Burn For Him (5 page)

Chapter Four

“So, what are we doing tonight then? What have you got planned?” Harper asked Dee as she danced around him in the kitchen before popping a square of milk chocolate into her mouth. I made a face at her. Chocolate was one of my favourite treats, but in my opinion, chocolate and alcohol do not mix well together.

“’Um. We’re going out, aren’t we? That was the plan, wasn’t it?” I laughed, looking down at myself. It would have been pretty pointless to get all dressed up like we had and then plan to stay in for the rest of the night with a pizza. We had all been in good moods and it would have been a total waste not to go out and enjoy it, especially when Destiny had managed to talk her father’s nurse into staying overnight to look after her father.

“Yeah, but I more mean where are we going to go?” Harper rolled his eyes as he moved around Dee to grab another beer. “We’re banned from going to Revolve, remember?” He didn’t say it in a way to make Dee feel bad because he was over it now. He was just stating a fact that we were going to have to make a decision as to where to go.

“Well then, we’re just going to have to go and try out somewhere new, aren’t we?” I said.

“Yeah, but any ideas where?”

“You do know that there is more than just the one club in this city.” I laughed. “What about Voltz? Or Underground?” I started ticking names off on my fingers when Dee suddenly jumped up to sit on the counter, swinging her ridiculously long legs in front of her.

“What about that new place?”

“What new place?” I asked her.

“Damn. What’s its name? It was in the paper last night. Looks like a pretty extreme night out.” Dee grinned.

“You mean Milligan’s?” Harper asked as he necked his beer, making a face. He was more of a spirit drinker, but seeing as the beer was cooling in the fridge, he’d opted for that.

Destiny clapped her hands together. “Yes! That’s it! That’s the place. Milligan’s. It sounds like a pretty awesome night out from everything I’ve heard about it. What do you think? Do you guys want to go and try it out?”

I grinned and looked over at Harper. Destiny must have noticed that he was looking a little hesitant as she quickly added, “And I won’t be drinking tonight, so you don’t have to worry about me causing any problems. We’re just going to go and have some fun.” She even had the decency to look a little sheepish.

“So, you learnt your lesson last weekend then?” Harper asked her with a raised eyebrow.

“No.” Dee laughed. “I’m still suffering from the after effects of the last hangover. I don’t think that my liver could handle another binge like that again just yet. At least give me a couple of weeks…” She winked at me as she hopped back down off the counter. I couldn’t help but laugh at her. She knew that she had screwed up and she had been trying to make things right with both of us over the past week.

I had been snowed under at work and had no time for a social life so although I hadn’t seen her, we had still been in contact via text. That was about all I had time for and now that I could finally let my hair down and relax, I was going to take full advantage of the fact and have me some fun.

I was surprised she had mentioned last weekend. Both Harper and I knew why she had lost control like that, but it had taken some time for me to explain more to Harper and he had agreed to cut her some slack.

I hated to see this rift between them. They didn’t seem to talk to one another like they used to. The three of us were as close as ever, but Destiny confided in me a lot more than she did with Harper. I guessed that it was a girl thing. Plus, Harper and I were close anyway, even more so because we shared a home together. It meant that we shared more of our lives, whether we wanted to or not. We weren’t able to hide things from each other as easily as Destiny could.

I had to admit that I had the best of both worlds with having Harper and Destiny as my best friends. With Dee, I had all the girly things that I needed in my life. She was like a sister to me. And, with Harper, he was able to give me a different level of support and perspective on things. It was great having a guy for a best friend. Sure, it often scared off potential boyfriends, but it they couldn’t handle me having Harper in my life, then they weren’t worth knowing anyway.

“You’re going to have to make more of an effort if we’re heading out to Milligan’s.” Destiny said as she glanced over my outfit.

“She looks fine to me.” Harper said loudly as he stuck his head in the freezer, searching for ice. I knew that we didn’t have any, but seeing as he didn’t bother listening to me when I told him that earlier, I let him carry on with it.

I looked down at myself. It was a girl thing. Harper didn’t understand. I knew exactly what she meant by that comment. If we were going to go out and try a new club, we were going to have to jazz up my old outfit a little bit.

Destiny had on her usual BDSM/leather get up. It was becoming her trademark look. Me? There was no way I could get away with wearing something like that. Dee had a kind of exotic look going for her and she suited that more adventurous look. I didn’t.

“Come on.” Dee grabbed hold of my hand and dragged me back towards my bedroom, shouting over her shoulder to Harper, telling him to hurry up and get ready and get sexy. I knew without even looking at him that he would have been rolling his eyes at her. Saying that though, he would do what she asked and make more of an effort. It wouldn’t be as extreme as Dee would have liked, but he’d try.

She shut the door behind us and I stared at her with wide eyes. She meant business. Destiny turned and started to shuffle through the clothes in my wardrobe, tutting and shaking her head, casting aside most of my things and throwing a select few items on the bed. Half of the things she’d found I had forgotten that I even owned. And, they were things that I would never, ever think of wearing. They were the kind of items that I had bought on a whim, probably when I’d been out shopping with Destiny and had never had the guts to wear, and had obviously forgotten to get rid of.

“You’re wearing this.” She held up a ridiculously short skirt with an obscene split in the side. “With this.” The top she held up didn’t seem too bad at first – that was until the light hit it and I realised that it was virtually see-through.

“You have got to be kidding me!” I said, knowing full well that she wasn’t.

“Nope. You’ll look great in this. You know you’ve got a killer figure. It’s about time you started showing it off.”

I looked at her like she was stark raving mental. I knew that the outfit she had picked out would look great – on her. Not me. I didn’t have the confidence to wear something like that, even if I did have the figure for it.

