Eighteen
Tequila was not your friend. Oh, it pretended to be. Especially when it was whispering in your ear about all the wonderful things you were going to do together. It encouraged you to dance like no one was watching. At the time you didn’t care, so you happily obliged only to find out that not only were they watching, they were recording it for posterity. But it wasn’t just you the tequila was whispering to. It was telling the people you were with all kinds of things, too.
How much tequila to get a vamp rip roaring drunk? In the past, I would have said an infinite amount, but when you had one of the Comey sisters running the bar, you ended up with magical booze.
Bad, wonderful, horrible, delicious, metabolism blasting booze.
This was how the four of us wound up on Sterling Luna’s doorstep at two a.m. on a Friday evening. What comes next is the retelling from a fuzzy memory, two brunettes, and a pregnant woman who was probably not going to hang out with any of us for a very long while.
“Is it here?” whispered Helen.
Katie waved her phone around like she was at a rave. “Here. Yes! Here. Right here.” She jabbed the air. “That door.”
I swayed on my feet. “Thisssh one?” I slurred.
“That one,” Grace said and sighed. “This is a terrible idea, guys. Let’s just get back in the car.”
“Shut your beautiful face, Grace,” Helen said and fluffed the clairvoyant’s hair. “You really are sexy,” she said. “No wonder Lucas knocked you up so fast.”
Katie broke into giggles. Grace rolled her eyes but chuckled. “You’re right. I’m straight fire.”
“Get it girl,” Katie said right before she pointed to me. “You. Knock on that door. Caveman that man of yours and do horrible, unspeakable things to his body.”
“Noooo,” I said, though I did actually want to do that. I looked down at my hands. “I didn’t bring a club.”
“I think you can just trip him and pull him out of the house by his hair,” Helen said.
“His hair is kind of short,” I added.
“Caveman isn’t a thing,” Katie said. “It’s a state of mind.”
“Oh,” I said. “Does this mean I still have to trip him?”
“For the love of the gods,” Grace hissed. “Are we really doing this? Are we twelve right now?”
“Noooo,” Helen said. “We are women. Hear us roar!” The noise that came out of her mouth was like a strangled cat.
The door flung open and a dark-haired man with a wild five o’clock shadow stood there glaring at us. “What in the hell is going on right now?”
He peered at us before his gaze settled on me. I’d frozen like a deer in headlights, my heart pounding so hard it was starting to make my chest ache.
“Maron?”
Helen shoved me forward so hard I slammed into Sterling’s chest.
“Ooof,” he said but caught me.
In his big strong manly arms. I kept feeling his bicep. “So nice,” I whispered to myself.
“Maron.”
I tilted my head up to him. “Hmmmm?”
A smile quirked the edge of his mouth. “Are you -”
“Drunk?” Grace supplied. “Oh yes. Fantastically so. I am so sorry, Mr. Luna. I can get them out of here. Let me just -”
“SHUT IT!” Katie yelled at the top of her lungs. “This is a case for the people’s court, Mr. Luna.”