The Mistletoe Kisser: Blue Moon #8

by Score, Lucy

  She released a sigh nearly as weary as his soul felt. “You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked.

  “Why in the hell would I remember you?” he demanded. He’d never been to this bizarre, little, special-brownie twilight zone before and he highly doubted she’d come to him for accounting advice. He would have remembered that face, those lavender eyes.

  “Winter Solstice Celebration? Fifteen years ago? One Love Park?” she pressed.

  “I know very few of the words that just came out of your mouth.”

  Fifteen years ago, his parents had announced their divorce. He’d spent that Christmas morning in his father’s bare-walled condo eating cold cereal and opening a plastic bag of unwrapped presents. That afternoon he’d been shuttled to his mother’s new townhouse to repeat the process. It had sucked. Every Christmas since had pretty much sucked too.

  Great. An hour in this damn polar hamlet, and he was already suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder.

  “You seriously don’t remember?”

  Now she looked annoyed. Good. Ryan liked annoyed better than amused. “Look. I don’t know you. I don’t know this sheep. And I have shit to do,” he announced.

  With that, he spun on his heel and pushed through the door.

  “It’s not like I don’t know where you’re staying,” she called after him.

  “I’ll be gone by lunch tomorrow,” he predicted.

  Without a backward glance at Goat Guy chasing the big goat around the parking lot, Ryan headed in the French-accented direction of the nearest liquor store.

  The Monthly Moon: Apocalypse Recovery a Long Road: How to Grow Out Your Perm by Anthony Berkowicz

  6

  Lunar Liquors was located across the street from a grocery store called Farm and Field Fresh. Ryan zipped his car into a spot at the back of the lot. On reflex, he pulled out his phone and tried to check his work emails. When the app prompted him for his new username and password, he remembered there was no work, therefore, no work emails.

  He did, however, have a text from Bart Lumberto, one co-worker he wouldn’t be missing. Bart was a pot-bellied ass-kisser who stole clients and dumped all the work on the firm’s bookkeepers. His aunt was a partner which meant Bart had never been taken to task for his assholery.

  Bart: Trying it on for size. Thanks for the bigger office, dipshit.

  Ryan gripped his phone so hard the case cracked. The jackass had sent a picture of his feet propped on Ryan’s desk.

  “Fuck.”

  Any tiny scrap of hope he’d been holding on to that the partners would reconsider their decision and give him another chance extinguished. There was only one thing left to do. Ryan pried himself out of the car and shivered his way to the door of the liquor store.

  He stepped inside and was blasted with both heat—a welcome sensation for his mostly frozen face—and “The Twelve Days of Christmas” wailing from the speakers in the ceiling.

  Ryan had been in his share of liquor stores since turning twenty-one a decade or so ago. They all seemed to have the same displays of the same bottles, the same moderately depressed clientele, the same bitter employees.

  However, as with everything else in this trippy town, this particular liquor store was different. Instead of avoiding eye contact like respectable patrons, the shoppers here gathered and gossiped in aisles. Employees wore hideous holiday sweaters and Santa hats with mini liquor bottles attached where the requisite white puffball usually was.

  Just when he thought it couldn’t get more annoying, everyone in the store paused what they were doing to half-sing, half-shout “Fiiiive golden riiings!”

  He gritted his teeth. One bottle of decent whiskey, and he could go back to Carson’s and drink until he could pretend this entire week had never happened.

  Usually, he had a much more proactive approach to problem-solving.

  Ryan’s Regular Problem-Solving Plan

  1. Analyze the problem.

  2. Identify the obstacles.

  3. Outline potential solutions.

  4. Choose the most efficient option.

  5. Craft and execute an action plan.

  But being stuck in this holiday nightmare with a blurry family emergency while someone else tried on his chair and his clients for size called for a more intensive method.

  Ryan’s Emergency Disaster Plan

  1. Drink until he couldn’t see straight.

  2. Pass out.

  3. Be so hungover he would forget about any and all problems for the 48 hours it took him to get over the hangover.

  4. Feel like an idiot.

  5. Humbly move on to Regular Problem-Solving Plan.

  He’d only had to enact his Emergency Disaster Plan twice before. Once when he’d failed one of the sections of the Certified Management Accountant certificate. And then again when he’d been passed over for his first promotion at work. In both cases, he’d redoubled his efforts (after the hangover, of course) and accomplished what he’d set out to do.

