Immaterial Defense: Once and Forever #4

by Lauren Stewart

  But it was my own fault that I’d had to give up my apartment and move back in with my mom and Timothy, so I tried not to bitch about it too much. I had way more important stuff to bitch about anyway.

  Plus, when I was being particularly honest with myself, I’d admit that I actually really liked school. In fact, up until the dream started to die, I thought my life would include four years of college at Berkeley or Stanford and then three years of law school at UCSF.

  Now, my life included doing monkey work at Emilia’s virtual assistant company during the day and taking three night classes at SF State. I spent my weekends going to clubs, partying, going home with the occasional man, and then recovering before Monday rolled around again. Except last weekend. Going out just didn’t appeal as much since I’d met Declan.

  “Oh shit,” Carissa said, looking up from her phone. “I can’t believe I haven’t given you shit for this yet.”

  “Shit for what?”

  “For making me almost pee my pants at that karaoke bar a couple weeks ago.”

  “I don’t remember you peeing your pants. Was it after I left?” I’d grudgingly agreed to go to the karaoke bar with her. Carissa had never been to one, and I’d never wanted to go to one. Of course, that’s where I’d met Declan, and considering the way the night ended, I should probably thank her. Or never forgive her.

  “Duh.” She started scrolling through our texts. “You realize the whole point of sending me a picture of a guy’s driver’s license is so I know who he is in case you disappear, right?”

  “Duh back at you.” Of course, I did—I’d been the one to tell her about it. Safe casual sex wasn’t just about condoms these days. Safe casual sex meant a friend knew the name of the guy you were going home with and could give his license number to the police if you didn’t check in the next day.

  “So…?”

  “So…” she repeated, holding up the picture I’d sent her right before I’d left with Declan that night. “I swear, I almost peed my pants when I got your text.”

  Oh shit. I’d had his stupid name in my phone the whole time. I’d spent one of the most glorious nights of my life with him, being too embarrassed to admit I hadn’t heard his name when he’d told me. Thankfully, he’d kept me so distracted that I’d forgotten my own name for most of the night, but still…

  I don’t slut-shame anyone—including myself—but not knowing if the guy’s name was Declan or Dylan until after you left his place wasn’t good. I really should’ve just sucked it up and asked him. Or looked for a piece of mail. Or, you know, remembered I’d sent a picture of his license to a friend.

  “Damn, he looks good.” I grabbed her phone to take a closer look. His address wasn’t right, though. According to his ID, he lived in Los Angeles. “He’s even hotter in person. And naked.” And with his head between my legs.

  “You wish.” She tore the phone away from me. “You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve googled images of him. So, yeah, believe me, if a picture existed of him naked, I’d have found it by now.” She flicked the screen, probably swiping through pictures.

  I’d always assumed everyone from Texas spoke slowly and with a drawl. But not Carissa. She had a drawl but spoke so quickly, it sometimes took my brain a minute to translate what she said into something I could understand.

  “I didn’t even tell you I met the real him last week, did I? After you left with your stepbrother. I can’t believe how much I embarrassed myself. He makes me turn into a tween, I swear. I will murder you if you tell anyone that, by the way.”

  She groaned as she swiped through some more pictures. “Where did you even get a picture of Declan’s driver’s license anyway?”

  “I took it before we went back to his place,” I said, confused.

  “Wait. This is the guy you were talking to that night?” Staring at me with huge eyes, she slowly raised up her phone again. “The one you went home with?” The seriousness of her expression was actually starting to freak me out. “No fucking way.”

  “What?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him? He seemed so nice.” …said the neighbor of every serial killer ever.

  “You slept with Declan Hollis, Sara. Declan-fucking-Hollis.”

  Calm down. I wasn’t dead. I still had all the body parts I’d started out the evening with. We’d used condoms, a bunch of condoms, actually, because Declan’s version of “foreplay” was more like “fore, during, then back to fore, then even more fore, during again, in another room, during, during, even more during, and then after-play”.

