“Well then—let’s have another!” She pours two more shots and hands me one. I know this isn’t really going to help. I’m going to sober up in the morning—or maybe a bit later in the day than that— and the controls in the boat will still be down, and our whole fucking livelihood will still be just as in jeopardy as it is now. But, damn, I’d really like to forget all that for a while.
I pick it up, look at the clear liquid before I lean into her, my lips almost brushing the shell of her ear. “I think you and I both know the last time we drank tequila together it didn’t end so well.”
“True,” she says, pulling back just far enough to meet my eyes. “But there’s no twenty-four-hour chapel nearby manned by some reckless idiot willing to marry us, so I think we’re safe.”
Point made.
Harlow knocks back her shot and winces. “Ooooh . . . I don’t think I can do any more.” She holds up her hands, pretends to count out about thirty shots, and then smiles up at me. “One more and I’d face-plant into the bowl of these Fritos London is so excited about.”
She may have lost count, but I haven’t. Four shots into my time in the kitchen with Harlow and— besides Vegas—I’m drunk for the first time in years.
It feels like he’s been gone for an hour, but Not-Joe finally returns in a cloud of weed-smell. As he approaches, he extends his hand to me, saying very slowly, “I’m Not-Joe . . . it’s nice to meet you.”
Laughing, I remind him, “We met earlier at the store, when Oliver was doing the final walk-through?”
Not-Joe makes a little clucking sound, saying, “That’s why you looked familiar.”
It was three hours ago. This guy must not breathe unless it’s through a joint.
“You’re the lumberjack from Nova Scotia?” he asks.
“Fisherman from Vancouver Island.”
Harlow bursts out laughing. “Poor Finn.”
He looks back and forth between me and Harlow. “So do you guys know each other through Oliver, too?” he asks.
“Not exactly,” she says, and then looks at me with a silly grin. “Finn is my ex-husband.”
Not-Joe’s eyes go as wide as saucers. “Ex- husband?”
Nodding, I confirm, “That’s right.”
The kid looks at Harlow, and then really looks at her. Like eyes moving up and down her body in a way that makes me want to slap him into awareness and so he’ll stop fucking leering at her like that.
“You don’t look old enough to be divorced,” he finally concludes.
I lean forward to break his attention away from her chest. “But I do?”
Now he looks at me, but with far less interest. “Yeah, actually. You’re older than her, right?”
“Right,” I say, laughing as Harlow giggles delightedly next to me. “Thanks.”
Not-Joe digs his hand into a bag of corn chips on the counter, asking, “It must be weird hanging out at a party with your ex.”
She waves him off, saying, “Nah. Finn is an easygoing guy.”
“Am I now?” I ask her, and this makes me laugh because if there has ever been a phrase to describe me, it’s not easygoing. Easygoing is Ansel. I often get “contained.” I am, admittedly, sometimes a little closed off. I am not easygoing.
Nodding, she studies me for a breath and then says, “Yeah. You like long walks on the dock, making little dream catchers out of your extra fishing line, and evenings spent yukking it up with some Mountie MILFs at the local Mooseknuckle Bar.”
I burst out laughing. “I do, huh?”
Her lips come together in a sweet, thoughtful pout. “Mm-hmm.”
“Well,” I reply, “you’re pretty easy to be around yourself. It helps that you’re a fun-loving gal who likes shopping, nail polish, and . . .” I pretend to think some more before finally repeating, “Shopping.”
She puts her hand on my cheek, wearing a playfully adoring expression. “I love how well we know each other.”
“Same.”
In unison, we lift our empty shot glasses and clink them.
“Why did you guys get divorced?” Not-Joe asks. “You seem to really like each other.”
“Do we?” I ask, not taking my eyes off Harlow. I didn’t actually think I liked her all that much until tonight.
She finally breaks our shared look to tell Not-Joe, “The truth is, we were only married for a night and, like, half a day in Vegas. We’ve probably only spent a combined twenty-four hours together, most of it drunk or naked.”
“Or both,” I add.
“Seriously?”
We both nod.
“That is wicked.”
“It was, trust me,” she agrees, and then pretends to glare at me. “Very wicked.”
I look at her lips just as she licks them and it sends a shock of electricity down across my skin and straight to my cock. In fact, I’m nearly drunk enough to suggest she reintroduce that tongue to that cock.
“It’s something I think everyone should do once in their life,” Not-Joe muses, pulling my attention away from Harlow’s now-smiling mouth. “Everyone should: run a marathon, read Candide, and get married in Vegas.”
