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He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Ihatecoffee.”
Emma was shocked enough to stop walking. “What?”
She knew this was just the alcohol talking. It had to be. “We work at a coffee shop!”
And the coffee was good! Some of the best she’d ever tasted.
“I know, I know. But it tastes like dirt to me.” Kyle waved too wide, managing to make himself off-balance. He ended up on his ass, looking up at her and blinking like an owl.
Judy, Georgia’s maid of honor, materialized on her left, hip checking her. “I think someone needs coffee,” she said.
Kyle groaned, turning noticeably paler. “No. God, no.”
Emma turned to Judy, her features contorted in disbelief. “He hates coffee.”
Judy laughed at the expression on her face. “You look like he just kicked your puppy or something.”
“Because it’scoffee. The nectar of the gods. The smell alone is…” Emma trailed off, deciding it was too dramatic to say the scent had roused her from a coma. Even if she believed it.
“Stop!” Kyle held up a hand pleadingly. His face had taken on a waxy look, and he was sweating. “Please stop.”
Judy gave her a sympathetic glance. “Thank you for getting him off the dance floor. Do you think you can keep him off it while I go get him a Coke?”
“Yes. And thank you,” she told her, feeling chastised as the maid of honor slipped away. And rightly so.
Emma shook her head at the prone teenager. “How the hell did you get so drunk?”
The wedding had two open bars at opposite ends of the room. But it had never occurred to her that the bartenders would serve him. Kyle was almost twenty but looked sixteen.
She had been wrong. Judging from his current state—and his breath—those soft drinks he’d been drinking all night had contained mostly alcohol.
Resigned to babysitting a sloppy mess, she managed to haul Kyle up, ushering him to a plush chair in a small lounge adjoining the ballroom.
Judy came and handed her a glass of soda, immediately getting called away to put out another fire.
“Drink this,” Emma told Kyle, pressing the glass into his hand.
He sipped it gingerly. “Needs rum,” he muttered, slurring a little now.
“No.It doesn’t.” Emma covered her face with her hand.
A tingling at the back of her neck made her spin around.
Garrett was coming down the hallway, a distinctly annoyed look on his face. He wiped it clean when he saw her watching.
He stopped next to her, staring down at her plus-one. “He needs to throw up.”
Emma frowned. “But I’ve been trying to keep him from vomiting.”
“That’s the wrong move. Trust me, as a former teenage boy, I know whereof I speak. He needs to get it all up. Then he should have some of this.”
Before she could stop him, he thrust the cup of coffee she hadn’t noticed in his hand in Kyle’s face.
“Oh no.”
Emma jumped back as Kyle smelled the coffee. He jerked forward, proceeding to spew all over Garrett’s very shiny shoes.
Garrett closed his eyes, muttering something under his breath. He looked down at his ruined bespoke Oxfords and spattered dress pants with an icy calm.