A Toast to the Good Times - By Liz Reinhardt Page 0,8

the door of the bar with all of my weight, slamming into it with force that I should be careful about exerting while I’m this intoxicated, but it still won’t budge. The door has jammed like this since I bought my tiny dump of a bar last year.

I’ve really got to get someone out here to fix the piece of crap.

Or, just never close up the place.

Right now, that’d suit me just fine.

Except Mila once told me that twenty-four hour bars made her sad. That it was hard to believe that the people sitting on the stools at seven AM really had nowhere better to be. That there was no way no one was waiting for them at home.

Silly, naive, Mila.

Christ. Mila.

I flip on the lights, and the familiar buzz of the old bulbs interrupts the quiet, but does little to brighten up the dark, wood-paneled room. It’s dim enough even with the lights on that my eyes don’t need to adjust, so I hustle over to the bar, grab a Collins glass and get to work on forgetting that red dress, those unbelievably hot, albeit nerdy as shit, panties and the way Mila’s lips curved into the saddest little frowny-cat frown when I kissed her and then left her hanging like the callous tool that I am.

I toss a couple of ice cubes into the glass, squeeze the juice from a lime, and chuck the spent shell in with the ice. I reach behind me, grab the vodka without even having to look, and give a generous pour. I top it off with ginger beer and don’t waste any time throwing the drink back.

It’s been ages since I’ve had a Moscow Mule. My dad used to give me shit about drinking them, saying it was a sissy-vodka drink, that real men drink scotch, neat. He’d make it sound like I was drinking the equivalent of a watermelon breezer, or some other frou-frou drink that a wasted girl would parade around her sorority house with. But the mixture of vodka drenched in the ginger beer slinks down my throat like warm velvet.

Soft and smooth like Mila’s lips.

I slam the glass down onto the wooden bar top and start on a refill.

The last time I was drinking to forget, was the night I met Mila.

It was cold as shit that night. According to all of the weather guys, we were in the icy center of one of the coldest winters Boston had dealt with in at least nine years. Which might explain why Heather felt compelled to warm herself up with Tyler while I was out looking at the bar, stupidly still excited by all the potential the place held.

On the way back to my place, I had stopped at some cozy little bakery that Heather loved and grabbed us some hot cocoa and muffins, like a total romantic tool. I thought we could curl up in our tiny apartment, and I could tell her all about the place where I’d just plunked down every cent I had to my name in hopes that I could make it into a bar I could be proud of.

Instead, when I walked in, I found Heather grinding and moaning on top of my Santa-hat-wearing asshole of a best friend.

Merry Christmas to me, right?

I dropped the stupid cocoa in the doorway and high-tailed it outta there so furious and heart-sick and betrayed, I could barely see where I was going.

I wandered forever, not about to go back to the apartment and see if either one of those assholes was still there. And I couldn’t exactly go back to New Jersey since I’d pretty much fucked over my entire family, wound up in jail, and spent every penny I inherited on my brand new bar.

I had nowhere to go and the weather was getting worse by the second.

And to top it off, I stormed out of my apartment straight into the bitter cold of a Boston winter. The fucking wind was like a sucker kick to the gut.

Jesus, the wind that night practically blew me into that shitty little bar all on its own. Not that I fought very hard against the pull and warm familiarity of my go-to comfort escape place.

Bars always felt like home to me. They were in my blood. From the tiny gin joint that my grandfather owned, and then passed down to my dad, to the falling-down monstrosity I bought because I thought it would help me stake my claim and