A Toast to the Good Times

Copyright © 2012 by Steph Campbell
& Liz Reinhardt

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

Published by

Steph Campbell
& Liz Reinhardt

Cover design by: Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Dedication

To old friends, new friends, Facebook friends;

To the loves of our lives, and those we’ve yet to love;

To our fellow authors, our readers, our cheerleaders;

You make it all worthwhile.

Salud
.
skål
.
Chin-chin.
Cheers.

Chapter 1

I swipe a wet rag over the black laminate
bar top
, sending stray popcorn and mixed nuts flying across the room and onto the freshly swept floor.

Idiot.

“Well, that seems counter-productive, Landry.” Her normally tiny voice
echoes
in the old bar that reeks of beer, woozy fun, and bleary regret. “Where’s the broom?”

I glance up to look at Mila.
 
Her hands are on her bony-ass hips, her dark bangs are half falling in her eyes, and her mouth is pursed in fake annoyance.

"In the corner."
 
I jerk my head toward the thousand-year-old broom stashed off to the side and go back to wiping down the bar until it gleams. “I thought you were on your way outta town? What are you doing here?”

“I don’t leave until late tonight. I came by because I knew I’d find your scurvy ass here moping...oh, I mean working.” She winks at me, or tries to.

She always kind of wrinkles her face and blinks before she manages to get just one eye closed.

It’s ridiculously cute, like one of those sneezing panda videos I pretend to think are stupid but secretly kinda love. Just because I spend time breaking up raging fist fights and serving brew in my own personal dive bar doesn’t make me totally devoid of emotions.

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, Landry. So, what are your plans? Please don’t tell me you’re really going to spend it sitting in this bar? Alone?”

I smile at her and refill the little bowls of pretzels and mixed nuts. “Nope. The bar’s gonna be open tomorrow. And the next day. No worries. I won’t be alone. Trust me, there’ll be plenty of sad saps who’ll be thrilled I’m here to keep the drinks flowing. We’ll have a great time ringing in the holiday.”

Mila clucks her tongue. “Seriously? That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard. You can’t spend Christmas in a bar. What would your parents
—
” she stops herself from finishing.

I cut my eyes to the left and see that she’s grinning hopefully, the hope being that she didn’t piss me off by mentioning my family.

I haven’t seen them in over a year.

None of them.

Not my mom, or dad, or even my brother or sister. This is the first Christmas I won’t help them make popcorn strings to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve while we watch
A Christmas Story
and fight over who gets to put that deranged-looking Santa on the top. It’s the first year I won’t piss my mom off by stealing food off the trays before she’s ready to serve them.
             

Because the last time I saw my mom, it was just after she posted my bail.

Which happened the night after I ended up in jail because I got in a fist fight.

With my dad.

“Well, I know one thing for sure. Your mom would say you need a haircut.”

She reaches over the bar and ruffles a hand through the thick, curly hair I’ve always sort of hated, but haven’t gotten around to getting cut lately.

“You the fashion police?” I flick a peanut at her.

She blocks it with her still-mittened hand. “I like your long hair. It’s kinda cute. But I know you’ve been
borrowing
my shampoo, and it was okay when you had almost no hair. Now I think you’re using more than I am.”

“Now we’re even, because I know you used the last of my dental floss and then left the empty container in the drawer. That was lowdown, Mila. I had a popcorn kernel stuck in my tooth the other night, and it was hell. Pure hell.”

She winces. “Shit. Guilty as charged. Guess who’s getting a year’s supply of dental floss in his stocking this year?”

“Just put it on the shopping list when you’re done stealing it, thief.” I throw her my best charming smile. “And I’ll lay off your shampoo. It makes my hair so damn shiny and manageable, though.”

“Maybe Santa will get you some of that, then. I can’t believe you want lavender shampoo.” She wrinkles her nose at me, and I toss a piece of popcorn at her, which she catches in her mouth.

“You should be glad I like smelling nice. It makes living with me easier, right?”

“Truth,” she sighs, leaning on the bar and munching on a few cashews from the bowl.

Mila and I have been roommates since a few weeks after I moved to Boston from little old Branchville, New Jersey. I know everyone thinks we’re more than friends, but we aren’t and never have been.

