I lift my glass.
He pours, but nothing comes out, so I lean into the bottle and look up into it.
“Don’t get wine in your eye!” he shrieks.
“It’s corked!” I shriek back.
We stare at each other, then he lifts the bottle, eyes the cork, and we both giggle again.
“Call Mabel,” I say. “She’ll open it. She can do everything.”
Drunk Heath does a drunken scowl at me that makes me giggle more.
“I can wine a bottle of open.” He pushes a corkscrew down beside the bottle, then tries again, and again.
I laugh so hard I snort, but he finally gets it on a try that’s numberI don’t knowbecause I can’t count right now.
“Told you so,” he huffs while he fills my glass all the way to the brim, then does the same with his glass before sliding down the side of the checkout counter to sit across from me.
“You have very pretty eyes,” he says.
“My sisters have grue eyes.”
He blinks slowly. “You drunk really are.”
“They are,” I say. “They’re grue. Green in some lights, blue in others. My dad always tells me how lucky they are that they got such pretty eyes.”
“Your dad’s a wanker.”
“My mom tells me I could be a size four too if I worked out like my sisters do.”
“Your mom’s a dick.”
“I used to pretend I was switched at birth, but really, I was an old egg. My mom was nine-thirty when born I was. Nine-thirty. I was born. Nine-thirty. Fuck.”
He doesn’t laugh this time.
Instead, he stares at me with an intensity that makes my head even woozier than the wine has. “You don’t need to be your sisters.”
My eyes bug out. “Oh my god. I don’t need to be my sisters.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“That’s what you just said.”
“Your parents don’t deserve you if they make you feel like you have to be your sisters.”
Dammit.
Dammit.
I forgot this part.
The part where enough wine makes me sappy and sobby. “Don’t say that.”
“They don’t. If they can’t honor and respect you for who you are, fuck ’em. Stop taking their calls. Don’t go visit. Stay here. Have real family.”
“Stop being nice,” I whisper.
