8
Alison
“Wet Pussy.”
“Leg Spreader.”
“Sex in the Jungle.”
“Sex on the Farm.”
“No way. I call bullshit.” Noah leaned back and scowled at me. “There’s no such drink as Sex on the Farm. You just scrambled when you couldn’t think of anything, and you riffed on my Sex in the Jungle.”
I pointed my finger at him. “You’d be wrong, mag man, because it just so happens there issoa cocktail of that name.”
He smirked. “Oh, really? What’s in it? Hayseed and ninety proof?”
“Nope. It’s made of vodka, peach schnapps, cranberry juice and orange juice.” I smiled triumphantly.
“What the hell does any of that have to do with a farm?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe someone made it up on a farm. Or maybe because it has peaches, cranberries and oranges in it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you ever even drunk—you know, Sex on the Farm?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. I went through a long peach schnapps phase in college. One of my roommates made up a whole pitchers of Sex on the Farm for my birthday.”
“Huh.” Noah’s eyes narrowed. “I’m still not convinced that you’re not making this up.”
“Oh, so I’m supposed to just blindly accept your word as truth when you toss me names like Mountain Dew Me, Pink Balls and Rugburn, but you don’t believe me about this totally legit cocktail?”
“We need a judge’s call here.” He lifted his hand and waved the bartender, Carol, over to our end of the bar. She’d been hanging with us off and on since we’d seated ourselves here in the hotel lounge. On the other side of the room, crowded around a couple of tables, some of the guests from Emma and Deacon’s wedding were drinking and getting loud. Noah and I had sat with them for about ten minutes before by silent mutual consent, we’d relocated to stools at the bar.
“Need a refill?” Carol glanced at our still mostly full drinks and cocked an eyebrow.
“No, thanks, but we could use your bartenderly wisdom. Is Sex on the Farm really a drink, or is my girl here telling me tall tales?”
An unfamiliar warmth bloomed in my chest and spread throughout my body at Noah’s words. I knew he was just using that phrase casually, but I had to admit that hearing him refer to me ashis girlgave me a huge warm and fuzzy feeling.
Settle down there, lady,I cautioned my inner romantic sternly.This isn’t anything except a flirtation. Two casual friends hanging out because fate threw us together again at this wedding. Don’t start building fairy tales. You know they never have happy endings for women like you.
“She is absolutely not putting you on, big guy. Thereissuch a drink. It’s made of peach schnapps, vodka, cranberry juice and OJ. I can make you one if you want.”
“Vindication!” I lifted both hands in the air. “Ha!” I lowered one hand to hold out to Carol for a high five. “Thanks for having my back.”
“Just how do you know all these sex drinks?” Noah asked her. “Alison and I have learned that we both did informal studies of cocktails with suggestive names in college. Is that where you got the knowledge, too?”
Carol laughed. “No, although I did make up my fair share of those names when I was an undergrad. But last year, the hotel hosted a conference of international sex writers. They hung out at my bar whenever they weren’t in workshops, and they had multi-paged lists of drinks based on sex.” She winked at us. “Let’s just say I took a lot of notes.”
Someone from the wedding guest table called out for another round, and Carol rolled her eyes at us. “Sorry, folks. Duty calls. I’ll check on you two again in a little while.”
“Sex writers,” I mused. “I wonder exactly what that entails.”
Noah grinned at me. “Considering a career change, darlin’?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Although I have to say that I’m intrigued. Do they just write books about sex, or do they write erotic fiction? Or both?”
“Maybe they also write scripts for porn,” Noah suggested. “If that’s the case, they need to up their game. Most porn is seriously lacking in storylines and decent dialogue.”
