ONE
I wasn’t in a very cheery mood.
Despite my best efforts otherwise.
Christmas Eve normally found me at my merry-and-brightest, but I couldn’t seem to find any of that usual energy to keep me pushing through the endless stream of customers augmenting their own moods with liquor.
If I had to make one more Mistletoe Mule, I was going to scream.
Not really.
But, I cursed the lack of foresight in my lively agreement to work the bar — on Christmas Eve of all nights — a little more with every cute metal cup with the Night Shift logo on it I dropped to the counter in front of me.
Ice.
Vodka.
Lime Juice.
Laken’s precious hard ginger beer.
Cranberry juice.
Stupid mini candy cane on the side.
“You should try to look a little more sullen,” Lark teased as she came to a nearby register to cash a ticket out. “Really drive home the cranky bartender on Christmas vibe.”
“I’m giving a vibe?” I questioned with wide eyes — a response that garnered a raised eyebrow from my cousin.
“You’re joking, right?” she finished what she was doing, then grabbed the receipt and a nearby pen before turning to walk away. “You’ve been in a mood all week…”
Really?
Shit.
And here I’d been thinking I was doing at least a decent job of hiding it.
My arrival in Blackwood hadn’t been timed with the holidays, but they’d certainly been a potent factor in what some — my parents — called a snap decision to run off across the world.
As if there weren’t any nonstop flights between here and New Orleans.
I could admit that I’d hated to uproot my life – if we could even call it that – with very little explanation or preparation, but when one of my favorite cousins got the inkling I needed a change of space and pace and offered me a job, it had taken little thought to accept.
Hell, I didn’t even think about it.
I just said yes, cause the thinking had already happened. I couldn’t take another round of holidays like last year.
Last year was a damn disaster.
And this year hadn’t been shaping up to be much better emotionally until I bought the plane ticket I hoped was going to bring a major shift to my life. I’d felt such immediate relief stepping into Night Shift that first day, fresh off my flight, that it was a bit jarring to hear you’ve been in a mood since you arrived.
“How’s this?” I asked Lark when she came back, after I’d loaded one of the server’s trays with tonight’s signature cocktail. I put on my biggest smile, and Lark’s eyes went wide.
“Babe… it’s fucking terrifying,” she said, so solemnly that I immediately put my teeth back in my mouth.
And then we both broke into laughter.
“Why would you say that?!” I asked once I’d regained a bit of composure.
“Because I like to deal in the truth,” she laughed, stepping in closer to meet my gaze. “Don’t do that shit ever again in your life.”
“In life?”
“In life,” she giggled, then dipped her head to ask, “Hey, seriously though… you good?”
“Yes,” I swore, putting a hand to my chest. “It’s just… you know…”
She groaned, pulling me into a hug. “Yeah, I do. Fuck him for ruining everything for you.”
Everything covered a lot, unfortunately, but I knew that right now she was mostly referring to my usual enjoyment of the holiday season. Since childhood, I’d been very much a Holly Jolly Christmas kinda chick, to the point of annoyance for friends and family.
The him was my ex-husband, who’d absolutely bested me in one last act of pettiness – having me served at the office party on Christmas Eve – the party I planned — when I hadn’t even realized my marriage was in that much trouble.
It was frighteningly vindictive.
And disastrously effective.
His goal had been maximum emotional damage, and he absolutely achieved it – months and months later, not only was I damn near dreading the winter holiday season, I was still getting pity stares at the office – a big reason behind me finally saying fuck it and moving to Blackwood on a whim.
I was the Kimble.
Making Kimble Bourbon Co. my family’s business, over generations.
I shouldn’t be the one feeling awkward and out of place at work, he should.
Instead, he was still welcome with open arms, while I felt damn near ostracized except for a select few family members who refused to fuck with him because of how he’d chosen to fuck over me.
If I had my way, he’d have been thrown from the roof of the building – onto a big bean bag or something that was put there last minute, but still. That was not, however, how that cookie crumbled.
Instead of settling for crumbs, I packed up my shit and did what I’d wanted to do for damn near a decade anyway.
I went to work with my cousins.
“I’m not even stressing it,” I said, although I hadn’t hung a single decoration in the apartment over the bar – Laken’s old place that was mine now, since he’d purchased a condo with his wife. I hadn’t even brought anything with me and had purposely avoided those areas in stores over the few weeks I’d been here.
Lark gave me a look, letting me know she damn well knew better than to believe the lie coming out of my mouth, but she just pursed her lips as she released the hug, clearly choosing not to address it.
Yet.
But I knew her enough to know it would come.
In the meantime, I went back to the same thing as before – slogging through those damn mistletoe mules. Eventually, the crowd started thinning out into the more “usual” crowd of first responders and hospital staff that Night Shift was a staple for.
Once the bar service was all caught up, I took the opportunity to peek at my phone, immediately frowning at what I saw on the screen.
“Can we talk? – Rex.”
“No the fuck we cannot,” I answered aloud, but didn’t actually respond to his inquiry. The only reason I hadn’t full on blocked his ass was because our jobs at Kimble Bourbon were tangentially related enough that sometimes I had to communicate with him. But now that I’d moved on to take on a sales management role at Kimble Brewing, there wasn’t shit he needed to say to me.
Thank God I didn’t give his ass any babies.
I slipped the phone back in my pocket just as Lark approached again, this time with a tablet in hand, asking about the commemorative champagne glasses I’d insisted on for the New Year’s festivities at the bar. It only fell into my purview because I thought it would be a cool item to add for merchandizing – we could mark up all the champagne and champagne cocktail sales that night because they got to keep the glass.
“The delivery is set for Tuesday, but it’ll probably be Wednesday honestly,” I told her. “Thank goodness Keris got the design back to me on such a tight turnaround.”
“I told you she could do it – that girl is a freaking gem,” Lark gushed on her way to the back, making me grin. The way she’d embraced her sister-in-law was such a sharp contrast to the way she’d been about Rex, and with good reason I hadn’t quite been able to see.