Vegas Boys

I half-walked, half-floated up the stairs to my room, and had almost reached the top landing when I heard my dad’s deep growl of a voice call my name behind me. I turned to see him standing in the wide archway that led into the kitchen, thick arms folded over his chest and a grim look on his face. "Did you have fun?" he asked.

"Mmhmm," I managed dreamily.

He raised a bushy eyebrow at me. "Your make-up’s all smudged," he observed.

"Is it?" I was hardly aware of what I was saying.

Unthinkingly, I turned and continued up the stairs, but Dad stopped me again. "Your mom called while you were gone."

A prick of discomfort at the mention of my mother permeated my protective layer of happiness. "Okay," I replied, hoping he wouldn’t elaborate--I wanted to keep this wonderful euphoria for as long as possible.

"I told her you’d call her back tomorrow."

"Okay."

"Goodnight, Kelsey," said Dad finally.

"’Night, Daddy." Still smiling so widely that my face hurt, I hurried away to my room, leaving him staring after me with a perplexed expression. I never called him "Daddy."

-----

As I slipped into my bathroom to get ready for bed, I noticed, with a little smirk to myself, that my make-up really was smudged--very smudged--and my own dull black-and-white make-up was contaminated with a few streaks of Brendon’s colorful costume make-up. For a moment, I didn’t want to wash it off; I wanted to save all evidence of what had happened tonight, so I would never ever forget this feeling.

When I had finally got out of my costume, I just lay in bed with the light on for a long time. Brendon’s bedroom was right across from mine, and I could see his lit-up bedroom window out of mine. I closed my eyes and pictured him doing the same--lying in bed, thinking about me. It was a nice thought.

After almost an hour, I reached over and turned out the light, and moments later the light in Brendon’s room went out as well.

-----

The next morning, I attempted to preserve the remains of last night’s bliss, but by noon, I had no choice but to call Mom back as Dad had promised I would.

The phone rang seven times and I was about to hang up just as her overly-perky voice on the other end of the line chirped, "Hello?"

"Hey, Mom." I tried to sound a little more enthusiastic, but after everything, could she really blame me?

"Hey, sweetheart," she cooed, her voice instantaneously melting into sweet-talking mode. "How are you?"

"I’m fine. What about you? And Chris?" I added, as an afterthought.

"Oh, we’re doing great. We’ve found a couple of apartments we think are pretty good prospects--we just want to compare some prices and, you know, check out the neighborhoods and everything before we buy…"

"Oh. Yeah," I agreed dully, "that’s probably a good idea."

"So," she said briskly, obviously changing the subject, "how’s Vegas treating you?"

"Okay, I guess," I replied reluctantly. It was better than okay--it was great, now that I had Brendon. But I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that, especially since she’d always specifically warned me about "those Vegas boys."

"Have you made any new friends?"

"Yeah…a couple."

"Well, that’s great, honey, I’m so happy for you," said Mom with fake interest. "Um--Chris and I have to go meet with this couple looking to sell their apartment, so I have to go now, but I’ll talk to you soon, okay?"

"Okay. Bye." I didn’t even wait for her to say goodbye before hanging up, as I wondered how long "soon" would be. Probably another two months, at least.

Oh well. I could stay here forever, as long as I had Brendon.

-----

Brendon and I walked down the street hand-in-hand, the cool autumn breeze whipping our hair about our faces. It being early November, Vegas was actually a comfortable temperature at this time of night--right when the sun hovered just above the horizon, before the streetlights came on. As soon as the sun went down completely, though, it would get cold in the desert.

"So, how do you like Vegas?" asked Brendon conversationally because neither of us had said anything in a while, and, being the Ritalin junkie he was,he could only be expected to savor the quiet for so long.

"Um..." I couldn't quite put the memory of the torturous summer out of my mind, but here, under the cloudless starry sky that stretched on endlessly, with Brendon's fingers intertwined with mine, I was biased. "I love it."

He gave me a funny little smile--pleased disbelief. "Really?"

I considered it again. "Yeah," I determined.

"You're not just saying that?" He raised his dark eyebrows at me.

"No. Why would I ever pass up an opportunity to offend you on purpose?" I laughed.

He grinned. "You have a point there."

"Of course I do." We walked in silence for a few more minutes, and then I turned to him and asked, "How do you like Vegas?"

He shrugged. "I grew up here. It's all I know, I guess."

"But do you like it?" I pressed.

"Yeah." He paused, smiling at me. "And this awesome chick named Kelsey just moved in next door and upped the whole neighborhood's cool points to, like, forty-thousand-million, so that's a plus."

"Forty-thousand-million," I repeated, mostly to distract myself from blushing. "That's a lot."

"Yeah, well...she's pretty amazing."

We both stopped walking, as if obeying some silent, shared command, and just smiled at each other for a second. Brendon let go of my hand, wrapping his arms around my waist instead and pulling me in close to kiss me tenderly.

As he finally pulled away, I couldn't stop smiling, which was embarrassing, and only led me to blush more. To try and keep him from noticing this, I said, "Well, you're pretty amazing yourself."

Brendon laughed and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Only in bed," he drawled.

"Shut up!" I laughed, sliding out of his grasp and shoving him playfully. He caught me by the wrist and pulled me back into him, and I tried to jerk away, but I just ended up spinning around like a ballerina and very nearly falling flat on my face; luckily, Brendon wrapped his arms around my middle from behind and caught me before I hit the ground.

We were both laughing hysterically, Brendon bent over me from behind, supporting my entire weight as I let my head hang down limply so that the ends of my long reddish-blonde hair almost touched the ground. Then slowly, as our laughter began to fade, I became more and more aware of his arms around my waist and his warm breath on my bare neck.

"Do you trust me now?" he whispered so softly that I might not have heard, had he not been so close that I could feel his lips moving against my earlobe.

"Yes," I whispered breathily.

He hesitated just long enough to drive me completely mad, and then planted a kiss on my neck, just below my ear, that became the first of a whole string of them. And everywhere his lips touched me, my skin was left tingling, alight with some raging fire I couldn't control, or even understand.

The whole neighborhood was a lot more quiet than usual, I noticed--or maybe it was just that I wasn't listening, that my whole body was so completely focused on Brendon that I could take in nothing else. But in that moment, it felt like we were the only two thinking, feeling human beings in the whole neighborhood--in the whole city--in the whole world, even.

There were a million little houses, all more or less the same, lined up along streets headed in every direction, with lit up windows and streetlights out front and quaint little picket fences on either side--and there were people inside. But none of them were living--none of them were alive like Brendon and I were.

And God, were we alive.