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He smiles, that samebad girlsmile, this perfect mix of pride and affection and love of defiance and desire to control.
We stay there for a moment, in that perfect place, then the music changes, and I fix my dress, and he fixes his slacks, and we slip back into another mode.
Not the friends who dare each other.
Or the lovers who care for each other.
Something deeper, bigger, purer.
Something I can't explain.
He's the Jackson I know, but he's different in some fundamental way.
Or I'm in a post-sex haze. That's also possible.
"Back to the hotel?" he asks.
I want to be alone with him, I do, but I don't want to run into someone we know. I don't want them to ruin the magic. Not yet. "I have another idea. If you trust me."
"I do."
Chapter Nineteen
Daphne
The bar is a strange mix of tropics and elegance. Fake palm trees and real hibiscus wrap around the mahogany bench seats. Little white string lights cover the gold and cream wallpaper. A bartender in a Hawaiian shirt pours tiki drinks and martinis in equal measure.
This is Las Vegas. Always trying too hard to look chic and cool and landing in some delightfully tacky place.
There's even a neon sign of a palm tree.
Is it ridiculous on purpose or on accident?
Am I doing all this on purpose or accident?
Cassie is still my best friend. And those martinis are exactly what her ex would drink. This is the sort of place he'd like, actually. He'd buy into the false attempt at modernity and class. He'd sit there and talk our ears off about music without letting anyone else get a word in.
And, yes, Cassie does that now, but she and Damon discuss it together. They're obnoxious together.
And, well, I can be honest. Cassie's type is musicians who think they have exquisite taste. She likes annoying people. My brother is annoying. I love him for it, but I don't suffer from any illusions he's not a little self-important.
When he starts talking about guitar riffs or, god forbid, the genius of grunge songs about heroin sounding like love songs, as if Cassie hasn't already told me that a million times, as if no one has ever made the observation that love is like a drug, and addiction is like an abusive relationship—
Jackson presses his palm into my lower back, and my other thoughts scatter.
I try to call them back. I try to remember the way Cassie cried over her ex's cheating. I try to picture myself in her childhood bedroom, listening to Fiona Apple, eating coffee ice cream, promising her I'd always be her other half. Like Meredith and Christina inGrey's Anatomy. We'd always be each other's person.
But we weren't. I was too busy with school, and she was too hurt, and she fell in love with my brother.
I took the excuse to move across the country.
Isn't that bad enough? I shouldn't hurt her more. I shouldn't sleep with her brother. Even if it's equal. The whole abandoning her for the East Coast thing makes it very much not equal.
And, well, that ship has sailed.
I'm not one of those people who suggests oral sex isn't sex.
I already blew her brother in the limo.
