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“Woo!” Trey hoots, and the sound is quickly followed by my friends’ whoops and shouts of excitement.

And that’s how we end up here, at none other than our favorite place: Toca Madera, of course.

Two rounds of shots have already been passed through the group of us—all thirty of us.

Me, and my girls, and my Ricky, and our Sam, and Greyson and his band and their people—and what I’m quickly learning is his tight-knit, makeshift family.

We talk about anything and everything. Sports, art, music. The military. Recording. Touring. College. Highschool.

Greyson and me.

My friends, and his.

Laughter flows in abundance along with the drinks, and in the span of a single night, our worlds completely shift. Fusing Greyson’s and mine together.

It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Seventy-four After

LADY’S DOOR SLAMSshut, jolting me out of my daze, and a giggle unwittingly pours out of me. I may have, probably, definitely, had a bit too much to drink tonight.

But I’m not mad about it. Because tonight was a blast. One of the best, ever. And I’d do it all over again.

Greyson slides into his seat, shifting my focus to him as he turns the engine over. I trail my eyes over his strong hands, languidly moving them up his muscled arms and broad shoulders before landing on his face. It’s a good face. A really good face. And those lips.

Fuck, those lips. They do so much more than the average lips, don’t they? The way they sing, and speak, and kiss, and laugh.

“Let me paint you,” I blurt. “I could paint you so hard.”

“Come again?” those lips reply with a smirk, and it takes everything in me not to climb across this car and kiss it from his face.

“You heard me. I’m painting you,” I decide for the both of us, a smile spreading across my lips. “You can’t say no,” I add with a shrug, and he laughs in response.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” he says.

“No?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I look forward to it,” he adds, and I smile even wider.

“Okay. Thank you.”

He glances over at me, eyes shining with amusement, his lips matching the sentiment, and says, “I want to be a dragon.”

“What?” My face scrunches up in a weird way that feels funny and ridiculous, but I know I must’ve had even more to drink tonight than I thought I did, because did he just saydragon?

He wants to be a dragon.

What? “What?”my words quickly echo my thoughts and give voice to the expression on my face.

“We are talking about body paint here, right?” he says, seemingly dead serious. “So paint me into a dragon.”

A laugh bursts out of me. “Oh my God, I love you.”

He smirks. “Joking.”

“I know.” I smile. “I mean, that does sound like a lot of fun—believe me, it does—but I think I’ll stick to what I know.”

“Sounds good.” And he smiles, too.