  He ignored the aisle of cheerfully labeled wines with names like Bohemian Riesling and Dirty Hippie Chardonnay, heading instead for the Whiskey/Bourbon sign. It was a popular aisle.

  A woman with waist-length, silvery dreadlocks and a Peace of Pizza T-shirt winked at him as she passed with a bottle of Lagavulin. She had good taste, not that he was ever inclined to make small talk with a stranger.

  Instead, he gave her a nod and then tried to maneuver around a couple so mismatched it was almost comical. The man was in Dockers and a starched button-down under a dreidel tie. The woman had jet-black hair in pigtails secured by skull clips wearing Santa hats. Instead of a sensible wool coat like the guy, she was wearing a floor-length, dark purple cape embroidered with silver thread. Her boots looked like they were less for snow and more for mosh pits.

  The nerd and the goth princess.

  They were being questioned by a skinny man of indeterminate age wearing a homemade Support Your Local Exotic Dancer T-shirt and breaching what Ryan considered to be the common decency standard of personal space. “So, if I build a shed over my bunker and store some of my used paperbacks and G-strings in there, can I write it off as a work expense?” he asked.

  “Well, maybe,” the nerd hedged. His glasses were fogging up. “I’d need more information. Like if you were also using the structure for personal use. And what the ratio between personal and professional usage would be.”

  Ah, the nerd was a fellow accountant. Ryan thought he’d recognized the resignation of a professional being pounced on in public for free advice.

  “Why don’t you make an appointment with Mason, Fitz?” goth girl suggested sweetly.

  “Ha! Good one, Ellery! Then I’d have to pay him for his time,” Fitz the exotic dancer fan, or—God forbid—the actual exotic dancer, chuckled.

  “You know, tax preparation is a deduction,” the accountant hinted.

  Ryan skirted the free advice dispensary but accidentally made and held uncomfortable eye contact with the goth queen. Her dark purple lips curved up. Another smiler. What was it with this town?

  Finally, he made it to the whiskey shelves. It was a decent selection for a town that was barely a blip on the map.

  He was debating between a scotch and a bourbon when a very small redhead clutching a very large bottle of tequila bumped into him. In fuzzy pajama pants, pink boots, and a Pierce Acres sweatshirt she’d clearly stolen from an adult, the kid looked like the kind of student elementary school teachers hoped didn’t land in their class.

  “Oopsies! Sorry,” she said, beaming up at him.

  “Aren’t you a little young to be buying tequila?” he asked.

  She threw back her head and laughed until her tangled curls shook. “You’re funny!”

  “Aurora!” A guy with a nice suit, nicer wool coat, and a familiar-ish face rounded the corner.

  “Hi, Bucket!”

  “Short Cake, how many times have I told you not to wander off in here? Sorry,” the man said to Ryan. “Last
time I brought her in here, I found her behind the register asking to see Old Man Carson’s ID.”

  Ryan let out a rusty, short laugh. Small towns meant small worlds, he guessed. “Carson is my great-uncle,” he said, then wondered why he’d willingly volunteered the information.

  “You must be nephew Ryan. I’m Beckett Pierce, attorney and mayor of this circus. This is my daughter, Aurora.”

  “Technically, Bucket is my stepdad,” Aurora explained. “But we don’t like to use that label in our family. He’s my real dad just like my other real dad because s-e-x doesn’t always equal family.”

  Beckett—or Bucket—looked a little misty-eyed over the whole “real dad” thing. Ryan didn’t feel like he was up for an emotional family moment.

  Thankfully, Santa’s overanxious twin bustled around the corner into the aisle and interrupted. “Mayor Pierce!”

  “Shit,” Beckett said under his breath. Aurora looked delighted.

  “Bruce, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Beckett?” the mayor said. “Aurora, put the tequila down.”

  “You know how I feel about disrespecting your office,” Bruce, the Santa look-alike, insisted.

  Beckett bit back a sigh. “Have you met Carson’s nephew Ryan?”

