ONE
When Hanna Stevens found herself with time to kill, she preferred to drown it in whiskey.
She checked the time on her phone as she caught the bartender’s eye. He reached for the bottle of Maker’s she’d put an impressive dent in and tipped it over once more.
4:17 PM.
She still had forty-three minutes to talk herself into attending her best friend’s engagement party, despite the unfortunate guest list.
The bartender poured another two fingers’ worth of whiskey over ice and slid it across the bar—the ancient wood as chipped as her outdated manicure—and she took a long, slow drag of it. The room swirled as the aged spirit pooled on her tongue and burned the whole way down.
Probably. She’d stopped feeling the sizzle at that point.
Hanna could have arrived at the Rodriguez house early and, in all honesty, probably should have. She'd accepted the sacred Maid of Honor role six months before and, thanks to her long-distance friendship, had skirted many of the obligatory duties. It was time she paid her dues in the form of fluffing rented linens and arranging grocery store flowers in thrifted glassware.
Instead, she’d cruised by the classically beige suburban home twice before deciding it was safer for her to let the rest of the attendees trickle in and take up space before she had to face anyone.
Sara had been perfectly understanding, of course.
Not that she had any choice.
Hanna found that the only—only—benefit of her mother’s death the previous summer was the wide berth it earned her in social scenarios. Whether it was because they were kind and understood the special hell she was in, or because they simply couldn’t think of something to say, she wasn’t sure.
And it didn’t really matter.
What did matter was that she maintained just enough of a buzz to convince everyone at the party she was totally fine without it feeling overly contrived. A task that would have been easier if the groom didn’t share DNA with the former love of her life—and current nightmare ex—Logan.
She checked her phone once more and restlessly tapped her teeth, idly scrolling through Instagram.
Nope, still not blacked out, she thought as she sipped her glass.
The whiskey in her throat had burned away some of the anxiety, at least enough to convince her she could handle seeing Logan.
Hanna loved a whiskey buzz. Smooth, cozy, just witty enough to earn a laugh from the room but not enough to show her ass.
Tequila drunk, and she’d cry to the bartender about that bitch Logan had left her for.
Gin made her vomit.
Vodka… oof. Vodka turned her into a five-foot-nine woman scorned, looking for any and everything to incinerate.
No one liked Vodka Hanna.
But Whiskey Hanna? Whiskey Hanna was safe. Whiskey Hanna curled up in armchairs, reminiscing about the good old days she wasn’t sure she’d ever even had. Whiskey Hanna hardly even remembered the way the funeral director smelled of cheap aftershave and Marlboros.
She set the glass back on the bar, twiddling at the rim absentmindedly and debating how much further she could push her buzz.
She didn’t want to be the problem child at the party. She already knew she was in for a night of pained tongue-clicks that preceded asinine questions like, “How are you?” and “You hanging in there?”
And she was, beneath the anxiety, very excited to see her best friend, which was almost enough to override the dread tightening her spine. Sara had fled Phoenix for Silicon Valley the moment they graduated from college, and they’d survived on FaceTime and long weekends for the decade since.
It wasn’t enough, but as ready as she was to see Sara, she just couldn’t fathom sitting in a house full of people who knew her innermost pain while they attempted small talk?—
“Hey, sorry, but are you Hanna?”
The low voice crawled over her shoulders and slid onto the stool beside her as his question hung in the air. Even sitting, she knew he was tall by the way his shoulders hunched to speak into her ear. He was wrapped in a dark pair of jeans and a button-down with sleeves shoved up over his elbows, revealing a canvas full of inky-black tattoos.
Wait a minute, she thought. She knew those tattoos.
