Fly With Me | ✓

48.1

"Stevie's not going to be mad at me, is she?"

"I don't think Stevie could be mad at you if you told her you killed someone."

Everleigh snorted. "She would help me hide the body."

"Honestly? Probably."

Everleigh laughed again. "I love her."

"I know you do."

"I love you too."

"I know you do."

Everleigh pouted. "You're supposed to say I love you back."

"You're really drunk right now, aren't you?"

"You're not Han-fucking-Solo. Tell me you love me, you fuckin' spoon."

Maverick laughed softly, squeezed her thigh. "Of course I love you."

Everleigh crossed her arms. "You're not even wearing my face on your shirt."

"You recognize that's my shirt?"

And it was. Everleigh had taken the tour shirt from his suitcase and pulled it on for the day. It was big on both of them which meant it was a fantastic shirt for cocktail making with no trousers on. But after she'd had enough to drink, all she'd had the energy—and, arguably, ability—to do was pull a pair of jeans on, slide a pair of sneakers on, and head to the car. It was a win on the Maverick tour shirt. One day that thing would be in the hall of fame. So there.

"It's our shirt, bestie."

Maverick was one to talk anyway. He was wearing Everleigh's GRAD 2023 hoodie her parents had bought her at the ceremony while she'd been catching up with Maverick. He'd claimed it was because he'd grabbed the wrong hoodie. Everleigh could tell from the small smile that pulled at the corner of his mouth it was for another reason.

Maverick laughed. "Oh my God."

"I'm really drunk," Everleigh said.

Maverick pulled the car into the driveway of the MARS house. "I'm sure that's a good thing for a party where you're all sampling cocktails."

"I had to quality assure them."

"Quality assure does not mean drink all of them." Maverick undid his seatbelt.

"The pitcher in the back says I did not drink all of them," Everleigh said.

"The pitcher in the back was your second attempt and don't even pretend it wasn't," Maverick said.

Bold words from someone who's cocktail was a carton of orange juice he was claiming was a "virgin mimosa." Because they had been requested to make their cocktails movie themed, Maverick had told Everleigh, with his poetically beautiful brain, that because his was based on Juno that it needed to be non-alcoholic—he'd called it You Mean As Friends?. Everleigh told him he was being lazy, Maverick said he wasn't denying that, and then she told him he should've picked Sunny D instead if he really cared that much. He went into some tirade about how he didn't know if yellow-6 mattered to Rami so the orange juice seemed to be the way to go for the veganism. That was when Everleigh started quality assuring her cocktail because what the fuck was yellow-6.

"If you can make it up the stairs by yourself, I'll carry the cocktails in and then come back to get Dewey," Maverick said.

"Why can't I take my cocktail in?" Everleigh asked. She'd worked hard on the Bloody Mary's all afternoon. Little knife food picks went through the olives as one last little shoutout. She'd called it Billy Loomis and had a field day when quality assuring. "I don't want you taking credit for it."