Page 68 of Touchdown, Tennessee

He paced back over toward me, standing under the tree where I’d first found him out here.

“Because I can’t afford to.”

“Bullshit.”

“I can’t afford to, Peachel,” I told him, each word dripping with finality.

“You’re drunk as shit.”

I stood up from my spot on the wall and paced over to him. Each step felt a little bit like swimming through water. I was drunk.

Fine.

I wastoodrunk.

But I’d never been too drunk to tell the truth.

“You want to know one thing that was always different between me and my mom?” I asked him, coming in close to him like he had done to me before.

His eyes scanned my face. “What?”

“When she got drunk, she blacked out. She was sloppy. Did things she wouldn’t do otherwise. Turned into somebody else.”

“And you’re so different from that?”

“I am,” I told him. “I’ve never been too drunk to know who I am. Or to tell theexacttruth. Everything I do, everything I say while I’m drinking is something I would do sober. No exceptions.”

And there was something I wanted to doright nowthat I’d have done sober, too.

I moved in quickly to crush my lips against his.

It was a rough kiss.

More like a challenge than anything else, same as when he gripped my chest.

I half expected him to stop me, to shove me away and deny me the scrap of pleasure.

ButAndrew.

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.

He didn’t shove me away. He reached up to put his hands to either side of my jaw, pulling me in deeper.

Opening his mouth to me, like he always did.

I moaned as I felt his tongue slide out against mine. He tasted like whiskey and I knew I did, too.

I put my tongue along his jaw, licking along his skin, stopping lower on his neck to suck a slow kiss there.

I could feel him breathe.

“You’re saying you’d do all of this, without a drop of alcohol in you?”

“I’d do all this and a whole lot fucking more.”

I shoved one hand up under his shirt, sliding my palm up along his skin and dragging my fingertips across his nipple as I went for another kiss.

“Fuck you,” he whispered against my lips after I gave him a little nibble there.