"Coming right up!" The girl beamed at Blaze, cast a slightly worried glance at Arik, who was still seasick pale, and then she skipped away. "Thanks," Arik said, sipping his beer and moving his fries around in their basket as though he wanted to build a fort out of them, not eat them. After "the incident," as Arik was calling it, at Mini Golf Insanity Land, Blaze had driven them to the closest place that sold alcohol, which turned out to be a sports bar that had tiny TVs at every table and waitresses in green-checkered plaid shirts and solid black mini shorts. The hardest thing they served was a malt beer, and Blaze had ordered two of them and a couple baskets of fried foods to fend off Arik's shakes. Whenever Blaze had an "incident" that powerful, he usually got a drop in blood sugar that could leave him flattened on the ground. And Blaze was absolutely sure that Arik had experienced an "incident" the likes of which were very familiar to Blaze. The kiss had been fraught with sizzle and spark, and Blaze had been halfway to the moon, high on the rare and cherished connection sensation, when Arik had staggered away, yelled loudly enough to make the wee humans cry, and stared at Blaze in a weird mixture of accusation and fast-dying hope.
