Stay with Me (Wait for You, #3)(48)

His smile spread. “Since this is the first time you’ve ever been drunk, I’m gonna say four shots is pretty damn good.”

“Tequila is like a long-lost, not so annoying friend.” I squeezed the bottle in my arms, pressing it against my chest. “I really like tequila.”

“We’ll see how you feel in the morning. Why don’t you hand over the bottle?”

A frown pulled at my mouth. “But I like it. You can’t take that from me.”

Jax leaned forward, chuckling. “I’m not going to hurt the bottle, Calla.”

“Maybe I want another shot.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I tried to pull off a pissy look, but I think all I ended up doing was crossing my eyes. Sighing loudly, I eased up on my bottle death hold.

He gently pried the bottle out of my grasp and placed it on the coffee table, just out of my reach. I immediately missed the golden bottle of happiness, and I thought I should sit up and retrieve it, but again, effort. When his gaze settled back on me, his grin made me feel funny in my chest and in my tummy.

And in lots of other places that made me giggle.

“So back to the things you haven’t done.” He leaned back against the couch, obviously not feeling as good as I was. We’d gone over most of what I hadn’t done in my twenty-one years of life, a staggering list of embarrassing material, but I didn’t care. I liked how he grinned each time I’d told him what I hadn’t done and how this look would creep into his striking face, like he was coming up with something clever. “Never felt sand on your toes?” he added.

I shook my head. I thought I did. “I have plans. My plans don’t involve those things.”

“What are your plans?”

“They’re the Three F’s.”

His brows rose. “Three F’s?”

“Yep!” I shouted and then I said much lower and in a much more serious voice. “Finish college. Find a career in the nursing field. Aaannnd finally reap the benefits of following through on something.” I paused, curling my upper lip. “Though I’m not sure on the following through part. I kind of follow through on most things, but there’s not a lot of things that start with the letter F that would involve planning, so . . .”

He grinned. “So that’s it? Your big plans are basically finish college and find a job?”

“Yeppers peppers and pandas!”

He shook his head at me. “Honey, that’s not much.”

I started to tell him that was everything, but then I thought about it, and it must’ve been the tequila, because I thought he was right.

And then I said, “You were my first kiss.”

“We need to get—wait.” The easy, lazy grin slipped right off his face. “What?”

At first I didn’t realize what I said to him, so I had no idea why he was staring at me like I’d said something crazy. Then I realized what I had admitted and . . . yeah, I didn’t care that I’d blurted out that little humiliating factoid.

Tequila was awesome.

“I’d never been kissed before,” I told him.

One dark brown eyebrow rose. “At all?”

I shook my head. Or I kind of wiggled on the floor.

His brown eyes widened. “You’re twenty-one and you’ve never . . .” The look on his face got even better as his gaze flitted to the ceiling, as if he were praying to the heavens.

Feeling a little weird lying down now, I forced myself to sit up. The room spun for a second and my stomach dipped precariously. I did not like that feeling—the spinning—but it settled quickly and then I was staring at Jax.

Gosh, he was so . . . so good-looking. The longer I stared at him I realized it wasn’t so much a conventional hotness. Some might think his lips were too full or his brows too thick, but he did it for me. He made me wish I was . . .

I really needed to stop thinking about his hotness, because low in my belly, my muscles were tightening and my breasts felt heavy.

Jax tilted his head toward me, his expression odd. “Damn, honey, that wasn’t even a real kiss.”

“Oh,” I whispered.

Oh.

Dipping my chin, I let that settle in, and though it didn’t make it very far through the tequila haze, there was still a pinching deep in my chest, a feeling of things settling into place where they should be. Of course.

“What?” Jax asked.

I’d said that out loud. Lifting my gaze, I focused on his shoulder. I felt a little stupid for thinking that it had been a real kiss. I mean, he barely knew me now, but then, he’d only known me for a few days. And boys like him—guys who looked like him and talked like him and walked like him . . . and breathed like him, didn’t kiss girls like me. Not girls who looked like me, and who grew up pulling the white in white trash.

“Calla? You feeling okay?”

The concern in his voice tugged at the pinch in my chest. “I . . . I still like tequila.”

There was a pause and Jax burst into laughter. “Wait until you try vodka.”

“Mmm. Russians.”

Jax grinned. “And you can’t forget about the whiskey.”

“Whiskey?” I gasped, eyes going wide as I clasped my hands under my chin. I was beginning to realize I was a bit overdramatic when I drank or I was sobering up. “No. Not whiskey. Mom used to drink whiskey and things . . . yeah, she would be really happy or really sad.” I rose to my knees, pushing my hair back over my shoulders. “Is it hot in here?”