Kiss Me
Part One
Henley
A gay bar. Of course it was a gay bar. I should have known. Because only my sister would choose to celebrate her twenty-first birthday party in a gay bar.
I sighed and scratched my jaw. Why couldn’t it have been a lesbian bar? They had those, right? Then again, I wouldn’t have gotten any enjoyment in one of those either. Meg had ruined the whole lesbian-fantasy thing when she'd come out at fourteen. There was no pleasure in imagining two hot chicks doing nasty, beautiful things to each other when one of them kept morphing into your sister.
Shit, I could barely suppress a shudder at the thought, but no one noticed. Not Meg or her friends, who were all too busy drinking and laughing and shouting over the thundering music to notice how uncomfortable I was. A straight man in a gay club in New York City. I wasn’t the first, obviously, but for some reason, I felt like it.
I hunched over the Coke I'd been nursing for the past half hour and tried my best to ignore the interested stares I was getting. If my buddies could see me now they'd shit their pants laughing and then volunteer to kick some ass with me just as a matter of loyalty. As if I needed to protect my delicate manly sensibilities by resorting to physical violence. I sighed again. No, I'd just have to suffer in silence.
The place was so dark it should have been impossible to catch anyone's eye, but the rainbow laser light-beams moved in time with the strobe's beat to create a disconcerting kaleidoscope effect that provided just enough light and just enough headache-inducing delirium for me to feel kind of trippy even though I was stone-cold sober. Another sip of warm Coke didn't help, and neither did the shadows or the uncomfortable hunch. I couldn't have stood out more if I'd had a blinking neon sign over my head.
The Vibe. If I'd been smart I would have said no as soon as Meg mentioned the name of the place. Then again, I'd never been able to say no to my baby sister. She was a devil with sweet eyes and I'd been devoted to her ever since she was born. Even if all she ever did was torture me.
"If you don't cheer up I'm going to tell Mom," Meg bellowed into my ear. I looked up just in time to see her smile turn into a frown. Her hazel eyes reflected the rainbow lights and glittered back at me with an overly glossy veneer. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips twitched just enough to make me laugh. She'd always been a terrible liar.
"You are such a brat," I said.
"Shut up, you love me." Her giggle was slightly crazed.
"You're drunk." She smiled and nudged my shoulder with her own.
"I'm twenty-one, big bro! That’s the whole point." On my twenty-first I'd gone overboard with the Jack Daniel's and ended up puking my guts out two hours into the party. The hangover had put me off the stuff for years. The way Meg was headed she'd be having a similar experience and the idea made everything else worth it.
"Sure, just remember that when Tara is holding your hair back and you're worshiping the porcelain god." She sniggers and turned to kiss Tara. Jesus, she hadn't even warned me. She really was a brat. To avoid watching my baby sister make out, I turned toward the crowded dance floor. So much skin, so many grinding masculine bodies moving to the pop hit-slash-techno beat like the music put them into some kind of trance. Either the DJ was a wizard or the dancers were all caught in a lust frenzy. And the DJ was no wizard. I rubbed my temple and considered heading to the bar to refresh my Coke, but the last time I'd done that I was hit on by three guys, all of them half-naked. And none of them had taken my 'Sorry, I'm straight' as anything but a challenge. Better to just avoid the situation and hope the waiter would come by soon.
The music faded and the DJ's voice came through the speakers. "And now it’s time for a treat. Put your hands together for the hottest show in New York City. Give it up, for the best group there us….Fantasy!" Beside me, Meg squealed as the rest of the club erupted into cheers and turned to face a stage I hadn’t even noticed. This….was going to test me.