  Bruce glanced at Ryan. “Of course I know Ryan. He’s from Seattle, even though the rest of his family is in Pennsylvania. You really should visit home more often, you know.”

  “Uhhh.” Ryan didn’t know what to say to that.

  “We’ll catch up later,” Bruce said to him with confidence. “Mayor Pierce, I have a dire situation that I must discuss with you immediately.”

  Beckett closed his eyes for a moment. “Bruce. You are the town supervisor. I have complete faith that whatever crisis arises, you can handle it on your own tonight. Because I am spending the entire night alone with my wife while my saint of a mother takes the girls for a sleepover and Evan is with the debate club in Corning.”

  “I’m afraid some situations are a bit more urgent than a quiet evening at home,” Bruce insisted as he fidgeted with the zipper on his coat.

  Beckett gripped the man’s shoulder. “Bruce. Nothing. I repeat. Nothing is more important than getting home to my empty house where my beautiful wife is waiting for me to show up with a bottle of wine.”

  Santa Bruce opened his mouth, but Beckett cut him off. “Nothing,” he repeated. “Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I need to get Aurora home to hand her off to my… Mom?”

  At the end of the aisle, a woman wearing a floppy felt hat and glasses looked up. Her eyes went wide and she tried to duck behind a display of holiday-themed wine gift bags.

  “Hi, Gram!” chirped Aurora, the underage tequila shoplifter.

  “You’re not invisible, Mom,” Beckett said dryly.

  The mayor’s mother popped back up, abandoning the charade. Just then, everyone paused and shouted “Fiiiive golden riiings!”

  “Oh, hi, Aurora, Beckett, Bruce…” Her gaze tracked to Ryan. “Man I don’t know.”

  “This is Carson Shufflebottom’s great-nephew Ryan,” Beckett said.

  “From Seattle. The one with the condo with the concrete countertops,” Bruce added.

  Ryan added Santa Bruce to his list of things he didn’t like about Blue Moon right under “spontaneous singalongs in liquor stores”.

  “Hi, Ryan. I’m Phoebe. This one’s mother and that one’s grandmother,” she said, pointing to Beckett and then Aurora with a large bottle of merlot.

  “Uh. Hi,” Ryan said, growing increasingly uncomfortable. He wished the aisle was wide enough to escape this conversation.

  “What are you doing here, Mom?” Beckett asked. “I’m supposed to have the kids to your place in fifteen minutes.”

  Phoebe joined them in the aisle, crowding Ryan even further. “I’m preparing to babysit,” she explained, shooting a pointed look at Aurora. “How are you liking Blue Moon so far, Ryan?”

  Don’t be an asshole, Ryan cautioned himself. It wasn’t a babysitting grandmother’s fault his life was a disaster. “It’s uh… very festive,” he said. “Full of livestock.”

  “It certainly is,” she agreed. “What brings you to town?”

  Bruce was making a suspicious slashing motion across his throat.

  Phoebe’s eyebrows rose over her glasses. “Oh,” she said as if someone had answered her question. “Well, good luck with… everything.”

  Beckett rolled his eyes toward the ceiling while Bruce laughed nervously.

  Ryan had the distinct impression that he was missing something. Not that he cared to figure out what that something was. No small-town shenanigans could measure up to the hell he’d endured this week.

  “Gram, I picked this out for you,” Aurora announced, proudly holding up her tequila. “You can have some while I give Grampa a makeover!”

  The kid was going to be a menace in her teenage years, Ryan predicted. Mother and son shared a silent and pointed exchange. You owe me, Phoebe’s face said to Beckett.

  “Let Gram see that bottle,” Phoebe said with a sigh. Aurora handed it over and her grandmother studied the label then shrugged. “Good enough for me and Grampa Glamorous.”

  “Yay!” Aurora squealed. “Mr. Oakleigh, can I pick something for you?” She was already reaching for a bottle of something called Sour Apple Pucker. It looked like NyQuil.

  “That’s quite all right,” Bruce said, patting her on her snarl of red curls. “But you can tell your daddy how much I need his attention regarding an issue with the state auditor.”

  “Nah. I’d rather pick a drink for you,” the kid said.

