First, guilt. Cold and tidal. Even if some sophomoric little fragment of him had wanted to wreak anything worse than loosening the kid up, he had never hoped to make him into the blanched, miserable-looking thing that came lurching down the stairs. Shit. Time to move on to water.
After, when the chill pulled away (gravity: it was a couple of glasses of wine, not like he’d poured Everclear down his throat, for Chrissake), what remained was uneven terrain gnarled by Jude’s alarm, a larval thought that he should probably defer to despite there being no indication that anything had changed between now and then.
He squinted a series of glances toward the dog, the window -- raindrop streaks -- the rifle, the kid. Still too fuzzy in his own head to make any solid connections. “Um. Pretty sure I shouldn’t be behind the wheel right now. Don’t drink and drive, and you’ll stay alive, you know that one? Plus I don’t have a damn clue where there’s a store … Gas station a couple of miles out, I guess …”
After, when the chill pulled away (gravity: it was a couple of glasses of wine, not like he’d poured Everclear down his throat, for Chrissake), what remained was uneven terrain gnarled by Jude’s alarm, a larval thought that he should probably defer to despite there being no indication that anything had changed between now and then.
He squinted a series of glances toward the dog, the window -- raindrop streaks -- the rifle, the kid. Still too fuzzy in his own head to make any solid connections. “Um. Pretty sure I shouldn’t be behind the wheel right now. Don’t drink and drive, and you’ll stay alive, you know that one? Plus I don’t have a damn clue where there’s a store … Gas station a couple of miles out, I guess …”