The Edge of Never, Wait For You, Rule: Scorching Summer Reads 3 Books in 1. J. Lynn

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СКАЧАТЬ not backing out on me, are you?” She sort of freezes, looking warily across at me.

      “No, I’m still on. Next week I’ll be out of my mom’s house and living with a slut.”

      “You bitch!” she laughs.

      I half-smile and go back to my brooding, the stuff before, that she wasn’t relating to, but I expected as much. Even before Ian died, I always kind of thought out-of-the-box. Instead of sitting around dreaming up new sex positions, as Natalie often does about Damon, her boyfriend of five years, I dream about things that really matter. At least in my world, they matter. What the air in other countries feels like on my skin, how the ocean smells, why the sound of rain makes me gasp. “You’re one deep chick.” That’s what Damon said to me on more than one occasion.

      “Geez!” Natalie says. “You’re a freakin’ downer, you know that right?” She shakes her head with the straw between her lips.

      “Come on,” she says suddenly and stands up from the table. “I can’t take this philosophical stuff anymore and quaint little places like this seem to make you worse—we’re going to The Underground tonight.”

      “What? No, I’m not going to that place.”

      “Yes. You. Are.” She chucks her empty drink into the trash can a few feet away and grabs my wrist. “You’re going with me this time because you’re supposed to be my best friend and I won’t take no again for an answer.” Her close-lipped smile is spread across the entirety of her slightly tanned face.

      I know she means business. She always means business when she has that look in her eyes: the one brimmed with excitement and determination. It’ll probably be easiest just to go this once and get it over with, or else she’ll never leave me alone about it. Such is a necessary evil when it comes to having a pushy best friend.

      I get up and slip my purse strap over my shoulder.

      “It’s only two o’clock,” I say.

      I drink down the last of my latte and toss the empty cup away in the same trash can.

      “Yeah, but first we’ve got to get you a new outfit.”

      “Uh, no.” I say resolutely as she’s walking me out the glass doors and into the breezy summer air. “Going to The Underground with you is more than good deed enough. I refuse to go shopping. I’ve got plenty of clothes.”

      Natalie slips her arm around mine as we walk down the sidewalk and past a long line of parking meters. She grins and glances over at me. “Fine. Then you’ll at least let me dress you from something out of my closet.”

      “What’s wrong with my own wardrobe?”

      She purses her lips at me and draws her chin in as if to quietly argue why I even asked a question so ridiculous. “It’s The Underground,” she says, as if there is no answer more obvious than that.

      OK, she has a point. Natalie and I may be best friends, but with us it’s an opposites attract sort of thing. She’s a rocker chick who’s had a crush on Jared Leto since Fight Club. I’m more of a laid-back kind of girl who rarely wears dark-colored clothes unless I’m attending a funeral. Not that Natalie wears all black or has some kind of emo hair thing going on, but she would never be caught dead in anything from my closet because she says it’s all just too plain. I beg to differ. I know how to dress, and guys—when I used to pay attention to the way they eyed my ass in my favorite jeans—have never had a problem with the clothes I choose to wear.

      But The Underground was made for people like Natalie and so I guess I’ll have to endure dressing like her for one night just to fit in. I’m not a follower. I never have been. But I’ll definitely become someone I’m not for a few hours if it’ll make me blend in rather than make me a blatant eye sore and draw of attention.

       Two

      We make it to The Underground just as night falls, but not before driving around in Damon’s souped-up truck to various houses. He would pull into the driveway, get out and stay inside no more than three or four minutes and never say a word when he came back out. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known Natalie, but I’ve never been able to accept his drug habits. He grows copious amounts of weed in his basement, but he’s not a pothead. In fact, no one but me and a few of his close friends would ever suspect that a hot piece of ass like Damon Winters would be a grower, because most growers look like white trash and often have hairdos that are stuck somewhere between the 70s and 90s. Damon is far from looking like white trash—he could be Alex Pettyfer’s younger brother. And Damon says weed just isn’t his thing. No, Damon’s drug of choice is cocaine and he only grows and sells weed to pay for his cocaine habit.

      Natalie pretends that what Damon does is perfectly harmless. She knows that he doesn’t smoke weed and says that weed really isn’t that bad and if other people want to smoke it to chill out and relax, that she sees no harm in Damon helping with that.

      She refuses to believe, however, that cocaine has seen more action from his face than any part of her body has.

      “OK, you’re going to have a good time, right?” Natalie bumps my backseat door shut with her butt after I get out and then she looks hopelessly at me. “Just don’t fight it and try to enjoy yourself.”

      I roll my eyes. “Nat, I wouldn’t deliberately try to hate it,” I say. “I do want to enjoy myself.”

      Damon comes around to our side of the truck and slips his arms around both of our waists. “I get to go in with two hot chicks on my arms.”

      Natalie elbows him with a pretend resentful smirk. “Shut up, baby. You’ll make me jealous.” Already she’s grinning impishly up at him.

      Damon lets his hand drop from her waist and he grabs a handful of her butt cheek. She makes a sickening moaning sound and reaches up on her toes to kiss him. I want to tell them to get a room, but I’d be wasting my breath.

      The Underground is the hottest spot just outside of downtown North Carolina, but you won’t find it listed in the phone book. Only people like us know it exists. Some guy named Rob rented out an abandoned warehouse two years ago and spent about one million of his rich daddy’s money to convert it into a secret nightclub. Two years and going strong; the place has since become a spot where local rock sex gods can live the rock n’ roll dream with screaming fans and groupies. But it’s not a trashy joint. From the outside it might look like an abandoned building in a partial ghost town, but the inside is like any upscale hard rock nightclub equipped with colorful strobe lights that shoot continuously across the space, slutty-looking waitresses and a stage big enough for two bands to play at the same time.

      To keep The Underground private, everybody who goes has to park elsewhere in the city and walk to it because a street lined with vehicles outside an ‘abandoned’ warehouse is a dead giveaway.

      We park in the back of a nearby Mickey D’s and walk about ten minutes through spooky town.

      Natalie moves from Damon’s right side and gets in between us, but it’s just so she can torture me before we go inside.

      “OK,” she says as if about to run down a list of do’s and don’ts for me, “If СКАЧАТЬ