Page 18 of The Mistletoe Kisser

“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.