Two Men Walk Into a Bar (At Christmastime)

Two Men Walk into a Bar (at Christmastime)

Katy Regnery

When Asher Lee (from
The Vixen & the Vet
) and Zach Aubrey (from
Playing for Love at Deep Haven
) get stranded at the Los Angeles airport on Christmas Eve, an instant friendship is formed. But will bad weather (and bad luck) conspire to keep them from joining their wives, Savannah and Violet, for Christmas?

TWO MEN WALK INTO A BAR (AT CHRISTMASTIME)

Copyright
© 2016 by Katharine Gilliam Regnery

Sale of the electronic edition of this book is wholly unauthorized. Except for use in review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without written permission from the author/publisher.

Katharine Gilliam Regnery, publisher

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Cover by Marianne Nowicki

Formatting by Cookie Lynn Publishing Services

Please visit my website at www.katyregnery.com

First Edition: January 2016

Katy Regnery

Two Men Walk into a Bar (at Christmastime) : a short story / by Katy Regnery – 1st ed.

ISBN: 978-0-9966547-9-1

With fond thanks to Kim Nadelson.

Because she suggested it on a Facebook thread.

With lots of love to all of the fans who kept asking.

A letter to my readers

I never intended to write a sequel to
The Vixen & the Vet
. That’s the truth. I didn’t see the story in my head, and I was terrified of ruining the well-deserved happily ever after that Savannah and Asher had already earned.

But as the months went by, readers clamored for more of Asher and Savannah’s story. I got e-mails, Facebook messages, and Goodreads questions, and it seemed like everyone wanted to know just a little more about Asher and Savannah’s happy ending.

Once or twice, I thought about writing another story that featured them, but I still couldn’t figure it out, and every time I started, it just felt wrong.

A few weeks before Christmas, some of the girls on my street team were talking about my books, and Kim Nadelson commented that it would sure be fun if Asher Lee from
The Vixen & the Vet
and Zach Aubrey from
Playing for Love at Deep Haven
ever met. Like, if they bumped into each other at a bar or something.

My mind ran with the idea, and the story formed in my head almost instantly. That same day I wrote part 1.

I don’t know if I’ll write another story featuring Asher, Savannah, Zach, and Violet
next
Christmas, but maybe I will. I’ve learned to never say never.

Katy

xoxoxo

Two Men Walk into a Bar (at Christmastime)

Sitting down on the only available bar stool at the Rolling Stone bar in Terminal 7 of the Los Angeles International Airport, Asher Lee groaned inwardly as he stared at the Weather.com app on his phone. Blizzards were rare in Maryland, but Bethesda was getting hammered with snow right this minute. At first they’d delayed his flight by an hour. Then two. Now he wasn’t scheduled to leave sunny California until midnight, which meant he’d be on a red-eye at best and miss Christmas at worst. And maybe that wouldn’t matter to another man, but for Asher, who was desperate to get home to his new bride and spend their first Christmas together, it felt pretty damned awful.

“This fucking sucks,” muttered the person to his left.

Asher looked over to find a man about his age wearing a black Metallica T-shirt, his dark hair in gelled disarray. His arm, resting on the copper bar beside Asher, was heavily tattooed, and the amber-colored drink in front of him was almost finished.

“Amen.”

“You stuck here?” asked the man.

Asher nodded, turning slightly toward the man. Although he was far more comfortable in public than he used to be, he still braced himself for strangers’ reactions to his heavily scarred face. But the tattooed man didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t care, because his face registered nothing but resigned annoyance.

“Yeah. Headed to D.C. Supposed to get home tonight, but now . . .” He looked over the man’s head at the departure board, the words DELAYED taunting him. “Who knows?”

“Headed back to New York myself. Sounds like we’re in the same boat.”

“Whole East Coast is gettin’ slammed,” said Asher, holding up his phone, which showed a long band of white from Boston to Richmond.

But the man’s attention was stolen by the hand holding up the phone. It was the newest-generation i-Hand prosthesis, and while some people—Asher’s wife, most notably—thought it was cool, others were shocked to see something so robotlike sticking out of the cuff of Asher’s pressed dress shirt.

The man’s gaze held on Asher’s hand for a moment before meeting his eyes.

“What’s your poison?” asked the man, rapping his knuckles rhythmically on the counter. “I’ll get you a drink.”

“No need,” said Asher, a hint of defensiveness creeping into his tone. He didn’t need a stranger’s sympathy. He lowered his phone to the counter and gestured to the bartender, who held up a finger telling Asher it would take a minute for her to get to him. He nodded, and out of habit, his thumb found the gold band on his finger and twisted the warm metal. Though he was a world away from her, it made him feel connected, somehow, to Savannah.

