2.
Unlike a sprain that needs a cast or a cut that can use some Neosporin, emotional pain can’t be cured with any over-the-counter remedy. But it can be dulled, if only temporarily, by regarding the bottom of a whiskey-filled glass. Repeatedly.
I’ve planted myself in a dimly lit bar in the farthest corner of the resort, handed over my card, which I’m sure will be declined soon, and taken a shot for every moment I think about my—no, not my—the apartment that once held my furniture, my most treasured items, empty.
Ah, another shot.
It doesn’t even burn as it goes down. It tastes enough like water that I lift the glass to smell it, to make sure the heavily tattooed bartender hasn’t decided to steal my emotional medicine from me. The scent of whiskey hits my nostrils, reminding me of my father sitting by our old coffee table, watching the game on a TV while I hovered nearby, ready to adjust the battered antenna every time the signal went out.
And that memory has me downing the rest of my glass.
I’ve lost track of how much I’ve drunk, but last time I looked at one of the flat screens hanging above the glossy mahogany bar, the teams on the screen were white jerseys versus blue ones. Now it’s red versus yellow, and maybe a different sport? Football or fútbol?
I’m very buzzed. And there’s a consistent feeling of a nail being hammered into the back of my eyes, sloppily pulled out, and hammered again. Maybe it’s a migraine, maybe it’s from all the drinking.
Maybe, I think as someone glides a glass of water over the countertop while heavily ringed fingers remove my empty glass, I’m dehydrated.
My head weighs approximately one hundred pounds, so turning it to the side takes extra effort.
There’s amusement in those familiar hazel eyes and concern in his furrowed brows as he meets my blurry gaze. The man takes a seat on the stool beside me.
“Stranger!” I say, patting his arm. I meant to tap him, but my hand squeezes his biceps to confirm—yes, they are as hard as they look. Nice.
If he cares at all about my assessment, he doesn’t show it. “Good to see you didn’t sprain an ankle sprinting away in those heels,” he says in greeting.
My eyes widen, and my hand grips my hair—my real hair without the wig. Not that it matters anymore; clearly, he recognized me, and if he didn’t, the whole stranger greeting from me gave it away.
“I was concerned,” he says at my silence.
Unlike me, who needed a shower immediately after our first meeting, he’s wearing the same outfit. I’ve opted for an oversized shirt and jeans meant for a more casual environment. Something that I didn’t notice until now.
“I’m honored.” To be worried about by a beautiful stranger who doesn’t even know my name.
His dimple makes an appearance, a heavy shadow on his cheek under the ambient lighting, and I’m not sure if I kept that last part in my head.
“I’m honored to have witnessed someone down a beer and three glasses of whiskey and still remain upright.” He gestures to the glass of water. “For your accomplishment, I’ve brought you a gift.” He pushes the water closer to me.
I hold a hand to my chest. “Wow, it’s exactly what I wanted.”
“I saved up all year for it,” he says so earnestly, I laugh, and some of the misery I’ve been collecting oozes out of me.
I down the water in one go, then catch the eye of the bartender. He raises his brows, both questioning if I want another one and inquiring if I am still coherent enough to keep drinking. I hold up a finger, then look to my right. “Want a drink?”
He thinks about it, then gestures two toward the bartender.
“So,” Stranger says, “what has you drinking the night away on your own?”
“So many things,” I say as the bartender drops our glasses. I collect mine, clink a cheers to Stranger’s before he even grips it, and take a sip.
“My eviction, my inability to get a new real job, my dreams coming undone, and it wasn’t a major concern until recently, but for some reason, speaking to you reminds me of my failure to maintain any semblance of a romantic relationship. So, in other words, completely hitting rock bottom.”
“Oh.”
I thought about my eviction again, so I pick up his glass and down half his drink. His eyes widen so comically that it yanks a laugh from me, but even I can hear the bitter aftershock trailing behind it. I point at him. “You asked a simple question, and I just dumped all my life problems on you.
Has your curiosity dwindled?”
So slight I nearly miss it, his head cocks to the side. I only catch it because a stray, dark wave of hair falls over his forehead. He drinks, and my gaze catches on how his lips meet my lipstick print on the rim. “I still want to know your name.”
My head spins like whatever holds my brain steady in my skull is starting to crumble. I blink until it dulls, but the drinks start catching up with me.
