The bouncer approached Stick, motioning to the car. Stick wasn’t as big and broad as Lucas, but he wasn’t tiny, either. But he was dwarfed by the huge bouncer, who towered over him. He placed a meaty finger in Stick’s chest and again motioned to the car where I sat.
I couldn’t hear them, even if I had rolled down the window—and I didn’t particularly want to. But I could see Stick chatting up the bouncer, waving a hand to me, then a hand at the club.
The bouncer looked pissed (do bouncers look any other way on a Saturday night?), but eventually stepped back and waved Stick into the club.
I sat, debating whether to call Jane again and let her know Stick was coming to get her. Not even knowing whom she was with, I figured a surprise attack from Stick might be the best approach.
It seemed to take forever, and the bouncer glared at me the whole time, while occasionally letting in new arrivals. I noticed everyone who went in was well into their late twenties or thirties, and dressed in expensive club clothes.
This was not a college club, even for those students over twenty-one.
Good God, if my father found out about this. Stick came out then with Jane in tow. Literally towing her, her arm firmly in his grasp.
She said something to the bouncer, and he stepped forward for a second, as if to answer Jane’s appeal, until Stick said something. The bouncer left Jane to Stick and sat back down on his stool.
“Lily,” she yelled in my ear, wrapping her arms around me as I stepped out of the car to let Jane get in the back seat. “You need to come inside with me. The DJ is totally sick, and I’m soooo close to hooking up with Montrose.” She looked across the hood at Stick, who was crossing over to the driver’s side.
“Until this asshole showed up.” She yanked on my arm. “C’mon, Lily. Come back inside with me.”
“We need to get home, Jane,” I said, trying to guide her unwilling body to the back seat.
She stumbled a bit and her whole body seemed to heave.
“Unh huh,” Stick said, now sitting behind the wheel. “She is not going to chuck in my car.”
“I don’t ‘chuck,’” Jane said.
“Yeah, sure you don’t. No college freshman getting hammered for the first time ever does,” he said, almost to himself.
“It’s not the first—”
“You’ll have to put her in the front seat, Lily,” Stick said to me, as if Jane was a bag of groceries. “Less chance of her getting sick than riding in the back.”
I was all for leaving the deadweight of Jane with Stick. I sat her in the front seat and Stick held on to her arm as I eased the seat forward as much as possible with her in it. I squeezed into the back, then put the front seat back into position, Jane flopping back with it.
I tried to reach through the opening, but couldn’t reach the door to shut it.
Noticing my inability to get us on our way, Stick softly swore, then moved across the bench front seat, reaching past Jane, and pulled the door close.
That perked the fading Jane back up. “Boob graze! Totally felt that boob graze, ya perv.”
“Yeah, highlight of my night,” Stick said with disgust. “Grazing your tits has totally made this shitty night worthwhile.”
“Well, they are very nice tits,” Jane said, letting her head fall back on the headrest and closing her eyes.
A tiny chuckle escaped Stick, almost unwillingly. “Keep your eyes open,” he said to Jane in an almost nice voice. “Less chance of getting sick. And buckle up so you don’t fall and crack your skull on my dash.”
Jane struggled with the seatbelt, needing several tries to make it click. Stick sighed with disgust.
I slid over behind Stick so I could keep a better watch on Jane. Remarkably, she listened to Stick and opened her eyes. Even managed to hold her head straight.
“Jane, how did you even get in there?” I asked. “Who were you with?”
She waved a hand in the air, like coming to be in a much-older club at eighteen was nothing. Maybe it was to Jane. I didn’t know a lot about her life before Bribury, though I was sure my father would have briefed me on anything…dangerous, if he’d been aware.
“Oh, my lovely Lily,” Jane said, not so much slurring her words as singing them. “You don’t get to know everything. Don’t want you reporting it back to Daddy, do we?”
I stiffened. “I thought we were good the night we did the True Confessions thing,” I said. “You know I wouldn’t—”