  Oh, my God. Had he learned how to do some of those things in prison?

  I grabbed her arm. “Tell me what he did!”

  People’s heads spun toward us when she squealed.

  “Owww!” She swatted at my hand. “Stop squeezing me so hard, and I’ll tell you.”

  I let go of her and pretended I didn’t massively regret texting her the picture of his license. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and all the fantasies I’d had about Declan ever since that night would still be making me feel the good kind of dirty instead of the disgusted kind.

  She glared at me and rubbed her arm.

  “Oh, come on, Carissa. I don’t have enough upper body strength to have hurt you that badly.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. Now, can you please tell me if the guy I slept with is a fugitive or something?”

  “You really don’t know who he is?” After another century of making me wait, she burst out laughing. “You slept with Declan Hollis, and you didn’t know who he was!”

  “Sure, enjoy your laughter. I’ll just be over here having a heart attack trying to figure out what kind of psycho he is.”

  “He’s a singer.”

  “A what?”

  “Singer—a person who sings. In a band.” She waited. “How can someone so smart be so clueless? Sara Antonopoulos meet”—she held up her phone again and turned it over, showing me a picture of—“Declan Hollis.”

  “Oh, my God, is that him?” I snatched her phone back.

  The background was dark, colored overhead lighting creating splotches of color everywhere. But right in the middle, holding a microphone, his hair wet and falling forward into his eyes was a guy who looked a lot like the man I’d been obsessing about for the past few weeks.

  “It’s hard to see him.” I used the phone’s zoom feature to see his face better.

  “I have better pictures. Swipe right.”

  I glanced up at her in shock. She had pictures of Declan saved on her phone.

  “Don’t judge me,” she said, blushing. “Besides, I’m not the one who went home with a celebrity without knowing it.”

  “He’s not a celebrity!” Oh shit. “Is he?”

  She shrugged. “Depends on what you think celebrity means. Does everyone our age who has decent taste in music know who he is? Yeah. Does everyone he takes home and bangs the shit out of? Obviously not.” She laughed so loudly the people next to us started staring.

  I shushed her and then looked down at the phone again. “This is why I never tell you about my sex life, by the way.”

  In the next picture, Declan was standing with three other guys, one of whom was Trevor. Declan looked pissed or bored, maybe. I swiped past a few of Carissa’s selfies at school and clubs, some screenshots and memes, then a picture of the two of us with our faces squished together.

  My finger froze and I let out a long sigh when I got to another one of Declan. He looked just as amazing as the last time I’d seen him, except this one was in black and white, and he was sitting on a stool with his guitar. But his expression was the same—sad and a little hurt. I couldn’t help but wonder who he’d been thinking about when the picture had been taken.

  Luckily, that thought reminded me of how stupid I was, and that I really needed to stop obsessing about him.

  “Go be as tweeny as you want.” I shoved the phone back at Carissa. “Doesn’t matter to me. Because I’m not going to ever see him again.”

&n
bsp; “Really?” She raised an eyebrow. “So, he has nothing to do with why you’ve been so out of it lately? And by lately, I mean ever since that night.”

  “Nope.” I dropped my head forward and focused on my salad. “He’s all yours. And whoever else wants him.”

  “Great,” she said mockingly. “His band is playing tomorrow night. I was going to invite you to go with.”

  “I was already invited,” I grumbled, stabbing a crouton to death. “And I’m not going.”

  “That’s too bad. But just so we’re clear, you’d be one hundred percent okay if I went home with Declan after the show, right?”

  “Yep,” I said tightly.

  “What if I asked you to watch the door, so we could fuck in the bathroom?”

  Good thing I hadn’t eaten much because I would’ve thrown up all over the table.

  “Damn, Carissa. That was way too graphic.”

  “And you’d be fine if, say…I had a picture of us kissing.”

  “I wouldn’t want a copy to put on my wall or anything, but yeah, I’d be totally okay with that.”

