“Hey, you okay?”
He jumped at the sound of her voice. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Did you get settled in okay?”
“I guess so. This is weird, right?”
Micah stopped mid-step and turned to her. “It is, isn’t it?”
Isabel let out a laugh that broke some of the tension in the room. “How the fuck did we get ourselves in this situation?”
“I don’t know, but liquor doesn’t seem to help either.”
“It’s worth a try,” she said as she crossed the room to the bar cart and poured herself a glass. Micah stood back and watched as she shot back a serving of his one-hundred-year-old whisky like it was a lemon drop.
“Truth or Dare?”
“Truth.”
“Why did you have tears in your eyes in the kitchen?”
“Wow, cutting right to it, are we?”
He nodded in her direction and watched as she poured herself another glass. “My papa. I miss him more than anything, and when she talks about him, it’s like it was just yesterday that he died. My parents had true love. The kind that nothing gets in the way of, nothing other than death. Maybe someday I’ll have half of what they had.”
“You will. You’ll get everything you deserve out of this life. I just know it.”
“Truth or Dare?”
“Dare.”
“I dare you to get wasted with me so we can laugh about this ridiculous plan of yours rather than obsess over everything that is going to go wrong.”
“I wasn’t obsessing.”
“You were. I know that pacing thing you were doing. Your words may say you are all in, but your actions tell me you are just as freaked out as I am.”
“Fine, I will get drunk with you, but not because I’m freaking out. I will do it because you are.”
“Whatever. just pour yourself another drink.”
Those seemed like the famous last words of two people doomed for a disaster. Drinking with Izzy tonight was not a good idea. He was emotionally raw, and he knew she was too. But there she was, dressed in nothing but a tank top and sleep shorts with her hair pulled up into a sloppy bun and her glasses on, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. There was no way he could deny her anything she asked for. Not now, likely not ever.