Page 53 of Anger Bang
There wasn’t any point in denying that, so Kade didn’t.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” Dex said with a chuckle that sounded almost like his old self.
Then he stood up, and, almost like magic, his brother’s right eyelid came down just a bit, his mouth slackened, and he unfocused his gaze just enough to look like he was drunk enough to fry two mics by accident.
“Shee ya, brother,” he slurred before turning around and weaving his way back over to the groomsmen already holding up shots.
The group made a big production out of taking their shots, then broke into a loud rendition of the L.A. Inferno’s fight song led by a very inebriated-sounding Dex. And that was Kade’s cue. He unhooked his mic pack and left it on the table along with the Dr Pepper–soaked mic before making his way outside to find Thea.
Chapter Twenty-Three
That evening, Thea couldn’t have felt farther away from the lawn shed of lust than if she was on the moon.
After an hour spent with Jackie and the bridesmaids getting eighties makeovers for the bachelorette party, she was dressed in a shiny teal-and-magenta monstrosity of a prom dress that looked like it was made out of highly flammable wrapping paper. The sleeves were puffed. The skirt was tiered. The waist was dropped. And her hair? Thanks to a mountain of teased-out temporary extensions, it was ten miles high and pulled into a high side ponytail. And she didn’t even want to think about her makeup. Her eyeshadow matched the dress, shade for shade, and her mascara was a bold electric blue that fought for dominance with her bright-pink lipstick.
Of course, it could be worse. She could be wearing Jackie’s outfit. Her sister was wearing a grape-Kool-Aid-colored dress with a sweetheart neckline made out of the same cheap metallic material as Thea’s. However, Jackie’s tiered skirt abomination had been styled with a black satin bow and a copious amount of ebony tulle under her skirt.
Between the dresses and the amount of hair spray locking everyone’s eighties hairstyles in place, it was no surprise production had warned them all not to go near any open flames.
Maybe they should have warned them to stay away from Jell-O shots. Instead, Lakin, Pepper, Jackie, and Thea had drowned their dress sorrows in sugar-free gelatin spiked with vodka while playing throwback games like lawn darts and bocce ball. By the time the crew finally let them take ten precious off-camera minutes to shake off their “being on” personas, most of the Jell-O shots were gone.
“This is a fucking nightmare,” Jackie groaned as she sat down on the iron bench where Thea was. She held out a small tray loaded down with tiny plastic cups filled with green and blue gelatin. “Jell-O shot?”
Thea grabbed a lime-flavored alcohol treat and slurped it down. “Thisis a nightmare?” she asked as she gestured toward the makeshift dance floor under the stars where Lakin and Pepper were chatting with the production crew. “You wanted all of it.”
“Not this. It’s just the shit Ihaveto do.” Jackie’s shoulders slumped as she rested the tray on her lap and she let out a harrumph of a sigh before letting her head rest on her sister’s shoulder. “It’s not all roses for me, you know.”
Thea didn’t. Everything seemed to come easily for Jackie, and if it didn’t go her way she strong-armed it into submission. She was a force of nature and always had been.
Still, sitting here feeling the light floatiness of being tipsy off Jell-O shots with her sister by her side made Thea remember the days when they’d been closer. The times when they could talk to each other without saying a word or when there was never any doubt that they had each other’s backs. It had been years since that was their reality, but at this moment, it felt like not a day passed since they’d last spent an all-nighter watching scary movies while huddled together under the same giant blanket. God. Thea hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed that up until now.
Emotion clogged her throat as she blinked away unexpected tears and tilted her head so it rested against the top of Jackie’s.
“So why do you do it?” Thea asked her sister.
“Because I love it.” Jackie gave a shaky laugh that teetered on the edge of tipping over into tears. “I love trying on a character for a while and getting lost in it, the opportunity to let someone watching escape into a new world, and that sense of community that comes when you make something together.” She sniffled and sat up, pivoting in her seat so they faced each other. She lifted her chin in defiance. “People make light of it, but life is fucking hard, and we need to have a place to let ourselves believe that our hope for something better isn’t misplaced. I know my shows are silly, that it’s not important like what you do at the museum, but…” She ended the sentence with a loose-limbed shrug as her chin dipped back down and another sniffle snuck out.
Thea scrunched up her face in an effort not to let how much she ached for her sister spill out into tears. God, she knew that feeling. The not-enough feeling. The not-meeting-expectations feeling. The hollow, achy, you-could-be-more feeling. She never expected to find out her sister experienced it, too, and the guilt for that oversight hardened the spiked Jell-O sloshing around in her stomach.
“What you do is important.” She put her arms around her sister’s shoulders and squeezed, hoping she’d feel the truth in her touch if she didn’t catch it in her voice because Thea meant every word. “It’s not an either-or. It’s a both.”
“Both?” Jackie’s chin trembled, and she started blinking rapidly as she looked at an empty spot on the wall. “I can’t even have a world where the guy I love thinks of me as anything more than a friend.”
Thea gasped, surprise flooding her system so fast her jaw went slack. “What?”
“Fuck. I should stop with these now.” Jackie grabbed another plastic Jell-O shot cup from the tray on her lap and sucked it dry. “Or maybe I should get a few more.”
“Tell me everything.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Jackie said with a shrug. “He loved me. I said I only had time for my career. He said he understood, and we became friends, and then I realized that I’d biffed it. He was amazing. Of course he moved on. That’s what great guys do—they find people who have it in them to have feelings.” She looked around as if flabbergasted by everything she saw. “And now here I am, with the kind of wedding every girl dreams about, acting like the queen of bitches while trying not to cry my eyes out because the last thing I fucking need on top of it all is for social media to analyze all of the ways I’m a haggard old crone who always looks tired.”
What the fuck?“You’re not even thirty.”
“Exactly! I’ll be playing the mother to some guy a few years older than me in a few seasons.” Jackie set the tray down on the floor and nudged it under the bench with the heel of her bright-blue satin high heels and then took Thea’s hands in her own, holding onto them tight. Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears and determination. “But it’s not too late for you. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Promise me. You’ll regret it, and then you’ll find yourself in acid-washed overalls and a sports bra in the middle of nowhere Wyoming where it smells like sulfur and lime Jello-O, getting shitfaced on the eve of your wedding.”
“That was very specific.” And a lot to process. All of the new information was swimming around in Thea’s head like rabid sharks in a feeding frenzy.
“I’m serious, Thea.” Jackie grabbed Thea’s hands, clasping them tight in her own. “Promise me.”
