Misery Loves Cabernet (36 page)

Liam smiles. “Is that an offer?”

I smile back. “Well, my roommate recently moved out, so we’ll have the place all to ourselves.”

Liam laughs. “Well, when you put it that way, I’d be delighted.”

My face lights up. “Oh . . . ,” I say, excitedly hitting him on the arm. “You know what you should do tomorrow morning?”

Liam continues to smile at me as he shakes his head “no.”

“Make me an Irish fry-up. Except maybe you could cook the eggs this time. And wear nothing but your boxer shorts when you make it.”

I feel so proud of myself for my suggestion. Liam, on the other hand, chooses to ignore me. “Okay. And do I get to pick the lingerie you’ll be wearing?”

“Flirt!” I exclaim, throwing my index finger in the air. Then I give the question some thought. “Wait. Was that a ‘Truth or Drink’ question? Was I supposed to drink to that?”

“I definitely think we need to get you home.”

I like him. I really like him. It’s probably a bad idea, but I just can’t help myself.

“Can I ask you a question?” I say in all seriousness.

Liam smiles. “Braces when I was twelve, and a Beverly Hills dentist who bleaches my teeth,” he jokes.

I laugh. Then I look down. My question is rather serious, and right now my ego is riding on his answer. “No, that’s not it.” I watch my feet shuffle about nervously before looking back up at him, then looking away toward the dartboard. “I’m always with someone, or you’re always with someone, so I know I shouldn’t ask but . . .” I turn to look Liam straight in the eye. “I just want to know . . . if we had both been single when we met, would you have thought I was cute?”

Liam and I keep eye contact for what feels like several hours. He puts his forehead against mine. “I think you are way cute,” he says quietly. “Why, if your sister hadn’t threatened me with bodily injury, I would have tried to bed you the night we met.”

“Oh, that is so sweet!” I drunkenly say, putting my hand to my heart. “Is Ireland just an island full of James Bonds?”

“James Bond is British.”

“Pierce Brosnan isn’t.”

Liam smiles. “Truth or Drink: Would you have sex with Pierce Brosnan?”

“Yes,” I answer immediately.

Liam laughs. “You won’t even consider drinking to that question?”

“Oh, I’ll drink to that,” I joke.

Liam laughs. I gulp the rest of my drink before he takes my hand and leads me outside to a cab.

“Did you know I’m neurotic?” I ask as we walk out.

Liam smiles. Opens the cab door for me. “All women are neurotic. Don’t apologize for it. Own it.”

“I need to write that down,” I say. Before I step into the cab, I look at him sadly and say, “If I slept with you, I’d fall in love with you.”

He looks pained that I’ve told him that.

But I’m drunk, so I continue. “And then it would end badly, and I’d wait by the phone, and I’d check to see if your e-mails were more than two sentences long, and I’d try to translate how you signed your name. Only now that you’ve become my friend, I’d want to call you and ask you to translate what the e-mails mean. And I’d think about the time we made out, and how great it was to kiss you, and I’d wonder why you didn’t want to kiss me like that anymore. What was wrong with me that I wasn’t enough for you?”

We have a moment where we look into each other’s eyes. I can’t take the intimacy anymore, so I climb into the back of the cab. Liam follows, closes his door, then gives the cabbie my address. Next he turns to me and asks softly, “How on earth did you jump ahead from us making out to me never talking to you again?”

I shrug. “Women always think ahead. We think about the first kiss, then we either think about the wedding, or we think about the breakup. Men, on the other hand, think in the middle: they’re thinking about sexual positions, and trying to figure out how to get us into bed. It guarantees procreation really: one sex thinks about the beginning and the end. The other thinks about the middle.”

Liam nods his head. “I think you’ve given this way too much thought.”

“And I think you have beautiful lips,” I say, gently putting my finger up to his bottom lip.

Before he can say thank you, I continue. “They match your eyes, which is funny, because they’re not the same color or anything. Blue lips would be bad.”

The backseat is starting to spin. Liam gently takes my finger from his lips, takes my hand in his, and gives me a soft gentlemanly kiss on the hand. “We really need to get you home.”

“You know what I wish? I wish I could see pictures of you as a little kid. I wish I could watch . . . wait. What’s your favorite movie?”

“I Went Down.”

