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“Nope.” The bride shook her head, kicked off the boots, and said, “As much as I want to get ripped, I don’t want to end up with my head in a hotel toilet. Pretty sure that’s how you get dysentery.”
“Pretty sure that isn’t right,” I said under my breath.
“Schnapps, maybe?” Asha asked.
“Objector’s choice,” Sophie said, her lips turning up into a little smile as she tilted her head and looked in my direction. “What should we drink?”
“Whiskey,” I said, wondering what her usual drink of choice was. Because when she was dressed as a bride, I would’ve pegged her as a cosmo drinker, perhaps someone who enjoyed a nice chardonnay. But this Twinkie-tossing, wild-eyed girl was a bit of a mystery. “Unless you’re dialing back to something lighter.”
“Not at all,” she said, pulling the elastic from her hair and shaking out the half bun. “But tequila punches too hard.”
“Have a shot with us, Objector,” Asha said—or, rather, squealed. “The pizza’s already on the way.”
“First of all, youhaveto stop calling me that.”
“Why?” Sophie asked, putting her hands on her hips and screwing her eyebrows together. “What’s your real name again?”
“Max,” I said. “Parks.”
“Max,” she repeated, raising her eyes to the ceiling as if it held an opinion on my name. “I mean, that’s a fine name and all, but The Objector is next level.”
“It makes me sound like an off-brand superhero.”
She snorted a little laugh, and I noticed her freckles when she crinkled her nose. “Like a lawyer who got stuck in radioactive waste, right?”
“Exactly,” I agreed.
“Which whiskey, Objector?” Asha asked, gesturing toward the bar. “You’re drinking with us, right?”
“Thank you, but I can’t—”
“Ofcoursehe isn’t,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes and climbing onto one of the two barstools. “He is a man, and it’s their job to disappoint us. Eternally. Please pour me a shot, Ash.”
“Didn’t you just call me your hero?” I asked, sliding my hands into my pockets as she ignored me and reached for the shot glass. “Like two minutes ago?”
“Your actionswereheroic and I’m very grateful,” she said, circling a perfectly manicured fingernail over the top of the tiny glass and turning her back to me. “But I said what I said. Asha, my love, will you pour my whiskey shooter, please?”
Something about the all-knowing way she said it and her absolute dismissal of me made me shrug out of my jacket, toss it on the sofa, and grab the stool beside her.
“Make that two, please.”
She turned her head toward me, her eyebrows raised. “You’re staying?”
“I can’t ruin the reputations of men everywhere by disappointingyou, can I?” I asked, reaching for the shot that Asha slid in front of me. “What are we drinking to?”
Her lips slowly slid into a smile as she lifted her glass. “To last-minute reprieves.”
I raised my shot to her. “To last-minute reprieves.”
three
Sophie
“Is she good?”I asked, looking away from the TV and at the objector, who’d tossed a drunk Asha over his shoulder and carried her to bed after she fell asleep on a barstool and nearly toppled to the floor.
Max quietly closed the door to the master bedroom behind him, nodding. “Already snoring.”
I didn’t know what to make of the objector in terms of whether or not he was a good person, but I was having a great time with him. He was down to an untucked dress shirt, no tie, and no shoes, and he’d thrown back drinks with us as if he’d always been a part of our friend group.
