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“Jacob!”

I had to put a hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t wake up Alexis and Daniel, I was cracking up so hard.

Part of this was the bourbon making me loopy, part of it was the story, but most of it was the morose, serious way she was telling it. Like she was confessing to a murder.

“That’s not all.” She swallowed hard. “I stole the microwave plate. And the lightbulb out of the fridge. I took the lid for the blender and the oven mitts and the garage door opener and I untuned his guitar and I tore out the last five pages of the book he was reading. I put red Kool-Aid in the shower head and peeled the labels off all the canned food and I put raw shrimp into the curtain rod on the window next to the bed—stop laughing!”

I was practically crying.

“They call it Pulling a Briana Ortiz at work,” she said miserably. “It’s so embarrassing. I think the nurses tell it to their boyfriends to scare them straight or—”

I had to pull her in and kiss the top of her head. I couldn’t help it. She looked so despondent.

“They had to replace the carpet,” she whispered. “They couldn’t get the sparkles out.”

“Well, in your defense, I think he deserved it,” I said, chuckling into her hair.

She nodded into my chest. “He did. He really did.”

“Where do you get five gallons of glitter?”

“Amazon.” Sniff. “Prime.”

“Of course. Do you regret it?”

“No.”

I let a laugh out through my nose.

She stayed there for a second, sniffling against my shirt. Then she sat up and wiped her hair off her face. “Tell me something nobody knows about you.”

“What?”

“I told you this. It’s my most embarrassing thing. So you tell me something now.”

I sat back against the hope chest and gave it some thought.

“Okay,” I looked back at her. “When I came into Benny’s hospital room, I froze up because you were so beautiful.”

Her jaw dropped. “What?”

“I couldn’t even talk.”

She giggled. “Stop!” She pushed my knee. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better about the glitter.”

I looked at her steadily. “I’m serious.”

She gawked and I smiled.

“Well, I can’t stop staring at your collarbone,” she said.

I looked at her amused. “My collarbone?”

“I think it’s so sexy.” She lisped on sexy. “And your forearms. I love them.”

Well. I was never wearing long sleeves again. Winter was going to be rough.

“When I was sitting at the restaurant talking to you that day, it rained,” I said. “I was on the patio. I got drenched.”