I picked mine up too and we locked eyes over the glass. In this light, those blue eyes were transformed again. This time, it was the overhead green light from the bar that was doing it.
“What are we drinking to?” Noah asked.
“I have no idea. What does one usually drink to?”
He looked thoughtful for a moment. And then a small smile broke out across his face. “New friends, new experiences and seeing where the night takes us.”
CHAPTER 52
“Oh my God!” I screamed at Noah from the middle of the dancefloor. Four shots of tequila later, some strange, delirious courage that saw all my inhibitions tossed out the window and the most awful music known to mankind now had me front and center on the dancefloor, watching the band play.
“This is the worst music I have ever heard,” I shouted, and laughed. “I mean, it’s AWFUL! What would you call it?”
Noah laughed and put his hands over his ears. “I think they call it death metal?”
“Death metal?” I looked back at the four people jumping around on the stage, the singer was screaming into the microphone, and I couldn’t make out one word. On the drums, a skull logo with horns read “Worm Sheep Head”, the name of the band. The random graffiti out front finally made “some sense,” although I saw little point in naming your band that. The screaming intensified and the people in the crowd began jumping up and down and bashing their heads back and forth. Was this the dancing that everyone was doing? If so, it was bloody terrible. Like nothing I’d ever seen onDancing with the Starsor that dance program with J.Lo.
“Is this dancing?” I asked Noah, having to scream over the noise of the other people screaming.
“Headbanging!” he yelled back. “Here,” Noah said, passing me another tequila.
I took it and threw it back, the hot liquid slipping down my throat and igniting something in my veins that felt a lot like wild abandon.
“When in Rome, right?” I screeched.
And so, with that last shot running rampant through me, firing all sorts of neurons and transmitters that until now I don’t think I’d ever had in my brain, I started jumping up and down too. Noah burst out laughing and soon joined me. We grabbed hands and, just like that, started jumping up and down in a small circle, as if this was a game of Ring a Ring o’ Rosie. Which, if you think about it, is rather apt;Did you know that “Ring a Ring o’ Rosie” is actually a song about death?You couldn’t get more appropriate than that right now, because for the first time I think I heard what the singer was shouting about. Something along the lines of “Blood, fire, death” or was it “Mud, tire, death,” or maybe it was something else entirely.
But despite that, I seemed to lose myself in the “music.” The screaming, growling music, the piercing, shrieking vocals, the impossibly fast drumming and the chaotic guitar. I lost myself in the crowd too. In the sweating, jumping bodies around me and the hair that regularly whacked me on the face as someone tossed their head back. We all got into a strange rhythm of jumping and bumping into each other. But this didn’t seem to be a problem. In fact, it was almost encouraged. On several occasions I got bumped and fell all the way into Noah, and each time he caught me in his arms, laughing. I could see he was just as caught up in the strange moment as I was. And then . . .
OMG! I covered my head and bent down as a sweaty body came flying through the air towards me. I hadn’t seen it launch itself off the stage, but it had. The body seemed to move in slow motion. I felt a scurry of people and feet around me and then looked up to see the body now suspended above me on a sea of hands. Even Noah was holding the body up above me. But then, the hands started to slip against the sweatiness and soon, the body was tumbling down and coming straight for me.
“Oh NO!” The body landed on top of me with a thud. And then, it slid off me like a wet slug and I was too shocked to think about how grossed out I was that someone’s sweaty body fluids were now on me. The body, which belonged to the singer, crawled to his knees and carried on screaming into the microphone. And then he turned and looked at me, aware for the first time probably, that someone was actually there. He thrust the microphone into my face, and without knowing what to do, really, I also screamed. This seemed to be the correct response, though, because the crowd around me erupted. So I screamed some more, and some more, and I continued screaming when the man dragged me onto the stage and gave me the microphone. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know the “words” to this “musical” “song,” or couldn’t pick up on a “beat” or “melody.” It didn’t matter as I jumped up and down on the stage, screaming random words into a microphone in front of a crowd of screaming, jumping people.
“Dog! Sheep! Baby lamb doll! Chainsaw death, and Lucy’s eyeballllllsssss! Peel my leg and call me Chloeeee!” I groaned and screamed.
And then, the guitar came to a grinding halt, the drums reached a hectic crescendo and the music stopped. There was a moment of silence, where I looked down at the crowd below me, and they looked back at me, and then, like I was some rock god, they erupted into applause.
So, without thinking, I brought the mic back up to my mouth and screamed.
“It’s my birthday soon. Shooters on me!” I jumped off the stage with a thud and Noah immediately pulled me into his arms, putting his mouth up to my ear.
“You can’t buy everyone here shooters!” he whispered into my ear.
I pulled away from him and screamed. “Yes, I caaaaann!”
He looked around nervously and seemed to placate everyone with a smile and a wink, as if letting them know I was a little nuts, or something. He pulled me towards him again. “You can’t. There must be at least a hundred people here. You can’t buy everyone drinks. I know I said let loose, but I can’t let you do that. You know how much that will cost?”
I pulled away from him, putting my hands on his shoulders and looking straight into his face, which seemed to be spinning slightly. “NOAH, do you know how much money I have!”
“SSSHHHHH!” He put his finger over my lips and looked around. People had gathered in a circle around me and a chant of “Shooters, shooters, shooters!” had started to build. The “Happy Birthday” song had also been thrown into the mix.
“Whisper,” Noah insisted, putting his ear to my lips.
“Noah, I am, like, literally, a millionaire. No! Like, not even a millionaire, a multi-multi-multi-millionaire. A few times over. And you know what is crazy . . . I’ve never spent a cent of it! Not a cent. It’s all in some low-risk, bland-chicken-breast retirement policy and I’ve never done anything silly and wild with it. And I deserve to. At least once in my life, so . . .” I pulled away from him again and screamed. “Shooters on MEEE!”
I rushed through the crowd to the bar and smacked my hand down on it, hard. I looked at the bartender, who was definitely looking in my direction now. No need to fight for his attention this time. “Well, what are you waiting for?” I said to him.
He looked at me very skeptically and raised his brows. “Uh . . . you sure you can . . . uh, it’s just no one has ever bought everyone drinks before. This is very . . .”
