The bartender set two beers in front of them, then poured two shots of whiskey into lowball glasses and put one in front of Alice and Alex each.
“Whiskey? Seriously?” Alice asked.
“What? It’s good for you. Makes bruises heal faster.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
Alex picked up the shot and tipped it towards her. “Be that as it may, drink up.”
“Is that your idea of an argument?”
He nudged the glass towards her. “Take your medicine.”
A whole series of arguments scrolled through Alice’s head like the credits of a movie on fast forward. She shouldn’t, should she? But hell, what was one drink? She had taken an elbow to the face only a few hours earlier. Didn’t that give her some freedom to drink a little?
“Oh, what the hell? Cheers.” She clinked her glass against his and tried to ignore his triumphant smirk. “One drink.”
Alice could count strikes like nobody’s business, but she was not as gifted in counting shots.
It didn’t help that the bartender kept taking the empty glasses away. How on earth could she be expected to keep track without having the evidence lined up in front of her?
She was drunk.
There was no disputing the evidence. Everything around her had a slightly hazy quality, and she was feeling awesome. It was an interesting side effect, the way drinking chased away the heavy bitterness that followed her day in and day out, and replaced it with a buoyant cheerfulness.
And flirtatiousness unfortunately.
She knew she shouldn’t be touching Alex’s arm so often, and deep down she was also aware he wasn’t as funny as her giggles might suggest, but she was helpless to stop herself. Once the drunk-Alice ball got rolling, there was no stopping it.
She really shouldn’t have taken the first shot.
But if she was already in full-on boozy mode, she might as well surrender to it. Have a little fun. She was young still, well youngish. But being a single mom tended to get in the way of any kind of social life. Since Kevin had moved in with them, things had gotten easier, but she felt trapped by her life sometimes.
She must be drunk if she was even willing to think something like that. No matter how true it might be.
Alice wouldn’t trade Olivia for anything, but she did regret her past decisions. She’d been a stupid teenager who mistook lust for love, and it landed her with an unexpected pregnancy and a no-good baby-daddy who just made her feel bad for getting knocked up.
Given the chance to do things differently with Matt, she might have chosen another path. What nineteen-year-old wanted a baby? And what twenty-eight-year-old wanted to feel so goddamn awful about being out with a handsome, funny, wealthy baseball star?
Nursing her beer, she stared at Alex, wondering if there was a way to read a person’s true character simply by looking at them long enough. It was an unfortunate truth that Alice was not the best judge of men. While Alex seemed like a solid enough dude, she had to ask herself how much was posturing and bravado.
How much of any man was posturing and bravado, though?
She snorted into her drink.
“Is there something in my teeth?” He flashed her his pearly whites. “You keep gawking at me like there’s something in my teeth. Or my nose.”
Seeing him check himself for wayward food, Alice was taken aback by how adorable he managed to be. His eyes had grown heavy lidded from the booze and the warmth inside the bar, but it gave him a seductive bedroom-eye quality, making her think of how he might look at her as they both fell asleep.
That’s dangerous thinking, missy.
Her hand rested on his forearm again. The muscles there were taut, like corded wire. If years of batting had done that for his arms, what must years of crouching behind the plate have done for his thighs? Or for his butt?
Right then, she wanted very badly to find out.
“I’m not going to have sex with you,” she blurted.
“Excuse me?” He stopped with his glass halfway to his mouth and eyed her with an expression somewhere between concern and bemusement. “I wasn’t aware I’d made an offer.”
“An off… What? No, that’s not what I’m… Look, listen.”
Alex set his drink down and stared at her. Why did he seem so much less drunk than her? That wasn’t fair.
“I’m look-listening.”
“No sex.”
“Are we talking just tonight, or is that a flat no sex? Like, ever?”
“Ever.” What was she talking about? Why? He was cute. God she was being stupid. “I think?”
“No. I reject your offer. Try again.”
Alice was stymied. He couldn’t ignore her insistence, could he? She had been raised to believe if a woman said no sex, that was it, end of story. Yet here was Alex trying to make her…negotiate terms?