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“You’re lucky I love you, bitch. Otherwise I’d stab you in your sleep.” She sneers at me and I grin at her before frowning at the five drops of wine that fall from the bottle into my glass. Damn. There goes one bottle.
“You girls have fun. I’ll be at Christian’s if you need anything.” Ethan makes a quick exit, and I realize with him now gone, my sister’s attention is now wholly fixated on me.
“Jeez. What did I do now?” I grumble as I open the wine fridge beneath my kitchen island and peruse my many options. Sweet and red. Definitely sweet and red.
“Nothing. Guilty conscience, much?” She slides onto one of my barstools with a grace only my sister can muster. Though, ten years of ballet will do that for a girl. I was decidedly not interested in the same hobbies. While she was learning to be the epitome of grace and femininity, I was mucking out stalls and expressing anal glands on every dog in town.
“I just came to save you from your pity party.” She shrugs as I grab a second glass from the hanging rack under my wall cabinet. After opening the bottle, I pour a healthy amount into both and slide hers across the counter for her to grab before taking a large drink of mine. My legs are tingling, which is that oh so favorite feeling that I get when the buzz starts to really set in.
“I’m not wallowing.” I wipe my mouth on the sleeve of my cropped hoodie and stare her down, she meets my gaze without flinching.
“You are and you know it.” She takes a dainty sip of her wine and I glare at her glass until she sighs and knocks the whole thing back in one go.
Peer pressure for the win! She knows if she has any chance of joining me in my quest to forget the deal I made with my mother–or whatever she’s actually here for–that she has to trek the low road with me. She loves it though, I know she does. This just gives her the perfect person to point the finger of blame at when Ethan has to fireman-carry her home.
“Nah. I don’t wallow. I mourn. There’s a difference.” I lean my hip against the counter, refilling her glass for her.
“And what, pray tell, are you mourning tonight?”
“The chance to have a nice, quiet vacation at your wedding extravaganza, of course. I had plans, you know, and they didn’t include sharing a room with a stinky man.”
“They don’t all stink,” She grins. “Besides, it’s Cancun, Kitty-Kat, and you’re not supposed to hibernate in your room with a stack of romance novels in Cancun.”
“I’ll have you know that that’s exactly what any self-respecting book dragon would do!” I raise my hand to my chest and open my mouth in fake outrage. “And I wasn’t going to do it in my room. Obviously. I was going to read them on the beach while sexy cabana boys bring me endless fruity cocktails and fan me with giant palm leaves. Duh!”
She rolls her eyes, spinning her glass on the counter with the stem as I drain my own before refilling it. “I don’t understand you, Kat. You’ll swoon over all the book boyfriends in the world–so I know you’re a romantic at heart–but you refuse to even allow yourself to experience it in the real world.”
“It’s simple really,” I shrug, licking a stray drop of wine off of my glass. “Book boyfriends do it better.”
If she rolled her eyes any harder, they’d pick up like a helicopter and fly out of her face. “You wouldn’t know though, would you?”
“You’re totally harshin’ my mellow, bitch,” I sigh, sticking out my bottom lip.
“Fine. I’ll leave it alone for now.” She raises a perfectly tweezed brow at me and then grins. “For now, let’s party!”
* * *
“Ick! No! He was a total pansy!” I chuckle as Annabelle kicks my foot extra hard.
We’re currently laying on our backs on my plush rug with our feet propped up on my couch. Two empty bottles of wine at our sides, and a third passing between us–our glasses long since abandoned after a dance party that will leave me with bruises, I’m sure.
My sister and I are professional wine ingestors. We may not be able to taste a single note of pine or whatever the hell aficionados can detect, but we can handle our liquor like an Irishman at a pub. In other words, we aren’t cheap dates.
“I mean, maybe a little, but he showed promise!” She cackles when I kick her back.
“He was a doormat, Belle. I need someone with a far stronger backbone to handle me. I’m too…” I wave my hands in the air before realizing I’m holding the bottle, sending the red nectar of life sloshing onto my sister’s light pink blouse. She glares at me, snatching the bottle before taking a swig. I almost think I got a way with it before she puckers her lips and aims her face towards me.
“No!” I try to scramble away from the fountain she’s made her mouth into, but I’m too clumsy–my movements too slow–and she gets me right in the chest. “You bitch!”
We collapse into a fit of giggles when her spout turns into a dribble and leaks down her face and into her hair. I’m pretty sure she got more on herself than she got on me. Laying back down, my arm resting against hers, quiet falls around us.
“It doesn’t matter anyways. I’m doomed! There’s no way I’ll be able to find someone in time,” I groan.
“It’s not a matter of whether you’ll find someone, you can walk out onto the street right now and yell out asking for a date and probably end up with a dozen applicants. It’s whether or not you’ll find someone who you think is worth your time. And considering who you are…”
And that’s just it. I’m picky. My sister knows me better than I know myself–which is far better than the tabloids know me–so she knows I’m not a bitch, or stuck up. I’ve just read far too many romances for me to be content with just anything. I don’t settle for good enough. And maybe that’s a bad thing.
But I can’t help it. The book boyfriends found me first.
