Twelve
One would think that Isaiah, who may or may not be a drug kingpin, sending his minions to the bar would be the most pressing problem at hand, but because I specialized in dumb, it wasn’t.
Standing in the kitchen of the house, my gaze shifted from the bottle of José and the two shot glasses Jax had also taken from the bar, to the current huge pain in my ass.
Half of his full lips were tilted up in a lazy grin that matched the lazy look to his brown eyes. He was leaning against the counter, well-defined arms folded across his chest.
An attractive pain in my ass, but still, a pain in my ass.
“No.” I said again, for probably the tenth time. We’d been back at the house for about forty minutes, and every minute had been spent with him telling me to take a shot and me telling him various reasons as to why I couldn’t.
Not once did he lose his patience.
Not once did he get angry.
Not once did he make fun of me for not wanting to drink.
Not once did I not have to stop myself from telling him the truth to why I didn’t drink.
I was running out of excuses, and my gaze shifted back to the full shot glasses. I swallowed, frustrated and . . . just really frustrated. It wasn’t like I never wanted to drink. I wanted to. I wanted to experience what everyone and their mother apparently liked to indulge in. Being drunk was a great unknown to me.
A lot of things were the great unknown to me.
I wanted to throw myself on the floor and roll around like a toddler, like my brother used—I cut that thought off, shaking my head.
“Hon, you’ve got to try it. Just one shot.”
My gaze flickered to his. I liked it when he called me hon or honey, which was the stupid icing on the dumb tier cake. Our eyes collided, and those thick lashes, those eyes, those eyebrows, and that face.
Fuck.
If being distracted by a hot guy with a beautiful face made me one-dimensional, then at least I recognized that about myself.
“Is it because of Mona?” he asked.
Whoa. The force of him hitting it right on the nail caused me to take a step back. I hit the chair at the table, and its legs rattled against the floor. “What?” I whispered.
He pushed off the counter, arms going to his side. “Is it because of your mom? Because of how she is?”
Holy holes in the moon, my feet were rooted to the floor as I stared up at Jax. I hadn’t known him for more than a week and some-odd days, and he seriously got it. Just like that. Might have something to do with the fact that he knew my mom when no one—not Teresa or Avery—had ever laid eyes on her or had a chance to experience the wonder of Mona.
It was because of my mom. That wasn’t a surprise to me, but to hear him hit it like that floored me.
I’d seen my mom do terrible, stupid things when she was drunk or high. I’d seen horrific and humiliating things done to her when she was drunk or high. She never had any control when she was like that. Hell, she never had any control before then, but it was worse when she was drinking or popping pills. She was the reason I didn’t do a lot of things and I wanted complete control, because I . . .
I never wanted to be her.
I wasn’t her.
I would never be her.
My feet moved before my brain caught up to what I was doing. Walking toward the counter, I brushed past Jax and I felt him turn as I reached for the shot. My fingers trembled as they closed around the cool glass.
I turned to where Jax stood, my hand steadying. “I’m not my mom.”
And then I tipped the glass to my lips.
Just one shot. Ha! Famous last words.
Four shots later, I was lying on the floor, on my side, cuddling the half-empty bottle of liquor to my chest. My eyes were closed. There was a warm, electric blanket coiled up in my belly and a pleasant buzz trilled through my veins. I’d long since kicked off my shoes and was currently deciding on if I wanted to take my shirt off or not. I had a tank top on underneath, but sitting up, raising my arms, seemed like it required too much effort.
A soft caress, a feather-light touch, traveled over my forehead, causing the electric blanket in my belly to heat and the trilling in my blood to hum louder. “Tequila . . . Jax, tequila is . . .” I ran out of words, because . . . well, words were so hard to think up and string together.
“Awesome?” he drawled, pulling his hand back.
I opened my eyes and grinned. He was sitting next to me, his long legs stretched out in front of him with his back pressed to the couch. We were only a couple of inches apart, and I didn’t remember how I ended up lying on the floor, but I do know that he’d gotten down there with me immediately.
“Calla?”
“Hmm?” My eyes had closed on their own, so I opened them again. He reached over, tapping my knee with his fingers, and I giggled. “I’m a lightweight, aren’t I?”
His smile spread. “Since this is the first time you’ve ever been drunk, I’m gonna say four shots is pretty damn good.”
“Tequila is like a long-lost, not so annoying friend.” I squeezed the bottle in my arms, pressing it against my chest. “I really like tequila.”
“We’ll see how you feel in the morning. Why don’t you hand over the bottle?”
A frown pulled at my mouth. “But I like it. You can’t take that from me.”
Jax leaned forward, chuckling. “I’m not going to hurt the bottle, Calla.”
“Maybe I want another shot.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I tried to pull off a pissy look, but I think all I ended up doing was crossing my eyes. Sighing loudly, I eased up on my bottle death hold.
He gently pried the bottle out of my grasp and placed it on the coffee table, just out of my reach. I immediately missed the golden bottle of happiness, and I thought I should sit up and retrieve it, but again, effort. When his gaze settled back on me, his grin made me feel funny in my chest and in my tummy.
And in lots of other places that made me giggle.
“So back to the things you haven’t done.” He leaned back against the couch, obviously not feeling as good as I was. We’d gone over most of what I hadn’t done in my twenty-one years of life, a staggering list of embarrassing material, but I didn’t care. I liked how he grinned each time I’d told him what I hadn’t done and how this look would creep into his striking face, like he was coming up with something clever. “Never felt sand on your toes?” he added.
I shook my head. I thought I did. “I have plans. My plans don’t involve those things.”
“What are your plans?”
“They’re the Three F’s.”
His brows rose. “Three F’s?”
“Yep!” I shouted and then I said much lower and in a much more serious voice. “Finish college. Find a career in the nursing field. Aaannnd finally reap the benefits of following through on something.” I paused, curling my upper lip. “Though I’m not sure on the following through part. I kind of follow through on most things, but there’s not a lot of things that start with the letter F that would involve planning, so . . .”
He grinned. “So that’s it? Your big plans are basically finish college and find a job?”
“Yeppers peppers and pandas!”
He shook his head at me. “Honey, that’s not much.”
I started to tell him that was everything, but then I thought about it, and it must’ve been the tequila, because I thought he was right.
And then I said, “You were my first kiss.”
“We need to get—wait.” The easy, lazy grin slipped right off his face. “What?”