Last Hit(7)

“Oh but . . .” Terese trails off.

“What is it?” I have made another error but I do not know what it is.

“Is it an open bar? Because my beer budget can’t handle the prices at that place.”

“Yes, of course,” I respond immediately although I have no idea what an open bar is. I add this to my mental list of things to ask Daniel. “It is open bar, open food. All of it is open.”

“To an open bar?” Laila asks. “What? Are you loaded?”

Eager to gain their acquiescence, I nod. “Yes. Bring all your friends to my open bar.”

They exchange another glance, which conveys a message I cannot decipher. Laila says, “You’re cute. A little weird, but cute. We’ll be there and we’ll bring some friends.”

I am jubilant, and this time my smile is not unpracticed. I cannot wait to return home and share the good news with my Daisy. I do not notice Laila stumbling backward into Terese’s arms although I do hear her murmur another thing I will need to ask Daniel about.

“I call dibs,” she says to her friend.

“Shit, honey, we better get there early,” Terese replies.





Chapter 3


Daisy

“A party?” I ask Nick that night as we do the dishes. I’m confused—he’s never mentioned wanting to throw a party. I run the scrubber over a pan, rinse it, and then put it in the drying rack for Nick to towel off. We are doing the dishes by hand. The dishwasher in the apartment isn’t working. Nick tried to fix it, lost his temper, and jerked the wiring out of the wall, cussing in Russian the entire time. So we do the dishes manually. I don’t mind it, because we do them together.

As long as we do it together, I don’t care what we do.

“Da, a party,” Nick says. “It is open. Open food, open bar. It must be so.”

I give him a strange look. “Really? Isn’t that expensive?” I don’t know a ton about bars, but my meager experiences with Regan tell me that drinks at a club tend to be pricier than they are at the grocery store.

He shrugs. “It is how it must be. Many will come. We will impress them and make friends.”

I melt a little at that. “Does this party have something to do with our conversation the other night?”

“We have many conversations,” he says, being cagey. There’s a hint of a smile on his firm mouth, and I know he’s proud of himself at the moment. That just confirms my suspicions that yes, this has everything to do with that conversation despite his pretending.

I flick a handful of bubbles on him. “You know what I mean, silly. About not being able to make friends! Is that why we are having a party?”

He just grins at me, boyishly pleased with himself.

I am the luckiest girl in the world to have a man like Nick. “You are wonderful, you know that?”

“Everything I do is to make you smile, kotehok,” he tells me, leaning in and brushing a kiss over my mouth. “That is worth every pleasure, every pain to me.”

So dramatic. I giggle at his words. “And is this party a pleasure or a pain?”

“I think it will be both. Pleasure at seeing you making friends, and pain because I will have to pretend like I care about what others are saying.”

I laugh again. My Nick would be happy if the world consisted of no one but him and I. I wish I could be so easily pleased and not need outside friendship.

“So,” Nick says as we return to washing dishes. “How do we call bar and tell them we have party there?”

I shake my head and laugh as I dip a plate into the water. Count on Nick to do things backwards. “I can call them and make arrangements. When will it be?”

“This Saturday.”

“So soon?” It’s already Wednesday. My mind is aflutter with preparations.

Nick’s upbringing was odd, but mine was an equal mess. I suppose that’s why we mesh so well together. My life was fine until my mother was murdered. From there, it was like a switch flipped inside my father. He became agoraphobic and withdrew into our farmhouse, turning it into a fortress. During the daytime, he’d homeschool me. At night, we’d practice firing guns in the basement. My father controlled every aspect of my life from that point on; from what I wore to what I read, and always what I watched on television or saw on the Internet. My only interactions with the outside world were when I left the house to run errands that my father couldn’t handle, and so my worldview is skewed. I can fire a gun with incredible accuracy but I’ve never seen a single show on MTV.

On the television shows I watched—Happy Days, The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy and Donna Reed—the only shows allowed to me growing up—parties were fascinating affairs with balloons and tablecloths and party dresses with puffy skirts. But I know from my few excursions with Regan that this isn’t how clubs are. How can these two things possibly mesh? Regan would know, but she hasn’t been quick to answer my texts lately because it’s calving season at the ranch, and they’re running ragged. Nick will have no idea, so I’ll have to call the bar and find out what I need to bring. “I think I might need a party dress,” I tell Nick. “Something with a nice skirt.”