[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
Chapter One
Point of View: Nick

There is nothing in the world like a good high to get you out of a bad place.

The club music was beating all around us, the darkness concealing what we were up to. He passed the needle to me and I shot it quickly in my forearm, watching the fluid drain into my veins. The pain would stop in a couple seconds and I'd be free to have fun again. Relief was coming.

Joe waited patiently while I pushed it in. He was casually looking around the room. He met the eye of a waitress that passed by and stared her down defiantly when she spotted the needle in my arm. Joe was too intimidating to ever be reported, nobody dared to cross him.

When it was drained completely, I threw it into the brief case he had still open on the seat and pulled out my wallet. Already it was rushing to my head. I pulled the money out and threw it down into the briefcase as well. As soon as it parted from my fingers, he slammed the case shut, spun the combination lock, and dropped it to the floor.

I scratched the spot where the needle had been as my arm burned. My head was already loosening up, though. I nodded to Joe and ducked out of the booth, heading back down to the VIP lounge where my friends were waiting for me.

Brian and Leighanne were hanging onto each other, two glasses of Sprite between them on the table. They were kissing, but too politely to be interesting to watch. AJ was dancing with a woman, a sparky thing he'd picked up somewhere out on the main dance floor, she had pink hair. I dropped into a seat next to Howie, who was eating nachos and texting on his phone.

The shot was definitely working now. I felt amazing. "Ah shit," I grabbed a handful of Howie's nachos and tossed them onto the table in front of me and started eating them.

"Do you have any idea what's been on that table?" Howie asked, wrinkling his nose.

"My nachos," I said.

"Correction, my nachos," Howie answered.

Something about the tone irritated me. I scooped up what was left and threw them back into his bowl, "Fine, have'm back then."

"What the hell?" Howie griped as they fell and mixed with the untainted ones. "Jesus Nicky, what the hell?" he shoved the bowl away and glared at me, then turned back to his cell phone, clearly more interested in whoever he was texting with. Probably his wife.

"You're no fun," I muttered bitterly, and I got up and made my way toward AJ. AJ knew how to have a good time, I could remember having good times with AJ once. We used to do all kinds of crazy shit like you wouldn't believe. We were awesome.

"Hey Frack," AJ called, dancing smoothly around his girl, who wasn't that great of a dancer - especially compared to him. AJ had always been fucking incredible at dancing. He was the only one that picked up the choreography for the tour like the second we'd been shown it. He was good.

I, however, am kind of crappy at dancing. I always feel like a worm on a hook that some fish is about to gobble up. It's all good though, women don't like me for my dancing anyway. Luckily, they mostly think my pathetic moves when I'm free styling are cute. Plus, if I incorporate what little bit I do manage to pull off from choreography I can almost half ass fake being semi-okay at it.

I'm just bad when I'm on stuff, though.

AJ snorted, "What the shit are you doing?" he asked as I moved to the club beat throbbing overhead.

"Dancing?" I asked.

AJ pushed his hand against my chest and moved me back, "First of all, six foot dance floor rule effective immediately as your flailing could pretty much cause a murder. Second of all, that is so not dancing." He paused, looked into my eyes. "God damn it," he said, recognizing the look, "What the fuck are you on?" he demanded.

"The dance floor," I said, laughing. For some reason, I found this somewhat hysterical.

AJ did not. He rolled his eyes, "You're stupid," he muttered. He moved away, pulling Pinky with him.

"Ah what do you know," I said, but I don't think it was really loud enough for him to hear. I was getting a little dizzy. Plus hot. Definitely hot. I tugged at the collar of my shirt and fanned myself.

So let me make a correction from before... AJ used to be fun. Then he sobered up and started judging me. I mean it's cool he's sober, he was doing it a lot more then me, and a lot worse stuff than I do. He was, like, never sober.

He above all people should understand what it's like to need to get the fuck out of your own head.

I didn't even wanna try talking to Brian. I knew he'd react worse than AJ had. The VIP lounge was no fun now, maybe something was going on downstairs.

I moved out into the main dance floor, where the bodies were packed like sardines. People were bumping into me from every angle. If I was claustrophobic I'd be flipping the hell out about now. Luckily, I wasn't, so I didn't. But I'm just saying, if I was.

There's something about a club that makes the real world seem far away. It's like going to Wonderland and meeting the Mad Hatter. Every hot woman is a Cheshire Cat, about to disappear. The colors and the sounds and the people are eccentric, and delicious. They're not at all the gray and brown and bleh of real life.

In a club, its possible to forget all the shit that happens everyday.