“Fine,” she relents. “One round.”
She crosses to the big hutch that serves as the Minelli liquor cabinet. Tapping her lower lip in a very distracting way, she considers her options. “Chocolate? Mint?”
“Yes,” Cassie says firmly. “Two rounds of shots.”
“Or we combine them.” Rory winks and plunks a bottle of white chocolate liqueur in front of where I’m sprawled at the big kitchen table. “Hold this.”
I hold it.
She digs out peppermint schnapps and vanilla vodka.
Then a shaker.
“We’re getting serious now,” Carmen giggles, leaning on the table.
“One shot,” I remind everyone.
But then Rory puts a lot of ice in the shaker, and she free pours way more than three shots worth of the differentingredients.
“Oops,” she says. “Oh well.”
She shakes it up like a pro, then grabs four shot glasses. “You in, Garrett?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She pours them up and we lean in, tapping our shots together before swallowing the delicious but deadly combination that tastes just like peppermint bark candy.
“Now it feels like Christmas,” Cassie says, wiping her mouth.
Rory and I exchange a look. We’re both thinking the same thing. She lives—lived?—across the road from Santa’s Workshop on the Polar Expressway, andthisis what pushes her into Christmas vibes?
“One more,” Rory says, urging us all to put our glasses in again.
I push out of my chair and shake my head. “I’m good.”
I cross to the sink to wash my shot glass as they do another round.
Carmen sighs happily. “I should follow your dad to bed. Night night, my babies.”
I hold my breath until she’s out of the room.
Rory and her mom have an interesting relationship. They love each other fiercely, but they also butt heads constantly, and it feels like a miracle that they didn’t argue tonight—and that Carmen didn’t find a way to blame Rory for Cassie’s breakup, as she feared.
Now that she’s heading upstairs, I should do the same.
“Can I trust you two to close this place down by yourselves?” I ask, going for lighthearted.
Rory nods, not quite meeting my gaze.
But Cassie protests. “No, stay up with us.”
For good measure, she pouts, a mirror of her mother.
Rory rolls her eyes. “You just want a chaperone so Idon’t ask you about Nate, but Garrett won’t stop me from doing that, so put that manipulative lip away.”
“Ouch.” Cassie snatches at the shaker. “Let’s make more drinks.”
“Nope.”
