Page 86 of Begin Again Again

He smiled. “No hesitation there.”

“Nope.” Beth chewed the edge of her thumbnail. “I hate that actually. How much people liked me drunk. It’s all my old friends talk about when we get together.”

“Did you do funny shit when you were drunk?”

“Maybe, I just…” She shook her head. “Forget it.”

“What?”

Beth sighed. “The night Stephen crashed my car, I was walking up the hill in the rain, my shoes ruined, my hair in rat tails, and I realised that if I’d died, all anyone would talk about at my funeral was how much I loved tequila and how I once kissed twenty-three guys in one night.”

Byron’s eyebrows went way up. “Twenty-three?”

“I mean…” Beth squirmed in her seat. “I was nineteen? And Dolly dared me? And men are sluts? And my jaw hurt afterward?”

He stared at her for a moment and let go of her hand. For a split-second Beth was horrified, and then he laughed long and loud. Relief flooded her and she laughed too. “Shut up, it was fine!”

“I’m sure it was.”

“Shut uppp!” she wailed, and they laughed together some more.

“Fuck,” Byron said eventually, rubbing his eyes. “COVID regulations would be screwed if you did that now.”

“Probably.”

He smiled at her fondly. “I’ve never hung out with someone who doesn’t drink. Do people give you much shit about it?”

“Oh yeah. A tonne.”

Byron’s brow creased. “Seriously?”

“Is that a rhetorical question or have you actually cleared your schedule for the next one million years?”

He chuckled. “Does Lara give you shit?”

“Nah, not really.”

“Just about who you go out with?”

Beth chose her words carefully. “We’ve known each other for ages. She just wants me to be happy.”

“I thought we were being honest?”

“About Lara?”

“About everything.”

Beth twisted her fingers together. “I do think Lara wants me to be happy, but the way she’s happy. You know, big job. Husband. Kids.”

“Is that what you want?”

Beth was glad Byron couldn’t see into her head. “I have no idea. It changes from thought to thought.”

“You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.”

She snorted. “Yeah, all the time in the world.”

He rolled his eyes. “Not this shit again. You’renotold.”

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