Chapter 20

Grayson

Friday, we were packed and ready for Vegas. The four of us boarded the plane and ordered vodka right away to start our celebrations. It was a special occasion, and we were going to make the most of the night.

We were in the air, the vodka had set in, and the weather was perfect for our flight. Jack and Tony talked to Carter about the plans for the night, and I smiled, listening to the shitty banter that came from them. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to like them. Carter was friends with them, and he gained some value from them, I guess, but they weren’t my kind of people.

I looked out the small window at the world below, thinking about Vegas. Casinos and alcohol and shows and strippers.

Shit.

I hadn’t canceled the strippers I’d ordered for Carter to wait for us in the room. I had completely forgotten about them. After having a change of heart and deciding to let Carter have his day, I’d ditched all my plans for disaster. I glanced at my watch. It was still a while before we landed. I had to take care of it the moment our feet hit the ground. Carter would be righteously pissed at me. I had been willing to risk that for the sake of the relationship being ruined when I had made the bookings, but I didn’t want any of that anymore.

And Carter didn’t want strippers. He wasn’t that kind of husband to be. He had treated Jenna with the most respect before his wedding to her too. It had been something I had admired back then because I would have killed him if he’d hurt my sister in any way. I had been such a dick to consider doing something so terrible to Carter and the woman he loved now.

I knew what my motivation had been and why I had decided to it, but I couldn’t believe I’d stooped so low. My stomach turned and canceling the strippers was all I could think about for the rest of the flight. I hardly touched my alcohol and only partly joined in the conversations, barely hearing what they were saying.

“Why are you so quiet?” Carter asked after a while. “Is everything okay?”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’m saving my energy for tonight.”

Carter laughed. “It sounds like we’re going to have a crazy time, then.”

I hoped it wouldn’t be too crazy. Before, I’d hoped it would be. God, I was an idiot.

The time dragged by, and it felt like a million years before we finally touched down. I hoped it wasn’t too late to cancel. I didn’t care what it would take to make it all go away. I just wanted to take care of the strippers and make sure the bachelor party was the success it was meant to be. It couldn’t be what I’d hoped for it to be before.

We made our way to the baggage carousel, and the boys were laughing and joking. I was starting to stress. I hadn’t had a chance to get away from them to make a call yet, and the more time passed, the less I could focus on our time together. After we found our bags, Tony offered to do a coffee run while Carter chilled.

“I’ll get it,” I offered quickly. “Best man duties.” I left the boys behind and finally had a chance to make the call. I dialed the agency I’d emailed for the strippers. The phone rang and rang without answer. I tried twice more, but I got no response.

Shit, shit, shit.

I typed out an email while I was in line and sent it to the email address I had used to make the booking. The reply I received was the normal automated response thanking me for my booking, and it made me stress even more. What if they didn’t get the email on time? Or at all? What kind of business didn’t answer their phones? I should have thought about this earlier.

When I joined the boys with their coffee, Carter looked at me with a frown.

“You seem stressed,” he said. Sometimes, it was a pain when he knew me as well as he did.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Lighten up, man,” Carter said. “We’re in Vegas!”

He was right. And the reason we were here was that I had initially looked for a way to ruin his wedding. So, it wasn’t a good thing. But if I kept the boys out of the hotel room somehow, maybe I could still avoid the mistake I’d made. God, I hoped so. If I could keep them away until I could handle it, it would all go away.

We took a limousine to the Bellagio. We were doing everything in style, and Carter was enjoying himself. I wished I could say the same. I was shitting myself about the strippers.

The rooms were made up beautifully with bachelor-themed parcels on the beds — chocolate molded into the shapes of naked ladies. Carter laughed about it, but I noticed he didn’t eat it. He put it away where we all sucked on ours as if it was a real woman. It made me feel even worse. At least the strippers would only come later, so it gave me a bit of time to do damage control.

When our bags were in the rooms, and we had changed for a night out on the town, we headed down to the casino to try our hand at luck. Carter won a couple of times, which was perfect. The rest of us kept losing. I didn’t give a shit. I checked my phone for an email reply every now and then and got none.

The alcohol was as free-flowing as water, and before long, Carter was sufficiently wasted. He laughed and enjoyed himself and started throwing money at the dealers, betting more and more. I let him because it was his party, and he won enough in return not to have regrets in the morning. I wished I could say the same about my gambling, but I couldn’t.

