“Ninety-two actually,” I agreed. “And while it’s a sauna outside, you have turned our hotel room into a damn igloo. My nipples are trying to cut through my shirt right now because it’s so cold in here.”
“You’re so weird,” she laughed, grabbing a pair of shorts.
I watched silently as she pulled them over her curvy ass, leaving them unbuttoned and unzipped. The shorts were corseted, the black material held together on the sides with shoestrings. She made them herself—hell, on any given day, most of the items in her closet she had made. Dressed in only the shorts and her bikini top, she looked more like she was on her way to work a shift at a strip club than going to a rock festival. That particular look wasn’t unusual for my sexy friend. Riley wanted to start her own clothing line for short and curvy women, and she was her own model for every outfit she created.
“Will they even let you through the gate dressed like that?” I asked as I watched her fix her boobs in the mirror.
“I’m going to wear a shirt over it. I just don’t want to be too hot later.” Picking up her foundation brush, she set to work doing her makeup, and I curled up into a ball under the blankets on my bed.
Crap, I should have talked Lindsey into coming instead. I had over a dozen favors she owed me that I could have cashed in on.
Riley had won an all-inclusive package to attend one of the biggest rock festivals on the East Coast, in Charlotte. None of us thought she would actually win when she signed up for the contest on the Demon’s Wings’ website. With the millions of fans who must have entered, the actual chances of Riley winning had been slim to none. Yet, by some miracle, she had.
Everything from first-class plane tickets for two, to ground transportation, to hotel and shuttle service to and from the festival. On top of that, she was going to get to meet some of the hottest legends and hang out with them tonight. She wanted one of us to come with her, and it seemed like I lost the coin toss with our other roommate, Lindsey.
I hadn’t really complained about it. Not when I was just as into the rock genre as Riley was, whereas Lindsey was more the classical music or nothing type. Getting to meet the members of Demon’s Wings and OtherWorld had been the seller, so I’d jumped at the chance to go with my friend, having never been to a festival before.
Riley’s clothes revealed more than they covered, leaving nothing to the imagination with her perfectly rounded ass cheeks peeking out of the shorts. I could see it now. All those drunk, high-off-their-ass fuckwads we had encountered the night before, panting after Riley like the horny dogs they were. It always amused me to watch the male—and even some of the female—population salivating over my best friend. But I couldn’t help feeling trepidation as the morning went on. I wanted to bundle her up and take her back to California.
Dressed in a pair of distressed cutoff shorts with a T-shirt I’d cut up the night before so the back was shredded and my hair pulled under an old ball cap that belonged to one of my little brothers, I thought I looked cute. Cute was good enough, especially when I was comparing myself to the b
lazing hotness of Riley.
Her dyed, jet-black hair was short, ending just past her chin. The ink on her back—a single peacock feather—went the entire length of her spine. With her golden skin and those piercing blue eyes, she looked exotic in a sea of mundane. Her eyes always told guys to go fuck themselves, though, and the smirk that was normally close to the surface made her lips look even fuller than they really were. She was a few inches shorter than me, but her curves more than made up for her lack of height.
Grabbing my fake ID and my cash, I followed Riley out of our room. There was already a group standing in front of the bank of elevators. The three guys and two girls all ran their eyes over us. I was easily dismissed, but the girls took one look at Riley and decided she was after every guy on the planet. They grabbed their boyfriends’ hands and pulled them closer, forcing them to snap their mouths closed as drool beaded down their chins.
The third guy, who only seemed to be tagging along, stepped away from his friends. Lifting his can of beer to his lips, he took a long swallow before offering it to Riley. “Drink, sugar?”
My roommate’s eyes raked up and down the guy. Stretched out T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jean shorts that looked new, and flip-flops. He was in decent shape, if a bit skinny, and had a cute face, but he was nothing like what Riley went for. She liked them to look more like a bear than a stick. Every guy she ever brought back to the apartment had always been on the huskier side, with full beard and arms the size of tree trunks. When she stood beside them, she looked like a tiny pixie, but that was how Riley liked it. She wanted to feel like a fairy.
Lindsey called her a punk Tinker Bell the first day she moved in with us.
“Yeah, no thanks.” She grabbed my hand and entwined our fingers. “I’m taken.”
The guy’s mouth fell open, and I heard the girls snicker. “You’re a lesbian?”
“Obvi.”
“I don’t believe you.” He was getting angry for some reason, and I figured he was already drunk. If he was drinking beer at ten in the morning, the guy was going to be wasted by the time the festival opened at noon. “Kiss your girlfriend, and maybe then I’ll believe you.”
“I don’t know you, and I don’t owe you shit. I don’t care if you believe me or not.” She tugged me closer, cupping my ass in one hand and lowering her lashes as she looked at me. “Right, baby?”
Used to playing along with her lies, I smirked down at her. She gave my ass a squeeze, making me giggle. “Right, babe.”
“Fucking dykes everywhere,” the guy grumbled as he stepped into the elevator.
I stiffened, offended. I wasn’t a lesbian, but I had plenty of friends who were. I took two steps after the group, ready to punch the jerk in the balls, but Riley caught me around the waist and locked me in place. “Easy there, killer. No use in breaking your hand on some jackass’s jaw. He’s drunk and stupid. We’ll take the next one,” she called when one of the girls started to hold the elevator doors open for us, unaware that I was about to bring her friend to his knees.
Riley didn’t let go of me until the numbers above the elevator showed it was two floors down. “Take a deep breath and count to twenty, just like we talked about. We don’t want to alert anyone that you’re the one here with me, right?”
I did as she said, breathing in deeply and counting to twenty before exhaling. She was right, and if she hadn’t just checked me, I might have found the guy down in the lobby and throat-punched him on the way out the door. I didn’t need the attention that would come from that kind of publicity. Everyone would have their phones out, snapping picture after picture, and even though I doubted a single one of them would recognize me, if they posted it to Facebook with the facial recognition software the social media site now had, it would tag me in the photo.
Then the press that always stalked my pages would start digging into where I was, what I was doing, and whom I’d assaulted. Which would then get back to my mother, and then it would all be over. I was one more strike away from having to move back home, and I would rather have sold my soul to the devil himself than have to return to that place.
As my blood began to cool, I hugged her around the neck. “I love you, Riles.”
She hugged me back. “Love you more, babe.”