Dev shakes his head and laughs. “That is a little weird.”
“I think you like that I’m a little weird,” Charlie says in a new, confident voice—a voice that scrapes along his skin like Charlie’s fingernails did before—and Dev has to kiss him one more time, one last time before he can never kiss him again. Dev grabs Charlie’s chin, and Charlie meets him so gently, his hands hooking around the back of Dev’s neck, his thumbs on the side of his jaw. Charlie sucks on Dev’s bottom lip, and Dev wishes he could keep this moment somehow. He wishes he could preserve it in the grooves of a vinyl record and fall asleep listening to the song on repeat.
“Dev, last night…” Charlie’s mouth finds his ear. “In the bathroom. Were you hard for me?”
Dev groans in embarrassment. He’s already decided to destroy his entire life, so he says, “Yes, Charlie. God, yes.”
Charlie melts against him.
The door to the club opens twenty feet away, and “Telephone” streams outside. Charlie jerks away.
“Skylar, come on.” Jules’s voice is so clear through the chaos of the night, it feels like a sobering bolt of lightning tearing through everything else. “Those drunk idiots could be dead somewhere!”
By the time Jules spots them on the sidewalk, Charlie is five feet away from him, and Dev’s not openly panting anymore. “Hey, we found you,” Skylar says. “And look, Jules. They’re not dead.”
Dev isn’t convinced this is true.
“What are you guys doing?”
“Nothing,” Dev says too quickly, avoiding Charlie’s gaze at all cost. If he looks at Charlie for even a second, Skylar will know. If Dev looks at Charlie, his face will telegraph every damn feeling competing for room inside his chest, and everyone will know.
“Charlie,” Skylar says, “you don’t look so good.”
“Um…”
Dev turns toward Charlie then, to see if he’s okay. He gets a brief glimpse of Charlie’s expression—an expression he should recognize from night one—before Charlie hunches over and vomits all over Dev’s legs. Just like he did on night one.
Somehow, it’s still the best night Dev’s had in a long, long time.
Charlie
Oh, he thinks with a sinking realization. I’m dead.
Death is waking up in a strange bed with a railroad spike drilled into his brain and lead for limbs and a very shaky understanding of the past twelve hours.
He has never been this hungover.
He tries to sit up in the hotel bed and immediately vomits on himself. He goes to the bathroom to clean off the vomit and proceeds to vomit again into the toilet for an undetermined length of time. Jules arrives while he is sitting on the floor of the shower under the hot water, still wearing his outfit from the night before.
“Yeah…” Jules sets tea and a bottle of Excedrin on the counter for him. “This looks about right.”
“Did I do anything to humiliate myself last night?”
The night is nothing but a blur of Lady Gaga songs and tequila. So, so much tequila.
Jules takes a while in answering. “Depends on your definition of humiliating…” Was she faking her shots? She looks perfectly perky, and she’s exactly half his body weight. “You got shit-faced drunk and danced to a lot of Lady Gaga in a drag club. Does that sound humiliating?”
“The way I dance? Probably.”
Jules sits down on the closed toilet seat and pulls out her phone. On her Instagram story, there is a video of Jules and Skylar teaching him the moves to “Bad Romance.” It actually doesn’t look humiliating at all. It looks kind of fun. He looks like he’s having fun.