"You're just as drunk as I am, Rhodes."
She had me there. I was exactly as drunk as she was.
She dropped the keys back into the clutch and pulled out her phone. "I'll Uber. Get my car tomorrow."
"I'm riding with you."
"I don't need a chaperone, Rhodes."
"You're too drunk to Uber alone."
"I'm not that drunk."
"You wobbled."
"I adjusted."
"You wobbled, and I'm riding with you."
"I don't need you to ride with me."
"I know you don't. I'm riding with you anyway."
"Why?"
"Because you're too drunk to Uber alone, and I'm not going to stop saying it until you let me get in the car."
She stared at me. She was running the math on how long I was going to keep this up versus how long she was willing to stand in the grass barefoot, arguing about it.
"Fine," she said. "Fine. Get in the car. But only because you're annoying and you won’t stop being annoying unless I agree."
I smiled. The dimple, probably. I couldn't help it.
"You're right," I said.
She ordered the car.
I pulled my tie off over my head. The silk slid free, and I held it in one hand, grabbing my jacket off the chair with the other. The tie ended up in her hand, somehow. I didn't remember handing it to her. She didn't give it back.
We walked across the grass toward the side gate. The string lights above us were still on. The chairs we passed were empty. Somewhere in the bungalow behind us, Easton and Astrid were at the end of their wedding day, and the last of the night was folding in around the yard.
Audrey laughed at something. I didn't know what. I'd said something a few steps back that had landed, and she'd tipped her head and laughed. The laugh was the real one, the full-body one I'd heard on the patio earlier. I laughed, too, and neither of us was going to remember what the joke was in the morning, but we were going to remember the laughing.
We cleared the gate.
It clicked shut behind us.
CHAPTER 3
Audrey
My back hit the door, and then he was on me.
He had me pinned against it, one hand at the small of my back, the other against the wood beside my head, and his mouth was on my neck. The chain lock was rattling against the door behind my shoulder blade. My keys were on the floor somewhere. I'd dropped them when he kissed me in the entryway, and I hadn't thought to pick them up.
The ride back came in fragments. The gate clicking shut behind us in the dark. A streetlight sliding across the Uber window, yellow across his jaw. The driver's eyes flicking to us in the mirror and away again.
And the moment, three blocks from the bungalow, when I turned my face toward his and kissed him.
