and the stars will all come out

chapter thirty-four! ☆

"I HAVE AN IDEA," Taylor said as soon as Dave and Landry had come back inside and settled into the basement, "In honour of Landry's first high, why don't we do something fun? Like a party game? Maybe two truths and a lie?"

"Oh, that would be fun," Landry said, looking around at the group assembled around the coffee table: Nate was in the armchair, Taylor was on the floor next to him holding the bong, and Dave was beside her on the couch, his arm laid over the top of it, like he wanted to pull her in with that arm but was too nervous to. She was nursing a Coors Light, and the stereo was cranked all the way up, blasting Jane's Addiction.

"I'm down," Dave said.

"Who should go first?" Nate asked. "I think Taylor should, he was the one who suggested it."

"Oh, jeez, I hadn't thought that far..."

There was an awkward beat as he tried to think of something to say, then:

"Okay. Uh, I still get stage fright. I tried to give myself a tattoo when I was younger, and it didn't go well. And back when I was in Canada playing for Alanis, there was once a dude who made his way backstage saying he was Hootie from Hootie & The Blowfish. Everyone believed him until someone said, 'Wait a minute, there's no one in Hootie & The Blowfish named Hootie!'"

They all laughed, Landry a bit harder than usual because she was stoned.

"You definitely still get stage fright, 'cause you almost pissed your pants that one time," Dave said. "In Australia. I thought you were gonna run off the stage."

"There's no one in Hootie & The Blowfish named Hootie?" Landry said blankly. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah, it's Darius Rucker, man."

"I'm gonna have to say it's that," Nate chimed in. "Because there's no way. They would have security, right? Who would check that guy? We always have security at our shows."

Taylor just grinned mischievously.

"Where's the tattoo?" Landry questioned. "You don't have very many."

"Lan, it's in a place I, uh, won't show you."

She blinked, then said, "Yeah, it's definitely the Hootie thing."

All eyes turned expectantly to Dave.

"It's the tattoo," he said without elaborating.

There was a tense moment where they all stared at Taylor, who grinned, then said, "Yeah, it's the tattoo."

"WHAT?" Landry shouted.

He jabbed a thumb at Dave. "Care to explain, D?"

Dave rolled his eyes and lifted his shirt, exposing the weird black swirly thing over his heart she had vaguely wondered about once before.

"That was me. I did it myself - it was supposed to be a band logo but I never finished it. I actually wanted to remove it after a month because it was ugly and I looked like a convict. Someone said I should get a wet towel, sprinkle salt on it and rub the tattoo with it. Which turned out to be a pretty cruel joke, because all I did was sit there grinding fucking salt into this tattoo which hurt like hell and only made it brighter."

"And now it's there on him forever," Taylor said, laughing.

"Yep," Dave said with a kind of "it is what it is" look on his face, dropping his shirt. "Who wants to go next?"

"I think you should, Dave," Taylor said, and the rest of them nodded in assent.

"Sure. So, I went to Catholic school for two years, and one enduring memory of that school is getting really stoned and the sitting down and having to go through the whole morning prayer thing. I was so high it kinda sent me into a panic attack. And when I was sixteen, I had a job working at a pizza parlour, and that job fucking sucked. I was working the whole summer, working my ass off, smelling of pepperoni, just to buy my books for school. And I knew that I would eventually just fucking discard them all anyway. The last one is I met Paul McCartney at a Christmas party once."