Dakota and Micah’s group seemed to have a general idea of where they wanted to go and who they wanted to see. I followed along, too freaked out about seeing someone I used to party with showing up like a ghost and whispering boo to my face.
It also helped watching how Micah and Dakota really got into the music. They didn’t give a shit about how loud they were, vibing with the rest of the crowd. This place wasn’t a battleground for them, and that helped.
After two shorter sets without any reunions, I felt less on edge.
Someone complained they needed a drink, so we all walked to a concession area. Micah slowed down his pace and hooked his arm around my waist, his thumb rubbing over my hip bone.
“C’mon. There’s a set I wanna see, and we’ll meet up after. Dakota’s friends are fun, but they’ll get cross-faded and annoying, so we can do our own thing.”
“You don’t do that?”
Micah’s gaze shifted to me for a second before pulling us toward the side to get out of the way of a large group. “Not really. I may have a beer once in a while, but I never got into it. And Dakota’s crew doesn’t go further than weed, which I’m fine with. Shit should be legal anyway. Ah, here it is.”
Whoever Micah wanted me to see wasn’t at a main stage, but the area was packed shoulder to shoulder. He grabbed my hand and slipped between bodies, elbows knocking into elbows. Sticky drinks spilled on the ground and passing conversations about after-parties on the campground brushed against my ear.
Eventually, we found a pocket to stand in with a decent view of one of the screens on next to the stage. We found it at the just right moment because the singer walked out, a petite woman with a pixie haircut in a slip dress. The crowd went wild when she picked up her acoustic guitar.
She wasn’t anything remotely close to the other performers I’d seen with Micah and his friends. This woman didn’t have dancers all sparkly and extra or a bunch of dudes pounding riffs on the electric guitar like they had something to prove.
Other musicians standing on the stage with her were there to support her, but she carried the entire show on her own. The crowd swayed when she did, and they screamed the words like it was an anthem. And the singer didn’t shy away from talking about sadness, pain, and dancing along the edge.
The set ended too soon. I was still recovering from it as people walked away, staring at the stage wishing I could go back in time and live it all over again.
It wasn’t until Micah’s arms wrapped around my hips that I awakened out of my daydream.
“Did you like it?” he asked, resting a chin on my shoulder.
I nodded. “Who was she?”
“Casey McLean. Local singer who made it big a few years back. My sister was obsessed with her and forced me to go to one of her shows. I expected it to be boring as hell, but it turns out Ada was right.” Micha’s arms arm dropped away, leaving my skin tingling in the shadow of his touch. “Okay, I’m gonna call Dakota and see where he’s at.”
While Micah was on a call to Dakota to give him directions to where we were, I tapped him on the shoulder, pointed to a booth, and mouthed, “Water?”
Micah spun the bottom of the phone up toward the sky and said, “God, yes.”
Thankfully, the nonalcoholic line was far shorter than the booze one. As I was about to step up for the next opening, a high-pitched giggle chimed behind me, and my body froze. I hadn’t heard that sound in years, but I knew who it belonged to, its melody embedded in the crevices of my mind forever.
I had to get away. Gritting my teeth, I shifted to the left and out of the line, hoping to go unrecognized, until someone said, “Holy shit, is that you, Nik?”
The familiarity of that voice made my blood run cold, and my stomach churned. My throat tingled with the taste of bile, and I tried to move away, hoping that I was having some kind of drug-induced flashback, until a hand grabbed at my arm.
I snatched my arm away and spun around, my stomach slamming into the earth. Sure as shit, it was Addison.
We were never friends, but we circled the same crew and partied a lot together back in the day. When I knew her, she had dark brown hair cut blunt at her chin, her face a little filled out, her dark eyes always lively.
The brown hair was long gone for blonde. It made the hollowed pits of her cheeks stand out more. Her eyes were hidden behind her heart-shaped sunglasses, but even without seeing them I had a distinct feeling she was higher than a kite right now.
“Oh my god, it’s like a blast from the past!” Addison said with an excitement I didn’t feel. She jumped up to give me a production of a hug, and I stood stiffly, my mind spinning. There was a decent chance I was going to puke all over this chick.
