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“Think real carefully. Are you going to be sick?”

He pulls himself up more fully in his seat. “Absolutely not. I’m a gentleman,thankyouverymuch.”

I roll my eyes. “Getting sick has nothing to do with being a gentleman.” I study him for a minute, and as he’s staring back at me, he starts to tip forward in his seat.

“Right. Gentleman or not, here.” I buckle him in and grab my reusable grocery bag from the floor in the backseat. I hold out the handles to him. “Hang onto this. If you need to get sick, do it in here.”

He looks affronted. “I’m not going to get sick, Noli-bo-boli.”

“You’re also never going to call me that again,” I say. “If you get sick in my car, I will make your life on patrol a nightmare.” I slamthe door in his face but not before I watch his Adam’s apple bob on a giant gulp.

Good.

I don’t like puke. I can handle it. But I’d rather not.

I skirt the front of my car and sit down behind the wheel. As I pull away from the curb, Collin immediately starts pressing buttons and turning knobs on my console.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for my radio.”

“This isn’t a squad car.”

He sits back. I feel his gaze on me, and I resist the urge to cower. It’s slightly intimidating to drive with a cop in your front seat—even an inebriated one. But I take a deep breath, put on my metaphorical big-girl panties, and take charge.

“You’re going to need to tell me where you live.”

Somehow, we make it to Collin’s house—no thanks to the man himself. He’s a terrible navigator when he’s drunk, but fortunately I had a ballpark idea of where his house is.

“Alright, let’s get you inside and in bed.”

“Noli-bo-boli, I didn’t know you felt that way ’bout me.”

I grit my teeth, even as I feel color flood my cheeks. “Don’t flatter yourself, Rattler. And don’t call me that.”

Collin lets out a guffaw and then a hiccup. “Sorry. You’re so cute when you’re disgruntled. You get this teensy-tiny crease between your eyebrows. Boop.” He bops me on the forehead.

“Thanks for that,” I say dryly. “Here, up we go.”

It takes some effort, not because Collin is incapable of standing. There’s a little of that, sure, but mostly he keeps getting distracted. He’s a total punch-drunk. He’s flying from one topic of conversation to the next.

“Your hair looks like silk.”

“Monks probably shouldn’t get drunk, huh?”

“I feel like I could fly.”

“Do you like airplanes?”

He reminds me of a two-year-old.

“Collin, think. Where are your keys?”

He pats the pocket of his winter coat and then his jeans pockets. “Ah-ha! Mystery solved.”

He tries and fails to get the keys out of the front right pocket of his pants by jabbing his pointer finger directly through the denim fabric.

I grab his hand and yank it away. “I’ll do it.”