He’s halfway back up, a bottle of whiskey in his hand. The label is definitely not Green Hills Distillery.
“Will na you let me have my vices in peace?” he moans.
“I watched you down like four glasses of that shit and you were barely tipsy. You said you wanted to get drunk.”
“’Tis nashite,ya tasteless prick.” He thinks. “But that’s fair.”
He bends back down, and hesitates.
“I’m gonna get my drink of choice for when I wanna be good and pissed,” Loch says to the liquor cabinet. “But you canna mock me for it.”
“I passionately do not agree to that,” I say and spot a pantry in the recessed shadows next to the fireplace. We’ll need something to eat. Drunk goal or not.
The pantry is mostly empty. Cans of food, some baking supplies, a few shelves of essentials.
Our chef would beappalled—this close to their Holiday, and they’re not fully stocked?
But they don’t have the funds to fill it, do they? Enough to keep upappearances, whatever Malachy deigns to give them. And they don’t have people to provide for, either. Just a visiting Christmas Prince.
Heart in my throat, I sort through the meager food stuffs until I find two clipped bags of crisps on a shelf.
By the time I get back with them, there’s a bottle near one end of the butcher block island.
I chuckle. “Whipped cream vodka?”
Loch sits on a barstool. I grab the one across from him and he cracks open the bottle.
“Laugh it up, boyo, but my logic is proper brilliant. Sláinte.” He takes a swig. “You see, it does na taste quite like rubbing alcohol, but it does na have the syrupy shite that guarantees a bloody awful migraine.”
He offers it to me. I make a great show of cringing as I take the bottle.
“Sláinte to you,” I say and drink.
The rim is warm from his lips.
I swallow forcefully.
“You’re in no position to laugh at my drinking choices.” Loch grabs the bottle back from me. “Hating on Irish whiskey like that. I should throw you outta the country.”
“I’m more of a beer guy.”
Loch sputters on the next drink and shoves to his feet. “Why dinna you say so? Christ.”
“Where are you going?”
“Wait there.”
By the door we came in, Loch yanks open a fridge and hauls out two bottles.
He returns, pops the lid off one on the island’s edge, and hands the bottle to me. Smithwick’s ale.
“Oh, yeah, beer and vodka,” I note. “This is going to end well.”
Loch opens one for himself and retakes his seat. “That’s the point, eh?”
I barely get out the start of a question when he cuts me off.
“I dinna know you spoke Irish.” He unclips a bag of cheese and onion crisps, but his hand’s shaking a little.
