Last Stop This Town (12 page)

“No, come on,” Pike whined. “You said we were gonna eat. I’m starving.”

“You’ve just got the munchies,” Noah said dismissively.

But Walker took Pike’s side in this debate, saying, “I could eat.”

“Fine,” Dylan replied quickly, keeping his eyes on the girls. “Go grab something. We’ll meet up with you later. I’ll text you where we are.”

“Cool,” Pike agreed and he headed out with Walker to find some food.

Dylan turned to Noah, happy to be temporarily free of the dead weight of Pike and Walker. They were great to have around 99% of the time, but when it came to stalking prey you needed to travel light, and one wingman was plenty. “Come on.”

Dylan started running after the group of girls and Noah ran to catch up. As he got within shouting distance, Dylan slowed down and got their attention. “Hey! Hey.”

The girls stopped and turned around. They looked roughly eighteen, dressed a bit fancy, and seemed rich. Dylan guessed they were from Manhattan or maybe Long Island. Either way, he could tell just from looking that these girls were up for some fun, and it was actually a lot easier to convince five girls to get crazy than just one or two.

Noah let Dylan take the lead, of course, and Dylan didn’t let him down. “Hey, I’m Dylan,” he began. “Listen. We are totally lost. We were supposed to meet some friends but we’re not from the city. Can you help us out?”

The girls looked them over.

Leah, the cute one with short brown hair that fell over her eyes, answered. “Where are you supposed to meet them?”

“Where are you guys going?” Dylan avoided a direct answer.

Becky, the tall one with the long hair, said, “Element.”

“That’s the name of the place,” Dylan continued fabricating. He turned to Noah and asked, “Element, right?” for added credibility.

Noah played along. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that sounds right.”

Dylan smiled and waited. He knew that’s all he had to do.

Finally, the first one, Leah, suggested, “Do you want to come with us?”

But Dylan surprisingly played it coy. “I don’t know. Our girlfriends might get jealous.”

Noah looked at Dylan like he was crazy, but Dylan knew exactly what he was doing. First, by mentioning that they had girlfriends, Dylan had conveyed that they were into girls, but just not them, and were therefore safe to hang out with. But second, by playing it coy, the girls wanted them even more because, according to Dylan, girls always want what they can’t have.

Leah played right into his hand and replied, “Don’t worry. We won’t molest you.”

The girls laughed and Leah took Dylan by the arm. Becky linked arms with wild looking Chelsea, buxom blonde Faith, and waspy looking Caitlin. Together, the four girls grabbed Noah and escorted him down the street as well.

P
IKE AND
W
ALKER
made their way down to Chinatown. They could have been eating by now but Pike was a surprisingly picky eater for someone who was perpetually hungry.

Walker spotted a sign in one window. “There, there you go. All you can eat, nine ninety five.”

Pike finally agreed. “Challenge accepted, Hop Li Buffet Restaurant.”

They headed in.

Soon, Walker and Pike were filling up their plates with food from the buffet in this Chinese restaurant with dead ducks hanging in the window. Walker was surprised at how busy the place was at this hour, but Pike explained that New York City was “like its own time zone.” There were a lot of couples on dates and quite a few college kids who looked like they had the munchies worse than Pike.

They moved forward in the buffet line and Pike elbowed Walker. “Go for the shrimp. Pound for pound it’s the most expensive thing here.”

“I don’t want shrimp.” Walker scooped a mound of white rice instead.

Pike looked personally offended. “Dude, what the fuck are you doing? Rice costs like a nickel and it will fill you up before you get your money’s worth.”

A woman in front of them glanced back at Pike like he was an incredible asshole.

Walker rolled his eyes. “How am I supposed to eat Chinese food without rice? This is dinner, not an arbitrage opportunity.” He scooped more rice onto his plate, defiantly.

Pike shrugged. “Whatever. Sucker.”

At Element, hundreds of people were dancing to the thumping techno music in this former 19th century bank, now an all-ages dance club. The place was huge, with three levels: the candlelit brick walls of the private mezzanine, the lower “vault” level with old-fashioned safe doors, and the main dance floor with its 36,000-watt sound system. Element was the kind of place that spent a lot of money telling the world how cool it was, which of course made it fairly
un
cool, but the girls picked the place, and Dylan would have followed them to the Post Office if he thought he might get lucky.

The crowd was mostly “bridge and tunnel”—few locals took Element seriously—but there were a lot of out-of-towners in the city tonight and the dance floor was packed. The silver lining was that Dylan could dance right up against Leah without the usual break-in period.

Leah was incredibly sexy. She had short hair almost like a boy’s, but it fell over her green eyes like a picture you’d see in a hair salon. (Her haircut was actually very similar to Dylan’s vision-obscuring do, and if Noah had been a Freudian psychologist, he might have suggested it was the reason Dylan was so into her.) She was wearing a low-cut black dress that barely covered her butt. The music was a nondescript bass line that they could feel in their teeth, but Leah seemed into it, so Dylan was into it as well.

