A Toast to the Good Times Read Online Free Page A

Did I ruin the mood?”
    I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard.
    “No. You are...” I pull my hands back and hold them out, just above her skin, and it’s total torture. “You are extremely sexy, Mila. Seriously. It’s just...you and me? I mean,   you understand, right? It would be crazy. It makes no sense.”
    I’m trying to explain better, but she slides off my lap and kind of covers herself with her arms and hands.
    “Right. Okay. Me and you. We make no sense. Obviously make no sense.” She tries to laugh, but her utter humiliation makes it ragged and metallic. I reach a hand out and she flinches. “It’s fine. I’m fine. So stupid. This is...really stupid! I, uh, I think I’m pretty drunk. And you’re definitely drunk. Because you and me? Right. Nope. That’s just...really stupid.”
    She picks up her top and, instead of putting it on, she holds it tight to her chest. Her face is bright red, she won’t make eye-contact with me, and I’ve never felt like a bigger piece of shit than I do right at this minute.
    “Mila, please hear me out — ”
    “Landry!” Her voice bursts out, sharp and pleading at the same time. “It’s fine. Okay? It’s beyond fine. But, um, would you just get out? Please. Get out of my room.”
    Her lips tremble and she swallows hard. Her eyes look teary, and her knuckles, fisted over the fabric of her pajamas, are bone white.
    “If you just give me one — ”
    “Now.” The word is tiny and desperate.
    So I get up and leave her room without looking back over my shoulder, no matter how badly I want to.
    I pick up my coat, my wallet, my phone, and head out the door, on foot. The icy wind bites through my clothes and slices to the bone. I’m glad for the jarring discomfort. I deserve way worse. Lots of pain, lots of suffering. There aren’t Arctic conditions cold enough to match the freezing, icy, empty echo in my chest. In the space where a normal guy would have some kind of a heart.
    Too bad I’m nothing but a freakish, heartless bastard.
     

 
    Chapter 3
     
    I push on 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