“Lucinda,” I say, because people only refer to me as Lucy. Lucinda doesn’t even feel like a real name at this point. I’m so drunk my own fingertips don’t feel properly attached to my body.
“Lucinda,” he repeats, and the name coming from him sounds sultry and delicate. “Is that your real name?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” I gesture for a refill as the bartender walks by.
“Yours?”
“Anders,” he says. “You know, there are less liver-endangering ways to deal with hard times.”
“Like what? Therapy?” I scoff, as if I can afford such a thing.
“Like going for a walk, sitting out in the sun, reading a book.”
I slam my hand on the counter. “Did you just suggest exercise to make me feel better? Torture? The thing that killed John F. Kennedy?”
“I think you’re mixing up your world leaders.”
“Get out of my sight.”
His low chuckle doesn’t help my already tipsy balance. “Forgive me,” he says. “I just thought you may regret this many drinks tomorrow morning.”
“You always show this much concern over strangers?”
“Only the pretty ones who like to drink whiskey.”
It should be impossible, both from my drunken state and my all- around wallowing, but a zing of awareness shoots between my thighs.
I wouldn’t say he’s conventionally handsome, not that boy-next-door lead from a rom-com. He has the tall, dark, and handsome thing, sure, but the lines on his face are a little more complex, like every tiny scar or slight
smile line comes with a story attached. Neither boy next door nor bad boy, but on the border of both, which makes me study his crooked nose and the sharp angles of his face too long to be polite.
The bartender places a dish of truffle fries and steak tips before us.
“Fuel,” Anders says, pushing the fries toward me. “I thought you might need something to settle all the whiskey.”
I immediately shove a fry in my mouth, moaning at the taste of warm Parmesan and salt. Whoever invented fries, I hope they had a long, fulfilling life. “So, you must have been watching me a while to have ordered food for me.”
He clears his throat. “I was paying for dinner when I saw you stumble to the bar.”
Stumble. Because I’ve had three—wait, make that four—whiskeys here but raided the minibar in my room before deciding to make my misery everyone else’s problem. With every sentence we exchange, I feel each sip I took in a wave of dizziness.
“It feels suspicious how nice you’re being to me,” I say; as my head grows heavy, I lean my elbow on the counter and hold my chin. “Twice now you’ve caught me in poor form, but you sit by me, drink with me, order me food. Are you trying to sleep with me?”
He blinks, his mouth opening and shutting as he thinks about what to say.
I shake my head. “If you are, I can’t anyway. Not right now.” Wow, the alcohol has effectively removed the little filter I have. “I’m too sensitive.
I’ll either fall in love with you on the spot or instantly burst into tears.
Maybe another time.”
He gives me a small, not quite happy, smile, maybe a little sympathetic. “You’re going through a hard time,” he says softly. “I’m not busy, so I thought I’d keep you company.”
I’d tilt my head if it wasn’t so heavy. “Not to be a pessimist, but people usually do things for reasons other than just being a good person.”
“That is absolutely being a pessimist,” he says, then sighs. “Maybe I
have an ulterior motive.”
“So you want to sleep with me?”
He gives me a smile. “Your honesty is attractive enough for that to be a future endeavor.”
My body warms, particularly between my thighs. I cross them. “But that’s not it,” I say, not too drunk to miss that.
He nods. “I’m here for a wedding.”
I raise my brow. “Is attending such a miserable experience that you’d rather keep the company of a woman you found beneath a bush?”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” he jokes, then adds, lightly on the tails of it, “It’s my first love’s wedding.” I choke on my fry. “First and only, actually.”
I hand him my refill as soon as the bartender places it by the fries.
“Thanks,” he says, downing it in one single gulp. He drops the glass on the counter. “Have I earned the reason you were hiding beneath a bush?”
“What’s your first love’s name?”
“Anna.”
Not Eliza, so I don’t have to lie too much about why I’m here. But I wonder if Anders would enjoy me wrecking his first love’s wedding.
Then, a thought clicks. “Wait, you went to check out that plot of land
with your first love’s fiancé?”
He nods. “Lucas is my best friend.”
“Your best friend is marrying your first love?” I shout, a burst of energy sliding through me. I grip his face in my hands. “Why are you here?
Why would you subject yourself to this kind of agony? Are you a masochist?”
