Page 12 of Merry Little Mishap

I braced for the noise.

“Hello!” Tiffany finally answered, my nephews once again shouting in the background, along with cousins, uncles and aunts.

“Tiff, it’s Nick.”

“Nick… please tell me you’re just around the corner.”

She was going to kill me.

“I will be…” I hesitated, hoping she could hear my smile, “in just about… an hour and forty minutes.”

“Nicky!” she screamed.

“Relax, relax. I’m getting your prescription wine. I just need to know exactly what you want.” I slid my coquito recipe across the bar top, pointing to the ingredients.“Do you have condensed milk?”I mouthed to Luis, and he nodded, taking my list in hand.

“What about dinner for the boys? They’re starving!” Tiffany said.

“I already ordered them pizza before leaving my apartment. Two boxes of piping hot pepperoni are headed their way. Extra cheese.”

Luis came back to the register, piling cans of ingredients next to my rum.

“Could you call them back and order three more boxes? I sorta burned my tenderloins.”

“She nuked them!”Hank—Tiffany’s awful ex—barked behind her, his husky cackle carrying into my receiver.

I massaged the headache in my eyes, holding the phone away as they argued over the definition ofnuked.

The brass bell at the entrance chimed, and a gusty winter wind rolled towards my feet.

“There’s a guy out front who needs help tying his Christmas tree to his car.” A shivering delivery man announced, walking up to the register with his bike helmet still on.

Luis and I looked out the window, watching as his customer from earlier windmilled his arms before slipping on black ice. His ass hit the floor, and his tree rolled off the roof of his car and into a gutter.

The delivery man paid no attention, unzipping his backpack to pull out a bag of food.

“Sichuan Garden?” I gasped, unexpectedly surprised by its bright red letters and swirling long dragon.

What were the chances of seeing this now? Right in the middle of getting ingredients for coquito.

Elena had a takeout menu for thisverysame place on her kitchen counter this morning, and now, I was smelling the most delicious sweet and sour scent from a bag with its logo on it.

It felt like the universe was tapping my shoulder.

“Do you have a menu?” I asked the delivery guy, taking it from his hand while uncapping a red pen next to Luis’s register.

Hypothetically… if I were toeverpick up food for Elena, what would she even like?

“Their egg rolls are my favorite. Plus, their wontons taste like the crispyyaniquequemy mom used to make.” Luis split his chopsticks, rubbing them together.

“Taste like what?” I asked, circling the wontons on the menu.

“It’s a Dominican thing. Have you ever had fried dough? Never mind. The important thing is that it tastes like home.”

I scratched under my chin, sitting with Luis’s words that somehow struck a chord in my heart.

Like home,he said.

Home was what I wanted Elena to feel like, and damn…I knew Elena liked Sichuan Garden, but savory Chinese food wasn’t exactly the staple of a Puerto Rican Christmas dinner. Could it be a decent substitute?

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