“Come on, Carrie. For me? Please?” She could do the puppy dog eye thing better than anyone else I knew. She knew how to make it work and she was using it to her full advantage right now.

“Really?” I looked at the outfit again with weary eyes.

“Really!” She turned to rummage through the clothes she’d flung on the bed. “You could put this underneath it if you wanted to.” And she held up another top with spaghetti straps that would cover up a little more flesh, but not much more. I would still be showing way more than I was normally comfortable with, but I thought that it might be fun to dress up for a change, go for something out of the ordinary.

I shook my head at her and held up a fist, pretending to be mad. Destiny grinned like a loon. I grabbed the clothes out of her hands and stalked over to the bathroom. It was just lucky that I have my own small bathroom as Harper was hogging the main bathroom, trying to make sexy like Dee had instructed.

My bathroom was little more than a box, but it was enough for my needs. I looked in the mirror and knew that it was going to take all of my courage to actually put this outfit on, let alone actually leave the apartment in it. I was much more comfortable wearing my form fitting jeans and band tee-shirts. This was going to push me to my very limits.

I tugged on the clothes and tried my best to pull the skirt down a little lower to cover up a bit more thigh, but it kept on riding up again the damned thing. I didn’t have a full length mirror in the bathroom so I couldn’t see the overall affect, but I had a good idea of how ridiculous I looked. Taking in a deep breath, I pushed open the door to my bedroom.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Carrie! You look hot! Wow!” Destiny sounded genuinely amused at the transformation and the surprise in her tone at my changed appearance was evident. I wasn’t too sure whether to feel complimented or insulted at her surprise. It wasn’t like I dressed like a tramp the rest of the time. I always made the effort to dress up and look good when we went out. I just never opted to show off this much flesh all at once. That was Destiny’s thing, not mine.

In the end, I had to laugh at her enthusiasm. Turning to walk around the bed to go and have a proper look at myself in the long tilted mirror that stood in the corner of my room, I nearly fell flat on my ass when Dee made a sudden grab for me.

“No! Wait! Let me do your hair and make-up before you have a look at yourself.” There were those puppy dog eyes again. Oh, what the heck. How much worse could it get?

I sat down on the edge of the bed and avoided trying to sneak a peek in the mirror. Well, while we were playing dress up tonight, I thought we might as well go the whole hog. We’d probably give Harper a heart attack, but we’d deal with that when it happened.

Dee grabbed her bag from the other room, running back quickly before I could change my mind and change into something more appropriate. I was pleased to see that she was only grabbing her phone to reply to a text. I was worried for a moment there. My own make-up was a lot more understated than what Destiny wore.

Tutting all the while about my total lack of colour, she didn’t take too long with the rest of the make-over. I had already done my make-up for the evening, so she was really just putting some special finishing touches that she thought it needed. A knock on the door made her finish up with an exaggerated flourish.

“Ta da!” she said proudly.

“Are you two ready? It’s getting late.” Harper called out.

“I think the question is, are you ready for this?” Dee grinned at him as she opened up the door, sweeping a hand in my general direction.

Harper stood there with his jaw hanging on the floor. Well, I guessed that I could take that as an encouraging sign. Either that, or I looked like the bride of Frankenstein.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Destiny asked him, poking him in the arm to get his attention.

“I… You look… Wow.” Harper stammered.

I frowned at him for a moment while Dee laughed her ass off. It was almost killing me, not knowing what I looked like. I had to turn around and see what all the fuss was about.

Wow.

I had never seen myself looking anything like this before. It was like a whole new me had emerged, the butterfly from the chrysalis. My body looked long and slender with curves in all the right places, accentuated by the skimpy clothing that complimented rather than revealed too much. My silky long electric blue hair was piled artfully on the top of my head, looking elegantly messy. And the make-up? Dee had only added a few little extra touches here and there, but my plain dark brown eyes now looked smouldering and my lips looked full, but natural.

Harper was still staring over at me when I turned back around and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the expression on his face. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. The look on his face told me that this was probably the first time that he had ever really seen me as anything but ‘Carrie, his friend’. The look on his face was priceless and I knew that I would tease him mercilessly about it later.

“What’s up, Harper? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Dee chuckled.

He shook his head slightly, as if to clear his jumbled thoughts. “You both look great.” He said neutrally, but he never took his eyes off me. It was starting to get a little unnerving. He had never looked at me that way before and I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Come on, Harper. Get yourself together. You’ve seen a pair of legs and a great pair of tits before.” Destiny hooted with laughter as she pushed him out of the door ahead of us. I followed the pair of them out of the apartment, grabbing my old leather jacket on the way. The look in Harper’s eyes had amused me, but there was no way that I was going to be stepping out of the door like that. The jacket wouldn’t do much to help cover up, but at least it would make me feel a little more decent.

We pulled up a little way down the street from the club. We’d decided to get a taxi, because although Dee had promised she was going to behave herself and not get rip-roaring-drunk, I never voluntarily got in a car with the girl. She was a menace to the roads. Road rage? You haven’t heard anything until you’ve heard Destiny screaming at other drivers, who in all fairness, weren’t usually the ones in the wrong.

We walked the short way back up the street and joined the back of the queue that was snaking along the building. Give it a few more months and the custom in this place would get a little steadier and the queues would eventually get more manageable, but for now, with it being the hot new place to party, the amount of people still waiting to get in was ridiculous. I honestly didn’t relish waiting out in the cold for too long and was glad that I had the sense to bring a jacket with me. The night had a chill in the air and my bare legs were starting to feel like ice cubes.