He places a hand over mine. For a moment, I think he means to remove it, but instead, he presses my palm closer to his cheek. Does the caress of a stranger offer comfort he couldn’t admit he needed? “It’s
complicated.”
“Life really sucks sometimes, huh?”
He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and I have the urge to press my lips against their lids. “Yeah,” he whispers.
I just learned his name minutes ago, but I feel such a magnetic pull toward him. I need to, at this very moment, smooth out the wrinkle between his brows. It doesn’t seem like he wants to try to uncomplicate his situation for me, and I can’t really blame him. He’s already extended himself to be here, attending a wedding he doesn’t seem to want to go to, confiding in an almost-complete stranger.
He’s done two solids for me already and has this disarming charm that’s effectively removed the pit of anxiety I can’t ever snuff out when left
alone with a man I don’t know. Maybe it’s the liquor stealing that security measure from me, but I felt fine with him when we were alone before.
Maybe the universe decided to place two miserable souls together, however briefly, to give them some respite from all the damage done to
them.
“Okay, Anders, let’s be sad together.”
His smile returns and warmth sparks in my chest, like a reward for bringing it back out of him, though something tells me nobody has to work too hard to do so. “Do you think a pity party will help?”
“Yeah,” I say, still holding his face. “Party is right there in the phrase.
Let’s suck out the sadness like venom from a snake bite. Once it’s gone, we’ll feel better.” I use my chin to gesture to the other side of the room.
“And then, we’ll drink some more, play some darts, and make bad decisions.”
He shows a set of perfect white teeth, his canines a little sharper and longer than the rest, which widens his smile. “Okay. Let’s.”
I pull away to think, but his hand reaches around my stool and pulls the chair closer to him, so my thighs are between his. I shake off the attraction that runs through me. I have to remind myself as I think of what to say: I’m going to comfort him, not sleep with him.
“Okay,” I begin, “I have a really sad life, so mine might be long.”
He slides a finger over my cheek and pulls a stray hair behind my ear.
“I’m here however long you need.”
Lucy, do not fall in love with a man who shows you a simple act of kindness.
“Okay, so from the beginning. I have never had anything that has been only mine,” I tell him. “My parents died when I was a teenager, and I spent most of my life trying to take care of my little sister.”
His gaze travels around my face, then focuses on my eyes, like a camera lens finding its subject.
“Growing up, I spent recesses in a corner alone, studying to get perfect grades to make my parents proud, so friends were nonexistent for a while.
My parents died in a car crash on the way to the hospital because my mom was sick, cancer, and as much as I love an ironic twist, that messed me up for a bit. After that, raising Taina on my own was a whole other kind of hard —balancing grief and responsibility was confusing for a girl who didn’t even know how taxes worked.
“At work, aside from one other woman, I was surrounded by men. I’d never be invited to the weekly team dinners, instead tasked with projects that ran well into the nights my coworkers drank through. I studied my lovers like exams and picked up their hobbies and passions like my own, so we’d have more to discuss. I’d cook their favorite meals, remember their coffee orders, listen to their burdens, and try to ease them or resolve them, and they still left.”
A touch of embarrassment and a shred of worry lodges itself in my throat. It’s too much to admit to a perfect stranger, but it’s because he’s a stranger that this feels like getting the poison out of my body to allow it to heal.
“It’s hard to explain. It feels like I had this deposit of gold within me once, treasured and sought after, but someone has been in there carving out every remnant of it. Only flecks of it remain, it’s not even worth mining.
Not so valuable anymore.”
At that, he reaches over and squeezes my hand, and it somehow feels like a hug around my heart.
“Want to know the most humiliating thing I’m doing now to get by?” I
ask.
“Tell me.”
I chew on my lip, just a brief moment of sense, trying to keep my mouth shut before the confession slips out. “Wedding wrecking.”
He frowns, scratches his ear before saying, “Sorry, I think I misheard.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” I tap his arm. And when his eyes grow wide, I hold out my hand. “I’m not here to wreck Anna’s wedding!”
I can see the emotions ranging over his face as he tries to process what I said until he ultimately stalls at a mix of confusion and sympathy. “Okay,” he says, “how does someone even get into that . . . field?”
I snort at his attempt at being polite instead of questioning my sanity.
