“I remind you of whiskey?”

“In every sense of the word,” I murmured, maybe too low for him to hear. I thought of how his skin burned mine when he touched me, how just being in his vicinity made my limbs tingle.

I realized then that it was harder pretending like he didn’t affect me when he was no longer tied to my best friend.

“We should do a shot.” Jamie pushed off the counter and grabbed the only bottle of Jack Daniels, filling two of my mom’s shot glasses to the rim before turning back to me. He slid the one branded with the downtown casino’s logo into my hand and lifted the other.

“I’m making a tequila drink,” I pointed out. “Mixing will probably screw me in the long run.”

“Nah, you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know, Jamie…”

“Oh come on,” he challenged, taking a small step toward me. It was tiny, barely even an inch, but suddenly I felt the heat from him surrounding me and I picked at my tank top with my free hand, desperate for a breeze. “Don’t you want a little whiskey on your lips?”

My eyes shot to his, because I knew as well as he did that there was more than one question beneath the one he’d voiced out loud. He cocked a brow, waiting, and though I should have pushed him back, made space, poured up a margarita and walked away from him, I lifted my glass to his instead.

“To bad decisions.”

His grin widened, his eyes never leaving me as I tilted my head back, letting the amber liquid coat my throat. Jamie took his slower than I did, inhaling through his teeth as the burn settled in.

And just like that, I’d taken my first shot. I didn’t tell Jamie it was my first one, I didn’t think I needed to. I wanted to hate it, to detest it, to grimace and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and reach for a chaser. But we set the glasses back on the counter slowly, our fingers brushing, and Jamie’s eyes were on my lips where leftover whiskey remained. My tongue traced the liquid, and he inhaled stiffly, eyes snapping up to mine.

Cat, meet mouse.

MY MOM WAS GOING to murder me.

Nearly everyone was gone now, the time on my phone reading 3:47AM. Everyone except for Jenna, who was passed out in my bed, Ali, a basketball player in my grade, who was curled around the same toilet Mom had been hugging the night she told me about Dad, and Jamie, who had stayed to help me clean what little we could once the last of the party had cleared out.

The carpets were ruined, that much I could tell for sure. I could probably salvage the cabinets and tables with a good scrub down and I’d need to search every corner for trash. Sticky cups had been gathered and thrown away, but shot glasses still littered the kitchen and various spots in the living room. It reeked of alcohol, a smell I wasn’t exactly sure how to get rid of at the time, and I was supposed to work in seven hours.

“I have to call out,” I finally said, blowing out a breath as I surveyed our surroundings.

Jamie looked around, too, running a hand through his long hair. “When does your mom get home?”

“Late tomorrow night.” I checked my phone again. “Or should I say, late tonight.”

“You’ve got time. It’s not too bad.” I leveled my eyes and he bit back a smile. “Okay, so the carpet is shot, but everything else is fixable.”

“My TV remote is missing.”

“Replaceable.”

“There’s a mustache made out of spitting tobacco on my face in one of the only family pictures we have.”

Jamie tucked his hands into the pockets of his dress pants. “Yeah, you’re kind of screwed.”

“I told you what would happen if I mixed alcohol,” I teased, trying to find humor in the situation while I still could.

Jamie crossed the living room to where I was standing, his eyes bloodshot but still beautiful. “Let’s get out of here for a while.”

“Are you crazy? I need to clean. I need to…” I waved my hands around. “Do something. About all of this.”

“You’ve already admitted that you’re screwed, B. What you can do is only going to take you a few hours, so why not send out tonight with a bang?”

I chewed my lip, knowing he was right and hating it all the same. “What do you have in mind?”

JAMIE THUMBED THROUGH his phone as we settled in on a blanket in the sand, feet facing the waves, the beach still dark. He landed on Chad Lawson’s The Piano album, adjusting the volume before setting his phone down between us and reaching into the brown paper bag on his lap. He handed me one burrito before retrieving his and setting the brown bag aside, using his shoes to weigh it down against the wind.

I couldn’t believe he’d convinced the cab driver to take us through the only 24-hour breakfast drive-thru in town, but I was happy he had been smart enough to realize neither of us was in shape to drive. He cracked the seal on a Vitamin Water and took a long pull before passing it to me.

“Think this will save us from a hangover?” I asked, taking a sip before passing the bottle back to him. He replaced the lid and we both went to work unwrapping the tin foil around our breakfast burritos — mine bacon, his sausage.

“I think it’s one of my more brilliant ideas. What cures a hangover better than greasy eggs, Vitamin Water, and the beach?”

“So modest,” I chided, taking my first bite. The sarcasm died on my lips after that. “Homahgawd.” I groaned, taking another bite as Jamie watched me, chuckling.

“You’re welcome.”

I grinned through a full mouth, but didn’t say anything else. For a while, we just listened to the smooth melodies flowing from Jamie’s phone as we ate and shared that one drink between us. Dawn was on the horizon, the beach glowing first in a cool pool of blue before taking on a soft purple hue. I was still in the thin tank top I’d stripped down to at the party and I shivered a bit against the cool breeze rolling in off the waves.

“Here,” Jamie said, unbuttoning his shirt the rest of the way down. He yanked his tie off before shaking one arm out and then the other. I tried to argue with him, at least I thought I did, but my voice must have been just as stuck in my throat as my eyes were on his chest. His bare, beautiful chest. He draped his shirt over my shoulders, the fabric still warm from him, dripping in his scent, and I sighed with the comfort it brought.

“Thank you.” I peeled at the foil covering my burrito, eyes on the water. “So, you excited to get out of here? Ready to cause trouble at UC San Diego?”