Tango was dressed and sitting on the side of the bed, having a smoke when Carter came back in. He didn’t turn his head to look at the other blonde; nakedness was never a turn-on once the heat of the moment had passed.
Carter grabbed his jeans and hauled them up his legs in a few efficient movements, not speaking until they were in place. “Did you kill him?” he asked, nodding toward Aidan’s still figure on the floor. His voice was still strained. Tango hadn’t seen him angry since he was a teenager, since Ava was kidnapped. That same tight ire was in his voice now, over Jasmine.
Tango took a deep drag on his cigarette, forced the smoke out through his nostrils. “He fell asleep. He smells like someone broke a bottle over his head. Or maybe a barrel.”
Carter braced a shoulder against the door and exhaled sharply, still pissed, all jacked up in the shoulders about it. “What the hell was that? Is he jealous or something?”
“Nah. It had nothing to do with Jazz. Or us,” he added with a sigh. “Tonya’s pregnant.”
Carter hissed. “Shit.”
Tango regarded his passed-out friend, sprawled across the orange carpet, snoring, his brow knotted with a worry the alcohol hadn’t been able to dim.
“Yeah. Shit.”
Two
Samantha checked her ensemble in the floor-length mirror in the corner of her room. Another day teaching her first-year Shakespeare students, another conservative outfit she’d put together off the Kohl’s clearance rack. Oh Professor Walton, what a glamorous woman you are, she thought with cold resignation.
Today she wore a gray pinstriped pencil skirt, a white sweater set, and pumps with sensible, clunky heels perfect for a day spent at the lectern. Her dark blonde hair was in its usual thick braid, tidy now, but waiting to slip loose a piece at a time and grow wild over the course of the day. Her eyes looked dull behind the lenses of her glasses. Lenses that magnified the crow’s feet she was starting to have thanks to lots of late nights up reading.
She needed to get more sleep, drink more water, eat more vegetables.
She needed a makeover.
But she needed to get her little sister up, because Erin couldn’t afford to be late two mornings in a row on her first week of junior year.
Sam gathered her bags and headed down the hall. “Erin?” She rapped on her sister’s door. “Erin, sweetie, it’s time to get up.”
No response.
“Erin, come on.” She turned the knob, surprised to find it unlocked, and let herself into the room. “You know you can’t…” The words faded in her mouth as her eyes roved across the room.
The bed was made, or as close to it as Erin ever approximated, the quilts tugged up hastily, pillows stacked against the headboard. The closet stood open and hangers jabbed out of it like plastic bird wings. Clothes littered the floor, tops, cheerleading shorts, bras and panties. Makeup bottles cluttered the dresser. The sharp citrus note of spilled perfume shot up Sam’s nose and punched her in the back of the throat.
Erin wasn’t there.
~*~
A sound woke him. An awful clanging sound, like Christmas bells and someone beating on a copper pot with a spoon. Low and high notes, clinking and resonant, together. It tolled through his head, pushed at the sides of his skull, hit the back of his tongue again and again, gagging him.
He became aware of things slowly. The heaviness and pain in his body. The press of a hard surface beneath his cheek. He lay on his stomach, his head twisted to the side, his neck pinched. His skin prickled into gooseflesh and he thought he must be naked beneath whatever scratchy linen covered him.
He worked his eyes open like old shutters, and that was when he realized the source of the noise. A coffee mug sat in front of his face, and someone was stirring its contents with a spoon, the silver clipping against the porcelain as it moved, the sound magnified by his epic hangover.
“What?” he croaked, and didn’t know why he’d said it.
Tango’s voice: “Hot tea, with honey and peppermint. Walsh swears by it.”
“Yeah, I bet he does. Fucker.” With a grimace and a groan, Aidan pushed up on his arms and sat back. The pounding in his head intensified. The light, weak though it was, stabbed through the high frosted window above the bed and shot needles through his eyes.
Wincing, he glanced down at himself, confirming that he was indeed naked, and that someone had thrown a blanket over him, one that now trailed off his shoulders. He wrapped it tightly across his front and reached for the tea. It actually smelled good, so that was something, at least.
Tango sat on the side of the bed, long hair on the top of his head carefully gelled and styled, so a few pieces fell across his forehead. He wore soft colors, a white t-shirt with the Lean Dogs logo and rockers. His face seemed sharp and too-thin, his eyes a little haunted around the edges.
Or maybe that was just the hangover. Whatever.
The first sip of tea flowed soothingly across his tongue, proving that his English brother knew everything about everything, as if he’d ever doubted him. He took another sip and glanced over the mug at his best friend.