“Accidentally?” I answer. “I mean, the entire job is made up. There is no frame of reference for me to follow. The idea was this cumulation of an alcohol-induced night, the luck of a loud, even drunker, groom-to-be begging his groomsmen to stop his impending wedding, and a projection of my own misery wishing someone had saved me from a doomed marriage, twice. And, of course, the cherry on top of the dirt-cake, it was the night I was fired from my job.”
“All right,” he interrupts me, curiosity currently winning his carousel of emotions, “you have to give more details than that. There’s a big jump from overhearing a groom having cold feet to straight-up wedding wrecking.”
I shove a couple of fries in my mouth before continuing. “The groom- to-be was begging for sympathy. His friends knew he liked men, knew the marriage was set up by his parents in denial, yet his buddies were encouraging him to go through with it. They said it was better to play into the facade than risk his parents disowning him—”
“Assholes.”
“I know, right? They kept saying he could date anyone he wanted, secretly. The groom-to-be—and me, when I stumbled physically and metaphorically into their conversation—thought it was unfair to the bride- to-be and whoever would have to live in secret with him.”
“He must have been happy for someone to take his side.”
“He was.” I go on, “Walter was his name, begged me to help him do something about it. Something that became more intriguing when he offered me all the money his parents sent him for a wedding present. I hadn’t seen that many zeros since one of my late-night, wine-fueled Zillow binges, where I scroll through houses I’ll never be able to afford.”
Anders’s chuckle brings a warmth to my chest that interrupts my train of thought before I continue.
“It was a sloppy mess. Crashing the rehearsal dinner, claiming I was in love with Walter and that we were running away together after a one-night stand. But at the end of the night, Walter said this way his family wouldn’t come after him for his sexuality, not for a while, and he planned to travel the world until he was ready to face everyone again.”
“Hearing it like this,” Anders says, downing one of the shots I didn’t even notice him order, “it makes you sound less like wrecking, more like helping.”
I’ve always viewed wedding wrecking as helping, as saving people.
Either from an incompatible marriage or a pairing like Eliza’s, where cheating is involved. Preventing them from feeling this ache of loving someone who betrayed you in this final, unforgivable way. Where you recall all the small injustices over the course of your relationship, rereading every chapter between you, searching every transgression, trying to pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong. The swift fear of having all this
love but losing the vessel to hold it, wondering where you’ll put it now—if you have the ability to do that at all.
Still, I point out, “I can’t help but notice a hidden but there.”
“But,” he goes on, “how do you decide to wreck a wedding? What if someone requests it, but they don’t have good intentions? And where do you even find them?”
I shake my head. “I only agree to help with wrecking the wedding when the pairing would be genuinely harmful to either party.” It was chaotic at first, but I had poured more and more energy into the idea until it ballooned into something that could stay up on its own.
“And my sister helps with the rest, making everything more streamlined,” I explain, ignoring the gnawing embarrassment of having to rely on someone whom I spent a year trying to teach to tie her own shoes.
“She used to code for work and fun. So, when I came to her with the idea, she built me a website offering wedding-wrecking services. A portal for people to reach me, explain their situation, vet them, and even run marketing to anyone searching key terms like How to get someone to call off a wedding? Wedding ruining. Wedding Crasher. How can I leave my partner before my wedding? My son is marrying a gold digger; how do I convince him against it? And so on.
“My clients can run through my application and choose a variety of methods. I’m here to make one of the most difficult decisions of their lives as easy as possible. I shoulder as much blame as I can, so that both parties can be left unscathed enough to move on.”
Anders looks at me with surprise, but do I see a hint of admiration as well? “This is all more elaborate than I’d think such a niche job would be.”
I smile. “Do you picture me with fake pregnancy bumps and shouting ‘I object!’ at weddings?”
His returning smile lets me know I’m not too far off. “I’ve been proven wrong. Still, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around all these people hiring you.”
“Turns out normal people turn to the internet for help instead of downing cheap wine and watching reruns of New Girl to fix their life problems. Go figure.”
Each time he laughs, a tiny ding rings in my head like I got the answer to a trivia question correct.
“Still, pretty impressive you can make a living with this. Turn an idea into a business.”
