“I hope so because I had to drink beer at the game and it was awful.”
He looked down at her and narrowed his eyes.
“How did you get beer at the game?”
She shrugged and took the drink from the bartender, giving him a smile. “Katie figured it out.”
“Interesting,” Tristan said in a dry tone. “So,you’ve already been drinking?”
“Just the one beer.”
“Okay, so then this is the only other drink you get.”
“Tristan I’m not a child. I’m allowed to get drunk.”
“Yeah,but you keep getting drunk in rooms full of300-pounddudes so, that’s your only drink,” he said again, tipping the class up to her mouth for her to take a sip. “It’s good right?”
She let the liquid swirl around in her mouth before she swallowed and smiled at him gratefully.
“It actually is, thank you.”
He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers before they were interrupted by Jordanroughly wrappinghis arms around theirshoulders.
“Woooo!!! Undefeated baby!” He screamed, referring to the game.
“Bro are you already shit faced?”
“Trist it’s my twenty second birthday, I’m already on shot number 7!”
“We just got here,” Tessa said with an amused smile.
“You’re so cute and innocent,” Jordan said, squeezing Tessa’s shoulders. “I’mtrying to get totwenty-twoshots by midnight.”
Tessa’s eyes went wide as she looked at Tristan.
“Yeah, I’m gonna be cleaning up his puke later,” Tristan said with an annoyed sigh.
“Come on let’s go do shots! It’s my birthday!”
“I’ll take one with you,” Tristan said, peeling his big brother’s armoffTessa. “She will be refraining.”
“Fine. Katie wants you to join her card game anyway Tess,she’sover there.”
Tessa smiled at the two brothers and walked over to where Katie and a few other girls were. She had come to learn a few of their names, finding out they were either girlfriends orsisters of the other players. She found herself in awe that she had somehow gotten here – that the straight A student who usually had her nose deep in books with fingers tired from typing outjournalism assignments was suddenly hanging out with a bunch of football players and their cheerleader looking girlfriends.
Tessa put her poker skills to the test with the four girls she sat with. Her dad had taught her many card games including poker since she was a little girl, and Katie was beyond impressed with her skills.
“Does Trist know you can play like this?” Katie asked, watching as Tessa continued collecting chips.
“No,” she said with a giggle.
“So let me get this straight. You can play guitar and piano, you can read music,you’rethe chief editor for the school newspaper,you’vehad some of your research papers already published in the citynewspaper, you get straight A’s, and you can play poker like a professional?”
“I don’t like to half ass things,” she said with a smile.
“You’re a bad ass is what it is,” Katie said with a laugh.
Tessa sighed contentedly to herself and looked around the bar, searching for Tristan since she hadn’t seen him for about half an hour. When her eyes finally found him, she felt her heart sink lower into her chest. That god damn Veronica girl was here – Tristan' ex that seemed to follow him around like a shadow when they first met each other. She hadn’t seen her or even heard about her in at least a month but seeing her talking to Tristan and batting her eye lashes at him made her muscles tighten in a way that she wasn’t used to.