Noah played the good wingman, keeping the other four girls occupied at the juice bar. He sipped his twelve dollar orange juice, then yelled to be heard, “Do you guys live here in Manhattan?”

Faith answered, “No, we just came in from the Island for the weekend.”

Faith was stunning. She had long, curly blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Her red dress was longer than Leah’s—everyone’s was—but on her, it just looked elegant. Noah could see she had some seriously big boobs packed in there but he tried his best not to let her catch him staring.

She added, “Leah’s dad got her a suite at the Plaza for a graduation present.”

Noah perked up. “Oh, you graduated this week? Our graduation is next week.”

Chelsea nodded along. “Cool.”

Chelsea had a possessed look in her eye. Noah would easily have guessed that she was the wild one, the instigator of all that was illegal, immoral, or just ill-conceived. She had wavy black hair, brown eyes, and a rocking, tight, athletic body. Maybe she wasn’t as hot as Leah or as beautiful as Faith, but Noah imagined she made up for it in the sack.

Becky downed her cranberry juice and slammed the empty glass on the bar. “This place fucking sucks,” she announced to no one in particular. Becky was the tallest, with long, brown hair and bangs. She was the only one with obvious tattoos, a Celtic arm-band on her left bicep and a series of Chinese symbols across the back of her shoulder blades. Noah figured the symbols meant something lame like “harmony,” but frankly he didn’t really care and wasn’t going to ask.

“We should have just gone to a real bar,” she lamented.

“Hey, but where else can you get a full day’s supply of vitamin C for only twelve bucks?” Noah joked.

The girls laughed. But Caitlin was sick of the small talk and grabbed Noah’s hand. “Come on, let’s dance.”

Caitlin had straight, blonde hair in a preppy bob. Her tight plaid miniskirt made her look like a Catholic schoolgirl, but her face said wasp all the way. Something about her Anglican nose, or her thin lips that rose into a natural smirk, made her seem full of herself. She wouldn’t have been Noah’s first choice—he probably would have gone for Faith or Chelsea—but she was the one dragging him onto the dance floor.

Sure, Noah was still thinking about Sarah in that moment, but this was Noah, not Walker, and
he
didn’t need someone to push him into the arms of a gorgeous girl. Besides, he and Sarah
were
broken up.

Noah followed Caitlin through the crowd until they found a small space to start dancing. Caitlin was one of those girls who just really liked
dancing
, and Noah, it seemed, was there as more of an accessory. Sure enough, Becky, Chelsea, and Faith soon made their way over to join them and it quickly turned into more of a platonic group thing than a prelude to hooking up.

Dylan, on the other hand, was really putting the moves on Leah, grinding her on the dance floor and squeezing her ass. Not that she minded one bit. After all, Dylan was charming, good looking, and frankly, sexy, and he excelled at making girls feel good about doing what he wanted.

After a couple more songs, Dylan could tell he was working her into a frenzy.

Suddenly, Leah spotted her friends just a few yards away and yelled to them, “I’m starting to get sober. Let’s go back to the Plaza.”

Dylan, fearing he’d somehow blown it, asked, “Already? It’s early.”

Leah looked up into Dylan’s eyes and asked innocently, “Do you guys want to come with us?”

Dylan smiled, amused that he had doubted himself even for a second. Noah and the girls worked their way over to Dylan and Leah. Dylan looked at Noah knowingly.

Before they knew it, Dylan and Noah found themselves in Leah’s stretch limo, piled in with the five girls. All of them were laughing and sticking their heads out of the windows and sunroof.

The limo driver just rolled his eyes.

But Noah and Dylan didn’t care. They had five hot, sexy, almost certainly promiscuous girls on their laps.

Walker and Pike chowed down, Pike on mostly shrimp and Walker on mostly rice. Between bites, Walker asked, “What do you think everyone’s doing right now at Marco’s beach house?”

“Who the fuck cares?” Pike snapped. “Live in the fucking moment, man.” He took a big mouthful of Kung Pao Shrimp.

Walker sighed, then just kind of blurted out, “God, I need to get laid.”

“Wait. I thought you just
got
laid. What about that girl?”

Oops.

Walker tried to cover. “Yeah, I mean I need to get laid
again
.”

But Pike knew Walker too well. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

Busted.

Walker blushed. “No.”

Then, much to Walker’s surprise, Pike demonstrated a rare moment of empathy when he said, “Hey, no worries, man. It’ll happen.”

Walker opened up. “I just couldn’t. I mean, I didn’t even know her name.”

“Don’t overthink it. Look at Dylan. If he thinks there’s a chance a girl
won’t
kick him in the balls, he just goes in for the kill. No chit chat, no baking lasagna, it’s like a fucking surgical strike.”

“Well, I’m not like that. Dylan told me I’m the kind of guy girls appreciate when they’re older.”

“Yeah, and Dylan told me to stop smoking so much pot.”

Walker put down his fork. “I don’t know. I feel like it’s important to be friends first.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Pike laughed before letting out a tremendous burp. So much for the empathetic moment. He threw down his fork as well. “Man, I am stuffed.”