I drop my feet to the ground and down the rest of my cider. “Do you want another?” I ask him as I walk to the kitchen.
“Sure,” he answers, but I can hear the trepidation in his voice.
I don’t bother to ask him what’s wrong because I already know. He’s worried I’m drowning my sorrows in booze, but I’m not. I’m trying to drown the red-hot emotions pulsing through me every time he looks my way. I’m aware I’m the one who asked him to be my friend—and only friend—all those years ago. I’m also aware that his sisters-in-law don’t believe he’s a relationship kind of guy. So I need to stop imagining things.
However...I can’t get the thoughts out of my head of how he goes down on a woman.
How he prefers his dick to be sucked.
How he’d treat his woman, like she’s precious.
Nor can I stop thinking about what his bedroom eyes look like. Are they darker? Clearer?
Not to mention, the way he so shamelessly tells me how beautiful I am . . . it’s starting to beguile me because I shouldn’t be looking at my friend like that. I shouldn’t be having these thoughts, so if I have to use alcohol to help me subdue them, then I will.
I crack a can open for us and hand him one.
“Let’s watch a show,” I say. “Or watch a movie. We can watchThe Thin Man.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to annihilate me in another board game?”
“I’m trying to save your pride.”
“Aren’t you considerate.” He grabs the remote, and I suck down my drink. My head is starting to feel fuzzy, which is just what I want. I welcome all of the fuzziness.
“Oh, I recorded some reruns ofPasswordin case you wanted to play.” He wiggles his eyebrows at me. “You game?”
“You know I always am.”
“Good.” He winks and then takes a large gulp of his drink as well.
* * *
“Stop.”I laugh so hard I nearly pee my pants. “Stop . . . how am I supposed to guess spoon from dairy?”
He is buckled over, laughing on the floor in our empty cider cans.
“Because you slurp dairy up with a spoon,” he says as he lies on the floor, arms spread, staring up at the ceiling. His shirt has pulled up a few inches, and I catch sight of his brilliant abs.
“You could have said spork. You’ve lost your touch.”
“I’m drunk,” he says as he kicks a few cans away. “And I just ate a donut, so my mind isn’t working well.”
I fall to the floor and crawl over to him, my hair falling over my cheeks as I stare at his smiling face. I reach out and pat his cheeks a few times. “You used to be so smart. What happened to you?”
“You and your drinks,” he says right before he wraps his arm around my waist and rolls me to the floor right next to him.
“We didn’t drink that much.”
“We drank ten cans each,” he says.
“Over like . . . ten hours.”
“Lia Fairweather-Fern, it has not been ten hours. And we’ve gulped down three in the past hour, so . . . we are drunk.”
“You might be drunk, but I’m not drunk.”
“Oh yeah?” he asks. “Stand and walk in a straight line.”
