Hot For It

Jodi Lynn Copeland

Vegas. The city of lights, laughter and illicit sex.

Tonight, when I craved each of those things almost more than my next breath, not a damned one of them was to be found.

The lights in the off-strip funeral home couldn’t have been further from the clichéd glittering lights of Sin City. Already dimmed throughout my father’s afternoon showing, with night fast falling and every other visitor gone, I’d had the funeral home director take the lights even lower, as if that somehow would make it easier to accept that my father was dead. That the heart-clogging meals he’d been ingesting for fifty-plus years had finally gotten the better of him.

Christ, how long had I been after his ass to give healthy eating a try?

Not long or hard enough, judging by the sickening pallor of his skin and that his final breath had been drawn two days ago. Approximately one hour after I could recall laughing for the last time. Laughter I’d shared with Jack Dempsey, my best friend. The bosom buddy who’d been by my side for over two decades.

The man who wrapped his arms around my waist now, pressing his strength against my back and reminding me that I wasn’t alone but with a guy who knew exactly what I needed tonight.

“There’s a bottle of Bombay Sapphire waiting for you in the passenger’s seat of my truck.” The words left his mouth as a whisper.

But the deep timbre of his voice could never be mistaken for a true whisper--Jack’s voice was as solid as the rest of his big body. Perhaps from ten years of yelling to be heard over the chaos that ensued while fighting fires. Perhaps just because he was one damned fine-looking man--with thick, wavy black hair that matched his mustache and predatory blue-green eyes--and God had seen fit to gift him with a sexy-as-hell voice to match.

Whatever the case, he was offering what I wanted. A chance to drown the tension and sorrows I had amassed over the last two hellishly long days.

I turned in his arms, burying my face against the crookof his neck and inhaling his familiar masculine scent. NormallyI had a serious loathing for letting my emotions show, evenaround Jack. Tonight, now, I just had to say “fuck it” toappearances and sniffle.

I went with the need for a few minutes, blubbering into his neck, probably ruining his best dress shirt. Then I sucked back my grief, accepted the shitty hand fate had dealt me--first my mother walking out years ago and now my father gone as well. At least I still had my grandmother, irrational as her aging mind could be at times.

At least I still had Jack.

I stepped back from his embrace to offer up an appreciative smile. “What would I do without you?”

His own smile flashed; a touch of the cockiness coming through which--along with our mutual take on relationships being for others--made us such compatible friends. “Get shit- faced drunk, hook up with an asshole, then wake up tomorrow wondering who the hell the guy in bed with you is and where the hell are you anyway?”

Yeah, it was a damned good thing I had Jack. Just like that he refilled my laughter well with his spot-on observation of my character. Not with bust-a-gut laughter, but laughter all the same; it rolled from my lips and felt like everything I needed right then.

Well, that, alcohol and an old friend to share it with.

Turning to my father’s casket, my momentary amusement vanished with the roiling of my insides. I said a final goodbye, laying the last kiss I ever would upon his pasty cheek and shedding a few more of those unavoidable damned tears.

Then I turned back to Jack and nodded. “Take me home and get me smashed.”

I’d been to Carinna’s apartment thousands of times--hell, I even had my own key. But something about tonight was different. From the moment I stepped inside her small but cozily decorated living room, something had my gut tightening and every nerve in my body going on full alert the way only an all- alarm fire could typically accomplish.

I knew that something had to do with the weakness she’dlet show back at the funeral home; those brief minutes whenshe’d cried and let me hold her. I knew that letting her moretender emotions show meant she was down and out in a way I’dnever seen her before today, and for good reason. I also knewthe last thing I should do was sit on the couch beside her andget hammered the way she was asking me to do.

We shared a healthy love of sex, and experience had taught me that mixing sorrow, alcohol and a member of the opposite gender generally led to precisely that. I valued our friendship way too much to risk ruining it over a hasty screw.

“C’mon, Jack,” Carinna goaded me from the couch.

The bottle of gin I’d picked up on the way to the funeral home dangled from her fingertips, open now and several drinks shy of full. Those drinks seemed to be working their magic on her mood--all trace of vulnerability was gone from her gray eyes, the self-assured arrogance I knew and respected shining through.