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“Are you sure?” JT asks in my ear, massaging my shoulders like a coach taking care of her boxer.
“Too late to back down,” Chelsea confirms, grabbing a bottle from the guy who’s been taking care of the stash. “We have to win no matter what.”
I know. The problem is that Max Cassiano doesn’t look anywhere near as tipsy as his buddy.
He doesn’t look anything like his buddy, period. Cassiano is the kind of guy who turns heads, and I’m not immune to him when his attention is solely trained on me. He doesn’t break eye contact as he opens the first bottle with his hand. A buzz is building up in my belly even before I take the first sip.
My party trick to open beer bottles makes his eyebrows go up. That’s the last respite I get before someone counts down from three, and we start to drink.
Mierda. He’s too fast. He keeps looking at me while he chugs like he’s never drunk a drop in his life.
I struggle to keep up, but I won’t call it quits. One bottle after another, I drink and drink, ignoring the way the bubbles burn my throat and the trickles escaping from my lips. There’s beer between my boobs, but I take comfort in the fact that his gray T-shirt doesn’t hide his spillage either. This goes on for who knows how long. What is time when you’re trying to knock your opponent off his pedestal?
The walls of the bathroom feel closer. Or is it that the space between us has shrunken? Cassiano is way too close now. He catches me with his free hand as I sway. Which is annoying. It means he can still stand on his own two feet.
People still chant the word chug around us. I can’t let my team down. On the plus side, I feel nothing as I take the first swig of a new bottle. How many have I drunk? How many has he drunk?
No importa. What matters here is that I have to be the last one standing.
“You don’t look good, Tinker Bell,” he says, wiping his face with an arm.
It takes me a couple of tries to find his real chest and poke it. “What you talking ’bout? I’m freaking hot.”
“Hell yeah!” Is that JT? My girl.
Hold up, is he nodding or is the ground shaking?
“Sure, but let’s just say I win and call it a night.”
“Never.” I open and close my hand into the void, but a beer doesn’t magically appear in it. “Another beer!”
Cassiano sighs.
Is he not even a little bit affected? Or are all those muscles of his a distillery?
I fixate on a thin line of beer descending from his jaw, all the way down the side of his neck. The trickle treks down his clavicle and disappears below his T-shirt. The second I wonder how far it goes, I start choking.
The convulsions are so strong I lose my balance, and this time, no one catches me as I go down. A shock of cold makes me yelp. I shake around, trying to get out of it. My lungs take a deep breath when I resurface.
The noise is unbearable. I almost want to go down again. People shout and laugh. It takes me another moment to realize why.
I fell into the damn tub.
My right hand comes up with a beer bottle. My crop top floats over a slush of ice and water.
Hold up. My back’s never felt better.
“You okay?” JT grabs my arms, trying to pull me up. But I don’t budge.
“Never better.” My voice comes out in a slur. I narrow my eyes at the Bolts’ captain, who’s still standing there like a statue. “By the way, you’re cheating.”
“What?”
“Beer keeps trickling down your mouth.”
He snorts. “Yours too.”
“Where’s your proof?” I giggle, knowing that it’s washed away in the gross tub water.
