A Toast to the Good Times (9 page)

She looks right at me, right into my eyes and speaks slowly, clearly.

“You can do better. You
should
do better. Because I truly believe you’re a good person. I’ve always cared about you, and I always will. But you need someone to tell you to pull your head out of your ass, or you’re never going to be happy.”

“And that someone is you?” I grin at her, and she chuckles.

“I don’t see anyone else lining up to help your stupid ass out.” She sips her soda, her lips gorgeous around that straw.

She’s
damn gorgeous. All of her. And it occurs to me that maybe this is my chance to get something back that I threw away when I was so damn young and dumb. I’ve been an ass, but maybe it isn’t too late to change that.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for the chance to see her in a few scraps of lace and some sweet body powder now.

I lean over the table and try to communicate my regret, the chance that I’m willing to take with her, my intentions, my apologies. I look at her and hope it all comes through, because I know my words won’t really be enough.

“Maybe I don’t have to look all that far to find someone way better than I deserve.”

She snorts and half-chokes on her soda. She gasps and grabs some napkins to cover her mouth. I get nervous, but she’s telling me that she’s fine through more wheezy laughter.

“Oh, that was so damn corny, Landry! Thank you.” Her laughs bubble up again, and, honestly, she’s losing cute points right and left. “Oh my god, look at you pouting! You’re actually pouting? We’re nothing but wrong for each other. Is that not beyond obvious?”

“But you just said...” I lift my hands. “On the train, you kissed...
you
kissed
me
.”

“Yes.” She pushes her eyebrows together like I’m a word problem in an impossible math class. “You are so damn hot, Landry. Seriously. And I was feeling sentimental, and I have a stupid, stupid soft spot for you. I do. But that was definitely a kiss
good-bye
. I’m on the verge of starting a whole new life. And all I really want, is just to let go of the past. Not relive it. And it would make me happy to know that you’re doing well, that you’re not wasting time with stupid people and running away from things. I feel like you’re at this same point I was at a while ago. And you have the chance to switch directions before you self-destruct. And you should.”

“This is the weirdest date ever,” I gripe, slumping back in the booth.

“I know.” She grabs the check that the haggard waitress drops before I have a chance to reach for it. “But I feel like it was fate that we saw each other today. And I feel...I have no idea, really. I feel like I
had
to tell you all this, and now I have this sense of total peace. And those disco fries were so amazing. I’m really glad we did this.”

She sighs and pats her stomach. “This was really good. But I’m beat and need to sleep and so do you. You look like death warmed over. Can I give you a lift back home?”

And she’s serious.

I realize that I’m not getting any more kisses or anything else good, and my pout deepens. I don’t give a shit if it makes her laugh. I’m pouting with good reason.

Toni looks at me and, even after all the childish bullshit I put her through, she sees something really good, something important. She sees potential in me, and that’s wildly attractive. I need that because she’s right; I’m at the edge of something amazing, and if I don’t grab on and go with it, it’s going to pass me by, and I’ll wind up a bitter old man.

And it feels like this is a moment I should be able to grab.

I should be able to scoop her up and make all my past mistakes right.

I have my hands deep in my pockets while she pays our tab, which I hate, but she insisted on it.

I walk her out into the glass lobby, and I pull at her delicate, tiny wrist before she gets to the doors, before she can go back into the bitter cold that’s going to blow the last of this hot thing we’ve got going away.

I lean down, and I can see from the way her lips shake and her dark eyes widen that she wants to kiss me again, no matter what she says. I’m eighty percent sure I’m getting that damn kiss when she pulls back sharply and presses hard on my chest.

“No.” It’s firm out of her mouth. So firm, there’s no questioning it, and I know better than to press my luck this time.

I rub my hands up and down her arms and watch her close those soft brown eyes and breathe in, deep and slow.

I swallow hard and lower my voice so I can control it. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” She blinks a few times and nods. “Yes.” She cups my face with one hand and rubs her thumb over my cheekbone. “You...wow, you’re hot. You really are. Please find a girl who doesn’t care how hot you are, Landry. A girl who doesn’t notice how cool and suave and
tortured you are, okay? Find a girl who can laugh with you. Laugh
at
you. Hard.
 
That’s the kind of girl you need.”

She gives me a shove. “Now back away. Seriously, you really are so hot, Landry. It’s just that whole first love thing, I guess. I’m a hopeless romantic.” She fans her pink cheeks with one hand as she marches to her car, shaking her head the entire way.

On the drive back to my house, she’s silent and guarded, sitting military straight and working to maintain the distance between us. I could push it, could try for another kiss and probably get it.

But I decide to actually listen to what Toni said to me, and, as I work it through in my head, it makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Heather was wrong
for me
in so many ways. I knew that.

And the string of gorgeous girls who’ve been jumping in and out of my bed for years? They haven’t been doing me any good either.

I’d say I need to take a break from girls in general, but that’s sort of impossible for me.

Toni’s car slows in front of my parents’ house. Creepy Santa shines bright from the upstairs window, but the rest of the house is pitch black.

“Thanks.” Not enough, definitely lame, but all I can think to say that isn’t pushing my luck or ruining things in a new and fresh way.

She presses her lips together and gives me this weird, tight smile. “You’re welcome. I hope...I hope you take what I said to heart.”

My hand is on the door handle. “So, tell me who he was.” She looks at me, her eyes narrowed with confusion. “Your lifesaver. The guy who swooped in to help you after I dicked you over like an asshole.”