  “You mean this?” She slipped her phone between my eyes and my salad.

  It was a mistake to sit back in my chair because it gave my eyes a chance to focus on the screen of her phone. I turned away as fast as I could, but the image had already burned a hole in my retinas.

  Great. I would spend the rest of my life seeing their lips pressed together. As if he wasn’t already on my mind twenty-four seven.

  “Relax, girl,” she said, laughing wickedly. “I practically had to tackle him to do it, and he wasn’t pleased with me afterwards. But I’ll have the picture to fantasize over forever.”

  Oh, thank God. I’d been the one to give the ultimatum, and Declan was exactly what I didn’t need in my life. But telling myself that and knowing that were two very different things.

  “Plus, you don’t care anyway, right?”

  My smile hurt. “Right.”

  “Perfect.” She stared at me another minute. “You sure you don’t want to go with me tomorrow?”

  “Well...” I swallowed. “Maybe I’ll go, after all. Just to see if their music is any good.”

  Her smile held nothing back. “Thought you might.”

  16

  Declan

  Right after our set, I made my way through the small group of women waiting for us offstage and headed out the back door of the club.

  “You better come back, Dec!” Trevor yelled after me. “You promised. Remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I jogged around the building to grab a cab back to my place to drop off my guitar and let Kitty take care of business. Unfortunately, I’d let the adrenaline of the show and my need for a strong drink make me agree to hang out with my bandmates as soon as I was done, so I had to come back.

  * * *

  Normally, after a gig we’d all help carry our equipment out to our volunteer roadie’s van. Then I’d say good night to the guys before they went back into the venue and I went home. Tonight, in exchange for my promise to come back, Trevor told me they’d take care of loading up our stuff, so I could make a quick trip home and still get back before everyone was wasted.

  So, after telling Kitty I’d rather hang out with her and would be home as soon as I could, I went back to the club. I got there just in time to see to our one-and-only roadie, Ed, packing up the last of our equipment into the passenger side of his van.

  Ed—or as he was known by his small following of fans, DJ REC’Ed, and pronounced like ‘wrecked’—jumped about a foot off the ground when I smacked him on his back. Thankfully, the piece of sound equipment was only about two inches above the seat when he let go of it.

  “Holy shit, man! You just knocked two years off my life.”

  I shrugged. “They’ll come off the end, so I wouldn’t be too busted up about it.”

  “Are you kidding? That’s two years less of being a dirty old man who can get away with anything.”

  “I see your point,” I said, “and I apologize for making you scream like a little girl. Now, please tell me that the guys didn’t make you load everything up by yourself.”

  “They did fine. The last couple things are mine, and no one else is allowed to touch them. You need to stop treating them like they’re your kids, Dec. They really can manage without you looking over their shoulders.” He shook his head before diving halfway into the passenger side and moving shit around.

  “At least for the small stuff,” he added, chuckling as he came back out.

  “You really think I treat them like children?”

  He slammed the door and turned to face me. “I get it—sometimes they act like children. But if you keep treating them as if they can’t take care of themselves, don’t be surprised when you’re right. ’Cause you’ll have been the one who taught them they can’t manage on their own.”

  Legally, Ed wasn’t even old enough to get into the clubs we played. Thankfully, nobody ever carded the twenty-year-old musical prodigy who helped carry in our stuff and set up his gerry-rigged sound equipment alongside the venues’ that made us sound even better.

  “Are all DJs so wise or just the ones who are going to be household names someday?”

  Just referring to him as a DJ made the volume of his smile turn up all the way. He spent all his free time staring at his computer with his headphones on, sampling different pieces of music and magically turning them into something totally different. That part of the industry made no sense to me, and I had to respect the talent and work he put into it.

  He’d gotten work DJ’ing a few small events but was still waiting for his big break. Until then, he was happy to learn about the music business by helping us out, and we were ecstatic to let him.

