A Toast to the Good Times - By Liz Reinhardt Page 0,59

looking in. Mila pulls herself up to a sitting position and wraps the thin blanket around her shoulders. “Morning, I was just…”

“Talking to yourself?” I raise my brows and chuckle.

“Pretty much,” she admits. She cracks a small, embarrassed smile and runs her hand through her long hair, nervously trying to work some of the tangles out with her fingers. “Where’ve you been? And, um, why are you sparkling? Is that glitter?”

I look down at my black t-shirt and, sure enough, the front is sprinkled with the silver glitter from the crocheted snowflakes.

“I was upstairs in the attic, and there’s lots of glitter. And dust. Nevermind…I have something for you.”

I feel like I’m eight years old again, sure I’m getting a new bike, rushing down the stairs and seeing just the front of the wheel and a huge red bow. I remember feeling like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. That’s exactly the way I feel right now, waiting to show her what I have for her.

“Landry, you didn’t need to buy me anything. Really. Last night was…it was so, so good. Seriously. It was amazing. And happy. And thank you. I truly appreciate what we...did together. I do.”

“Merry Christmas,” I say, interrupting her babbling. I place the drawing on her bare legs. She’s still wearing nothing but a camisole and panties, though she must’ve gotten cold in the middle of the night because her un-sexy socks are back on. “I didn’t buy it, but I do want you to have it.”

“Merry Christmas,” she answers uncertainly. She inspects the gift with careful attention.

It’s a simple sketch, done on what used to be plain white paper, but it’s now yellowed and wrinkled in the corners. It has seven boxes, each with a sequential drawing, a comic strip done on the fly while the artist sat at my grandfather’s bar.

“What is this?” Mila asks, but her voice quivers like she knows half of what I’m going to say before I tell it, because half of the reason this gift is amazing would be common knowledge to a fan-girl like her.

But the other half is part of a story that I want to share with her and make part of our own story, the story of the two of us and how we did this crazy thing together.

She stares down at the drawing of the familiar scene.

There’s a pretty simple arc. A woman, in love, dreamy-eyed, with a man looking bleary and worn. The man’s obvious surprise and upset and the woman’s furious reaction. A huge fight, and a couple divided. Moping. Missing each other. The man sheepishly returning, with a simple gift of hand-picked daisies. A passionate embrace.

A simple story of lovers finding their way back to each other plays out in the sketch.

I know she can recognize the craftsmanship of the drawings, and I know she recognizes other elements that are now familiar to her, mainly the interior of what’s presently my father’s bar, right down to the old gilt mirror and the intricately carved wooden bar counter.

“This belonged to my grandmother. A man walked into their bar...” I pause when Mila’s brows pull together. “And no, that’s not the start of a joke.”

She traces a finger over the smooth paper and smiles down at it. “That’s a relief. You’re a terrible joke teller.”

“You always laugh at my jokes!” I exclaim, a little shocked that I’m apparently way less funny than she’s been pretending.

“Well, you’re funny.” She tries to wink, and that baby panda sneeze face is staring back at me. “And you’re super cute. So I always laugh. At you. With you.” She laughs.

Which makes me laugh, automatically, like her laugh’s the trigger and mine’s the bullet.

“Okay, enough outta you, smartass. Anyway, back to the comic. So, this stranger walked into the bar on the worst night of Grandpa’s life. He’d pissed off my grandmother...like royally pissed her off by forgetting their anniversary. So, this man was from out of town, just looking for a quiet place to collect his thoughts or whatever. He had a few drinks, and eventually told Gramps that he had had a rough night, too.”

I take her hand and thread my fingers through hers. She stares at our two hands, locked together. “Gramps tried to give him his drinks on the house after the poor guy sat there and listened to him whine all night about how Gram might not be there when he got home, but the guy insisted on paying.