I snort. “Making a living is a stretch,” I tell him. “Sure, I can charge a hefty amount for my services, which helps. Even if the average American can’t afford flights and hotels and wedding planners, the people who can don’t have any real sense of the economy for the working class. I charge to make up for the lack of opportunities.”
At the surface of a memory, I grip his arm. “Once I worked on a wedding where, after a meeting, the groom sent me home with five hundred dollars for an Uber to take me just a few blocks away. When he saw my wide eyes, he asked if it wasn’t enough and threw in an extra hundred. It’s the rich that make you wonder why God left you to scrape by and earn your living while others got to eat four-dollar avocados every day.”
Another laugh. Another ding.
“So if this isn’t making a living, what are you going to do once the jobs run dry?” Anders asks.
“Before that happens, I should have saved enough for my real goal— I’m going to buy into this animal shelter I’ve cared about since I was a teenager. The owner’s retiring soon, and if I don’t come up with my share in time, someone else will take it. And that place means everything to me.” I sigh dramatically. “The owner promised me I’d have time, but now he’s retiring earlier than expected. I have a few months to come up with my share before someone else swoops in and crushes my soul.”
“What happens if he ends up taking the other person’s offer?”
“I walk into the ocean, never to be found.”
He chuckles again.
At least I’m funny. Something positive to balance out the fact that I’m a twenty-eight-year-old two-time divorcée with no real job, or money.
“Right, you were married twice?” he asks.
I blink, but I’m sure I said that part in my head. “Yeah.” I nod. “The first time, I was freshly seventeen and desperate to care for my little sister and give her a home. He was eighteen, which wasn’t really an adult, but he had a job and an apartment, which was more than I had. So I married him, mistook security for love. He left me for one of his classmates, and, luckily, it got annulled because of my age.”
“Seventeen is too young to have so much on your shoulders,” Anders says so quietly I’m not sure he meant to say it aloud.
I shrug. “After that, I had a string of bad relationships until I got
married again.”
Anders asks, “What was that jerk like?”
It makes me smile. “Ah. This one hurt the most. During one of my visits to my sister at college, I met her TA. He was sweet and kind. I loved him, really, no naivete about it. He never hurt me, not till the end. Married me because we were two years in, and it was the next step given the time we’d spent together. A good guy. He would have stayed with me forever— unwillingly resented me for it, but he would have stayed. All while being in love with his coworker.”
Anders moves a little closer. “What happened?”
“I gave him an out. I was too embarrassed to say I knew he didn’t want me, so I let him catch me making out with one of his friends. You’d think someone wouldn’t be relieved to find his wife hooking up with someone else, but he was. I hated him for it, a bit. I wish he’d just never married me, left me himself.”
I wish someone had stepped in and told him that it wasn’t right.
Subconsciously, it’s probably why I jumped on the chance to wreck a wedding. It’s so much worse, being hurt by the person you love most rather than a stranger. I know so well what it’s like to feel trapped in a place not good for either party.
“They both sound like assholes,” Anders says, rubbing circles over my jeans. “I hope they’re living mediocre lives. Nothing too horrendous, not life-threatening, but incredibly annoying. That they live dealing with a thousand inconveniences that make it impossible to have a good day.”
A laugh tears out of me. “Like always stepping on a wet floor with socks on.”
He nods solemnly. “And consistently hitting the corner of the dresser when they walk by.”
“Paying for a commercial-less subscription and still getting commercials,” I say.
“Always feeling like they have to sneeze but never being able to.”
“Evil!” I say. We both laugh, and it feels like the last of the poison has seeped out of me.
Anders is a perfect stranger, yet weirdly it feels safe here, letting it all out. He doesn’t know me well enough to judge me, so if he does, it won’t hurt as bad. But the way he watches me, his gaze piercing and fully focused
on me, like he has to make sure not to miss a single word, makes me believe he wouldn’t judge me at all.
“So,” I finish, “isn’t my life so bleak?”
He smooths my hair, his hand moving until it’s holding my cheek. “It sounds like you’ve had some hard times.” I nod, a little embarrassment creeping its way up my neck. “And yet here you are, undefeated by it all.
Able to smile, make jokes, and comfort a perfect stranger. Someone who dedicates her life to animals and her family. Life is bleak but you seem bright.”
“Oh,” I say, and though I felt steady this entire interaction, his words snap something inside me, and I burst into tears. “Sorry, oh God, sorry!”