Harlow laughs and begins to explain to him that it was fucking expensive and actually not all that convenient. We could have banged and parted ways for free. As she tells Not-Joe about the misadventures in Vegas, I excuse myself to go hit the head.
Outside the kitchen area, the party is loud and drunk. London is belting out a song at the poker table; Mia is playing cards and wearing the sombrero while sitting on Ansel’s lap. Lola and Oliver are the only ones who seem sober, and I laugh watching them for a few seconds. Oliver is notoriously competitive about cards, and here I can see the same determination on Lola’s face. The rest of the table has dissolved into drunken debauchery, but the two of them seem to be trying their hardest to keep the game organized. It’s like trying to tie a string around raindrops.
When I come out of the bathroom, Harlow is there waiting for a turn. She slips past me with a cheeky little smile and when I turn to do something—fuck, I don’t even know, crack a joke, stare at her, kiss her—she closes the door in my face.
I forgot how drinking makes me feel blurry at the edges, a little unwound. It’s freeing, but in the corner of my mind I can sense the red flashing light: Danger. Danger.
Looking down the hall, I consider going back to the poker table or to the kitchen, but my feet are planted, and even while I think about how fun it would be to play some cards with Ansel and Oliver, I don’t go anywhere.
Harlow opens the bathroom door to find me leaning against the wall opposite and she doesn’t look even a little surprised. Not one little bit. She stands in the doorway studying me and then takes a couple of steps closer.
She just stares up at me, and this is all so fucking new. She feels like a different woman than the wild Vegas party girl, than the hungry vixen who nearly broke down my front door. This Harlow feels patient, and seductive, and fucking fascinating. Beneath the surface of her gaze I see something there I hadn’t seen before, some depth she usually keeps hidden, as if tonight, some shield was stripped away.
It can’t just be the alcohol, because I’ve seen her drunk. It can’t just be that she wants to get off, because we’ve done that before, too.
The longer Harlow stares at me, the more it feels like my heart has become an inflatable raft she’s slowly filling with air. My chest just gets tighter and tighter and tighter.
I can tell she put on some more lip gloss in the bathroom, and her mouth shines red when she smiles a little. “Are we gonna rumble?”
This breaks me from my trance and I reach for her arm, pulling her with me and turning us into the bedroom just to my left.
The room is empty but for a pile of bedding, a low dresser, and some cardboard boxes in the corner.
“Who the hell has an empty bedroom in a place like this?” I ask, walking to the floor-to-ceiling loft windows that line one wall. This place has three bedrooms and is twice the size of my house on Vancouver Island. There’s a sweeping view of the harbor and, in the distance, what I think must be Coronado.
“This was Ruby’s room,” Harlow says, leaning against the wall to my right. “London inherited this apartment a few years back. Ruby just moved out a couple of weeks ago, right after Lola moved in.
She got some amazing internship in London.”
I look over at her, feeling confused. Drunk, mostly. “Ruby . . . and London?”
“Ruby moved to London, England,” she says more slowly. “And yeah, I know. Her roommate was London; she moved to London. The jokes were endless. It was like Abbott and Costello up in here.”
Pushing off the wall, she takes a couple of steps closer to me and looks out the window at the water.
“They’re looking for a new roommate so if you know anyone who wants to flee the oppressive regime in Canada . . .”
“You won’t move in?” I ask.
“I like my space. I like living alone.”
I nod. I like living alone, too. My hometown is small enough as it is; sometimes it’s nice to imagine I can close my door and get some distance.
Not that even at a thousand miles away I can really distance my thoughts from all the bullshit going on at home. My phone feels like a lead weight in my pocket, and I slip it out, putting it on the flat top of a cardboard box. Harlow watches me do it, and then does the same, pulling her phone from the pocket of her frayed-hem denim skirt and laying it facedown beside mine.
I step forward and she turns her face up to me, closing her eyes when I slide my hand along her neck and into her hair. “You smell like a fucking dream.”
“Yeah?”
I nod, but she misses it, eyes still closed. “Give me your underwear.”
No pretense, no warm-up, and she doesn’t even startle. My worries are safely placed on top of a cardboard box four feet away, and what I have in front of me is a soft, warm girl to make everything else evaporate. With a little glance up at my face, she reaches under her skirt and shimmies out of her panties, giving me the tiny blue handful of lace. I slide them into my pocket, and then bend, kissing her.