Page 6 of The Game We Played

“I totally would. Unless you tell me what’s wrong. Or are you going to drink away your sorrows?”

I wish I could confess to her. Tell her all of my sorrows. I don’t have a person to confide in. But she doesn’t care. She’s merely being nosey.

“Drink away my sorrows.”

She slams a bottle of moonshine on the bar in front of me. “I warn you. Enough shots of this and you’ll be spilling your secrets to me in no time.”

“Challenge accepted.”

She pours us each a shot and hands me one before raising her glass in the air. “To smugglers, bootleggers, rumrunners, and the mermaids who loved them!”

We clink glasses before I down my shot. It shouldn’t be possible, but this one burns more than the previous one.

“What the hell is this?” I sputter.

“Moonshine.” She winks.

“It doesn’t taste similar to any moonshine I’ve drunk before.”

“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Tanner Long.”

I motion to the room filled with women dressed up as mermaids. “Obviously not. Kansas is not obsessed with mermaids.”

“Poor Kansas.” She sighs. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

I hold my glass out to her. “Fill me up, bar wench.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Bar wench?”

“As in female server in a bar. Not a low-status servant or sexually promiscuous woman.”

Her mouth gapes open. “I don’t know what I’m more surprised by – you knowing the definition of bar wench or you understanding the word promiscuous.”

I waggle my eyebrows. “There’s more to me than meets the eye.”

She rakes her gaze over me. “Yes, there is.”

“Now do you want to give me your telephone number?”

She barks out a laugh. “You are a charmer, Tanner Long. Too bad for you, I’ve been bartending atMermaid Karaokesince I was old enough to pour a beer. I learned awful quick how to spot the players.” She points at me. “And you, Mr. Wide Receiver, are a player.”

I shrug. I can’t deny it. Not when she obviously knows the truth about me. “We can be friends.”

She pours us new shots and raises her glass to mine. “Friends.”

I grin. “This is going to be fun.”

“You have a strange way of pronouncing trouble.”

“Follow me and I’ll show you how much fun trouble can be.”

She rolls her eyes before a customer yells her name and she hurries off. I stare at her ass as she sashays away. This summer is looking up.

Chapter 3

BREAKING: TWINS SUSPECTED IN YET ANOTHER INCIDENT Sources say “It Was Definitely Their Fault”

Alaia