe lights, and strips of LED lights lined the bars and pathways on the floors, which were completely obliterated by the sheer mass of people packed inside.
Within the first five minutes, Jack witnessed body shots, two girls making out, and a guy with some sort of canister blowing air at the crotch of a couple girls, the already too short skirts of their dresses riding higher from the force of it, revealing skimpy panties—or none at all.
The second they’d walked through the doors, Jessica disappeared, whisked away by Joe, who unsurprisingly knew his way around. Jack shook his head, then rolled his neck and cracked his knuckles, preparing to forget about Jessica and actually enjoy himself.
Chad led Jack and the rest of their friends through the crowd, pausing every so often to compliment girls, or accept a shot from one walking around with a tray laden with tubes filled to the brim with glowing green liquid.
“Are you sure you should be accepting random drinks like that?” Tyler asked skeptically.
Jack was inclined to agree with him but, not wanting to be a wet blanket, kept his mouth shut. He and each of his three friends had a role to play on this trip, exactly as they did on the ice during hockey games, and Jack was comfortable in his.
Tyler was the captain, and a forward, which meant he was responsible for keeping them in line. He was the level head, the voice of reason, the one to get them home safe at the end of the night.