There’s that sweet blush again.

“None of your business, Landry.” But she’s smiling in a way that makes me instantly hate whoever he is, especially because he’s obviously a smarter, better man than I am.

But I’m trying to take a cue from Toni and not be such a reprehensible douchebag all my life. “Alright. I can take a really, really obvious hint. Sometimes. Maybe I’ll see you around before I head back to Boston and you get all Euro-awesome.”

She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “I think we might. I’m helping your parents get their books in order before I head out. I think your dad’s been having a pretty hard time with the bar.”

I lean my forehead on the icy window glass and let my breath make a huge fogged ring. “Yeah.”

“Feeling guilty over leaving?” Her voice is soft.

“Yeah.”

“Well, you should.” There’s a definite bite to her words. “What were you thinking, Landry? Or, I guess, you weren’t thinking.” She clamps off the sentence before she can add the
as usual
I know she wants to tack on.

“I’ll fix it.”

I feel weird saying that because I don’t know how to fix my own shit, let alone my dad’s, and I had no plans to fix anything for anyone until those words popped out of my mouth, probably mostly influenced by my sickening overtiredness and the deep need to make Toni forgive my crazy asshole behavior and like me again, at least a little.

But she turns those eyes on me and her features are all softened like she’s looking at some returning hero instead of me, Landry Murphy, resident fuck up.

“I know you will.”

I lean over and kiss her at the place
right on the side of her lips,
half-regretting I lost permission to do more through my own jerkoff behavior. But I’m glad, too, because Toni as a friend is doing good things to my mostly shit present, and I know that’s worth more than a few memory-inspired rolls in the hay.

Not that I’d actually regret getting her in my bed, even as a temporary thing. I just get that it’s better if I don’t.

Sadly.

I watch her car pull away, let myself in through the always loose basement window like I’m some sad high
-
schooler sneaking around, and crash on the futon bed.

Chapter 7

The sound I awake to is familiar, but I still pause and try to place where I am for a minute. I blink until the fog clears from my eyes and my brain, though it doesn’t do much for the crick in my neck. The futon was never all that comfortable.

My brother, Henry, is in the corner of the room, tossing out swear words at the washing machine that’s thumping against the floor because the dumbass needs to redistribute the clothes.

“You need to open the lid and move the shit inside, douchebag,” I groan. “Yelling at an appliance will never fix the problem. Any problem.”

He flips the lid up to stop the lurching and cranes his neck around the corner to look at me with shock all over his face, and I realize I’ve missed this cocky little bastard.

I also feel the old-man jab of melancholy when I realize that he’s got scruff, isn’t the size of a toothpick, and looks more like someone I’d hang around and drink a beer with instead of the goofy baby brother I was always leaving behind.

It’s only been a year.

One year.

And with the realization that so little time has actually passed, and so damn much has already changed, I swear I start to wonder if Toni was the ghost of Christmas future or some shit.

“Landry?” Henry’s voice is low with shock.

Before I can respond, he runs at me, doing this weird shuffle-skip thing, nearly tripping over the frayed edge of the rug in his excitement, and then tackles me like we’re kids again.

“Holy shit! What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to teach you how to do laundry. Again,” I mumble. I try not to smile, because that’d be giving away how fucking glad I am to see this kid right now.

I haul myself off of the futon and stumble toward the washing machine.

“What time is it, anyway?” I ask.

Henry reaches into the pocket of his running shorts and pulls out his iPhone.

“Quarter to ten.”
 

I open the washing machine, rearrange the pile of sopping we
t, oversized towels, and groan.
I may have slept for a few hours, which is more than I get some nights after closing up the bar, but it feels like I’ve been up for days.

The fuck-up with Mila, the train ride, the run in with Dad, the pseudo date/rejection with Toni...there’s a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that aches for sustenance.

I let the lid of the washer slam harder than I need to. This is a routine Henry and I have done a thousand times. Not just with the washer
—
with everything. Changing the oil in his beater of a car, shoveling snow, cleaning gutters; anything that required a little work, Henry feigned ignorance or illness so he could hopefully get someone else to take over the majority of the job for him.

I’d normally be irritated by his old routine. But right now, I’m just glad to see him.

“You didn’t answer me, what are you doing home?” he repeats.

I collapse onto the black fabric of the futon and fight the urge to let the sound of the swishing water in the washing machine lull me back to sleep till New Year’s.

The answer to Henry’s question was simple a few hours ago but is getting more complicated by the second. I opt to dodge his question and move onto the simple family drama we’ll all be dealing with soon.

“Paisley says she has some major announcement. You got any idea what’s up?”

“Nope. But I hope she’s not knocked-up. That’s all I need right now, to live in this house after she drops that bomb.”

“She swore to me she’s not, but who knows? How you been, Henry?” I rub my hand across the rough stubble on my cheek that’s growing past busy-man five-o’clock-shadow, and drifting into pseudo-hippie who can’t afford shaving cream.

“I’m good. ‘Bout to start my last semester of school in the Spring, you know? Everyone else is good, too.” Henry throws in the last part a little more quietly.

I decide to let it go for right now.

“What’s the plan after school?”

Henry shrugs. “Dad wants me to use my degree to pick up contract work in Kuwait or some shit. Apparently, I can make like, two-hundred-fifty-grand working over there. Or, you know, get blown up. Mom wants me to stay close and teach.” He rubs his palms together and stares up at the popcorn ceiling. “Me? I’ve got no fucking clue.”