I blink at him a few times. “Is that a porn movie?”

“Yes, Charlie, I just told you my favorite movie of all time is a porn movie,” he deadpans. “It’s an Irish road movie.”

I furrow my brow at him. “Isn’t Ireland all of sixty miles across?”

“Yes. But we still have roads.”

He is so taking away from my romantic moment here. I forge ahead with my confession.

“I wish I could watch
I Went Down
with you. I wish I could ask you your favorite color, and your favorite food, and what your first pet’s name was, and if you’ve ever been in love. I wish I knew how you got that scar on your chin. I wish I had the courage to tell you that I want to know everything about you.”

I lean in, and kiss him gently on the lips. Then I pull back and admit, “I wish I had the courage to say how much I’ve been thinking about you.”

Which sounds like it could have been a promising prelude to an enchanted evening.

Unfortunately, I have no idea.

Some days are a total “What the Hell was I thinking?”

Oh. God.

Ow, ow, ow, head throbbing. Eyelids feel like sandpaper . . . glued shut to pupils made of broken glass. Too much rum . . .

All right, open your eyelids now, Edwards . . .

I force my eyes open. Ow, ow, ow . . .

I look around. I’m in my own bedroom.

Which probably means I went home with Liam, and he’s in the guest room.

Or he ran screaming back to Ireland.

I look down. All clothes still on. That’s good, I suppose.

Oh God, I’m thirsty. I feel like I could drink a swimming pool. I look over at the nightstand. There’s a glass pitcher of water with a water glass next to it. I start to pour the water into the glass.

Oh, to hell with it, I just grab the pitcher and guzzle it.

I hear a key in my lock downstairs. I quickly put down the pitcher, and head downstairs to see Liam, looking ridiculously fantastic in a gray cotton T-shirt and blue jeans. He walks to my dining room, carrying a tray of coffees and a white paper bag.

“Good morning,” he says brightly, flashing an altogether unhungover smile. “How are you feeling?”

That’s a very good question.

And, of course, I have two options to that very good question: be a charming little minx, and act like I’m lovely, thank you very much. Last night was wonderful, thank you very much. Oh, and, by the way, did we sleep together? And should I be thanking you? And by how much?

Or I could go for the truth.

“Well . . . ,” I begin, looking around and trying to piece together the evening, “I finally found something to replace my cigarette cravings—I’d give up a kidney for a bottle of fruit punch Gatorade right now.”

Liam smiles, and pulls a bottle of fruit punch Gatorade from the white bag. “Oh, I think you’ll be needing both of those today to keep your poor liver company.”

“Oh God!” I say, letting my head fall.

Liam laughs. “I’m kidding. Man, you were funny last night.”

I open the bottle of Gatorade, and chug down half of it in one greedy gulp as Liam pulls a bottle of Advil from the bag. “I’m just going to jump right in,” I say to Liam. “How fun was I?”

“I said funny,” Liam says, chuckling as he opens the Advil bottle and hands me three tablets. “I think you would have been fun. But you were pretty inebriated. And there are rules against that. Although after you insisted to me for the third time that there’s a nine-to-one shot I must be bad in bed, I must say I was tempted to prove you wrong.”

“Oh, God!” I whine as I take the tablets from him. “I swear there was a compliment buried in there somewhere.”

“Well, it would have to be buried, wouldn’t it?” he jokes. “So, how much do you remember?”

“Oh, enough,” I lie, then throw the Advil into my mouth, and chug the rest of the Gatorade.

Liam smiles, and looks deep into my pink eyes. “Good,” he says, then gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Are you still up for taking me to the airport this morning?”

“Sure.”

“Because I can take a cab.”

“Don’t be silly,” I say. “I have to be at LAX in a few hours anyway. My mother is making all of us kids meet the grandparents when they get in from St. Louis.”

“I’m so sorry I’m gonna miss that,” Liam says. “But I’m taking the red-eye back Wednesday night, so I’ll be bright-eyed and bushytailed Thursday morning for your mother’s dinner. I can’t wait to meet the rest of your family.”

He can’t wait to meet my family?!

Okay, what in God’s name happened last night?

There are no such things as mistakes, just lessons
.

“I’m never drinking again,” I whine as I let my head fall between my knees at the airport baggage claim a few hours later.

