Lick (Stage Dive 1)

“No, you’re going out,” said David. “Me and Ev are having date night too.”

“What? You’re f**king kidding me. Where am I supposed to go?”

David just shrugged and scattered pepperoni atop his steadily growing creations.

“Oh, come on. Evvie, you’ll stand up for me, won’t you?” Mal gave me the most pitiful face in all of existence. It was sadness blended with misery with a touch of forlorn on top. He even bent over and laid his head on my knee. “If I stay in town they’ll know we’re here.”

“You’ve got your car,” said David.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Mal complained. “Don’t let him throw me out into the wild. I’ll get eaten by f**king bears or something.”

“I’m not sure they have bears around here,” I said.

“Cut the shit, Mal,” said David. “And get your head off my wife’s leg.”

With a growl, Mal straightened. “Your wife is my friend. She’s not going to let you do this to me!”

“That so?” David looked at me and his face fell. “Fuck, baby. No. You cannot be falling for this shit. It’s only one night.”

I winced. “Maybe we could go up to our room. Or he could just stay downstairs or something.”

David shoved his hands through his hair. The bruise on his poor cheek, I needed to kiss it better. His forehead did that James Dean wrinkling thing as he studied his friend. “Jesus. Stop making that pathetic face at her. Have some dignity.”

He cuffed the back of Mal’s head, making his long blonde hair fly in his face. Skipping back, Mal retreated beyond the line of fire. “Alright, I’ll stay downstairs. I’ll even eat your shitty broccoli pizza.”

“David.” I grabbed his T-shirt and tugged him toward me. And he came, abandoning his pursuit of Mal.

“This is supposed to be our time,” he said.

“I know. It will be.”

“Yes!” hissed Mal, getting gone while he was ahead. “I’ll be downstairs. Yell when dinner’s ready.”

“He’s got a girl in every city,” said David, scowling after him. “No way was he sleeping in his car. You’ve been played.”

“Maybe. But I would have worried about him.” I tucked his dark hair behind his ears then trailed my hands down to the back of his neck, drawing him closer. The studs in his ears were all small, silver. A skull, an “x” and a super tiny winking diamond. I hadn’t noticed it before.

He pressed his earlobe between his thumb and a finger, blocking my view.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“I was just looking at your earrings. Do they mean anything special?”

“Nope.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Why were you frowning earlier?” He picked up a handful of mushrooms and started adding them to the pizzas. “You’re doing it again now.”

Crap. I kicked my heels, turned all the excuses over inside my head. I had no idea how he’d react to my knowing the things Lauren had told me. What would he think if I asked about them? Starting a fight did not appeal. But lying didn’t either. Withholding was lying, deep down where it mattered. I knew that.

“I talked to my friend Lauren today.”

“Mmhmm.”

I pushed my hands down between my legs and squeezed them tight, delaying. “She’s a really big fan.”

“Yeah, you said.” He gave me a smile. “Am I allowed to meet her or is she off-limits like your dad?”

“You can meet my dad if you want.”

“I want. We’ll take a trip to Miami sometime soon and I’ll introduce you to mine, okay?”

“I’d like that.” I took a deep breath, let it out. “David, Lauren told me some things. And I don’t want to keep secrets from you. But I don’t know how happy you’re going to be about these things that she told me.”

He turned his head, narrowed his eyes. “Things?”

“About you.”

“Ah. I see.” He picked up two handfuls of grated cheese and sprinkled them across the pizzas. “So you hadn’t looked me up on Wikipedia or some shit?”

“No,” I said, horrified at the thought.

He grunted. “It’s no big deal. What do you want to know, Ev?”

I didn’t know what to say. So I picked up my soda and downed about half of it in one go. Bad idea—it didn’t help. Instead, it gave me a mild case of brain freeze, stinging above the bridge of my nose.

“Go on. Ask me whatever you want,” he said. He wasn’t happy. The angry monobrow from drawing his eyebrows together clued me in to that. I didn’t think I’d ever met anyone with such an expressive face as David. Or maybe he just fascinated me full stop.

“Alright. What’s your favorite color?”

He scoffed. “That’s not one of the things your friend told you about.”

“You said I could ask whatever I wanted and I want to know what your favorite color is.”

“Black. And I know it’s not really a color. I did miss a lot of school, but I was there that day.” His tongue played behind his cheek. “What’s yours?”

“Blue.” I watched as he opened the gargantuan oven door. The pizza trays clattered against the racks. “What’s your favorite song?”

“We’re covering all the basics, huh?”

“We are married. I thought it would be nice. We sort of skipped a lot of the getting-to-know you stuff.”

“Alright.” The side of his mouth kicked up and he gave me a look that said he was onto my game of avoidance. The faint smile set the world to rights.

“I got a lot of favorite music,” he said. “‘Four Sticks’ by Led Zeppelin, that’s up there. Yours is ‘Need You Now’ by Lady Antebellum, as sung by an Elvis impersonator. Sadly.”

“Come on, I was under the influence. That’s not fair.”

“But it is true.”

“Maybe.” I still wished I could remember it. “Favorite book?”

“I like graphic novels. Stuff like Hellblazer, Preacher.”

I took another mouthful of soda, trying to think up a genius question. Only all the blatantly obvious ones appeared inside my head. I sucked at dating. It was probably just as well that we’d skipped that part.

“Wait,” he said. “What’s yours?”