He grinned. “You’re right, but that’s too loud.”
She blinked. “Does your head hurt?” she whispered.
“No. Does yours?”
She shook her head. Even for a conversation with a drunk, this was loopy. “You should rest,” she whispered.
She made a move to go, but he grabbed her wrist.
That hand must have made a pact with that snake. She felt that reptile slithering over the entire square footage of her skin.
Slithering over everything.
Every. Thing.
“You can’t go yet,” he muttered. “You haven’t told me the secret.”
He took his other hand and opened hers, grazing her palm with his finger.
Slow-twitch-fast-twitch-slow-twitch-fast-twitch-slow-twitch-fast-twitch.
What is the name of that snake in Chile?
He looked up at her. “Are you okay? You look like you did in Barcelona when you looked like you might faint.”
She stiffened. “I told you I don’t faint.”
He grinned. “That’s right. That’s me. I’m the one who faints.”
She dropped her chin to hide her smile.
He stared back at her palm, running his finger back and forth, her flesh shivering in its wake.
“Your hands are small.” He looked up at her. “Did you know that?”
You just told me that.
If he can’t even remember that, hewon’t remember any of this.
“So I’ve been told. Now please give me back my hand.”
“Not until you tell me the secret.”
She sighed. “I didn’t drink as much as you.”
“Yes, you did. You had the same number of rounds as the rest of us. And you drank to a lot of the never-have-I-evers I did. That surprised me.”
She felt her heart start to pound but not in a good way. “Why? Because I’m a woman?”
“Maybe.”
At least he was honest.
She sighed. “It may have looked to you like I was drinking as much as you were, but I wasn’t. Whenever I went to buy a round, I got Coke for myself.”
“But Coke is darker than scotch, and it has bubbles.”
“Not if you water it down, which is what I asked the bartender to do.”
