One Last Thing Before I Go

grins and then laughs, and then they’re both laughing, hard, not because anything is funny, but because they’re drunk and drugged and getting older faster than they’d like and really, what else is there to do?
    “I’ll miss you when you’re gone, buddy,” Jack says somberly.
    “Thanks, man.”
    He looks at Silver until Silver looks back, and then quickly looks away. That’s about as much intimacy as either of them can stand.
    “You want to tell me what this is all about?”
    “Not really.”
    Another look, another look away. Jack slaps his leg and gets to his feet. “Fair enough. You coming back out?”
    “I’ll be there in a minute.”
    “OK. Watch your feet, there’s fucking glass everywhere.”
    “I thought you were using plastic cups.”
    Jack grins. “The glasses are for the grown-ups.”
    * * *
    Outside, the party has reached a fever pitch. The girls are all buzzed and sweaty, gyrating wildly to the music. Two of them, stripped down to their bras, dance on Jack’s coffee table. What few men Jack has invited are either dancing ridiculously with the girls or perched on the furniture that’s been moved to the perimeter, downing hard alcohol and watching. Jack is in the center of the dance floor, sweating profusely as he dances pelvis-to-pelvis with a girl Silver recognizes from the pool. What he lacks in grace he makes up for with shameless enthusiasm, and even though he’s an ass, Silver feels a warm rush of affection for him.
    “Dead man walking!” Jack shouts, waving to Silver. He’s been calling him that all night.
    Sad Todd sits weeping into his whiskey on the arm of a couch. The girls on the coffee table get wrapped up in a passionate kiss, and the room applauds their open-mindedness with shouts of encouragement.
    The girl who had come with him into Jack’s guest room leaves the dance floor to embrace him with an enthusiastic hug, like a long-lost love. She is either trying to make him feel better about before, or else the little red pills are still pirouetting through her blood, painting the room pink for her. Either way, he can’t remember the last time someone hugged him like that, and he feels his eyes grow warm and wet.
    “You feeling better?” she says, her lips brushing his ear.
    “Yeah.”
    She smiles. “Dance with me.”
    She pulls him into the tangled mass of undulating bodies, wraps her arms around his neck, and shimmies against him. He falls into the basic white man’s two-step and tries not to get in her way. No one over the age of twenty-five should ever dance like this. As a drummer, he has an inherent sense of rhythm, but rhythm and grace are not the same thing. The girl purses her lips and presses her rocking pelvis against his. “You are feeling better,” she says with a sexy grin. She runs her fingertips over his pants, up the length of his erection. Then she leans forward and gives him a warm, openmouthed kiss. He closes his eyes, feeling the room spinning around him, the deafening music, this beautiful girl’s warm, willing lips pressed softly against his own, and he thinks, If I’m going to die, now would be a perfect time to do it. Of course, if he did, he would haunt every kiss this girl ever shared afterward, but we take our immortality where we can get it.
    “Come with me,” she says, leading him off the dance floor, back toward the hallway to the guest room. Before he can decide whether or not he’s up for another attempt, another girl squares off in front of them with an angry scowl on her face.
    “Jesus, Silver. Are you kidding me?”
    The girl holding his hand drops it and, after a moment of uncertainty, touches his shoulder in farewell and heads back to the dance floor to begin the healing process. He looks at Casey, who is drilling him with unforgiving eyes, and he thinks, for the second time in as many minutes, that now would be as good a time as any to check out.
    Casey is wearing a short skirt, a backpack, and an expression that causes his internal organs to clench with regret. She opens her mouth to speak, and he knows that whatever she says will further pierce his already perforated soul, but he is spared from hearing it because right then, Jack’s flimsy coffee table finally gives way, and a collective squeal rises up from the room as the dancing coeds come crashing to the ground in a tangle of limbs and underwear.
    “Shazam!” Jack yells. Casey rolls her eyes and looks at Silver like it’s all his fault, then storms out of