“Why are you in here and not wiping the floor with us at poker?”

Harlow shrugs, placing her hands on my waist so she can move me aside and open the cabinet overhead. “I’m distracted tonight.” She frowns up into the crowded cupboard. “And why is this such a mess? Dear God.”

“You going to rearrange their kitchen for them?” I ask, smiling at the clinking sounds as she moves glasses around. “In the middle of a party?”

“Maybe.”

Dark auburn hair frames her face, which she tucks behind her ear as she stretches for the top shelf, exposing her long neck. I immediately think of sucking little marks into her skin, from her ear to her collarbone.

“Preoccupied this morning,” I say, drinking in the sight of her bare shoulders. “Distracted tonight.”

She retrieves two clean shot glasses and pulls back to look at me silently in response. And now I remember the heat of her oddly hypnotic eyes—more amber than brown—and the temptation of her full, flirty lips. Unscrewing the cap from a bottle of pretty stellar tequila, Harlow blinks away before pouring each glass to the brim.

“Well, I can tell Not-Joe is doing a great job undistracting you,” I tell her, “but you might want to slow down on shots with the guy who pierced his own penis.” Honestly, when Oliver told me that story, I nearly choked on my sandwich.

Harlow was beginning to hand me a shot, but her hand pauses, midair. “He... what now?”

“Twice. One in the tip, one in the shaft.”

She blinks.

I lean in a little and the way she’s staring at my mouth is making my skin hum. “According to Oliver, ‘things happen’ when Not-Joe gets drunk.”

She tears her eyes from my mouth and looks up at me, lifting her chin to indicate the table of people still playing cards across the room. “You’re suggesting instead I go play cards with the people who’re giving out shots of Clamato as penalty?”

“It’s even better than that,” I say with a shudder. “It’s Budweiser with Clamato. It’s called chelada, and it’s pretty warm now.”

She makes the exact same face she made when the barista offered her a pumpkin spice mocha this morning—complete and total horror—and that drink she ordered. “Someone actually made that into a thing? There are people who drink and enjoy that?”

Laughing, I tell her, “You know, despite my better judgment I find it really funny when you act like a diva.”

With her head tilted to the side, eyes incredulous, she asks, “Being turned off by Budweiser mixed with tomato and clam juice makes me a diva?”

Apparently I’m buzzed enough to belt out a few lines of the only diva song I can think of at the moment: “I Will Always Love You.” And then I lift my shot and down it.