Addison took a step closer and slowly slid her sunglasses on top of her head. Her pupils were blown as hell and out of focus. “Man, I was talking about you the other day, for real for real. I was like, where the fuck is Nik Ward these days? Since he decided to ditch us out of nowhere. Where the hell have you been, bro?”
I wetted my lips, a strange laugh punching out of me before I could manage to say, “Uh, busy.”
“Oh my god, me too!” Addison leaned in, a familiar euphoria playing across her features. Coke was always her pleasure drug at places like this, and seeing the way it affected her was like watching a car crash. “Nik, you wouldn’t believe what I landed with this guy. He rich, like, old money rich. Private plane, big-ass house in Atlanta, the whole deal. He buys me all kinds of shit and takes me on all these trips. We literally just got back from two weeks at Catalina on his yacht.” She leaned in close, her breath acidic with booze.
A sudden rope of jealousy wrapped around my middle, dashing away the weightlessness Micah brought. I’d not set foot outside the damn state since I was a kid, and even then, it was only to Georgia, and I didn’t remember jack shit about it.
Still, I needed to get Addison away from here, because the last thing I needed was her babbling about her sugar daddy’s Pacific yacht and whatever coke he was shoveling her way. I swallowed down the lump in my throat and said, “Sounds like a vibe.”
Addison nodded with far more enthusiasm than the conversation needed before some internal lightbulb lit up in the fog of her mind. She reached out and grabbed my shoulder and said, “Oh my god, you should totally come to Cancun. He’s got this house on the beach, and everyone will be there. It’s—” She waved her hands in front of her, eyes rapidly blinking as if she was doing math. The iron fist in my stomach tightened. I could tell that the coke she’d been snorting had started hitting. “I forgot when it is, but you should totally come. Have you been to Mexico?”
Asking me that kind of question was like asking me if I’d seen a unicorn this week. I’d barely seen the southeast of America, much less another country.
“Can’t say I have,” I said, but it went over Addison’s head because she’d done a weird shift into a slur of run-on sentences, sporadic and wild. She messed around with her bag, digging inside, and revealed a small baggie, tightly packed with white powder, throwing me off guard.
Oh no. Fuck, no, no, no.
My throat clenched from the memory of the age-old taste, the drip coating in the back of my throat until it thickened with an emotion that felt like my entire mouth had been stuffed with cotton.
Maybe just once.
I stumbled back, and lifted my hands up and mumbled out, “I’ll have to pass for now. I got some friends waiting for me in the crowd so I can watch Placebo.”
Addison shrugged like it was no biggie. She lifted up on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss against my cheek, an old thing she used to do when we hung out. At the time I was so touch-starved, I cradled those moments. Now, as I watched her walking backwards into the horde, my skin burned with the need to scrub it off.
“Okay, babe, gotta bounce, but give me a call to catch up,” Addison said, pointing directly at me.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, running on autopilot, the words sticky and vile in my mouth.
I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that was going to happen. The moment I was released from the ICU, I’d made sure to get rid of her number and sever all connections with the people in those groups.
Addison spun around in her platform shoes and disappeared into the crowd, all feathers and low-rise pants. Overwhelmed and breathless, I longed to collapse onto the ground, hoping it would cradle me in its warm embrace, shielding me from the remnants of a chaotic weekend filled with visitors.
I braced for the urge, but it never came. I numbly got back in line and got the two waters, and I managed to think to get a couple extra since Dakota and the others were joining us. I could barely feel the weight of them in my hands.
By the time I got back, the group had already joined Micah, and he was involved in some kind of intense conversation. Dakota, on the other hand, wasn’t engaged with them at all.
He was watching me.
Blood rushed away from my head and slammed into my feet with such force my face went numb. Had he seen what happened? If he did, would he say something to Micah? Fuck, was this all going to bite me in the ass?
Somewhere inside of me, I gathered enough bravery to push aside the panic and walk toward the group without breaking eye contact with Dakota.
“Thanks,” Dakota said when I offered him a bottle. “Run into a friend?”
I twisted off the bottle and took several long drinks, the chill numbing my throat. When I was done, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and shook my head. “Not at all. And if I’ma be real with you, if I never saw the likes of her again, it’d be too soon.”
At this, Dakota snorted and lifted his fist to me. As I bumped his, he said, “Amen to that, bro.”
