Chapter 8: Lightweight
** Eli **
Something seemed off about Harper. Even in the dim light of the theater room, Eli could see the flush on her face. The rosy hue over her cheeks had turned into a bright red, and she looked like a perfectly ripened peach.
Was she drunk? Eli glanced at the empty martini glass in her hand. It was only a light drink. Could her tolerance really be that low?
"What about a soda if you don't feel like another round?" he offered again and straightened back into his side of the seat, reaching for the tablet as he tried to remember what kind of drinks she liked as a kid. "Strawberry lemonade?"
"No, I'm fine, really," Harper replied all too quickly. "I'm just— Actually, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. I could always use a strawberry lemonade in the summer."
... She was definitely behaving oddly. Eli studied her with another skeptical look, affirming his suspicion that she was super lightweight. He wondered idly how that was possible for someone with the last name McKenzie, or how four years of college life had not trained her at all.
Their order came quickly. As soon as the curtains rustled and the glass clinked lightly on the table behind them, Harper got up, not even giving him a chance to bring it over for her. She grabbed the drink, downed a huge gulp, then settled herself at the mini bar.
"I think ... I think I'll take some cookies too," she mumbled, her eyes locked on the dessert tray in front of her.
Eli felt a bit lost. Even more so when Harper just sat there, not actually moving to take a cookie as she claimed. It wasn't until then that he noticed she looked unusually tense. She was stretching her back taut in a rigid line, and she rubbed her thumbs together in a way that she always did when she was nervous.
Wait. It couldn't be that she was shy?
Realization struck, and it finally occurred to Eli that she had only started taking those huge gulps of her drink when things got too heated on the screen. The flush of her cheeks ... Could that have been from blushing, instead of alcohol?