She straightens. “Good. He doesn’t need to see his sister like this.”
“Speaking of, where is she?”
She turns me around and points to the bar. It takes me a moment, but I see the back of her head among the sea of people. She’s definitely drunk, and she’s talking to the people on her right. They laugh at something she says, and a smile crosses my face.
Ivy chuckles under her breath. “She’s been making friends.”
“I see that.”
“You should have heard her talk about you.”
I look over at her. “What do you mean?”
“Dude, she has it bad,” Ivy says, waving her hand around. Because she’s intoxicated, the movement is practically in slow motion.
“For?”
She pokes me in the arm. “You! She won’t stop talking about you.”
A smile spreads across my face. “Bad or good things?”
“A mix of both. Is your favorite flower really a dandelion?”
I laugh under my breath as my response.
“You know that’s a weed, right?”
I shrug and start to make my way over to her, but Ivy grabs my arm. I frown down at her.
“Sorry, but, uh…don’t be mad at her. I encouraged her to get drunk so she’d spill everything that’s on her mind.”
Shaking my head, I say, “I’m not mad at her. She’s an adult, and if getting drunk helps her solve her problems, then so be it.”
She lets go of my arm, grinning from ear to ear. “You really are a good guy, Reid.”
“Thanks,” I murmur before heading to Avery. I want to get to my girl. Ineedto get to her.
When I reach her, I press my stomach into her back. She stops whatever she was saying to her stool neighbor and looks up at me, her head bumping into my chest. “Oh shit,” she says.
I chuckle, bend down, and kiss her on the lips upside down. “Is that how we’re greeting me now?”
“You must be the boyfriend,” the lady next to her says. I look over at her and take in her red hair pinned back by a bandana and the fringe of her biker outfit.
Avery frowns and looks at the woman. “I told you, Brenda. He’s not my boyfriend.”
Brenda points at her. “You need to make it official.”
“You think?” she asks, leaning back into me. I hold up her weight by keeping my feet planted on the ground so that I can be her support.
“Yeah,” Brenda says before taking a swig of her beer. “When you talked about him, I didn’t think he’d be such a hunk, but now that he’s here, you need to snatch him before someone else does.”
Avery curses under her breath. “I didn’t think of that.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I interject, but they don’t listen to me.
“That’s right,” Brenda says, clinking her beer bottle against Avery’s shot glass of what smells like tequila. “Screw the brother, and take your man.”
“Oh, oh!” Ivy says beside me. “Tell him about what you’d do to Avery’s ex!”
