“Okay.” She places one hand on my shoulder. “Let’s test my hypotenuse.”
“You mean, hypothesis?”
“Whatever.” She rolls her big blue eyes. “We’ll find you a guy to flirt with.” She leans forward. “A really drunk one.” She winks.
I’m not sure what that means. Why does he have to be drunk?
“We’ll let the guy kind of grope you a little and see what Thor does about it.”
“Thor is blond.”
“Whatever.” Deena scans the room, back and forth, and stops. “Got him.” She uses her arm to turn me until I’m facing the living room. “See that guy on the sofa?”
I locate the sofa and spot her target. He’s slumped over a bit, a red cup in his hand that is slowly dripping green beer onto the carpet. I don’t know about Deena’s plan, but the least I can do is save Joe’s carpeting from a green stain. I look down at the floor and realize it’s too late.
“Go on.” She pushes my shoulder. “Go talk to him.”
I don’t want to. Besides, I think the guy is asleep. Why wake him? “Can’t we just wait and see if someone comes to us?” I mean, Marty did try to hit on me. Yes, that ended badly but still…
“Go.” She pushes me again. “Let’s see what the brown-haired Thor does.”
“Brown-haired Thor?” God, she really needs more variety in her television viewing. Something other than justThe Real Housewives.
“Fine.” Stomping over to the couch, I reach down and take the cup from the drunk guy. As I set it on the table next to the sofa, he suddenly wakes up.
“Hey,” he says with a scowl. “The fuck you doing?”
Oh, wow. He’s angry.
As he pushes himself up, I realize he’s quite tall. Like collegiate basketball player tall. He’s also very unsteady.
“You took my beer, you bitch,” he spits, but fortunately, since he’s up a couple stories, that spittle misses me.
“I was just trying…”
That’s when I realize tall guy isreallydrunk. His body starts to tilt left, then right. I’m talking a dramatic shifting. When it changes to back to front, I know I’m in trouble. And that’s when all hell breaks loose because tall guy can’t recover from the forward tilt. And sadly, I’m standing in front of him—
“Uh…” is all I’m able to get out of my mouth when he reaches out, placing his hands on my shoulders like I’m somehow going to be able to keep him upright. Physics makes that impossible. He’s a foot taller than me. At least. He’s moving in a downward trajectory. There’s no hope. I do the only thing I can: I toss my cup aside and go down with the ship.
Hard.
Very hard.
Not only that, I go down at an awkward angle. My arm is behind my back, and my foot is turned sideways.
How did that happen?
This giant of a man is literally on top of me. And, unless I’m completely crazy, I think he’s snoring.
“Help.” I squeak because the weight of him on top of me is forcing the breath out of me.
“Becklyn.” It’s a man’s voice.
Please don’t be Joe.Because if he sees this, he’ll kill this drunk guy first, then me.
I’m able to see who it is, because my face is between the guy’s head and his shoulder. “Lucky?” I’m seriously having trouble breathing. “Help?” It comes out as a raspy squeak.
“Fuck.” He sounds quite growly. With hardly any effort, he pushes the tall guy off my upper body. His long legs are still on top of mine. That is, until Lucky lifts up the guy’s size-fifteen feet and flops them down onto the sofa. I look over at the man and see he’s on his back now, still sawing logs.
