I shouldn’t stay.
I shouldn’t drink more. I shouldn’t look at Everett again.
Naturally, I do all three.
Dead inside on account of the alcohol and the emotional shrapnel, I prop my chin on my hands while the world blurs and my friends switch to something allegedly “lighter.”
Scattergories.
From emotional Russian roulette to freaking Scattergories.
We’re thriving.
Growing easy laughter and softer topics smooth overthe jagged barbs I slung across the bar as effectively has Everett slung drinks. But too many feelings twist inside me to slide into the easy banter that doesn't require emotional hazmat gear.
I excuse myself to the bathroom because I need thirty seconds where I don’t have to perform.
At the reassuring click of the bathroom door behind me, I finally let my shoulders relax as I grip the sink.
What the hell was that?
Glancing up, I get a good look at Everett’s view during my spectacular lack of chill. Typical villain… flushed cheeks, too-bright eyes, the manic energy of a woman who carelessly detonated a decade of only the bare minimum of carefully executed exchanges for funnies.
I poked. I prodded. I watched him choke down every single hit.
And now I know.
He's not over it either.
I should be happy. Look at it as some twisted validation that I'm not the only one still bleeding.
Instead, my hands still shake five minutes later. My chest catches with each breath.
And despite logic, I want to march back out there and—something.
Finish what we started? Confess everything? Climb him like the damn mountain of a man he is and let the consequences duke it out?
Get it together, Barrett.
It takes three splashes of cold water on my face for the heat to fade into something manageable.
I don’t know what the hell I thought I was proving tonight. All I managed to prove is I still have a natural talent for bad decisions and when whisky and proximity collide, I’m a cautionary tale made for bad reality TV at best or trashy daytime talk shows at worst.
And that he still looks at me like I'm the answer to a question he's been asking for eleven years.
I dial my expression to something a little lessemotionally compromised and horny about it,take a deep breath, and walk back out there pretending I didn't set our unofficial truce on fire.
And when it becomes too much—the noise, the warmth, the ache of wanting him and hating myself for wanting him—I slip off my stool.
Seth stands with me, bends down, and kisses the top of my head. “Don’t go too far, Bug. You’re smashed.”
I wrap my arms around him and hold tight, wishing—just for a breath—that it could all be this easy.
But it’s not. It won’t ever be.
My eyelids are getting ideas. Bad ones. The kind that end with me faceplanting into the bar and waking up with a pretzel imprint on my cheek.
I drift toward the window seat.
