Page 10 of Obsessed with the Player

It felt likepower.

“Are you a coward, Andy Jacobs?” I asked, feeling the dare in my words.

His eyes felt like they were burning when they settled on me. “If you're trying to rile me up, you're not going to do it. You're losing on your own.”

God, he was such an ass.

I turned to face him fully, elbow still resting on the bar as I dedicated the whole of my attention to him. “I dare you to actually teach me, no chickening out.”

Andy stared at me for a long moment.

Suddenly, the bartender—Vincent, as I’d been told—was here again, asking if we wanted one of the same as before.

“No,” Andy said. “Bring in the shots.”

At his words, it was like my skin started coming alive.

Some of Andy's friends had come closer, and they quietly watched our exchange, the way they had been watching us all night.

The bartender put shot glasses in front of us, a tequila bottle beside them.

“You want me to teach you?” Andy asked. “Then you're going to have to play in the big leagues, not just nursing your one drink for hours on end.” He leaned closer to me, breath tickling my face. “You need to prove to me that you're really committed to it.”

Andy looked at Vincent, who took that as a sign to fill in the shots.

He brought in salt as well as already-cut lime.

The weight of everyone's stare settled on me, but Andy’s was definitely the heaviest.

“I dare you to take a shot and suck the lime out of my mouth.”

It felt like the breath had gone out of me for a second.

I watched in slow motion as Andy put a slice of lime between his teeth and took my hand to put the salt on it.

He held out a shot in front of me.

This was it, this was where I took the step. This was where I could finally shut Andy up, prove to him that I could do this, and most of all, prove tomyselfthat I could change. That I could be someone else. That I could be more than a failure, a guy stuck in a spinning wheel for the rest of my life.

I could try and be someone different, even if only for a night.

The weight of Andy's eyes felt dangerous. Too wild, too tempting, making me squirm the way they had that first time we had seen each other. His eyes were fixed on mine, the whole of his attention like a physical thing, the surety that I wasn’t going to do it basically written in big, bold letters on his forehead.

It felt like doing this would be like opening a whole can of worms, Pandora's box, and that once opened, it wouldn't easily shut and give me back my peaceful predictable life again.

In the end, none of my swirling thoughts mattered.

I licked my hand.

Took the shot.

Leaned into Andy.

I went to take the lime out of his mouth, the way that he had been meaning for me to do. I had seen people do this before, and they usually simply took the lime and sucked it once they had backed up, but I didn't.

I stayed right where I was. I sucked the lime, still between his lips, feeling the sharp sour taste of it, easing the burn in my throat, and I used my tongue, just the tip of it, to do it, catching a hint of the feeling of Andy's lips, and becoming all too aware of the way that his breath seemed to hitch at the contact.

My heart was a wild horse behind my ribs.

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