Unfiltered

by Payge Galvin

  Even though Dillon can’t see it, women do. I’m not stupid. I’ve seen the way girls throw themselves at him, and the way he very rarely throws them back. That’s why I’ve never let myself get that way with him: I don’t want to become another statistic, another notch on his Saturday night belt and then be through. In the past couple of years I’ve seen him have a lot of women, but I’ve never seen him have a relationship, and as our friendship is the closest I’ll ever come, I’ll do whatever I can to protect that.

  Dillon jerks and opens his eyes quickly, and I try to pretend I haven’t been staring at him this whole time.

  “Sure, get me on an eight-hour bus ride and then go straight to sleep,” I say, hoping my smile doesn’t give me away.

  He stretches and looks around the dim interior. “Well, what else are we going to do?” he asks, giving me a suggestive grin.

  “Shut up,” I say, shaking my head, thinking about how many girls in the world would kill to have him say that.

  “Just kidding.” Dillon looks at his watch. “Where are we?”

  “We should be in Flagstaff in a few minutes.”

  “Why in the hell do we have to go through Flagstaff anyway? It adds hours to the trip.”

  “Next time we should take the Lear jet,” I say.”

  “Duly noted.” He shrugs off the jacket he’s wearing and pummels it into a little ball. “Here,” he says, putting it on the armrest. “Get some sleep.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Bullshit,” he says, leaning away from me and putting his head against the seat by the aisle.

  I curl up in the seat the best I can, setting my head on the jacket that’s still warm from the heat of Dillon’s body. I try not to think about how close I am to him right this second, how little it would take to change everything.

  But I don’t do any of it, because the next thing I know the early morning sun is streaming through the window and hitting me in the face. I blink hard and lift my head to look around, only to realize that I’m lying right in the middle of Dillon’s lap.

  Crap, I think, sitting up straight, hoping he’s still asleep.

  No such luck.

  “Morning,” he says, looking up from his phone.

  “I’m sorry…” I begin, knowing that my face is red. “I didn’t mean to do that…”

  “It’s cool,” he says. “These bus seats were made for little people. I didn’t mind.”

  I watch his face, but I can’t tell if he’s being suggestive or not. “Are we almost there?”

  “Yep. I was just going to wake you anyway. We’re supposed to be there at 6:45.”

  I peer out the window but don’t see anything except desert with some mountains in the distance. “So where are we going to go?” There must be some cheap hotels in Vegas, the places that people go when they’ve lost all their money playing slots.

  Dillon flashes his phone at me. “I was thinking of the Skye.”

  “The Skye?” I glance at the pictures on his phone. I’ve heard of it—it’s one of the newest hotels on the strip. “That’s got to be really expensive.”

  “It’s not bad,” he says. “Besides, I told you, I have money.”

  “Right. The mysterious inheritance.”

  He places his phone in my hand. “But look at those rooms…that view.” He slides his finger over the image. “Can’t you just see yourself sitting out by that pool, margarita in one hand, a pool boy in the other?”

  I flick through a few more images. “It’s nice,” I say, trying not to give away the fact that I’ve never been in such a fancy place in my entire life.

  The bus pulls into the Las Vegas station, and we stand up and stretch with the other passengers. Dillon grabs my bag and both of his from the compartments. I can’t believe he let the guitars ride down below, but he was insistent that the bags stay with us. Apparently he’s pretty attached to his worn t-shirts and faded jeans.

  We grab all of our stuff from beside the bus and wander into the Las Vegas morning. “So where to now?” I nod toward a bus shelter on the sidewalk.

  “Nope,” Dillon says, walking to a line of taxis lined up on the other side. “Our bus days are over. We’re taking a cab.”

  “Aren’t you the big spender?” But I’m tired and it’s early, and honestly all I really want is a good cup of coffee, so I follow him to the white taxi at the front of the line.

  “We’d like to go to the Skye Hotel,” Dillon says, taking my bag from me and setting it into the trunk.

  “Up on the strip?”

  “That’s the one.”

  The cab driver looks at us with a surprised expression, but puts the car into gear. He’s probably more used to taking people from the Greyhound terminal to the local Motel 6. Neither of us speaks on the short drive, our faces pressed to the window to take it all in. At first, there’s not much to be impressed by—pawn shops and liquor stores and those two story cement apartment buildings with parking underneath them. Honestly, it looks like the sketchy side of Phoenix. But then we pass the tall tower that has the roller coaster on the top that I’ve seen on some of those travel shows.

  “That’s the Stratosphere,” the driver says, pointing out his window. “You can bungee jump off the top of it if you want to.”

  “Why in the world would you want to?” Dillon asks.

  “I don’t know; I think that might be a good way to celebrate a first day in Vegas,” I say, even though you couldn’t get me up there for a million bucks.

  “I’ll buy if you fly,” Dillon says, peering out the window at the top of the tower.

