Page 35 of His Hot Mess

“Oh for god’s sake,” Lucy said, taking the drink from Casey. She picked up Chris’s free hand and stuck the cocktail in it, forcing him to wrap his fingers around it.

“If you don’t want it, find someone else who’ll enjoy the handcrafted cocktail stylings of Sadie Fulham,” she said.

I stifled a snort-laugh. Leave it to Lucy to get straight to the point.

Chris glared at all of us. Though she’d turned her back to attend to Sam, Casey looked over her shoulder and winked at me while Chris looked down at the drink.

Did she sense the tingling electricity snapping between me and Chris? Did she know that no matter how much I was trying to push it down, a liquid heat rose in me when he was near?

As Casey guided Sam to the burgers at the end of the table. Lucy looked from me to Chris, her brows furrowed.

My cheeks grew hot.

“Well? Are you going to drink it?” Lucy asked. “Or was Casey right, you won’t drink pink things?”

“I like pink things just fine,” Chris said.

Was he looking at me when he said that?

He tossed the drink back in two quick swallows, stepped towards me, so close I sucked in a breath, then reached past me and clapped the glass on the table hard enough I was surprised it didn’t crack.

I kept my face straight. Then I tossed my own drink back, downing it just as fast.

“Damn,” Lucy said, next to me. She sipped her drink demurely.

“That all you got?” I asked him.

Was it my imagination, or did Chris’s lips twist slightly?

“I thought you didn’t drink,” Lucy said to Chris, ignoring me.

“I don’tnotdrink,” he said.

It was the same phrasing Lucy had used—we’re notnottrying. I giggled, then held a hand over my mouth.

“Are you laughing at me?” Chris said.

“Of course not,” I said. “Do you want another pink drink?”

“No, I don’t want another pink drink,” Chris said. The rhyming words coming out of his mouth, in his low, serious Chris-voice were suddenly hysterical to me.

Maybe it was the quickly imbibed cocktail on an empty stomach. Or maybe it was Chris. Or both. But I felt good. Loose inside.

Chris tossed his glove on the table. Then he strode to the nearby cooler and pulled out a can of beer. “I drink other drinks. When I want to.”

He held the drink out to me, one eyebrow up.

I strode over and snatched it from his hand. “Bet you nurse these though. Like a baby.”

Chris’s eyes went wide, but he grabbed another beer, stood up over me, cracked the top, and tossed it back. When he finished, he crushed the can in his hand in an exaggerated gesture of victory, making me snort-laugh.

I bit my cheek and walked back to my sister. I don’t know why I wanted to hide how much he was making me laugh—maybe I was still mad at him about earlier. I reached down for my wrist, remembering how I’d hurt it. It felt a lot better. Or maybe that was the alcohol. Then I remembered that he’d kept my injury between us, and my revived anger fizzled.

It was my fault I’d hurt myself.

“What is going on with you?” Lucy asked, a bemused but confused expression on her face.

I looked over Lucy’s shoulder, but Chris was moving towards Graydon at the barbecue.

---