Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 236(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
One day I’d tell Brian how close he was to getting his face punched. Or how close he was to waking up in a hospital bed. I didn’t trust myself right now.
He sighed, his laughter finally fucking subsiding. “I doubt she works here. She’s as wasted as I was on my twenty-first birthday.”
“Brian.” Finally, I could speak, through gritted teeth.
“Yeah?” He swung my way.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Wha—she’s not in our social circle. What are you doing?”
Ignoring him, I started down the hill, carrying my own alcohol in hand.
“Zeke!”
I raised a middle finger in the air and yelled over my shoulder, “Take care of my shit.”
“What are you doing?”
I raised my middle finger higher.
By the time I got to her, he was gone with the cart.
Ava had no idea I was there. Her head was down except when she’d tip it back for a drink, and she was moving in a way—I saw the headphones. She was dancing, listening to whatever as I saw her pull her phone out of her pocket and skip to the next song.
It was a lively one because she began jumping around, her head going the opposite direction. Her arms were doing…something.
I wouldn’t call this dancing. It was more like flailing around with a baseline of rhythm.
I watched her for two complete songs before her eyes opened. Seeing me, she startled, gasping, and a screech came out of her at the same time.
I smiled and held up a hand. I mouthed, “Hi.”
“What?! I can’t hear you!”
I nodded, pointing to her headphones.
Understanding dawned, and she started laughing, pulling off the headphones. “Hi. Sorry. I forgot I had them on.” Her music was blaring out of them. She didn’t move to stop or pause the song. She was frowning at me, half-squinting. “Zeke? What are you doing here?”
I cocked my head to the side. The glaze was minimal. She wasn’t slurring. She was speaking like she was sober, and without the electrocuted dancing, she now looked sober too.
I was somewhat impressed.
“Right.” I motioned around us. “We’re on a golf course, where I do the normal douchey thing and golf a few times a week, and your question is as if I’m the one out of place.”
At my words, she jerked her head around, sweeping in the entirety of the Fallen Crest golf course. Her eyes were almost bulging when she focused back on me. She spoke in a shocked whisper. “What am I doing here?”
I was nodding, but I edged closer and reached out, taking away the vodka from her hand. She didn’t notice. Then I almost started laughing. She’d barely drunk any. Maybe two shots’ worth. “Are you drunk or not? I’m having a hard time telling.”
“I think I’m drunk.”
“You barely touched this.”
Her gaze snapped to the bottle as I raised it, and she looked confused. Her eyebrows came together before she held her hands up, both of them, and gasped. “I didn’t even feel you take that.”
She was drunk.
She raised her gaze back to me, her hands still up in the air. “I parked at Manny’s, grabbed a bottle, and just started walking. I wasn’t paying attention. Dancing, drinking.” Her voice dropped low again. “I’ve never drunk before.”
Whoa.
My head went back an inch. “Never?”
Her eyes still wide, she shook her head at the same time. “Never. I accidentally went to a party once because my boyfriend was the local Uber. He went to pick someone up and I had to go to the bathroom. He thought I went in to stay and join the party.”
I… I had no words. I was quite aware that most of my life, if there was a night I didn’t party, that was the oddity.
“Oh my God. You’re looking at me like I’m a freak.” Her face flooded with color, and she closed her eyes. She was still holding her hands up.
“Okay.” I didn’t know what was going on here, but I moved in, took both her hands, and lowered them for her. She opened her eyes, and there was no reaction that she knew I did that. “Have you eaten today?”
She shook her head.
“You want to eat?”
“Um.” She started chewing on her bottom lip, her eyebrows still pulled together. Then she stopped. Her face cleared. She blinked. “No. I need to keep drinking.” She grabbed my beer and took a long draw. I was waiting for the sputtering, thinking she didn’t realize she reached for the wrong bottle, but nothing came. She kept drinking.
I got fixated on how her throat was working, chugging that down.
She was taking long and slow pulls, and she kept going.
It clicked she just chugged a third of my beer and I had a thirty-two ouncer with me today before I grabbed it back. “Stop.”
She reached for it, stepping with my arm.
I moved, turning and using my body to check her. “No.”