Page 10 of After All This Time

In our case, I'm the Titanic, and he's the iceberg. One look from him, and I feel myself drowning in this forbidden lust that wraps around me, and no matter what I do, I can't break free.

Or maybe I'm Jack, and he's Rose. Won't let me on that damn door, leaving me to die all frozen and pathetic while he floats off comfortably on his little makeshift raft of physical perfection.

I'm such a loser.

"What are we drinking?" Logan asks, pulling me out of my drunken spiral of dumb girl thoughts.

"Well, we're definitely not having sambuca, so we'll go with tequila."

A few minutes later, we drink our shots, and the tequila burns its way down. The lime makes me shudder, and I glance over at Logan and Harper, who are both making the samethat was a huge fucking errorface.

"Well, that was disgusting." Logan groans.

"It beats a thirty-five-dollar cocktail, though," Harper adds, and she's not wrong.

I look over at the table and see Michelle and Poppy huddled together, deep in conversation. Meanwhile, Natalya is glued to her phone, looking bored out of her mind and counting the minutes until she can leave, as if enduring this place is some kind of punishment.

"Do I have to go back over there?" Logan asks, and Harper gives him a playful punch that hovers between affection and assault.

"You know you're supposed to be the eye candy here. Go and make her night better."

"You're unbelievable. You know that?"

"I'm just playing. You know I love you."

"I think I'll head out if that's okay. I have stuff I need to do tomorrow," I cut in, feeling the tequila hit me just enough to remind me that one more and I'll be the drunk girl crawling home.

"Of course, that's fine," Harper says, smiling at me. "I appreciate you coming, and thank you for not being an asshole."

This is definitely a friendship in the making—brutal honesty as a love language.

"So Amelia gets to leave, but I don't?" Logan raises an eyebrow at Harper as he waits for her answer.

"We live in the same building. It makes sense for us to leave together."

Logan's smile softens at her words, his gaze lingering on her in a way that suggests he'd drop everything if she asked.

I grab my purse and pull out my phone, already pulling up the Uber app. "Could you please tell the others I said goodbye? And thanks again."

With one hand raised in a half-assed goodbye, I step outside, and the night air slams into me. My cheeks are flushed, and every breath I take tries to claw some sobriety back into my tequila-soaked system.

Chapter 5

Tobias

I'm zoning out to whatever Netflix is throwing at me when the front door announces Amelia's arrival—first with a click, then with a crash.

Throwing my blanket off me, I push off the bed and head to the hallway. As I round the corner, I see Amelia crouched on the floor, her hair spilling around her face as she reaches for a fallen picture frame. Her shoes are dangling from one hand, black fuck-me heels that she must have kicked off the moment she stepped through the door, and I watch as she attempts to place the picture frame back down on the side table.

"What are you doing?" Amelia jumps, whirling around like she's sixteen again, and I've just caught her sneaking in past curfew.

"Jesus, Tobias." My name comes out breathless, caught somewhere between a curse and a laugh. "You scared the hell out of me."

I take a step closer, tilting my head as I take her in—her flushed cheeks, her mussed hair, and the slight sway in her stance that tells me everything I need to know.

"Are you drunk?" The laugh bubbles up before I can stop it, probably because she's so fucking adorable when she's trying to act sober. "It's not even eleven o'clock."

She narrows her eyes at me, but I catch a glimmer of amusement there. "Well, I started early."

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