I wipe them away, but he brings an arm around me, pulls me in so my forehead is on his chest, and rubs small circles on my back. Losing my parents has made me a lot more hungry for physical touch. I used to flinch at hugs, but I think it was because I was afraid to want them too much and feared not getting them. But when I lost them, I grew this anxiety from the fact that you never know if the hug you give someone will be your last.
But something about this hug, this gift from someone who owes me absolutely no comfort—and, in all honesty, if I had met him the way he met me, I might not have offered the same—envelopes me in this warmth that feels like basking in the sun on your favorite beach, the waves licking at your feet just as soon as the heat and humidity get to be too much.
When I finally stop crying, I pull away and slap my cheeks a couple of times with a laugh. “Wow, that really made me feel better.” His answering smile tugs at my chest. “Your turn.”
When he doesn’t say anything, I say, “This is a safe space. You can vent. Or if you don’t want to, that’s fine too. There’s always another whiskey.”
He reaches for his glass, and I guess that’s that.
Then he chugs it and says, “I was with Anna for ten years, since high school graduation, and in love with her since we were ten years old and she moved into the house next to mine in South Carolina.” I still, trying to mimic how attentive he was to me. But I am drunk, and my gaze is a little glossy.
“I hated school, but it was everything to her, so I worked hard to get into the same high-ranking university. I majored in business, not because I liked it, but because I needed to make sure I could pull my weight when she
became an attorney. I’d down Red Bulls and Monsters mixed with instant coffee crystals to stay up and study when she did so I could spend time with her. I moved across the country to be closer to her family, neglecting my own, when her mother got sick. I got a job at her father’s firm, started making good money, and tried to be the perfect person for her.”
“It sounds like you were,” I can’t help but say.
He rubs a thumb across my hand. “I wanted to be. She pushed me to be things I never thought I was. Everyone around me always thought I was an idiot—my father, my teachers—but Anna never did. She was the one who helped me learn to read when I was struggling and took me to her mother, who found out I was dyslexic. Changed my life. She saved up from her part-time job at a soft-serve shop during high school and bought me a car. Her family took me in like one of their own, and she made me feel like life could be worth living. She was the love of my life.”
“But she’s marrying your best friend,” I say, harsher than I mean to.
I’m just trying to figure out how someone who sounds so lovely would do such a thing after having a man so dedicated to her, and being so dedicated to said man, for most of their lives.
He winces, and I wish I’d shut my mouth. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
No matter how much he props her up, I’m on his side. I don’t know her, and while I absolutely don’t know him either, I kind of do. In a way.
First come, first serve for Lucy’s Loyalty.
“I think marrying the best friend of someone you loved classifies you as a not-so-great person.”
He smiles sadly. “People are complicated. Wonderful people do horrible things, and horrible people can have slivers of humanity. She was my love, but I wasn’t hers. And that’s my own fault. I betrayed her. Led her on for years and years. She wanted a family, and I pretended to want the same.” His Adam’s apple bobbles. “I’m the not-so-great person. I was so scared of losing her, the family she surrounded me with, that I lied. Every moment I spent with her, every year I wasted her life, was a lie because I never planned on having a family. Never will. And so she left me.”
Well, that’s a shitty situation. Makes the whole best friend thing not as black and white. But he’s right; wonderful people can do horrible things.
We all make mistakes, and if we beat ourselves up too roughly, we don’t get up to learn from them.
I hold out my hands in a hug formation. “Come here.”
“I’m okay—”
I wrap my arms around him. His body stiffens for just a second, and then his shoulders slump. His hands snake around my waist, and I hear him let out a shaky breath. I want him to feel the same comfort I did when he held me, so I run my hands through his hair, rub circles on his back, and try to offer the warmth of a perfect day on my favorite beach.
A kinship has blossomed between us now that we’ve spilled our lives.
I feel oddly close to Anders and, more oddly, somewhat protective too.
He doesn’t pull away, so eventually, I do.
His cheeks have reddened, and he averts his gaze from mine. I find something about it so endearing that I reach over and slap my hand on his shoulder.
“Okay,” I say, cheerfully, “we took the first step. Pity. We got it all out.
Now let’s—”
“Party?”
I hop off the stool and link my arm through his, my smile wide. “Until we can’t see, think, or walk straight.”