  “What’s the problem, Bruce?” Phoebe asked.

  “Well, it seems that there is a problem with our paperwork—”

  Beckett cut him off. “Bruce is town supervisor. He’s going to supervise. I am going home to my beautiful, impatient wife, and you,” he said, pointing at Phoebe, “are taking my children so Gia and I can speak in complete sentences for one whole night.”

  “But—”

  Beckett cut off Santa Bruce with one raised hand. Bruce, looking like a recently kicked puppy, slunk off down the aisle.

  Ryan tried to do the same, but his way was blocked by a store employee with a cart of stock for the shelves.

  “I expect you to be feeling very grateful toward Franklin and me, favorite son,” Phoebe said cagily.

  “Extremely,” Beckett agreed.

  “How extremely?” she pressed.

  “Day spa for you and Franklin at that place you like.”

  “The Hershey Spa? Hmm. Three treatments each,” she said, cocking her head.

  “Two treatments, plus lunch,” her son bargained.

  “Deal,” Phoebe said smugly.

  Ryan decided it was beyond time to extricate himself from the conversation. He attempted to squeeze past Aurora, but she very deliberately stepped in his way and grinned. Diabolical child. He turned to try the other way, but a couple in matching corduroy bell-bottoms was hogging half the aisle and making excited exclamations over some kind of organic wheatgrass vodka.

  In desperation, he snatched a bottle off the employee’s cart. “Well, I need to go take care of… this bottle,” Ryan announced, holding up the bottle.

  Phoebe clinked her tequila to his whiskey. “It was nice meeting you, Ryan. If you need anything while you’re in town, let me know.”

  “Uh. Thanks,” he grumbled. He’d be on a plane by tomorrow and doubted there was anything he’d need help with in less than twenty-four hours.

  Phoebe turned her attention back to her son and granddaughter. “I’ll see you two in—” she glanced down at her watch. “Not very many minutes.” With a wave, she headed toward the cash register.

  “Don’t drink all of the tequila before we get there,” Beckett said, playing tug-of-war with Aurora over a cheap bottle of peach-flavored vodka.

  The frustration and abject fear on Beckett’s face made things click into place. Ryan snapped his fingers. “Goat Guy.�
��

  Beckett won the battle and pulled the bottle free. “What Guy?”

  “Goat Guy,” Ryan repeated. “That’s who you look like. I met him at the vet clinic. Do you have a brother?”

  “Two. Which one was it?” Beckett asked.

  Ryan couldn’t remember anything besides not liking the way the guy flirted with the vet. “He’s the one with all the goats.”

  He assumed that would narrow it down enough. He assumed wrong.

  “Big beard or short beard?” the mayor asked, stroking a hand over his own neatly groomed beard.

  Ryan had never been asked to classify facial hair before. “More stubble than beard.”

  The mayor nodded. “That would be Jax. He’s the youngest. The goat hates his guts.”

  Jax, the cheek kisser. Ryan still thought it was a stupid name.

  Aurora giggled. “Clementine wants to eat Uncle Jax. It’s sooo funny! Also, he looks nice in blue eyeshadow.”

  Ryan didn’t want to know how she’d obtained that information. He didn’t care for how the little girl was studying him like she was trying to figure out if he’d look better in spring or winter colors.

  “Well, it was nice to meet you,” he lied, thankful that the aisle had finally cleared, leaving him with an actual escape route.

  “You as well,” Beckett called after him.

  “Bye, Ryan!” Aurora waved.

  He ducked into the checkout line closest to the door. There was a display of hideous, hand-knit hats, mittens, and scarves. He averted his eyes from the rainbow of lopsided winter gear and stared at his shoes to thwart any more conversations with strangers. The bell jingled, and two more customers entered, bringing with them a cloud of frigid winter air.

  Damn it. It was still fucking cold.

  “Fiiive golden riiings!” shouted the customers around him.

  With the regret of a man who enjoyed a tasteful wardrobe, he grabbed the scarf set from the display and threw it down on the counter next to the bottle. They would get him through the ride out to Carson’s. And it didn’t matter if anyone saw him in it. Because he was leaving and never returning to Blue Moon.