Page 33 of Fight For Us
I thought about all the things going on in my life. Alex’s injuries, the hospital bills, the bullies, the support system that I’d relied on for the past ten years falling apart. “Yeah. I can say with total certainty, everything is fucked.”
“You got a recipe and a song to help this mess, Tiger?”
I heaved a breath. “Wish I did.” Spotting the bottle of rum still out, I grabbed it. “But I do have rum.”
“Do I look like a pirate?” He glanced down then back at me with a grin. “Don’t answer that.”
I shook my head. “I would never!”
“Screw the rum. I have something better,” he said, wiping his damp hands on his pant leg. Normally, I’d be against drinking hard alcohol after midnight while alone with a guy. But with the day we’ve both had—the month, more like—I threw caution to the wind.
He came out of his office with a bottle of golden liquor. I grabbed two glasses from the clean dish rack and set them down. “What’s that?”
“Sipping tequila.” He poured us each a few ounces and slid one toward me.
“Tequila? What am I a teenager on spring break?” I picked it up and gave it a sniff. Didn’t quite burn off my nostril hairs. That was a plus.
“This isn’t your average cheap shit.” He sipped with a sigh. “Go ahead, try it.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, I said, “Fine, but if it’s gross, I’m pouring it into your glass.” I closed my eyes, for no reason other than maybe it would somehow make it go down easier, and sipped. It went down smoothly with only the slightest of burns.
I opened my eyes an inch to find Wes watching me with his head resting in his palm. “Good, right?”
“I wouldn’t call it good, but I don’t think it’ll burn off layers of my esophagus going down.” He laughed and downed the rest of his glass in one gulp. I peeked again at the contents of my glass and thought,why not?“Cheers to our shit show lives.”
“Cheers to that.” He shook his head and watched me fill my mouth and swallow down every last drop.
Chapter 14
Wes
I knew two things.It was two in the morning, the bottle of reposado sitting on the table between us was almost empty, and Olivia was even feistier drunk than she was sober. Okay, so maybe I knew more than two things.
“What would happen if I beat up a ten year old?” She waved a hunk of cake in her hand as she spoke in between bites.
“I don’t know… jail? But I know a guy… We don’t have to do the dirty work.” I laughed, picturing one of my gym buddies showing up at an elementary school.
“What kinda friends do you have anyway?” She chomped a bite of cake, getting crumbs all over herself and the table in the most un-Olivia like way I’d ever seen. I was still relatively sober, thankfully there was one of us who was.
“You know I was kidding right?” I laughed. “We can’t hire a hit man for a ten year old bully, Tiger.”
“But what if we’re doing the world a favor? Maybe this kid will be the next… I don’t know. The next… dictator guy.”
“Well, then I guess we’ll have to kick ourselves in our old wrinkly asses thirty years from now.”
“Pffft. I thought you were cool, but you won’t even help me commit a crime.” She flopped her head back onto the vinyl booth, dropping her cake into her lap. “Oh no, cake down.” Her whine turned to chaotic laughter in the span of two seconds.
“You are a mess, aren’t you?”
“If I’m a mess, so are you,” she said before picking up a hunk of cake and tossing it at me. I’m pretty sure she was aiming for my face but it landed on the seat next to me.
“Who are you and what have you done with Olivia?” There was no use in bothering to clean the crumbs. They were bound to multiply and spread before the night ended.
She blew a raspberry, flicking more crumbs my way. Man, I wish I had a camera rolling. The footage would be pure gold.
“Who am I? I’ll tell you who.” She grabbed the cake from her lap and nibbled. “A mentally unstable, broke as hell twenty-seven year old with no health insurance, a mountain of hospital bills, and an unhealthy obsession with this cake.” I listened quietly while I pushed my water glass toward her. She took a long sip and smacked her lips. “Oh and I forgot to mention unloveable. Yeah… I’m that, too. Wait, this isn’t tequila? You tricked me!”
She gripped the edge of the table for support and fumbled her way out of the booth faster than I would have thought she could move. “Where are you going?”
