The Secret Recipe for Moving On by Karen Bischer (ebook reader for manga txt) 📕

Willow rips her coat off and throws it over a chair. “Bring it on!”

“This is hardly a fair fight,” Luke says, his eyes twinkling.

“What, you think just because I’m small I can’t keep up with a giant like you?” Willow says, pushing up her sleeves.

“Welllllll,” Luke says with a shrug.

“She can totally hold her own,” Alisha says, nodding enthusiastically.

“This I gotta see,” Luke says as he sets to work clearing the cups off the table and Alisha replaces them with new ones. They then fill some of the cups with soda and others with beer. Luke and I stand at one end of the table and Alisha pretends to glare at us from the other end.

“You guys ready to get creamed?” Luke says.

“In your dreams, Burke,” Alisha retorts, and Willow high-fives her.

Luke rests his hands on my shoulders and looks straight into my eyes. “Don’t let me down, Agresti. I’m counting on you and your sobriety to anchor us. I had no idea Willow apparently drinks like a pirate, and now I’m scared.”

I can’t help but laugh.

“Look at you, all loosey-goosey,” he says, shaking his head, but he winks at me.

I’ve never played beer pong and it shows in my first few attempts at landing a ball in a cup. Most bounce off the table. Or don’t even hit the table and just whack people standing nearby.

“It’s okay,” Luke says, nudging me in the side with his elbow. “Sometimes it takes a while to become at one with the cups.”

“All right, Buddha,” I snort.

Alisha is, distressingly, awesome. She lands almost every one of her shots, and if she wasn’t so damn nice, I’d have to hate her for it. And Willow comes as advertised. On the few shots Luke lands, she chugs her cups of beer defiantly and still maintains an air of sobriety. She’s also a pretty good shot herself.

This, however, means Luke and I are drinking a lot. By the end of the first game, which Alisha and Willow of course win, I’m getting jittery from caffeine and sugar. Luke, probably because he’s so tall, doesn’t seem that buzzed.

“Rematch?” Luke yells across the table.

Willow points back at him with a determined “You’re on!”

A.J. appears then with a tray of the appetizers and offers them to us.

“How’s it going?” he wants to know as he scarfs down a pizza bagel.

“Pretty terrible,” I sigh.

“Nonsense. Agresti is learning as she goes,” Luke says, putting his arm around me. I try not to think about how nice this feels, and chalk up this gesture to the alcohol finally kicking in for him.

“Ooh, ooh!” A.J. says, placing the tray on the table. “Try throwing more on an upward angle and then aim down.” He pantomimes throwing and I follow his lead, and amazingly, this seems to work. I fire at a cup and actually manage to get the ball in.

“Eeeeeee!” I say, jumping up and down. Luke gives me a double high five and even Alisha and Willow clap their hands delightedly.

Alisha’s incredible aim still kills us, but at least I land two shots in the next game. Luke, exhibiting signs of buzzdom, collapses dramatically into a chair next to the table as Willow and Alisha do a victory dance to the Jay-Z song blaring from the living room.

“If you all will excuse me for a bit, I need to get my dance on,” Willow says, boogying into the living room.

“I will never underestimate anyone’s drinking ability again. Even if they are under five feet tall,” Luke says, chugging a big cup of water. I stand in front of him and jokingly fan him with a place mat.

“Are we throwing in the towel?” I ask, and the weirdest thing happens. Luke looks up from his cup and his eyes lock on mine with such an intensity that I feel it—like I’ve been hit by a burning cattle prod on the inside. Then, ever so slightly, his knee brushes mine. And I think it’s intentional. It catches me off guard so much that I stop fanning. I don’t even know what to say or what to do, but I do know—

“You guys gotta stay,” A.J. says, making me jump. “I wanna play you!”

“I’ll be your partner!” Alisha pipes up with a big smile.

“Great,” A.J. squeaks, his ears turning pink. He totally likes her.

So now we definitely have to keep playing. There’s no way I can let my terrible aim and Luke’s growing drunkenness stand in the way of a possible love connection. Especially since I’m glad it diverts from the cattle-prod feeling inside me because I don’t even know what to do with that.

Luke raises his eyebrows at me and grins. “I guess we’re gonna keep going.”

“I guess we’re gonna lose again,” I laugh, as Alisha and A.J. bring in new cups on their side.

Luke stands up and his smile gets bigger. We’re so close, our sweaters are trading static electricity. Like, if I were to touch him right now, we’d get zapped with a shock. “We’re having fun, right?”

I nod.

“Good,” he says. Then he leans his face a little closer to mine. “And I haven’t told you this yet, but you, uh, look really nice tonight.”

I feel the heat rising to my face and pretend to study my outfit so he can’t see it. “Oh, thanks. So do you. Navy’s, uh, your color.”

“Is that so?” he says, straightening up and making his chest puff out. “Well then, I guess we make a good-looking pair, huh?”

My heart is racing. And I really don’t think it’s the caffeine.

Two hours later, Luke and I have finally won a game of beer pong (though I think Alisha and A.J., who seem to have a growing flirty vibe going on, took pity on us and let us win), the crowd has thinned out, and we’ve cleaned up and bagged most of the bottles and cans, which are now ready for the recycling facility. And all that soda I drank has