“Listen, though, I’m serious about hating the idea of you spending the holidays in this bar. It’s beyond depressing. I feel like I have to step in and stop this madness.” She hops on a barstool and pulls off her hat and mittens, like she means business. Like she’s planning to stay a while.

Oh, shit.

I toss the sticky rag back under the bar and it sloshes around in the bucket of brown water.

“Look, Mila, it’s not a big deal. I’ll be fine.”

“I know. I mean, I know you’ll be alive and buzzed and stuffed on stale pretzels. But think about your soul.”

She puts one hand over the red scarf she still has tied around her neck. She always has a scarf on, even at home, I guess for weird girly fashion? Or maybe because it’s always so bitter cold in our tiny, uninsulated dump of an apartment, she just has to keep warm anyway she can.

“I have no soul,” I gripe, and she laughs at me.

“You are a calamity. You are a Christmas miracle just waiting to happen.” She hops back off the barstool, sweeps the pile of unmentionably disgusting crap into the dustpan, and throws it out before leaning on the broom handle and looking at me with that bad-idea look she gets so often. “Hey, since you’re going to be serving brew on Christmas, and I refuse to trade my last shred of humanity in by joining you, we should do a little shindig tonight. You up for it?”

“You’re sweet. I appreciate it. I do. But shift isn’t over for five hours, and I don’t think I’ll be able to face one more sauced person wearin
g a Santa hat and wishing me a M
erry Christmas after I’m done.
Rain check
?”

I hold out a hand for the broom, and she passes it to me.

“Just me and you, then. We’ll unironically watch
It’s a Wonderful Life
, I’ll scrounge up some delicious food,
and we
can sit in sleeping bags on the couch and attempt to keep warm. What do you say? Say ‘yes.’ Oh, and do you like cranberry sauce with the berries?” She wrinkles her nose. “Or without? You seem like a ‘without the berries’ kinda guy. Am I right? You know what? I’ll just pick up both. Okay?”

Maybe I could have managed to let her down gently, let her know I’m really not in the mood at all. But she does the two-eyed baby-panda-sneeze wink.

It
is
two days before Christmas.

And I do, I guess, have a tiny shred of soul buried deep inside somewhere.

“Okay. Okay, sounds...fun.” I attempt to not look completely unexcited and she narrows her eyes.

“You’re the worst liar. Ever. Anyone ever tell you that?” She backs to the door, pulling her hat over her dark, messy hair streaked with fire-engine red pieces. “But this will be epic, Landry! Epic merriness, and it will make me feel better. To spread some Christmas cheer to the ultimate
Grinch
!” She throws her skinny arms up and knocks into the bells above the door. “Ho ho ho!”

I can’t help smiling, and it turns into a laugh fast. Mila is definitely a little dorky, but she’s got this irresistible cheerfulness that always manages to crack me up, no matter how hard I try to wallow in my own stubborn depression.

She’s probably the reason I didn’t leave Boston with my tail between my legs the first month, when everything felt like it had gone to overwhelming shit, and I felt like a huge failure. And it wasn’t just because she picked up half the rent.

Mila was someone dependable. Comfortable. Someone who wasn’t after anything from me.

She was someone to watch cartoons with in the mornings and never bitch
ed
that it was juvenile.

And even if she didn’t remember to replace my dental floss, she always remembered to pick up milk, so we could eat our Lucky Charms the way they were intended to be eaten and not with water or juice, both of which I had sadly attempted, unsuccessfully, pre-Mila.

She danced around the kitchen to awful girly pop music while she cooked even more awful food, and then, as she forced me to eat her inedible cooking, she told me stories about the people who came to the library where she worked and who were so freaking unbelievably crazy, they had me rolling even on my worst days.

She and I were both pigs, so our apartment was almost always a warzone, but Mila added some kind of magical touch that still made it feel homey, gym-sock stink and all.

Living with Mila was like having a sister-like person around.

Only less annoying.

Maybe like a pretty cool cousin.

Or, I guess, I could call her a best friend.

I start to restock glasses and think about the fact that she’s been, possibly, my
only
true friend here. There was this guy who came with me from my hometown,
Tyler
. We were supposed to see about buying this bar to run together. But he wound up sleeping with my girlfriend at the time, and we beat the piss out of each other when I caught him. So it seemed like a good idea to let that partnership go.

I find myself slamming the glass in my hand down a little harder than I mean to when I remember Heather, naked, on top of
Tyler
.

In my bed.