The Checklist by Addie Woolridge (color ebook reader TXT) 📗

pumps stick to the dingy green-and-white checkered floors. Formica countertops and an unfriendly-looking bartender with a beard to rival Santa Claus’s greeted her. The martini glasses would be passably clean, but that was about it. Scanning the room for Stacy, her eyes fell on the sad remnants of what used to be a pool table, now doubling as a beer stand in the corner. Dylan wasn’t sure how long Lenny’s had been around, but she was convinced the table and the layer of dirt that covered it were even older. Finally, she spotted Stacy’s familiar bob frantically waving at her from a semirevolting brownish-maroon booth.

“Look at you!” Stacy shouted as she came hurtling toward Dylan, her teddy bear scrubs blurring in the dim light. “You are the exact same! Seriously, how have you not aged?”

“Me? Look at you! You’re fabulous. I’m loving the hair color.” Dylan’s words were muffled by a hug.

Releasing her bone-crushing grip on Dylan’s neck, Stacy stepped back and appraised her. Dylan was a solid five ten, without the heels. In them, she was nearly a foot taller than her friend. “Neale was right: you are like a megaprofessional now.”

“Oh, please. I like how you’ve seen Neale and I haven’t.” Dylan smiled. This was typical of Neale.

“Shall we grab a drink?” Stacy said, not waiting for an answer before finding a home on a barstool. “Dyl, what do you want?”

Doing her best to sit delicately on the stool, she started fishing around in her purse for cash as she spat out her usual. “Hendrick’s martini, with extra olives, please.” She continued to dig around in her purse for a beat before feeling eyes on her. Glancing up, Dylan made eye contact with Santa the Bartender, who was staring at her in disbelief.

“We don’t carry Hendrick’s. We aren’t exactly your standard martini joint.” Santa’s gravel-packed laugh filled the gloomy space, catching the attention of the patrons sitting next to her.

Suppressing the urge to give Father Christmas a dirty look, she cast a desperate glance around the bar, trying to pick up on what the locals were drinking these days. The guy in a black knit cap next to her held a beer glass full of something that looked like a promising gin-based drink. Attempting to sound casual, Dylan tilted her head toward Knit Cap. “I’ll have one of those.”

Kriss Kringle’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline, but he didn’t say anything; instead he picked up a bottle and began pouring. “And you?”

“Pink Lady, please,” Stacy answered without missing a beat.

“One Pink Lady and a Beast.” He handed Stacy a pink concoction in a highball glass, then passed Dylan the Beast. “Cheers, ladies,” he said, wandering away with a slimy-looking rag to wipe down the bar.

“Cheers!” Stacy shouted, knocking her dainty drink into Dylan’s.

Dylan took a sip and did her best not to gag. To say the Beast tasted like whiskey fortified in a shoe would have been generous. No wonder Santa had looked shocked. To go from high-end gin to moonshine was a far fall from grace. Trying not to think about the drink in her hand, Dylan shifted her focus back to her old friend. “So clearly Neale filled you in on me. Tell me, what have you been up to?”

“Oh gosh. What’s new?” Stacy said, wrinkling her nose and taking another sip of her drink. “Ack! I can’t believe I didn’t mention this to you. I saw the evil spawn of Andrea Curtis this week. That demon baby tried to eat my hand as I was showing him how to floss.” Dylan’s skeptical laugh in response was punctuated by her gagging as she tried to swallow another sip of shoe drink. “Don’t look at me like that. Andrea was always the worst. You can’t possibly think she would give birth to anything other than a cannibal.”

“I didn’t say anything. She was always a—”

“Total a-hole.”

Dylan’s smile spread. Stacy worked as a hygienist in a children’s dental clinic, and it showed. Not only was she dressed in kid-friendly scrubs, but curse words were generally off the table. A-hole was probably the strongest language she would use all night, and Dylan suspected Stacy felt guilty about it.

“I find it hard to believe that a six-year-old consciously tried to eat you.”

“Well, he did. Because his mother is Satan’s Barbie Bride,” Stacy said, shaking her hair out of her face and taking another sip.

As Stacy carried on about the different kids she saw every day, former classmates, and bad boyfriends, Dylan felt lulled by the easy rhythm of an old friendship. It would have been more convenient to blame the warm, nostalgic feeling on her drink, but as they wove in and out of topics without preamble or backstory, she had to admit that in avoiding her family, she’d missed at least one person back home.

Dylan was glad she’d had the foresight to park the car and walk to the bar as she fell through the front door of her parents’ house, slightly sweaty from both the alcohol in the Beast and her brisk walking pace. After pulling her trench and heels off in one motion, she wandered into the living room. She had expected to find her father doing Tae Bo or something. Instead she found Neale thrown sideways in a chair, reading what appeared to be her mother’s battered copy of Either/Or.

“There you are. I was wondering when we’d run into each other,” Neale shouted, launching a hug at her sister.

“Hey, sister. How you been?” Dylan said, giving her sister a squeeze before carefully folding her coat over her arm.

Neale sat back down airily and looked around the room, as if she were surprised to be there. “So good. I’m sure Mom told you—I’m working on my next manifesto. I think it’s going to get a good response.”

“It sounds promising,” Dylan answered, knowing the vagueness wouldn’t prompt a response from space’s reigning queen, then made a mental note to ask her mother about the manifesto. She