“He can’t wait to meet your family?” Jamie asks me from the blue plastic chair on my left.

“Yeah, I know, right?” I respond nonlinearly, lifting my head, and rubbing my temples to try and rub out the pain of a full-blown headache.

“Well, then, obviously you slept with him, and just can’t remember,” Andy tells me from the blue plastic chair to my right.

“No,” Jamie says, shaking his head. “If she had slept with him, he’d have been in her bed trying to get in a quickie before his flight. Instead, he was fully clothed, not in bed, and talking about being excited to meet everyone. That means he’s still in full-on ‘lying to get her into her pants’ mode.”

Jamie, Andy, and I are sitting around baggage claim, waiting for our grandparents to arrive for Thanksgiving week. Once it was determined that no one could get Mawv back home to St. Louis against her will, Grandma and Grandpa decided that they would come out to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving, and stay at my mother’s house to enjoy the holidays with her.

Enjoy. Destroy. Same difference.

“Do you want me to just call him, and ask how you guys are doing?” Andy asks me.

“I think he’s smart enough to figure out I put you up to that,” I tell her.

“It’s okay. We can figure this out on our own,” Andy says. “Did he have you park and walk him all the way to the security line, or did you just drop him off at the airport?”

Jamie shakes his head. “You know,
When Harry Met Sally
was, like, a billion light-years ago. That proves nothing.”

“False,” Andy counters. “If he had her drop him off at the curb, it would mean he wanted to get away from her, no matter what he said about her family.”

“Or, it could mean that he was being polite, and didn’t want to trouble her,” Jamie points out.

“Guys, it doesn’t matter. I had to be here anyway, so I parked.”

“Well then, the next question is the kiss,” Jamie suggests.

“What about it?” I ask.

“Well, for one thing, did it exist?” Jamie asks.

“And, if so, was it great?” Andy asks, possibly a little dreamy-eyed.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask her.

“I’m married. From now on, I have to live first kisses vicariously through you.”

“Great,” I mutter.

“It was great?” Andy asks hopefully.

“No. I meant great that you . . . forget it.”

“So it wasn’t great?” Andy asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, torn. “I’m not even sure what kind of kiss it was.”

“Meaning what?” Andy asks.

“Well, I’m not sure if—” I stop and look at Jamie. Embarrassed, I lean into Andy and whisper, “I’m not sure if it was a French kiss or not.”

“You don’t know if he slipped you the tongue?” Jamie asks incredulously.

“I think he did,” I say to Jamie, embarrassed and unsure of myself. “Possibly.”

Off Andy’s look I add, “It’s like he sort of opened his mouth, but sort of didn’t. And then afterwards he pulled away, looked at me with concern, and said, ‘You look like you’re going to throw up.’ ”

Jamie shakes his head slowly. Andy just purses her lips together so much they disappear.

“In his defense, I was planning to do so within five minutes of leaving him. I was starting to get that baking-soda taste in my mouth . . .”

“Yummy,” Jamie says dryly. “Who wouldn’t want a piece of that?”

I shake my head. “I knew I shouldn’t have had that last Ray’s Mistake.”

“That what?” Andy asks.

“It’s a rum drink. Which reminds me.” I take out a little notepad, and jot down:

Never have that last rum drink.

My mother walks up to us, carrying four Venti Starbucks cups in a brown four-cup carrier.

“Okay,” Mom says, putting down the cardboard tray, and handing us each a cup. “I have decaf vanilla latte for Andy; Christmas blend, nothing added, for Jamie; and a mocha for Charlie.”

Mom hands me my cup, and I take a sip.

Then I gag. “Ew! This takes awful!”

“I added a shot of bourbon to yours,” Mom says. “I would have added brandy, but it was all I had in my flask. Hair of the dog.” She sits down. “So, what did I miss?”

“Nothing,” all three of us kids say in unison.

Mom eyes us suspiciously. “Were you talking about your father and me?”

“Yes.” / “Of course.” / “Caught.”

Dad walks up to us. “Okay, Jacquie, wanna give the kids a quick rundown on what your parents don’t know as of late?”

Mom points to Dad. “Good idea,” she says as she turns back to us. “Okay, first of all, they don’t know your father and I were trying to have a baby.”