  “You want to sneak inside for a few minutes and have a drink? My treat.”

  “Can’t.” Ed shook his head and pointed at the van. “Loading zone only. Besides, I do my best mixing at night.”

  “Yeah, probably should make the most of the time you have left. Since I accidently stole two years of it.” I stuck out my hand to shake his. “Thanks, Ed. See you later.”

  I watched him jump into the driver’s side and drive off before going through the back door of the club and kicking away the cement block he’d used to prop it open.

  I went around the side of the stage and out into the crowd. The whole area was packed so tightly, I had to look at the ceiling just to suck in a somewhat clear breath of air. Still stank like booze and sweat, though. And yet, these were members of the privileged class who dropped two hundred bucks for cologne and had free all-you-can-waste access to clean water.

  As I pushed my way through, I thanked the people who told me they’d enjoyed the show and absorbed a few overzealous congratulatory smacks on my back. All I wanted to do was to have a drink with the guys and get Trevor home before he passed out somewhere dangerous. Although, at least if he fell unconscious here, his body would be kept fully upright by all these fucking people.

  I didn’t see him until I was practically on top of him. Still mostly conscious but looking as if he were trying his damnedest to take the “mostly” out of my assessment. How long had I been gone? Damn it. So much for having a drink of my own. He’d probably already emptied out the bar.

  “Trev!” I yelled in his ear. “Come on, big fella. I’m taking you home.”

  We were standing too close to each other for him to push me away. I grabbed his arm and dragged him behind me, forcing bodies apart so both of us could pass. I held back a curse when I felt someone’s stiletto dig into my Chucks.

  Just keep swimming. Upstream. Like a fucking salmon.

  “Wait!” he yelled as if we were actually moving. “Let go of me!” He continued to yell at me while yanking his arm from my grip. If he’d had more control over his motor skills, he might’ve had a chance of getting away. The one perk of his drinking problem.

  I let go of him as soon as we cleared the mob and could breathe again, shaking out my sore
foot and checking to see if the heel had left a bloody hole in my shoe.

  “Hey, Dec!” Trevor said, surprised. Damn it, he’d just realized it was me.

  “Somebody drags your sorry ass out of that pit, and you didn’t know it was me? What if it had been—?” Who? Who would be stupid enough to drag a drunk out of the middle of a mosh pit? “A cop!”

  “You’re not a cop.”

  I nodded slowly, wiping a sweaty lock of hair off my forehead. “I’m glad you still have a good understanding of the obvious.”

  We had to yell to hear each other over the music, even standing a foot away from each other. He wiggled his eyebrows and moved his mouth, but for the life of me, I couldn’t decipher what he said.

  “Say that again ’cause I’m sure it was important.”

  He didn’t catch my sarcasm. “Mumble-mumble-here-mumble-for you.”

  “Sounds good. Even though I still have no idea what you just said.”

  He grabbed my collar and pulled me into him. “I said,” he yelled into my ear, “I found Sara! She was here looking for you a couple minutes ago. Surprise!”

  As I was waving away the flammable fumes of his breath, the words sank in.

  “Sara. My Sara?” Then I added, “Who isn’t mine.”

  “There are a lot of Sara’s who aren’t yours, man.” He laughed. “But this Sara who isn’t yours is about this tall.” He held up his hand to his belly, which meant he was either dumb as shit or talking about a small child. Probably both. “Wait. That’s not right.” He finally moved his hand up to a more reasonable approximation of Sara’s height. “And she’s blond and hot and has…” He squished up his mouth. “Um…lots of good...parts.” For the big finish, he actually pantomimed holding those good parts as if he had two of his own.

  “Yes, Trev, she’s got amazing breasts. I know this, and obviously, you know this. It’s not an international secret.”

  Trevor nodded. “Considering where they are.”

  I looked at my friend with serious doubt of whether I wanted to keep considering him one. “You need to stop drinking. Now. And take a cab home.”