  Soon we’re passing things that look like the Las Vegas I imagined. The huge water fountains, the columns in front of Caesar’s Palace and the place that looks like a big, black pyramid. The driver pulls up to a long circular driveway and drops us off in front of the nicest hotel I’ve ever seen. I let the hotel guys open the door and help me out of the cab like I’ve been doing this all my life. Dillon helps the driver with our bags and pulls a bill from his wallet to pay him. I feel weird not paying for anything, but if it was up to me, we’d be on the bus on the way to the Motel 6 right this second.

  “Can I take your bags sir?” the hotel guy asks, a shiny gold cart next to him.

  “No thanks,” Dillon says, grabbing his bags and the guitar. “I’ll take them.”

  I shrug. I’ll carry the Gibson, but I wouldn’t mind the guy grabbing my bag, except Dillon is already through the revolving doors and into the lobby.

  He’s standing at the front desk by the time I struggle through the door.

  “Way to be a gentleman,” I grumble.

  Dillon glances at the wall of doors. “Oh…sorry.”

  “Welcome to the Skye,” the cute, blonde woman at the front desk says with a wide smile. In my opinion, she’s way too perky for this early in the morning.

  “We need a room,” Dillon says. “Oh, uh…two rooms. For a week.”

  “No problem,” she says, looking down at her screen. “Do you have a reservation?”

  “We don’t.” Dillon taps a pen on the top of the counter.

  “Hmmm.” The only sound is her fingernails clacking on the keyboard. “Looks like I do have two adjoining rooms up on the twenty-first floor.” She glances at the clock. “But check in isn’t usually until three pm.”

  “Three o’clock?” I say. Seriously? That’s almost eight hours from now, and I’m not doing anything until I’ve at least had a shower.

  Dillon reaches down and puts one hand on my arm in the universal signal for ‘shut up’. “Really?” He leans closer to the woman at the desk. I can see his features soften as he tilts his head, probably to give her a better view of his profile. “That’s a drag because we’ve been traveling all night, and my sister here is exhausted. It would be so great to be able to take a shower and rest up before we hit the town.”

  Sister? I glare at him, but Dillon ignores me.

  The front desk woman glances up at Dillon through her lashes. Tha
t sister comment has made her much more accommodating. “Well…let me call up and see if those rooms are ready. I’m really not supposed to let anyone check in so early.” Tap, tap on her computer screen. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “That would be so great,” he says, giving her his best smile.

  She steps away from the desk, and I punch him in the arm. “So now I’m your sister?”

  Dillon looks over at me with an amused grin on his face. “Of course you’re my sister. How else can I explain why I’m getting two rooms?”

  “Okay, looks like we’re all set.” She leans forward over the counter just enough to make her cleavage front and center. “Just don’t tell anyone. We’ll need a credit card and ID to hold the room.”

  “I’d like to pay cash,” Dillon says. “I can pay the whole thing up front.”

  I stare at him. The whole thing? That’s going to come out to thousands.

  “We can take cash,” the woman says. “But we’ll also need a $500 deposit to cover room charges and incidentals.”

  “Not a problem,” Dillon says, without even blinking. How much of this ‘inheritance’ did he get?

  “What name should I put the rooms in?”

  Dillon glances at me. “Carlos Bonamassa.”

  “No problem Mr. Bonamassa.” The woman prints up some papers and hands Dillon a receipt to sign. “That’ll be $2,700.”

  Dillon bends down and unzips the duffle bag at his feet. I can’t see what’s inside, but he comes back up with a wad of cash and starts peeling off hundred dollar bills. “…twenty five, twenty six, twenty seven,” he says, tapping them into a neat stack and handing them over the desk. No wonder he’s not letting that bag out of his sight.

  “Great,” says the woman, giving him a broad smile. “Here are your room keys. The elevator is around the corner to your right.”

  “Thanks so much,” Dillon says.

  “Thanks,” I say, still thinking about that stack of money.

  “Oh, one more thing,” she says as we turn away. She hands Dillon a card. He glances at it and then tucks it into his back pocket with a little wave at her.

  He doesn’t say anything as he hits the elevator button.

  “She gave you her phone number, didn’t she?”

  There’s no mistaking the look of guilt on his face. “Maybe.”

  “You’re so awful.” I can’t help how annoyed this makes me.

  “Hey,” he says, putting both hands in the air. “I didn’t do anything except get us early check in to our fabulous rooms in Vegas.”

  “Absolutely Mr. Bonamassa,” I say.

  Dillon shrugs. “They’re my two favorite guitar players—Carlos Santana and Joe Bonamassa.”

  The elevator arrives. We’re the only ones on it as we step inside, and the doors close behind us. Dillon presses the button for the twenty-first floor, but it doesn’t light up and nothing happens. He does it again with the same result. I can tell he’s getting frustrated when the doors slide open again and a guy gets on with whisky on his breath and a glass in his hand. At seven o’clock in the morning—God bless Las Vegas. The guy weaves his way to the buttons, slips his room key into a slot above the panel and then presses number eight.

