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“Sometimes. I sang with a band once.”

“No shit! What were they called?”

“Eat Me.”

Eli chokes, but recovers. “Great name.”

“Not really,” I laugh.

He hands me my glass. “Did you ever do any of those shots they do on those reality TV shows?”

“Eli Dunham. You watch reality TV?!”

“I had to brush up onChef’s Apprentice! It was Blake’s suggestion. He had me and Jude go over to his and Cass’s place to watch a bunch of older seasons. We kept getting ads for this one calledCollege Co-ed Chaos, and one time we watched an early season and Jude uh…recognized someone on there.”

“Oh my God,” I laugh. “He slept with one, you mean?” I knew something of Jude’s pro tennis career—Nora said he’d had a couple of wild years, but he wasn’t happy, and it ended anyway, when he got someone pregnant. He did a full 180 into dad-life.

“Yeah. Apparently, they kept in touch a little, though not in a romantic way? She’s married with a couple of kids somewhere in the Midwest, he said, and she gives him parenting advice. Jude’s fucking weird.”

“I think that’s nice. He’s a great dad.”

Something runs over Eli’s face, but it’s gone too fast for me to catch it. “I guess he’s all right.”

“So they drank tequila on that show?”

“They did body shots.”

I pinch my lips together.

“Wait, you’ve done one of those?”

“Just once. It was a wild night.”

Eli narrows his eyes. “Do you mean to tell me some guy drank tequila out of your belly button?”

“Oh. No, it was the other kind. He uh…” How do I say he drank a shot from my cleavage without sounding ridiculous? “No, there was no actual contact with the one I did. Not really.”

“So no one’s ever done that with you?”

I shake my head. We’re still holding our glasses, and I bring mine up. “Want to try?”

Eli gapes, but his pupils seem to widen before my eyes. “Fuck yes.”

Fun. It’s all for fun.

CHAPTER21

Reese

TRACK 1:Haddaway, “What is Love”

TRACK 2:Two Feet, “I Feel Like I’m Drowning”

“Ican’t believe we’re doing this,” I say, a few moments later. Though I don’t regret the bold suggestion, because Eli’s lit up like a Christmas tree, not a trace of his bad mood anywhere.

“Oh I can,” Eli says. In only a minute since we left the kitchen, he’s put on extremely dated party music, which has me bent over laughing, then dimmed the lights. Finally, he dramatically swept everything off his dining room table.

Which, granted, looked to be just a stack of mail, but still made me cry tears of laughter. “Stop!”