AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fuck off,” Malice grunts, but there’s no heat in it.
“Heis, you know. The messy one, I mean,” Ransom says, glancing over at me with amusement dancing in his ocean blue eyes. “There used to be this picture of him in our house growing up. It was Mom’s favorite.”
“Shut the fuck up, Ransom.”
But of course, Ransom doesn’t shut the fuck up. He just grins innocently at his brother. “It’s of him with pudding on his face and hands. Like he just stuck his hands into the bowl and decided to smear it all over his cheeks.”
He mimes the motion, dipping his hands into an invisible bowl of pudding and then rubbing them on his face.
I can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of me at that. It’s so hard to picture with the way Malice is now, and I can only imagine how cute it must have been.
Even Vic smiles a little, just the slight upturn of the corners of his mouth.
“He was very into pudding back then,” he says quietly, glancing at me.
“So? That shit’s good.” Malice shrugs. “But if we wanna talk about embarrassing shit, ask Ransom about his first date.”
The gleeful look on Ransom’s face falls a little, and he shakes his head. “Nah. We don’t have to talk about that.”
“Oh, I think we do,” Malice counters, grinning sharply. “Since you wanna drag shit up. Vic, you do the honors.”
I half expect Victor to decline, but instead, he launches right in.
“Ransom was twelve,” he begins.
“I was thirteen!” Ransom interjects.
Victor shoots him a look. “Ransom was twelve,” he says again, and out of the two of them, I definitely trust Victor to remember the exact age better. “And he was in love. Her name was Niccola, and she had hair like a satin pillowcase.”
“Oh my god.” Ransom groans. “You make one comparison, and it haunts you for your whole fucking life.” He throws up his hands defensively. “That was the softest thing in our house, okay? I had no idea what else to compare it to.”
I laugh, reaching over to pat his shoulder. “It’s very poetic.”
Vic tells the rest of the story, painting a picture of how Ransom asked this girl to go to the movies with him but didn’t think to secure a ride, so they ended up walking for four miles in the rain and missed the movie entirely.
“Her dad picked her up from the theater and definitely did not offer Ransom a ride home,” he finishes.
After a few more stories, the food is mostly gone, and we’re all full and content.
Ransom gets out the whiskey and we pass it around as we keep talking. It burns going down, making me feel a little fuzzy headed from just a few sips, but it also feels good.
I’ve never done anything like this before, just sitting around, telling stories and drinking. The closest thing was that frat party I went to, and I don’t even want to think about how that ended up.
After everything gets cleaned up to Victor’s satisfaction, we move out of the kitchen and settle in the living room. The whiskey made it out with us, and we keep passing it around, drinking right from the bottle. Even Victor has a couple of sips, although he does make a face and wipe off the mouth of the bottle every time it comes to him.
With each sip I take, I get a little warmer, a little more buzzy. I can feel myself getting tipsy, although it’s not just the alcohol making me feel this way. It’s the atmosphere in the room. It’s the way Ransom leans a little closer than he needs to when he hands me the bottle, his fingers brushing mine and making sparks dance up my arm. It’s the way Malice’s deep voice rumbles in his chest as he talks, and the way it sounds when he laughs. It’s the way Victor watches me, glancing my way whenever I bring the bottle to my lips, drinking up the sight just like I’m drinking the whiskey.
When the guys finally move on from telling embarrassing stories about each other, the conversation turns to tattoos.
“Remember Malice’s first one?” Ransom asks.
“The shitty little stick and poke he did in his bedroom?” Vic snorts. “How could I forget? We were so sure it was going to get infected. It was red and ugly for days before it finally started to heal.”
Malice grunts. “It wasn’t that bad. I was just shit at tattooing back then. But it worked out.”
“And you got better,” I say, the words slipping out of my mouth before I can think better of it.
They all turn to look at me, and my face flushes a bit, but I don’t know if it’s from embarrassment or the booze. Either way, I’m right. I remember watching Malice work on his tattoo the other day, how steady his hand was and the way he didn’t even flinch from the pain.