  Dillon glances at me, takes his room key out of the holder and does the same thing. This time the numbers light up and the elevator jerks into motion.

  “Slick,” I say quietly.

  “Shut up,” he says, but he smiles back at me, and I can tell he’s not really mad.

  As we get off the elevator, Dillon hands me my key. He checks his room next door as I slide my key into the lock. I can’t help but gasp as I swing the door open—it’s everything I thought it would be, and then some. There’s a huge bed with about a million fluffy pillows and a leather headboard, along with a desk and small leather chair. But what really gets me is the view from the wall-sized window. I can see everything from here—the Eiffel Tower, the roller coaster at New York, New York, the green windows of the MGM Grand and even the red rock hills that surround the desert way beyond the strip. I don’t know how long I stand there, watching the tiny cars navigate the long street, but there’s a knock on the door by the desk, so I turn the deadbolt and open it. Dillon pokes his head into the room. “Oh good, yours is just like mine.”

  “Did you see that view?” I ask, walking back over to the windows.

  Dillon joins me. “I’ll bet it’s amazing at night. Like a million little jewels right at our feet.” He puts one arm around my shoulder and squeezes, an indication of how excited he is. “Did you see the bathroom?”

  “No,” I say, following him across the room.

  “Check it out,” he says, flinging the door open to reveal a marble-covered palace that happens to include a sink and a toilet. “That tub is big enough for two.”

  I bump him with my hip. “Hardly the kind of thing to say to your sister.”

  He raises his eyebrows at me. “I wasn’t thinking about my sister.”

  Staring at the sunken tub that’s deep enough to swim in, I back out of the bathroom, the visions that start forming in my head also something you definitely wouldn’t want to think about your brother.

  “What should we do first?” Dillon says, picking up a magazine by the flat-screen TV. “Want to hit the casino? Go for a drink? Sit by the pool?”

  “When’s the audition?”

  He flops into the chair by the window. “It starts tomorrow. I have to go insanely early to line up and get a number. Then we have to go through two screenings before the actual audition.”

  “Have you figured out what you’re going to wear?”

  “I don’t know. Jeans and a shirt.”

  “What jeans? What shirt? I think we need a fashion show.”

  “God, nobody cares what I look like. They just care what I sound like.”

  “Uh…wrong,” I say. “It’s going to be on TV—you know how they do this. Where’s your stuff?”

  “The good stuff is in the closet,” Dillon says as I walk into his room.

  The closet already smells like him, a combination of spice and a heady, musky scent that is part of his natural allure. I flick the three wrinkled shirts that are hanging next to a pair of faded, slightly torn jeans. “This is it?” I call back.

  “It’s fine. Just pick one.”

  I pull out a dingy white button-down and the jeans and throw them at him as I walk back into my room. “Come on, let’s see it.”

  “Now? Seriously?”

  “Yes, now. You have to be ready for tomorrow.”

  Dillon stands up and pulls the black t-shirt off his body in one perfect movement. I force myself not to react, not to say anything as I take in his smooth chest punctuated by perfectly sculpted muscles. In all the time we’ve been friends I’ve never seen his body before and although I had an idea of what he was hiding under there, it didn’t even come close to matching the reality. Luckily, Dillon doesn’t notice the fact that I’m speechless, just concentrates on unbuttoning the white shirt and shrugging it on. He grabs his belt buckle, but stops before he unfastens it.

  “I’d better go do this in my room,” he says, picking the jeans up from the chair.

  “Why?” I ask, unwilling to stop the private show.

  “Because….I don’t wear underwear.” If I didn’t know better, I’d think his face was getting a little red.

  I swallow hard and try to force my heart to slow down. I don’t want him to notice the effect this is all having on me. “So? Your sister wouldn’t care.”

  Dillon stands there, white button-down wide-open so that his chest is fully exposed, both hands on his belt. “My sister isn’t here.” There’s no denying the glint in his eye as he considers it.

  “Nice. I’m going to tell Mom you said that,” I tease.

  Dillon shrugs and unfastens his belt with one hand, kicking his boots off at the same time. He glances at me once more, then pulls his jeans down past his knees, tugging them off in one motion and reaching f
or the new pair. I’m trying not to stare, but he’s got those hollows on each side of his ass cheeks that make me weak. The hollows that are just begging for someone to run their fingers along their curves and hold on for dear life.

  “Perv,” Dillon says turning around. He sounds like he’s still teasing, but I know he can’t possibly miss the look on my face. The button-down is pretty long, but I swear I can see a hard-on starting to form before he pulls the jeans on with a small jump and turns around, buttoning the shirt over his magnificent chest. He holds his arms straight out and does a complete turn. “Well?”