He tipped his chin at me in response before dragging his girl toward the bar.
The server brought our drinks. Before he’d even unloaded everything, I grabbed two of the shots and passed one to Shane.
Holding up my own, I ignored the girl in my lap for a minute and looked into my friend’s worried amber eyes. There was a crease between his brows, and his gaze kept darting around the room.
The VIP section was small. Apparently, that meant it was more exclusive. I wouldn’t know and I didn’t really care. All I cared about was having a good time, and Percussion was the best time to be had in the city at the moment.
Eventually, some other club would take over as the ritziest. It always happened that way. When it did, I would move on to that next place when I wanted to have fun.
For now, Percussion was my spot.
Whenever I needed to blow off some steam, I came here. After the week I’d had, there was a lot of steam to be blown off.
Shane needed it, too. His mouth had that anxious-twitch thing going that it did sometimes, and his fingers were drumming against the table.
“Cheers, man.” I held his gaze and lifted my glass in his direction. “Let’s stop with the worrying for tonight. You can always make up for it with some extra worrying on Monday.”
He glared at me but raised his glass to his lips and dropped his head back to take the shot. I grinned, followed suit, and picked up two more glasses.
This time, however, I directed my attention to the others sitting around the table. They noticed me holding up the tequila almost immediately. Everyone reached for their own drink and raised their glasses for the toast.
“To a great night for us all,” I called above the music, then threw the smooth liquid down my throat.
It didn’t even burn going down anymore, which was great for tonight but a bad omen for tomorrow morning. Again, though, I didn’t really care.
A hangover was part of the package I was paying for tonight. Luke, my son, was with his mother for the weekend.
No doubt there would be some drama or other when I went to pick him up tomorrow afternoon, but that was just fueling my desire to drink as much as I could tonight. Sharing a seven-year-old with the devil tended to be bad for my liver occasionally.
There was also the fact that whenever I had to deal with Audrey, I had to deal with my former friend. My ex had turned to him for comfort after she bailed on me.
Comfort in this context had turned out to be his cock. Oh, and his sizeable bank account.
Nothing in this world was more important to Audrey than the size of his bank account. Not even providing a stable home for our son.
When I’d first started my business, she’d pushed me to work day and night—which I’d been doing anyway. I still didn’t achieve success fast enough for her, though.
She’d never had any intention of working for a living, and evidently, she’d gotten tired of standing around waiting for me to pull a miracle out of my ass. So she’d decided to start over with another man, Jett.
Shane, Jett, and I had grown up together. We played for the same rugby teams, attended the same schools, and used to be pretty tightly knit.
Until Audrey realized Jett had a trust fund.
She’d left Luke and me so fast I’d checked the floors for scorch marks because it had certainly seemed like her ass had been on fire.
Luke hadn’t seen his mother for months while she’d been on Mission Seduce Jett, which was why our son lived with me. Audrey hadn’t even tried to take him with her.
Wonderful woman, my ex.
Provided she wasn’t busy or didn’t come up with some other excuse, Luke went to visit his mother every second weekend. I could have taken her to court to fight about it, but I hadn’t.
Luke loved his mother, and since she was a bitter hag, it was up to me to be mature about things. The truth was that he wasn’t in any kind of danger with her. She just wasn’t terribly interested in him.
A weekend twice a month was more than enough time for her to sacrifice to spend time with him. She was bitter that I’d struck gold just after she’d left me, and a part of me wondered if seeing Luke now just reminded her too much of what she could have had.
Either way, she was a petty asshole, and I was glad she’d left me when she had. It had taken me some time to get over her and to realize she’d done me a solid by shoving off out of my life, but I had gotten there.
Now, I had more than moved on. I only wished I didn’t have to have contact with her so often. But there was nothing I wouldn’t do for my son. Dealing with his mother, walking through the fire she breathed at me, and seeing her every second weekend to hand him off was all just a part of it.
For Luke, I could pull up my bootstraps and take the motherfucking high road. I just didn’t have to be one-hundred-percent sober in the run-up to our encounters.
Just thinking about her made me drain what was left of my glass of champagne. The girl on my lap was chattering with a woman sitting next to me, seemingly completely oblivious to the lack of attention I’d been giving her. Or just not caring about it. Probably the latter.
As my head came back down after I’d swigged the remainder of my bubbly, I caught Shane’s eye again. He was watching the girl dancing on me with anxiety flickering in his gaze.
“This is reckless, Jude,” he said, not giving a damn about whether she could hear him or not. I was pretty sure she couldn’t. She was leaning almost halfway off the other side of me, and her eyes were glassy by this point.
Soon, I’d have to get my security to take her home. There was no way she was coming home with me in the state she was, but I also wouldn’t throw her to potential wolves by herself.
“Would you relax?” I replied to my friend. “She’s fine. No one made her drink so much. I’ll give Gary a call to come get her. He’ll see her home.”
“That’s not what I was talking about.” He raked a hand through his curls, but they bounced right back into place. “Well, that’s not the only thing I’m talking about. I know you won’t take advantage of her, but she’s still spent the last hour basically giving you a lap dance.”
“Has she?” I glanced at her, then shrugged. “She’s just enjoying the music. No harm, no foul.”
“Isn’t there?” He frowned at me, then made a circular motion with his index finger to indicate the room. “There’s a lot of harm being done tonight, Jude. Just like there is every time you decide to celebrate fun and freedom.”
“Hey, we’re not only celebrating that. We’re also celebrating being young and hot.”
He rolled his eyes. “We’re thirty-five, man. That’s not exactly young, and you might be hot, but I’m most certainly not.”
“You’ve just got some extra pudge around the belly now. Come to the gym with me. We’ll—”
“I don’t need a self-esteem boost. I need you to stop acting like you’re the life of the fucking party.”
“Why?” I widened my eyes at him. “Am I not the life of the party?”
“This isn’t good for your reputation,” Shane muttered almost under his breath. To be fair, it was probably at his normal volume, but it came across as being under his breath when compared to the pounding music.
I’d still heard him, though. On the other hand, maybe I’d just seen his lips form those words so many times that I didn’t need to actually hear them anymore to know he had spoken them.