“Booze would be my guess,” Simon says. “I did lend Jet my flask at dinner.”
“What if they fall?”
“Stuff like that is ninety percent balls. I get the feeling Jet has enough to spare.” He points ahead, where the chair lift ends and loops around to go back down the mountain. “Oh shit. We’re getting off. Do you remember how—”
“Not exactly—”
“We’re dead,” Simon says, squeezing Dez’s hand as she labors to raise the bar, assuming the position of someone ready for any of this. They plant their feet on a patch of pure ice, which sends them on their asses down a slope that ends abruptly at the porch where Dez first met Yael.
“Just like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby inRoad to Utopia,” Simon says, mounting the stairs and swinging open the door. “I’m Bob Hope, by the way.”
A gale of stale beer and Chappell Roan filters out from Villains as Dez follows Simon inside.
She feels the dark, seductive energy of the place swallow her up as it had once before. The bar is packed, the crowd is last-year heavy, laughing, glamorous, everyone drinking jewel-toned cocktails in whimsically shaped glassware. There’s no naked dancer on the banquette table this time, but looking around, Dez still gets the distinct vibe that they’ve stumbled into an orgy.
“Um, wow,” Simon says, edging past a pair of first-year women dry humping in the doorway. “Good for them, right?”
Fuck Dez’s intention to stay sober. There’s only one way to participate in a bacchanalia.
“We need drinks to catch up,” she says, stepping around another quartet of students, the women’s sweater minidresses hiked up as they dance. She spots Yael in a booth—having her toes sucked on by the emo last-year who works in the ski shop. Alice Quinn hovers over them, looking like she’s taking a complicated drink order for Yael.
Like a magnet, Dez’s gaze alights on Rafe in the center of the room. He’s seated at the bar next to Jet, with Esmeralda and Kitty on their respective laps. Rafe’s talking, laughing, regaling everyone in earshot as Esmeralda nibbles his ear.
A flicker of heat courses through Dez, followed by a grinding rage. The last time she saw Rafe, he was hiding his erection, hurrying out of her Lens. Not like he owes her anything. He’s made his boundaries clear. But she can’t subdue the tidal wave of jealousy as Esmeralda tries to lure him somewhere more private. He shakes his head, playful but firm, which only makes the woman more committed.
Dez thinks of how, only hours earlier, she’d dropped to her knees in the Vault before Rafe, imagining an exhibitionist scene not unlike this one. In her fantasy, people were watching her worship Rafe’s dick.
“This is a fuck frenzy,” Simon says, sounding alarmed. “I’ve got to find Esther before someone else does.”
Dez nods for him to go. “Good luck,” she says, just as Rafe meets her eyes.
She freezes. He winks. She holds his gaze, raising an eyebrow, long enough that Rafe looks away first.
Back to Esmeralda, still begging on his lap.
Dez reads his lips.Okay. Let’s go.
And then, without looking back at Dez, Rafe stands up and lets Esmeralda wrap her hand around his tie like it’s a leash and pull him out the bar’s back door.
Dez can think of only one thing to do next. Drink.
She cuts through the unfolding orgy toward the bar. She wants something stiff and spicy. On her way, someone bumps into her, sending her backward into Alice Quinn, whose tray of drinks topples onto the floor and shatters.
“Alice,” Dez says, crouching down to help. “I’m sorry—”
“Yael’s gonna kill me,” Alice mutters.
“We’ll get more drinks. It’ll be okay.”
“No. I can’t do anything right. Can’t even finish one film.”
“Alice—”
“Leave me alone!” Alice says, near tears. “Everyone’s looking now. You’re making it worse.”
“Okay,” Dez says, and rises guiltily, backing away from Alice. She turns to the bar, planting her hands on its waxed wood surface to regain her composure. She wonders what kind of pressure Yael is putting on Alice in the Vault. Would it have helped if Dez had told her she’s nowhere near finished with her first assignment either?
“Hello, Desdemona,” the bartender says, like they’ve known each other for twenty years. Did they meet before? Dez’s hazy first night here? She feels like she’d remember this woman’s long, electric-blue hair and the spellbinding hummingbird tattoo on her cleavage.
