*
Liz shouldn’t have had that second rum and Coke. Actually, she shouldn’t have had any of the rum and Coke. Terry had started handing out the drinks and it dawned on Liz way too late that the rum wasn’t the problem. Coke not only had sugar, but it had lots of caffeine.
Now she was wide awake, damn near twitching, and she had to pee. Again.
It took her a couple of minutes to get out of her sleeping bag and crawl out of her tent, and the zipper sounded incredibly loud in the still night. Not that it would matter to the rest of them, since they had the white noise of all those lovely rooftop air-conditioning units.
She was getting ready to push open the door when she heard a rustling next to her and froze. Bear? Maybe it was just a raccoon.
Slowly turning toward the sound, she bit down on a yelp as a dark shape—too tall to be a raccoon and too skinny to be a bear—came toward her. “Drew.”
He jumped and she heard him suck in a breath. “Liz. You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing out here?”
“Probably the same thing you’re doing.”
“I was leaving the beer cans next to the recycling barrel.”
“Okay, then maybe not. I have to pee.”
“Oh. Okay.” He didn’t keep walking, though, which would have been the polite thing to do. “Want me to stand guard?”
“I’m good, thanks.” She went into the bathroom without giving him the chance to say anything else.
When she came back out, she saw him sitting on a rock waiting for her in the spill of light from the bathroom before she flipped the switch. He was persistent when he wasn’t running in the other direction, she’d give him that.
After a lot of blinking, her eyes adjusted to the darkness again and she made her way toward him. “What are you doing?”
“I wanted to make sure you got back to your tent okay.” He shrugged, then she saw the white of his teeth when he grinned. “And ask what word got you middle-named by Rose during your dirty Scrabble game.”
“Ah, the truth comes out. Too bad. We don’t spell naughty words and tell.”
“You look pretty tonight.”
“Since it’s too dark to really see me well, let me describe to you the raggedy T-shirt and sloppy braid for sleeping.”
He got off the rock and moved closer to her. “Since you always look pretty to me, it was a safe bet.”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“I had a few beers. How about you?”
“I had a couple of rum and Cokes which I’m regretting now. I don’t really do caffeine anymore, so the caffeine and sugar combination is why I’m roaming around wide awake.”
“Want to go for a walk?”
As appealing as that sounded, she needed to zip herself back up in that little tent before she did something a lot more stupid than kissing him. “That’s probably not a good idea.”
At least where they were, it was only a semblance of privacy. If they went for a walk and ended up someplace where they were really alone, she might forget she was irritated with him.
“I guess you’re right.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Look where drinking got us last time.”
She started to walk away, but turned back. “Drinking didn’t get us in a bad place, Drew. I liked that place. It’s where we are now that kind of sucks.”
“I know. I’ll go home if you think that’ll make it easier.”
She didn’t want that. As much as his presence tied her up in knots, she’d miss him if he left. “I don’t want you to do that. Maybe I should just tell him.”
“No. If he finds out, it has to come from me.”
“That’s stupid. He’s my brother. We’re adults.”
“It’s a guy thing, Liz. A code.”
She snorted, then waited for him to continue. To say he’d talk to Mitch tomorrow or when they got back to Maine. Anything to signal he wanted her enough to risk pissing off her brother, but he was quiet.
“Let’s go sit on the swings for a while and talk,” he finally said, which wasn’t what she’d been hoping to hear.
“I don’t know. It’s probably not any better an idea than going for a walk.”
“We’ll be in full view of anybody who cares to look, so I’ll have to keep my hands to myself.”
She arched her eyebrow. “So, to recap, we’ll be in full view of anybody who cares to look.”
“We’ve known each other forever, Liz. We’re allowed to talk.”
He was right, and she felt silly about her paranoia. “I’m not going to sleep anytime soon, anyway.”
They kept a respectable distance between them as they walked down to the playground, sticking to the grass as much as possible. She could hear the hum of the air conditioners running all through the campground and knew that, as hard as the family played, everybody was probably sound asleep already.
She sat on one of the swings, smiling as he took the one next to her. “I haven’t been on a swing since I was a kid.”