“You sure?” asked the man beside him, flicking his lowball glass with his fingernail. It made a musical sound, as clear as a bell, and the man’s lips tilted up a touch as he flicked the glass again, nodding when it made the same melodic sound. “D-flat major.”

“Huh?”

The man looked up from the glass, as though distracted from a good memory. “You, uh, you sure you don’t want one? It’s an aged Scotch they keep under the bar for Keith Richards. An 18-year Glenlivet. Smooth as velvet.”

“Keith Richards, huh? From the
Rolling Stones
?”

The man nodded. “For when he passes through.”

“And you know this
how
?”

“He told me to ask after it if I ever found myself stuck in Terminal 7.”

“I’m guessin’ you’re a musician.”

The man nodded. “Guitarist. Songwriter. Name’s Zach.”

“Asher,” he said. “But I’m more of a bourbon man myself.”

Zach grinned. “No accounting for taste. My girl drinks Scotch. Me too.”

Suddenly Asher realized that Zach was also toying with the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. “Your girl?”

“My wife. Violet. Going on two years now.” Suddenly he grinned at Asher, his angular face brightening as though saying her name was enough to clear a cloudy sky.

“Just a year for me,” said Asher, thinking of Savannah’s loveliness and how much he wished he was home with her right now.

As if Zach could sense Asher’s encroaching melancholy, he leaned closer. “Want to know a secret?”

Asher shrugged. “Why not?”

The man flicked a glance at his watch. “It’s after midnight in New York. That means it’s Christmas Eve. Which also means she told me she loved me two years ago tonight.”

Words from long ago echoed in his head:
Say it again, Savannah . . .I’m falling in love with you, Asher.
They were still the sweetest words. The best words. The words that had changed his whole life.

Feeling a sudden, strong kinship with the man beside him, Asher nodded. “I’ll take the drink, Zach. On the rocks, if you don’t mind. But only if I can buy you a bourbon after.”

***

Savannah reached for the buzzing cell phone on her bedside table, squinting up at the bright screen in her dark room:
Delayed again, darlin’. Hopefully out of here by midnight. I love you.

She sighed, letting the phone fall to her chest, where she held on to it like it was a lifeline to Asher. She did the math quickly. If it was one o’clock in the morning here in Maryland, it was ten o’clock at night in Los Angeles. He still had a two-hour wait, and even then, there were no guarantees he’d make it home in time for Christmas.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Savannah sat up and scrubbed her free hand over her face, the other still clutching the phone as she stood up and walked to the window. Pushing the curtain aside, she looked out at the little yard that Asher kept immaculately trimmed. Covered in a pristine blanket of still-falling snow, she couldn’t help but admire how pretty it was, even though it was keeping her love from returning home.

Her phone buzzed in her hand again, and she looked down, swiping at the screen.
Found a friend. He drinks Scotch instead of bourbon, though. What’re you wearing?

This time she grinned, typing back:
Your use of the pronoun “he” just saved your skin.
She paused before adding:
Nothing.

Giggling softly, she crossed the room and climbed back into bed, cheerfully ignoring her phone when it buzzed thrice in quick succession.

***

“Anything important?” asked Zach, hanging up his own phone, which, Asher noted, looked like it had seen better days.

Important? Affirmative.
A naked Savannah was at the top of Asher’s list of important things—not that he could do anything about it from LA.

He placed his phone facedown on top of the bar and looked up at his new friend.

“Uh, yeah. No, not really.” He shrugged, picking up his drink and swirling the ice around. “Just, um, my wife.”

Damn it, but she could still discombobulate him. Even from a continent away.

Zach nodded at his own battered phone. “Yeah. That was Vile.”

“What was vile?” asked Asher, sipping the Scotch and deciding it wasn’t half bad.

“No. Vile is . . .” Zach grinned, his hard face looking sunny as he twirled the ring on his hand. “It’s what I call my wife. Violet.”

Asher felt his eyebrows knit together. “And that’s not a problem?”

Zach grinned, then laughed softly as though remembering something funny. “It
was
. Once upon a time. But she got over it.”

“Sometimes I call Savannah an alien. But I’m still convinced I might be right,” confessed Asher.

“How’d you two meet?”

Asher took another sip of his drink, words from long ago echoing in his head.
I’ve been commissioned to write a piece for a very notable national newspaper, the
Phoenix Times
. They want a human interest piece in time for the Fourth of July, and I thought . . . well, I wondered if Mr. Lee, that is . . .

