“You hungry?” he asks softly. “Suicide-bombing can really work up an appetite.”
I shift my weight. Blood is flooding into my crotch. “Yeah, I’m starving.”
He looks at his watch. “We’re supposed to meet up with ourOcean’s Elevencrew in just a few hours—no sense sleeping before then, right? Let’s go back to our hotel and grab some breakfast, maybe gamble a little—we can crash after we meet with everyone.”
“Yeah, sounds good. ‘Sleep when you’re dead,’ right?”
“‘Go big or go home,’” he says, smirking.
“YOLO.”
Josh touches the cleft in my chin again, his sapphire eyes sparkling at me. “That’s right, baby—you only live once. So don’t fuck it up.” He pauses, his eyes looking deeply into mine. “What am I gonna do with you, Kat?” he whispers. “Huh? You’re a goddamned runaway train.”
I shrug and wipe my eyes. “I know. I’m off the tracks.”
He exhales softly and slips his hand in mine. “Come on, Madame Terrorist. Let’s get you back to the hotel and get some food into you before you pass out—or, God forbid, injure some more innocent bystanders.”
Twenty-One
Josh
Kat’s drunk but beautiful head is resting on my shoulder as we sit in the back of the taxi, heading to our hotel. I grab her hand and look out the window at the pre-dawn zombies shuffling down The Strip. My eyelids are beginning to feel heavy. My head is beginning to pound. And yet I feel like I’m walking on air, sitting here next to Kat, holding her hand.
“Who’s Grace?” Kat suddenly asks.
“What?”
“The tattoo on your chest. You’ve got the dragon on you arm, so I can only assume the tattoo on your chest is the ever-regrettable ex-girlfriend-tattoo.”
“‘Grace’ isn’t a person,” I answer smoothly, like I always do. I don’t give a shit how “honest” I said I’d be with her—I don’t bare my soul about that particular tattoo to anyone, and certainly not to a woman I’m interested in. If Emma taught me anything, it’s that laying myself completely bare to a woman is a colossally bad idea. “It’s a reference to the phrase, ‘But for the grace of God go I,’” I continue. “It’s just a simple way of reminding myself to be humble and not take anything for granted—something I regularly need to be reminded of, it seems.”
She absorbs that for a moment. “No ex-girlfriend tattoo anywhere?”
“Nope.”
“You’ve got ex-girlfriends, though, right?”
“Sure.”
“Anything that lasted more than a month?”
I scoff. “My longest relationship lasted three years.”
“Wow. What was her name?”
“Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Emma.”
She squints. “You don’t have a current girlfriend, right?”
“I already told you I fucked Jen in New York last week. I wouldn’t have done that if I had a current girlfriend—and I most certainly wouldn’t be sitting here with you.”
She smiles. “Just checking.”
I squeeze her hand. “I’m not a cheater,” I say.
