Page 125 of Feed Your Fiends

I arch a brow.

“You know she’s off limits,” he goes on.

“It doesn’t stop you from wanting her.”

“No.”

“Then?”

“Zedd says I only want her because I can’t have her. Because I can have anyone else.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I believe that Stassi is the kind of girl you never want to ruin.”

“And you think you’d ruin her?”

He laughs humourlessly. “I ruin everything I touch. I’d devour her.”

“So it’s only okay when it’s a girl you don’t give a flying fried fuck about?” I ask, cramming another fried doughnut into my mouth whole. Zedd was getting scarily good at cooking.

“Don’t get on your high horse. It’s not like you ever cared about any girl you fucked over besides Elle.”

“Sure didn’t.”

“What was it about her? Elle?” he asks, those eyes seeking wisdom, answers again.

“I could list a thousand reasons, but here’s the biggest one. It’s primal. She’s my light, and I can’t control myself around her. I want to engulf it, suck up the warm and sink into it. Fuck it. Keep it forever. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to hold on to that little light. It’s all I can see in the darkness. It makes me giddy,drunk.” I nod at the bar.

“She’s your euphoria.”

“Once you had a taste of euphoria, you won’t ever give it up.”

“That’s why I can’t taste it. No matter how much she begs, pleads…wishes,” he says, licking his fingers lost in thought. “Where did you get these? You said homemade, but I know you didn’t make them. Heldina?”

“They were on the counter,” I say simply. “Rie, bring a bottle of bourbon so we can soak them.”

“Don’t pour it!” Hale says quickly. “Just bring the bottle. No glasses.” He leans closer to me. “The table’s cleaner.”

I eye his boots on the table as Rie clomps over in her thigh-highs. Hale slips the last doughnut out and onto the paper bag, leaving a glorious mess of sprinkled sugar everywhere. He pours the remaining quarter of brown liquor over the doughnuts that swell, absorbing it like sponges.

I wonder at the concentration because twenty minutes later, Hale’s laughing uncontrollably in my ear as Rie, who’d swallowed the last doughnut in two bites, performs the worst dance imaginable in her sweats. There’s heel clicking, seizure-like hip movements and dragging heels that drown out the music Hale had turned on. The shit sucks, but the important thing is that he isn’t sulking as tears roll down his cheeks as he falls headlong onto my shoulder.

Damn,he really had been sober for a few weeks because normally his tolerance is through the fucking roof. Or, maybe, he’s riding the high of friendship. Maybe I am too because soon I’m sunken into the cushions, boots on the table, with an infectious smile tugging at my lips.

“You think you can do better?” Rie asks when Hale’s cackling grows louder than her dragging heels. She looks to me, too, as if daring me to challenge her performance.

“Don’t look at me,” I say, tossing her another bill from my opened wallet lazily. There are at least twenty more at her feet. “I liked it. In fact,” I cock my head. “I think I’m into it.”

“Sounds like something Étienne would say,” Hale says, rubbing a tear from his eye. “Damn, I miss him.”

“Alright then, let’s see you try,” Rie says, gesturing for him to take her place.

He gets up begrudgingly, but the music switches to a slower, darker beat and suddenly the spotlight has invigorated him, because he gives it his damn all. Horny middle-aged women with husbands with ED, too much box wine, and a night out on the town with the girlies would be gassed.

“Did you know he could dance?” Rie Rie whispers out of the corner of her mouth, clearly choking on her former words.

“He’s a ballroom dancer at Beaulieu,” I say as Hale does a boneless body roll.

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