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She crept like a tipsy velociraptor, opting for confidence in her creep, rather than second-guessing where she was placing her feet.
And by the time she’d reached the pile of pillows, her daiquiri was almost gone. She sighed and sucked at the straw, anyway.
Jaxon switched their glasses so he had her empty one, shooting her a wink that despite everything, still made her cheeks heat up a bit.
“But this is yours!” she argued.
“Not really my thing,” Jaxon said with a shrug, holding what looked to be Brad’s hidden bottle of whiskey in his other hand. “Besides, you seem to like it.”
“Trying to get me drunk, Lawson?” she asked, raising her eyebrows coyly while she popped her straw into Jaxon’s glass and took a long sip.
“No, because you’re useless when you’re drunk, Teags,” Shea informed the room, causing a very giggly Britt to become even more giggly as she tucked herself back in place. “Frank’s making one more pitcherful and then he’s coming up too.”
“Come on, man!”
The voice reverberated up the stairs and caused all the girls to titter uncontrollably. Well, Britt and Teagan. Shea hadn’t tittered a day in her life and wouldn’t start now. But it was Shea’s version of a titter and that’s all that mattered.
Dave was keeping his end of the bargain and stopping Brad from coming upstairs and it struck Teagan as hilarious.
“It’s my house too! And my girlfriend’s up there!”
They couldn’t hear Dave’s retort, but they did hear thumping as Frank lumbered up the stairs, somehow not spilling his pitcherful of banana daiquiris.
He slid in beside Shea and passed the pitcher down so she could refill her drink.
Teagan had nearly finished the glass Jaxon had given her, so she set it down and sighed. “I should probably go get some water, right?
“That’d be the responsible thing to do,” Jaxon agreed.
“Fuck responsibility, there’s water in ice,” Shea reminded her. “And there’s ice in these daiquiris, therefore, you’re perfectly hydrated, because daiquiris are the perfect drink. It has all your essential nutrients. Potassium, water, rum...”
It might have convinced Teagan a little more if “essential” hadn’t had four extra syllables.
“Yeah, I’m going to go get some water,” she said, regretting her decision the second she moved because the room was spinning. It made for an interesting trek downstairs and made her see, if only for a moment, the merit in Brad’s arguments about the blanket fort. Jaxon came with her and didn’t seem as winded despite how many sips of that whiskey he’d had.
She felt as if she’d climbed a fucking mountain by the time they reached the landing where Dave was seated. She stumbled into the room, and she and Jaxon collapsed on the sofa in a pile of limbs. She felt warm and sleepy, and his arms felt so heavenly, she almost forgot about the reason she’d come down in the first place. Water.
Groaning, she hoisted herself up and walked out to the kitchen to fetch a bottle from the fridge. She returned to where she’d come from promptly because he was warm, and stumbling through Brad’s slightly sticky, dark kitchen wasn’t nearly as fun as it sounded. And it didn’t even sound fun.
He tasted like whiskey when she pressed her lips to his, and apparently she took too long in tasting him, because Brad threw a pillow at them, making a sound of disgust.
“Hey, stop it or I’ll get the hose.”
“You’re just mad because you’re too uptight to party with your woman,” Teagan quipped, uncapping her water and taking a rather large sip.
“Someone’s got to keep their head on straight,” Brad reminded her.
She frowned at him. “I’m still not letting you rain on my parade.”
“I just don’t understand why everyone’s in party mode when this thing is hanging over us. He has people at Britt’s,” Brad reminded them. He puffed out his chest a little, and it almost made Teagan laugh. Almost, because he was still being downright priggish.
“Britt needs this as much as I do,” Teagan replied.
“And Britt is smart enough to ask for help when she needs it,” Jaxon said. “She was scared, so she came to us. I think she deserves to get her mind off his horribleness so long as she’s able. Teagan too.”
“Too right,” Teagan replied, polishing off the rest of her water and pushing up off the couch to go grab a beer since she knew damn well that the daiquiris were likely long gone.
While she was popping the cap off the beer, she heard the front door open. She panicked for only a second, her eyes darting to the clock on the wall to see what in hell time it was before she heard Andrea call out a greeting and calmed again. Of course Andrea was here. She was probably just getting off her shift at the station.
