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When Hudson sits back down, I go to sit next to him, but he preempts that by pulling me right onto his lap, looping his beefy arm around my waist and snuggling me close so my back is flush against his front.
“Uh, hi, guys,” I say to his teammates, feeling a little awkward as drunk Hudson breathes in the scent of my hair while the other guys look on with amused smirks on their faces.
About twenty minutes ago I got a text from Tuck, saying the guys were out at Loser’s Luck Tavern and Hudson was demanding my presence. When I asked why Hudson didn’t text me himself, he said that Hudson was too drunk to remember his iPhone password.
Then Tuck called me so I could hear Hudson pleading for me to come out.
“You got our boy in a chokehold,” Rhys comments wryly.
When I first met Hudson, I never would have guessed his affectionate side would come out so much when he drinks. Then again, when I first met Hudson, there were a lot of things about him I never would have guessed.
He’s totally unlike I expected. Totally unlike anyone I’ve ever known.
“You guys should get girlfriends, too” Hudson says. “It’s great.”
The other guys just snicker and shake their heads.
Their snickering only grows when Hudson blurts out, “You guys wanna know my favorite part of Summer?”
“Hudson!” I admonish him in a low tone, twisting in his lap to nudge him in the ribs, thinking he’s so drunk that he’s about so say something naughty.
But he finishes his thought with a kiss to my temple. “Her brain. Her thoughts, her talent … it’s so beautiful.”
So, so cheesy. But if it’s so cheesy, why does it feel like my chest is melting into some kind of warm goo?
Hudson reaches to the table and downs the last of his beer. “Another round?” he asks after he sets his pint glass back on the table.
That’s my cue to hop off his lap and pull him up to an unsteady standing position. “Nope, I’m cutting you off. Let’s go home.”
“Home, huh?” His voice is low and suggestive, his eyebrows wiggling salaciously. “I like the sound of that.”
“Not for what you’re thinking of,” I retort sternly. “I’m putting you to bed.”
“In a … sexy way?”
“No. In a you need to drink a big glass of water, take two aspirin, and get to sleep because you’re going to have a throbbing headache tomorrow kind of way.”
Hudson’s expression drops. “That sounds a lot less fun.”
“Can’t say I disagree.” I bid goodnight to Hudson’s teammates before leading him out of the bar. My house is closer, so that’s the direction I’m steering him in. Tomorrow’s a school day, so I don’t know what Hudson was thinking drinking so much.
“Woah, everything’s spinning,” Hudson says, his head bobbling around.
I’m halfway propping him up with his arm snug around me, his weight resting against my side. It feels strangely nice. It’s a chilly night, but Hudson’s muscle-stacked body hanging off of me provides all the warmth I need.
“Why in the world did you drink so much?” I ask.
“Well, I realized the more that I drank, the more I talked about you and how much I like you. I really liked talking about that, so I kept drinking.”
He says those words like he’s describing something in the simplest terms possible, like he’s telling me how he put together a chair from IKEA. Not like he just said something that’s making my heart burst with happiness.
We get back to my place and I help him up the stairs. When we get next to my bed, I push him, and he falls onto the mattress like a giant redwood tree after being chopped down. He kicks off his shoes and crawls back on my bed until his head finds one of my pillows.
He pats the space next to him and beckons me to join him on the bed. When I do, and when he snuggles me into the crook of his arm, I feel those three words in my mouth again.
Now they’re not just crawling up my tongue, they’re sitting right on the tip of it, ready to pounce into the world, whatever their effect may be.
But now isn’t the right time to say them. Not when Hudson doesn’t even know up from down.
