Draped across the couch next to the girl was a boy with his head in the girl’s lap, legs sprawled over the arm of the couch. One hand was fiddling with one of those cube fidget toys.
It took Brennan a solid minute to process that the boy on the couch wasCole.
Before he had time to about-face out ofthatsituation, they all seemed to notice Brennan’s appearance at once, and he winced as their heads swiveled toward him.
Well. Shit.
Cole’s eyes fell on him and his mouth quirked in a silent, almost amused greeting.
“Ayyyy!” cheered Tony.
“You’re late!” said the girl. He recognized her voice now, the slight accent—she was Marisela. From the blood drive.Fuck. She didn’t seem to recognize him, or at least didn’t let on if she did.
Cole stayed quiet, but he pushed up to sit like a normal person and watched Brennan. His hair was a mess, flat from where he’d been lying and sticking up in all other directions. Brennan didn’t allow himself to find it charming, but it was a near thing.
“Late joiner’s fee is… two shots? What do you think, Mari?” Tony asked, and Mari gave a nod of approval before throwing back the remnants of her wine.
“You gotta get on our level,” Mari agreed.
Cole defended weakly, “It’s a Monday, go easy—”
“It’s therules,dude,” Tony said, and then he pushed off the couch to thrust a plastic Star Wars cup toward Brennan. Brennan didn’t need vampire senses to smell the vodka.
The liquid sloshed around in the cup, and Tony’s defiant expression said he was serious about enforcing the rules.
And, well, Brennan had been wanting to figure out if vampires could get drunk.
“This is peer pressure,” Cole pointed out.
Not to mention that he still needed to get a read on whether Cole was a lying traitor or not.
Two birds, one stone.
Brennan swiped the cup from Tony’s hand and threw it back while Tony and Mari whooped.
It barely burned going down, which was new.
“Peer pressure claims another innocent soul,” Brennan announced, and offered a bow before joining the party in the living room.
Tony poured Brennan another drink, the TV went to commercial break, and Brennan took a spot on the floor instead of squeezing onto the couch.
Everything was sharper with fresh blood in his system, like his world had come into focus or switched to high definition. But it wasn’t overwhelming. The sounds of the neighboring apartments—a blender on high, a radio playing Nicki Minaj, a group playing Dungeons & Dragons—were still there in the background, but he could tune them out like turning dials on a radio.
Brennan suffered through the last fifteen minutes of the show, the unidentifiable sexy singles “recoupling,” while Tony periodically announced that something one of them said meant everyone had to drink.
Finally, Brennan took a chance on a half-baked idea, just as he realized with utter certainty that vampires could, indeed, get drunk.
“Never have I ever,” Brennan said, “unironically enjoyed the Bachelor franchise.”
“This isn’t evenThe Bachelor,” Tony protested.
“My sincerest apologies,” Brennan deadpanned. “What are we watching?”
“Love Island! Have you not been paying attention—”
“Um, Tony, you’d better drink,” Mari pointed out, taking a gulp of her wine.
Cole had summoned a glass from somewhere and drank, too.
