Two Men Walk Into a Bar (At Christmastime) Read Free Page B

care.”
    “July?” asked Savannah glancing at her new friend’s mostly flat belly.
    “July fourth.”
    ***
    Zach had insisted that Asher use the shower first, so now he sat on the couch in Zach's living room, freshly showered and dressed in jeans and a UCLA Operation Mend T-shirt, feeling incredibly glum while Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas” in a black-and-white movie on TV. After losing his parents as a teenager and losing Savannah for a short period of time at the end of last summer, Asher knew what it was to feel bereft of someone you love—to feel their loss on a visceral, actively painful level. And even though Savannah was safe at home, and he was secure in the knowledge that her heart belonged to him, he felt that terrible ache now to be separated from her at Christmastime.
    He missed her. He really, really missed her.
    Asher and Savannah had met in May when she approached him about doing a patriotic human interest piece for a newspaper in Phoenix and fallen madly in love a few weeks later. But she’d also made some bad decisions about protecting their brand-new, budding love, and by July they’d broken up. In those bleak weeks apart, Savannah did all she could to make things right, and Asher had learned the utter desolation of life without her. By the end of August they’d reconciled, and Asher had proposed. Because they didn’t see any point in waiting to be together, they’d gotten married in late October, their wedding a whirlwind affair. And each precious day since with his wife—his wife —had been a gift that he’d embraced with both arms wound tightly around his happiness.
    But now here he was on Christmas Eve. And after a decade of Christmases spent alone or with his grandmother’s old friend Miss Potts, how terribly he’d wanted an old-fashioned Christmas, with a tree and presents and his wife’s beautiful smile. He imagined waking up beside her, making love to her as the sun rose, then swapping gifts. Eventually they’d get in the car and drive from Maryland to Danvers, Virginia, for Christmas dinner with Savannah’s family and Miss Potts, whom Savannah’s sister, Scarlet, had adopted as a surrogate grandmother in Asher’s absence. There would be baby clothes for Scarlet’s spring arrival, good southern bourbon, Judy Carmichael’s delectable dinner, carols, and fun.
    And warmth. Oh, sweet Lord, the sort of perfect warmth that only entered and remained in a man’s life through the deep and everlasting love of his best friend, his lover, his soul mate, his wife.
    So the terrible paradox of today was that, instead of being with his wife, he was in Los Angeles alone. And Los Angeles, which was at least forty degrees warmer than Maryland, felt as cold and bleak as Antarctica.
    He sighed. Well , he thought, you waited almost ten years to feel alive at Christmas again. I guess another year won’t much matter. Besides, there’s nothing you can do about it now.
    “All good?” asked Zach, coming out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and wet hair standing up at odd angles. “There’s beer in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
    “Thanks,” said Asher, mustering a grim but grateful nod before turning back to the TV.
    “ Holiday Inn, huh? Good movie.”
    Asher nodded. “Yeah. It’s one of my favorites.”
    “And this song . . .”
    “You like it?”
    “I do. Always have. It’s simple as anything, but there’s something simultaneously melancholy and comforting about it. Think about that, because it’s a strange confluence. Melancholy should be sad, not comforting. But it’s both. Why is that?”
    “I don’t know,” said Asher, feeling increasingly forlorn.
    “Me neither. But Irving Berlin was a heck of a songwriter to pull it off.” Zach scoffed softly, and Asher turned to look at him, raising his eyebrows.
    “I think it’s melancholy because it became popular during World War II. I imagine a bunch of guys sitting on their bunks in a ship berth off