“She’s a journalist. Or she
was
. Once upon a time,” said Asher, smiling at Zach. “She showed up at my doorstep with a plate of home-baked brownies, wearing her sister’s sundress and . . .”

“And what?” asked Zach, turning toward Asher and leaning his elbow on the bar.

“She wanted an interview.” Asher sighed, meeting the other man’s eyes. “I looked worse than this, if you can believe it.”

Zach grimaced, his eyes sorry. “I didn’t want to ask.”

“I was in Afghanistan. An IED,” said Asher. “First time I met her, well, by that time, I’d had a lot of surgeries, but I guess I’d, well, I’d sort of given up.”

“On the surgeries?”

“On everything. On more surgeries. On life. On friends. On meeting people.” Asher scoffed softly, unable, even after all these years, to keep traces of bitterness from his voice. “When you look like a monster, when you scare children, well, it’s easy to give up.”

“So what happened?” asked Zach.

“Savannah Calhoun Carmichael happened. I hadn’t seen a woman that pretty in years. Not up close. And I couldn’t turn down the chance to see her again. So I said yes to the interview, and she started showin’ up three times a week.”

“And you fell for each other,” said Zach, clinking Asher’s glass.

Asher took another long sip, remembering a picnic in the grove . . . the movie
Shag
in her backyard . . . watching her drive his car through the Virginia countryside . . . the way her soft lips felt underneath his the first time . . . the way they fit together when he slid inside her body. His heart thrummed behind his ribs.
What’re you wearing? Nothing.

“Something like that.” He set his glass gingerly on the counter, adjusting his pants a little and determined to change the subject, lest he embarrass himself. “How about you and . . . Vile? And how the hell do you get away with calling her that?”

Zach Aubrey finished off his drink and gestured for another, but Asher reached over, placing his bionic hand over Zach’s. “My turn to buy the drinks.” He nodded to the waitress and asked for two bourbons, neat, turning back to Zach as she hustled away.

“So?”

“The story of me and Vile,” said Zach, rubbing his thumb over his lower lip thoughtfully, “starts at Yale . . .”

***

Zach had been a skinny, pasty little shit who barely knew what it felt like to have a friend. And Violet, with her wild hair and huge tits, had walked into his dorm room, into his life—
into his heart
—like a sanctioned act of God.

To Zach’s great surprise, and pleasure, his new friend, Asher, listened with a quiet fascination, groaning when Zach confessed that he’d been unable to return Violet’s heartbreaking
I love you
, and nodding in understanding when Zach explained how meeting her again nine years later had felt like fate.

“The poetess and the heavy rocker, huh? Did you ever win her over to your taste in music?” asked Asher.

Zach laughed heartily. “Fuck no. No, man. Not even a little. The first time I took her to a concert? Whew. I honestly got scared it was over for us.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, thank Christ. I couldn’t let her get away again,” said Zach, sipping his second Scotch while Asher nursed a second bourbon. “I think I would have done whatever I had to, you know? To make her stay. Luckily, a hurricane took the decision out of our hands.”

“So she was
forced
to stay.”

“Yeah,” said Zach, nodding. “Something like that. It’s weird. In the end, I actually left her.”

“What?”

Zach nodded, wincing as he remembered her face when he’d said,
I’m standing in front of you, telling you I love you, telling you that I will love you, no matter what, until I die. But I’m also telling you that if you aren’t all in, Vile, this won’t work. I need all of you. Sorry that I’m such a greedy bastard, but I’m not Shep Smalley, and I can’t be with you if your heart doesn’t totally belong to me.

“You have to understand,” said Zach. “I was all in.
All in
. I knew she was what I wanted forever, but she wasn’t ready for us. She had some things to sort out.”

Like her engagement to Shep fucking Smalley . . . God rest his fucking soul
, he added grudgingly.

“So what happened?” asked Asher.

Zach shrugged. “I went on the road for two months. She went home. And absence, my friend, made us both want to fucking die.”

Asher groaned softly as though remembering a similar story of his own. “I feel your pain, brother.”

“But . . .” Zach held up his drink, and Asher did the same. “I got home. She was waiting. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“And they all lived happily ever after,” said Asher, clinking Zach’s glass before downing the rest of his drink as Zach did the same.

“Attention, all eastbound United customers. Please stay tuned for an important announcement. All eastbound United customers, we regret to inform you that Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington have all closed their runways until morning. I repeat, all eastbound flights to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and other Northeastern area airports have been canceled.”