Page 22 of A Grinchmas Delight

Scotty’s is packed, but I expected nothing less on a Friday night, especially the Friday before Christmas week. I sit for twenty minutes before Maia comes strolling through the door.

“Bitch. First, let’s take a shot,” she demands, hopping into the barstool beside me.

Her short red hair bounces as she plops down. Both of her hands are placed on the edge of the bar as she gets situated in her chair.

“Shots? Fuck,” I huff.

“You’ve got shit to tell me and I don’t want you filteringshit!”

I laugh at her logic. “Okay, okay. Fair enough.”

She raises her hand and the bartender walks over. Cassidy’s behind the bar tonight and I haven’t seen her here in forever. I also don’t come out here as much as I used to. Well, I have been here more in the last month than I have in the last year.

“Hey! What are you two drinking?” she asks.

“Two shots of Tequila 1800,” Maia says, sliding a twenty on the bar.

Fucking hell.

“Salt and lime?” Cassidy asks.

I nod enthusiastically. There is no way I’m taking a tequila shot without a chaser. She disappears to fix our shots and Maia turns to face me.

“You look cute today. Work Christmas party, right?”

I nod. “Right.”

“Okay. And…?”

“And Tall Hateful Devil was being fucking weird. He was staring at me the entire time.”

“Because you look hot in this outfit,” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

“Because we had hate sex in the stairwell.”

Her jaw drops and she squeals, kicking her feet against the bar.

“You didwhat?!”

“I—It just sort of… happened. And now I’m fucking terrified and I want to disappear for forever and never look at him again. Professionally. Personally? Personally I want to fuck him all day every day.”

“Dare, you haven’t had sex in forever! Oh my god!”

Cassidy approaches and sets the shots down just as Maia is announcing my lack of a sex life.

“It’s sixteen,” she says, swiping the twenty from the bar. She returns with Maia’s change and chimes in as she sets the ones on the bar in front of us.

“If you haven’t had sex in forever, maybe you should consider it. You know, for science… excuse me for one moment,” she says, storming down the bar to the man beating his hand on the bar for a drink. She grabs him by the neck of his shirt and says something close to his face before shoving him back. A cheer erupts around them and then she grabs a beer and sets it on the bar in front of him.

Joy to the World by Three Dog Night blares through the jukebox and Cassidy smiles, looking over at AJ sitting at the bar a few seats down from us. This has been his favorite song to play since I’ve been sneaking in here when I was seventeen and still in high school. Almost as long as Cassidy’s been working here.

He smiles and belts out the first line, making the rest of us want to join in with him. Jeremiah was a bullfrog will never sound quite this good anywhere else. The entire bar has a concert, with AJ as the lead singer and everyone else as the back ups. Maia clinks her shot glass against mine and we shoot them down. The tequila burns all the way down my throat but the salt and lime set it off perfectly.

“Ugh!” I groan, setting the shot glass down.

Maia nods, her face scrunched up in distaste as she bites into the lime wedge in her hand.

“This was your idea!” I chastise.

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