“Think real carefully. Are you going to be sick?”
He pulls himself up more fully in his seat. “Absolutely not. I’m a gentleman,thankyouverymuch.”
I roll my eyes. “Getting sick has nothing to do with being a gentleman.” I study him for a minute, and as he’s staring back at me, he starts to tip forward in his seat.
“Right. Gentleman or not, here.” I buckle him in and grab my reusable grocery bag from the floor in the backseat. I hold out the handles to him. “Hang onto this. If you need to get sick, do it in here.”
He looks affronted. “I’m not going to get sick, Noli-bo-boli.”
“You’re also never going to call me that again,” I say. “If you get sick in my car, I will make your life on patrol a nightmare.” I slamthe door in his face but not before I watch his Adam’s apple bob on a giant gulp.
Good.
I don’t like puke. I can handle it. But I’d rather not.
I skirt the front of my car and sit down behind the wheel. As I pull away from the curb, Collin immediately starts pressing buttons and turning knobs on my console.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for my radio.”
“This isn’t a squad car.”
He sits back. I feel his gaze on me, and I resist the urge to cower. It’s slightly intimidating to drive with a cop in your front seat—even an inebriated one. But I take a deep breath, put on my metaphorical big-girl panties, and take charge.
“You’re going to need to tell me where you live.”
Somehow, we make it to Collin’s house—no thanks to the man himself. He’s a terrible navigator when he’s drunk, but fortunately I had a ballpark idea of where his house is.
“Alright, let’s get you inside and in bed.”
“Noli-bo-boli, I didn’t know you felt that way ’bout me.”
I grit my teeth, even as I feel color flood my cheeks. “Don’t flatter yourself, Rattler. And don’t call me that.”
Collin lets out a guffaw and then a hiccup. “Sorry. You’re so cute when you’re disgruntled. You get this teensy-tiny crease between your eyebrows. Boop.” He bops me on the forehead.
“Thanks for that,” I say dryly. “Here, up we go.”
It takes some effort, not because Collin is incapable of standing. There’s a little of that, sure, but mostly he keeps getting distracted. He’s a total punch-drunk. He’s flying from one topic of conversation to the next.
“Your hair looks like silk.”
“Monks probably shouldn’t get drunk, huh?”
“I feel like I could fly.”
“Do you like airplanes?”
He reminds me of a two-year-old.
“Collin, think. Where are your keys?”
He pats the pocket of his winter coat and then his jeans pockets. “Ah-ha! Mystery solved.”
He tries and fails to get the keys out of the front right pocket of his pants by jabbing his pointer finger directly through the denim fabric.
I grab his hand and yank it away. “I’ll do it.”