After a few hours, when the partygoers all moved on and the serious gamblers stayed behind, I noticed a woman snaking her way through the casino goers. She wore skimpy clothing. She rolled her hips as she walked, and she dripped with sex appeal. She was a stripper or an escort of some kind. She had to be.

In other words, she was bad news.

“Let’s hit the bar,” I suggested when a slot machine didn’t pay out.

“I’m in,” Carter said, and I was relieved. I didn’t care what we did. I wanted to get away from Ms. Sex-Me.

We walked to the bar and ordered a round of shooters. I took my shot with the guys, but I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to have a good time, and I was stressed to the max by now. I had to get up to the room and do something about those strippers. I tried a few times to slip away from the group, but when I did, Carter caught me and either wanted to come with me or asked me why his best man was ditching him.

I couldn’t exactly tell him it was to save him from the mess I’d made, could I?

Carter was getting drunker and drunker, and if I’d still had the plan to get him involved with strippers, I would have been thrilled. In that state, I would have been able to do anything with him. But it wasn’t what I wanted anymore.

Tony and Jack were starting to get quite rowdy. They were roughhousing and bumped into a guy who walked past. Immediately, he was up in their faces, and a good night threatened to turn into a bad one. I didn’t want to fight. I couldn’t afford Carter to go home with bruises and black eyes, and he was getting involved because he was drunk enough to forget about anything other than swinging his fists. This was what happened when he drank too much. It had been this way since college.

“Let’s get up to the room,” I said, desperately trying to split up the fight before security decided we weren’t welcome in the hotel anymore.

“Just one punch, that’s all it will take,” Carter said and he lunged forward. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

“Let’s get to bed,” I said. “Abigail wants to call early in the morning.”

Her name seemed to bring Carter back to his senses. I was glad to get them away from the fight. When we stepped into the elevator to ride back to our floor, the movement made me nauseous, and I realized I was drunker than I’d thought. I had also not stressed as much as I had before, and the feeling was a good one. Light and airy, this was why I drank. Despite trying to be responsible, the shots I had taken every time the boys had ordered had loosened me up enough not to remember what I was so panicked about.

Until we opened the door and music started playing with the lights dimmed, and two women stood in the middle of the floor wearing next to nothing.

Oh, shit.

“What the fuck is this?” Carter asked, his eyes on me as if he knew it was my doing.

“Let me handle it,” I said. I pushed the boys out of the room and closed the door. The women came to me, touching me, rubbing their bodies against me. I struggled to think through the alcohol and my body being stimulated in all the right ways. There was so much skin, it made my mind swim.

I shook my head and turned the lights too bright. I switched off the music.

The women stopped grinding and looked at me. Neither of them seemed to be too worried that they were very naked. Only their nipples were covered, and a tiny triangle hit the V between their legs.

“I’m sorry, ladies, there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said. “I canceled for tonight.”

“We need twenty-four hours in advance,” one of them said.

I closed my eyes. The room spun slowly around me.

“What do you need to get out of here?” I asked.

“Cash,” the other one said.

“I already paid.”

“We have a cancelation fee.”

I took out my wallet. I would pay whatever it took. They seemed to know this and took advantage of it, but I didn’t care. I wanted them to fuck off. I ended up paying double their rates before they finally slipped into trench coats that suddenly made them look professional. They left the room, walking past Carter who looked fuming and too sober for this conversation to be blamed on alcohol.

“Do you want to tell me what the fuck that was?” he asked me.

I could lie to him and tell him it was the hotel when they’d learned it was a bachelor renting the room. But I had to come clean about it because I felt like shit.

“I booked them when I wanted to ruin everything. But that was before. I tried to cancel.”

Tony and Jack glanced at each other and disappeared. They weren’t willing to get involved.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? I lost Jenna, and now I’m never allowed to be happy again? Was the accident my fucking fault, Grayson?”

I shook my head. “I’m ashamed, Carter. You must know that, but I took care of it. I made them go away. This is still your night.”

Carter shook his head. “Suddenly, I don’t want this shit anymore. The upside is I’m so pissed off at you, I’m beautifully sober again so I can call Abigail. Which I am going to do right now, and she won’t be worried because I won’t sound like the fucked-up asshole you tried to turn me into.”

Carter pushed past me and slammed his door in my face. I stood in the hallway alone. I had messed up. I’d hoped I could fix it, and I’d managed to do some chaos control, but it still all blew up in my face.

I was a rotten friend.