Chapter One
“Come on, Zoey. No one ever died from taking a shot.” My very best friend, Cheyenne Winslow, pushes the shot glass across the table. Her wild curls are pulled back in a hair tie to keep them off her neck. We’re both sweating like crazy in this oddly hot October weather.
I stare at her. “Plenty of people have probably died from taking a shot. Like, from alcohol poisoning? Or, if they were allergic?”
She sighs. “Please, Zoey. I know you’re not allergic to alcohol. How long have we lived together? And on the rainbow of alcohol poisoning, you aren’t anywhere near the pot of gold, honey.”
“Where did you even find a shot of tequila at Oktoberfest, anyway?” I ask.
She smiles evilly and takes a sip out of her giant beer stein. “I have my ways. Besides, we’re here to get over—wait, what was that asshole’s name?”
“Chet.”
“Okay. First take the shot. And then, I have questions.”
I grab the shot glass and down the tequila. Then I pick up my beer stein and take a big gulp of cold beer to chase it. “Ugh. Fine. Shoot.”
“What the hell kind of a name is Chet? I mean, why didn’t that kind of a name just turn you off immediately? Like, when he said his name, didn’t you automatically want to put more clothes on?”
I grimace. “Kind of.”
“I have another question. Didn’t he have a barbed wire tattoo?”
I look down at the table. “Um, maybe. Say, do you want to walk around, like, maybe, look at the booths?”
Cheyenne hops off her barstools. “Yeah. But my question stands. Did he or didn’t he?”
“Didn’t he what?”
“Have a cliché tattoo?
“He had them around his ankles, too,” I mumble. I slip off of my own barstool and follow her onto the street, which has been partitioned off and lined with booths and vendors. Cheerful men dressed in lederhosen—at least, I think it’s lederhosen—and women dressed as barmaids check IDs and offer refills. I used to love Oktoberfest, but today, it’s all sort of grim.
Cheyenne laughs out loud. “And we don’t need to go over how he dumped you, which is the sole reason we are here, getting sloshed, this very day.”
“No, we don’t,” I agree, grimly. Because he dumped me by—well, not dumping me. One day, on his Facebook, he just announced he was tired of his old girlfriend and wanted people to hook him up with a new one.
Old girlfriend being me.
“He was a douche canoe,”Cheyenne says.“Like, literally a douche canoe. If there were instructions on how to build a douche canoe you would actually use Chet Donelson’s skin. I swear.”
I stare at Cheyenne. “Are you talking about building a boat out of my ex-boyfriend’s skin?”
She stares back. “Damn right I am.”
I lift my beer stein. “That’s why you’re my girl.”
We drink. And then we refill our beer steins, and we drink some more. A group of wasted college guys gives us blinking beer mug necklaces.
“Are we really wearing these?” Cheyenne asks, holding hers up between pinched fingers.
“They look great,” I say. “You’re like the hottest beer stein wearer I’ve ever seen.”
She spins in a circle, the little mugs clicking around her neck, laughing. I hold up my phone and snap a picture of her, and she leans in so we can take a selfie together. I’m hardly thinking about Chet at all.
“Look!” Cheyenne shrieks suddenly, peeling herself away from me. “Puppies!”
We stumble over to the humane society cages, where they try to convince half-drunk Oktoberfest-goers to adopt adorable shelter dogs. Right now, a German Shepard is sitting patiently on a leash, thumping its tail against the hot asphalt, tongue wagging.
“Oh my gosh, sooooooooooooo cute.”
I turn, and that’s when I see him.
“Right?” I say, but Cheyenne is already stooping down to pet the dog. But I’m not paying attention. And I'm not talking about the dog.
Because across the street, standing in the shade next to the old fire station, are two cops.
And the officer on the right—there’s only one word for him: hot. He’s tall with bright blue eyes, and just a little facial hair, like maybe he forgot to shave that morning. His arms are muscular, and he has an ass I could bounce a quarter off of. At least, I would love to try.
“Cheyenne!”
“What?” She bounces up. “Can we adopt this German Shepard? I think he loves me. How can you tell if a dog loves you? Because I think maybe this dog is for sure in love with me.”
I pull down my sunglasses, still staring across the street. “Can I adopt him?”
Cheyenne spins around, beer sloshing out of her stein. “Holy shit. What calendar did he escape from?”
“Helllloooo Mr. Oktober,” I giggle. I take another drink of my beer. My mind is buzzing nicely by now. Almost buzzed enough to tell Cheyenne that she can bring the German Shepard home.
“I’d sign up for that fan club,” Cheyenne quips.
“I’d get jackets,” I say.
“I’d pay a yearly membership fee for a timeshare.” Cheyenne pauses. “Is that how timeshares even work? I don’t know. I never was rich enough to get robbed like that.” She takes another drink. “If you’re not going in, I am.”
“Stop. I saw him first. You were all about the German Shepard. That would be like me adopting the German Shepard that you saw first.”
Cheyenne crosses her arms. “We live together, so you basically would be.”
“Fine. We’re close enough to share a dog, but Officer McHottiepants is all mine.”
Cheyenne stares at me. “Oh my god. You’re trashed. But fine. If you’re going to stake a claim, do it. Walk across the street and kiss him.”
I blink at her. “What? Like, right now?”
“What’s stopping you?”
I look across the street, at the man leaning on the bricks of the old fire station turned café.
I take another drink of my beer. I’m definitely drunk enough. Maybe too drunk.
But what’s too drunk?
So I wade through the crowd in the middle of the street, cooing over puppies and buying jewelry and other little knickknacks, and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m standing in front of him, and his ice blue eyes are fixed on me. He smiles, just slightly, and the other officer crosses his arms in front of his chest.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” His voice has the slightest accent to it, like maybe he was born somewhere else, but I can’t place it. My eyes focus on his badge—Officer Banks.
I spot a golf cart parked next to the curb that says POLICE. “Nice car,” I say, pointing.
His eyes are still smiling as he responds. “Great gas mileage. I’m going green.”
I smile at him over my stein. “I like a man who cares about the environment.” I can’t believe I’m doing this. “I’m Zoey Winston,” I tell him. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Porter Banks.”
“That’s very good to know, Porter.”
He smiles back at me, widely this time, showing even white teeth that should be in a toothpaste commercial. “And why is that good to know, Zoey?”
“Because I promised my mother I’d never kiss a man without knowing his name first.”
His brow furrows. “Excuse me?”
Before I can lose my liquid nerve, I stand up on my tiptoes—Porter is tall, even for a girl like me—and press my lips to his.
And Porter—he doesn’t exactly kiss me back, but he doesn’t exactly not kiss me back, either. And I swear, before I pull away, I feel the slightest little flip of his tongue. I wrap my arms around him, squeezing him tightly, and then I release him.
“Thank you for your service, officer,” I say. I blow him an extra kiss, and I walk away, my head spinning, trying not to trip over my feet on the sidewalk.