Page 56 of Don't Cross Mo Ellery

“Yes way,” Tasha says. “Because this little baby is called, wait for it... a sinkhole!”

We both double over laughing.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “You’re right. We have to.”

We hold up the shots to toast. The liquid looks gold and a little sparkly. We’re both mesmerized... or maybe that’s just me.

I stare into the depths of the shot glass.

“What do youwant?” Tasha asks suddenly, her eyes soft, her words slurring just the slightest, cutest bit.

Wow.

First date, huh? My lips are tingling and my good sense has evaporated, so here goes.

“I want to not feel sad and heartbroken anymore,” I say, and boy, just saying it sort of helps? I keep going. “I want to have more than like five bucks in my bank account. And this next one isn’t awant, per se, but I probablyneedto learn how to cook something other than hot dogs and cereal? And I want my parents to stop worrying about me and also to know that I’m just different from them, and yeah... I guess I want to know who I want to be in the first place. And I want to stay alive and unmurdered and I want to kiss you.”

“Thank you for that long and very complicated answer,” Tasha says sincerely. “I appreciate you telling me all that. But actually, I wasn’t asking you. I was askingthe shot.”

“Oh my god,”I say, promptly dying of drunk humiliation.

She smiles, gently swirling her shot glass as she holds it up to one eye and closes the other. “I don’t know, doesn’t it look like a portal to another dimension or something? Like it would speak if you asked it the right question?”

“I think it wants to swallow us whole,” I say, dropping my head on the table. “Which right now, I’d be okay with.”

Tasha finds my hand and puts it on my shot glass. “Here’s to the sinkhole that brought us together,” she says.

I pull my head up off the table, we clink glasses, and then shootit, and it isrevolting. We’re both instantly gagging and making weird faces. “What was that?” I ask, trying to scrape the lingering taste off my tongue with my teeth.

“Malört and tequila!” she says with a giggle.

“You are a menace,” I say.

“I’d like to kiss you too,” she says, and time stops.

“So gimme a kiss, you menace,” I say, grabbing the ends of her bow tie and pulling her toward me.

And suddenlyweare the couple making out in the booth. She tastes like beer and Malört and tequila and she is a very,verygood kisser.

When we come up for air, it’s clear that neither of us wants to be done, but there’s not much more we can legally do in this booth.

“What do you think about maybe getting out of here?” she asks, our foreheads still touching.

Chris flits through my mind, and I tell him to get lost.

“I like that idea,” I say. “But not my place. There’s an infestation. Poodles.”

She nods sagely.

“I have to close my tab,” I say and stumble up to the bar. The bartender turns around to close me out and I wait for my card, my eyes drifting over the pictures again.

And that’s when I see somebody I do recognize after all.

Whoisthat?

My drunk brain tilts, trying to match the face to a name.

I’ve almost got it when Tasha comes up behind me and buries her nose in my hair. Her lips find my neck and her hand grazes my wrist and I am going to need an underwear quick-change, or an industrial-strength hair dryer, if we don’t get them off me soon.