He flicked at his curls. “I wasn’t trying to jump down your throat.”
Then what was he trying to do?
His gaze found the floor. He cursed. “Got an actual shot glass in this bitch?” he asked, my brow jumping. His jaw shifted. “I don’t drink shots out of fucking milk glasses.”
He pulled the bourbon over, completely serious. I eyed him. “I’m not driving your ass home.”
“I’ll call a ride share. Just get the fucking glass.”
I did, giving him what he asked for. He downed that shit like it was nothing before taking another. He chuckled. “You actually have good taste in bourbon, little.”
A compliment, and from this guy. I smiled. “Some stuff I brought down from Chi-Town.” I’d gotten it with my fake ID.
Ares nodded. “It’s good,” he said, but he didn’t take another glass. He studied the room. “Got any snacks or are you going to continue being a piss-poor hostess?”
He said this, but he smiled, and for some reason, I didn’t immediately throw an insult at him. I chuckled. “What do you like to eat?”
As it turned out, everything, and I ended up defrosting what felt like half the freezer. Bru kept a lot of garbage around the house, frozen cheese sticks and wings. I ended up being pretty hungry too, so I made it all, and Ares didn’t protest. I really didn’t know why I was entertaining his presence here. When we’d gotten here, I’d wanted him out of my house.
“Pick your poison.” I tossed him the remote from the living room. We’d assembled all the garbage food out there with our booze, and seeing Ares in my brother’s easy chair was frickin’ hilarious. Bru may be a large boy but he wasn’t nearly as tall as Ares. With his legs stretched out, my brother’s teammate basically had his long legs breaching the opposite side beneath the coffee table.
Ares barked a laugh, a bowl of cheese puffs in his lap. “You’re giving me a lot of trust, little.”
“Just pick something, Wolf,” I tossed. I popped a piece of popcorn chicken in my mouth. “And it better be good.”
I angled back to see him actually smiling from my brother’s chair. He said that name was on loan, but I was only forty percent sure I’d get away with calling him that.
“I got something for you,” he said, and when he grinned, it appeared I did get away with what I said. He proceeded to change the channel to The Office, and I was surprised. That was like my favorite television show.
“You like The Office?” I asked, taking a blanket from behind the couch. I put it over my legs while I ate chicken.
Ares grabbed a wing off our island of junk. We’d arranged it all out on the coffee table for easy access. He
lifted a shoulder. “It’s cool. Jim fucking kills me.”
“And Dwight.”
“Yeah.” He faced me. “Wanna binge-watch? Now that I’m up, I don’t think I’m going to sleep anytime soon.”
I probably wouldn’t either. Not with everything that just happened.
I could use a laugh or two. “Only if you don’t fucking talk. I hate when people talk while I’m watching stuff.”
He lifted a hand, then proceeded to turn up the television. This was not how I’d thought the evening would go, and though Ares’s laughter boomed over the set almost right away at the show, his distraction didn’t annoy me. If anything, his laughter made me laugh too.
We laughed together which should be weird, but as we watched, it wasn’t. Actually, watching TV with him felt a lot like painting with him. It felt, I don’t know, easy.
I really didn’t think I’d sleep that night, but my lids definitely started feeling heavy during the show. I fought sleep for as long as I could, but I must have drifted off sometime between episodes. I was totally in and out of sleep because, at one point, I thought I felt a set of hands tugging my blanket up when it slid.
“Night, P,” I heard a voice say, but that couldn’t have been true. My name didn’t begin with a P.
I must have been dreaming.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sloane
A crash jerked me awake, my head rising from a couch pillow.