“Lauren,” she starts, but—surprisingly—Hudson cuts her off this time.
“I’ll drive her home. You don’t need to worry.”
I look him over. His tone is steady—no slurring, his eyes are open and alert, and he’s holding a bottle of water and not a mixed drink like almost everyone else. Which means he made that dope comment sober. Not sure if that makes it better or worse . . .
“If you have so much as one drink, I want her in an Uber.” I narrow my eyes and point a very unmanicured nail at him.
I mean, I might not be thrilled with Jude, but she’s still my best friend. I will hunt this guy down if she comes home with so much as a scratch.
He salutes me. “Aye, aye, captain.”
Thankfully, motherhood is basically disciplining your child while trying not to laugh because you are actually extremely amused at whatever their latest antics are, so I’m able to keep a straight face through this. In fact, I manage to narrow my eyes more.
“Good. My mom is one of the top attorneys in the state of California, maybe the country. If anything happens to her, I will not hesitate to come for you.”
“Her mom wouldn’t throw water on me if I were on fire, you’ll be fine.” Jude undermines my entire threat.
“Really? Do you want to die?” And considering I want to strangle her at the moment, I don’t know who I need to protect her from.
“Hudson’s, like, the best dude ever.” She rolls her eyes and takes a sip of the drink she does not need. “I’ll be fine.”
“You better be,” I say to her, but look to Hudson, who is staring right back at me with a small smirk on his face. And this time I don’t actually want to smack it off him. For the first time, he’s not looking at me like he’s preparing to go live on whatever platform he’s posting on or trying to convince me he is the person he’s showing the world. And I think that maybe if he came up to me like this, my night would have been slightly more enjoyable.
Strong maybe.
Oh well. It doesn’t matter. I’ve sworn off anything and everyone in my life that does not benefit Adelaide. So even if Jude and Hudson managed to slip past my first line of defense, my dry spell will not be ending anytime soon. Maybe not until Adelaide is grown and out of the house.
What’s thirteen more years anyway?
SIX
• • •
Jude
You turn twenty-one, and then you die.
I’m not being dramatic. Really, I’m not. But when I drank in high school, I could get pass-out drunk and wake up the next morning ready to run a marathon. Not that I would actually ever run a marathon. Who wants to run twenty-six miles? I don’t even want to drive that far. I did run a half once, but that’s as far as I’ll go. That’s beside the point. The point is that drinking without having a hangover was my superpower.
I just didn’t realize that power was also called youth. Something that seems to be slowly dwindling away these days. Because now when I drink, I wake up in the morning with a headache that feels like the San Andreas Fault, a mouth drier than the Sahara, and my stomach like that one time my dad took us to Spain and I had bad paella.
Good thing last night was a fucking blast.
Sacrifices and all that shit.
Too bad Lauren flounced. Now that vodka doesn’t have its grip on me, I can maybe see why. But we were having fun and Hudson was totally into her, he told me so as soon as we walked in! I know she’s a mom, but Addy wasn’t even home and she needs to get some. I mean, three years? Three! That’s like thirty-six months and . . . fuck . . . a lot of days. Plus, I’ve never hooked up with Hudson, but the streets talk, and the streets say he knows how to lay it down. It would’ve been a good sexual wake-up to get her back in the swing of things.
There’s a light knock on my door and an even quieter “Jude?”
I’m not sure if Lauren’s afraid to wake me up or if she just doesn’t really want to talk, but I answer anyway . . . or at least I try to.
“Yeah,” I croak out, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.
“Oh, you’re awake.” She opens the door without waiting for an invitation, not that she’s ever needed one. Sunshine floods my room and I instinctively yank the covers over my head.
Fuck hangovers, man.
“Awake-ish,” I amend. Damn it. I’m not sure what hates me the most, my abused liver or my throbbing brain.
“Here.” She yanks my sunshine shield, aka my duvet, off my head and shoves a bottle of water in one hand and four Advils in the other.
That’s my fucking girl. Prescription strength only, bitches.
“You’re the fucking best,” I mutter before tossing all four pills in my mouth and washing them down with a single gulp of water. Let’s just say this isn’t my first time at the rodeo.
“Listen.” She sits on the edge of my bed and stares at the pile of boxes lining my wall. I really need to finish unpacking, but I don’t have the motivation. Lauren, on the other hand, has all of her stuff unpacked, pictures hanging on our walls, and has turned Addy’s room into something off a Pinterest board. “Thank you for inviting me out last night. I know I don’t get out often, and I really do appreciate you trying to get me out of the house. I . . . I just don’t think that’s my scene.”
Clearly.
Even I was able to piece that together.
“I figured that out around the time you asked the bartender why they filled your wineglass up so high.”
“Yeah, I guess you can’t take the mom out of me.” There’s no humor in her voice, and I add my heart to the long list of organs in pain.
“Don’t do that. I shouldn’t have made a scene, and I really shouldn’t have called Hudson back over. It’s just, he was so into you and he’s an actual, real, decent dude. There aren’t many of those out there.” They’re basically as rare as unicorns. But since Lauren procreated with and almost married Ben, I feel like she already knows this, and I keep that skeptical thought to myself. “And you, more than anyone, deserve a night of someone pleasing you.”
“Oh my god.” She buries her face in her hands, but I already know her mocha-colored skin is turning pink. “Can we please not talk about sex anymore?”
“Three years!” I remind her of a fact she’s well aware of. “Please tell me you at least have a sex toy in your room somewhere.”
“You know how nosy Adelaide is.” She shrugs her shoulders, and even though it’s just us having this conversation, she still looks like she wants to die. “If I had one, she’d find it. Plus, she still sneaks into my room and sleeps with me most nights. I wouldn’t even have the time or privacy to do it.”