Page 101 of Bourbon Love Notes

I roll my eyes, though he can't see me anymore. "Sure," I tell him.

"You better."

"Okay, I'm in my locked car, driving down the street where I can run someone over if need be. I think we can end our call now, but it was a pleasure."

"This conversation isn't over," Brody says.

"All I have to do is push the 'end' button, and it will be."

"Meet me at Peak Pub tomorrow at eight," he says.

"No, thanks," I sigh.

"How many times do I have to ask you to meet me for a drink before you agree?"

I smile, feeling the warm sense of sin flare through my cheeks. "So many, you won't be able to count high enough."

"This isn't part of the game," he informs me. The game. A game we started when we were seventeen. A game that ended when we were nineteen. A game without any name or rules—just two people playing each other. For some reason, he thinks this so-called-game has restarted after all this time.

"What game?" I stick my tongue between my teeth, feeling like I'm holding power in this conversation that needs to end.

"Fine. You get the first point," Brody says. "Goodnight, carrot-top."

I grab my phone and hit 'end' button without saying goodbye.

It's a long fifteen-minute drive filled with racing thoughts before I'm pulling into the parking lot of the old-stone-mill that houses my studio apartment.

I find myself peeking over my shoulder while clutching my phone in one hand and my keys in the other, wishing the landlord would add a couple of lights to this parking lot. It isn't until I'm inside my eight-hundred square-foot open space that my shoulders relax and my pulse slows. With another peek at the dark screen of my phone, I toss the device onto the counter. Encircling my small kitchen and hang my bag off the back of the bar-stool.

The quiet hits me as I stare out the dark windows, knowing there is nothing out there but the view of cloud covered mountaintops that can't be deciphered at this time of night.

I drop down onto my sofa and toss my head back, staring through the window, upside down, toward the slight blur of the hidden moon. "I miss you so much," I utter. "It hurts. It hurts like it was yesterday. I hope you can hear me."