“Jacob Austin Dawson, what are you doing in here? And why do you have a whole bottle of champagne?” Mom snaps, losing interest in me.

Thank God.

Grabbing Dayton’s hand, I quickly begin dragging him with me out through the still-open door.

“Francisca!” Mom calls out, and I start walking faster.

“I’m going to get something to eat,” I call over my shoulder, still dragging Dayton with me.

“Francisca!” she yells, her heels clicking on the marble floor.

“We’ll talk in a bit, Mom.” I hurry down the hall with my new friend, then drag him around a corner, then another, striding toward the kitchen. The moment we step through the swinging door, the men and women my mom hired to work the event all stop what they are doing and silently stare at us.

“Sorry, please pretend like we’re not even here,” I tell them, letting go of Dayton’s hand as I walk across the kitchen to the pantry.

After flipping on the light, I grab the stool my mom keeps tucked away under one of the bottom shelves and carry it to the back corner of the pantry. Opening it up, I use it to reach up to the top shelf and grab the bottle of tequila my dad brought back from his last vacation in Mexico. Unscrewing the cap of the beautiful white and blue antique-looking bottle, I plop down on the stool and take a drink of the sharp alcohol, gagging at the taste. Tequila is definitely not the same without lime and salt.

Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I look up at Dayton and find him leaning with his shoulder against the shelf, his arms crossed over his chest. He’s a big guy, so he takes up a lot of space, but I didn’t notice just how big until we were in here.

“Hi.” I offer him a weak smile.

“You okay?” he asks quietly, his eyes roaming my face. I can only imagine what he’s thinking after just meeting me and experiencing the full effect of my family in less than fifteen minutes.

“Totally.” I look at the bottle and debate stomaching another drink, but the option is taken away from me when he steals the bottle from my hand.

After looking at the label, he smells the open top. “Tequila doesn’t say everything is okay; it says ‘I want to forget things.’”

“Actually, tequila says, ‘I want to have a great time, make a few fun mistakes, and wake up tomorrow not remembering what those mistakes were.’”

“True,” he mutters with a small smile, passing the bottle back to me before returning to his original position of leaning against the shelves with his arms crossed. “So, you’re divorced.”

“Yep.”

“And your ex-husband is here with another woman.”

“Yep.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“Also, yep,” I say, and he starts to laugh.