“Again, I apologize. We just don’t have twenty.”

“I barely have enough leis and grass skirts. And, just to say, neither are very high quality.”

“I’m sorry you think that as well, sir. But—”

“Yo!” Merry barked.

I jumped at the sound, pulled from my focus on my extreme annoyance at being an audience to this sheer ridiculousness when Merry and me had a ton of Star Wars and other party shit in four collective baskets, a cake to pick up, decorating to do, and later, merrymaking to achieve for my son.

Plus, my mother was at my house with my kid, helping me get ready by doing what she called “light cleaning.” This meant she was going to move shit around to where she thought it should be, which was what she always did when she jumped at the chance to do some “light cleaning” before some event I had at my house. This also meant it’d take weeks to find the shit she moved, something which was nearly more annoying than the selfish, thoughtless, in-a-hurry human population you encountered when you were out running errands (but just nearly).

Needless to say, I didn’t have time for an asshole on a tiki torch mission in Indiana for a luau he was giving in fucking October.

I looked up at Merry to see he agreed.

He’d also shoved his jacket back on both sides and had his hands on his hips.

There was no badge on his belt, seeing as he was off-duty.

Thus, I wondered how this would go.

That said, Merry was tall and lean and badass. The guy with the torches was not tall and was kinda doughy, so I had high hopes it would go well…and, hopefully, fast.

“You wanna move this along?” Merry suggested, though it didn’t come close to sounding like a suggestion.

“It’s my turn at the register,” the man in front of us sniped. “You’ll get your turn.”

“I’ll get it a lot faster, you give it up about tiki torches you aren’t gonna get, seein’ as this guy can’t conjure them from thin air,” Merry returned, shifting his torso to the side only slightly to indicate the line that had formed behind us, which had at least three other customers waiting to check out. “You do that, you can get on your way so the rest of us can get on our way.”

This was a faulty strategy.

He’d called out to the man’s civility.

Since the man had none, that was totally not going to work.

“I hardly need your attitude on a day where I’m looking forward to hosting a luau,” the man retorted.

There it was. I was right.

He didn’t give a shit that he was affecting all our days with his attitude about fucking tiki torches.

“Ditto, turkey,” the woman behind us snapped.

Surprised, I looked back at her to see a blue-haired, sharp-eyed lady with a basket filled with Frozen-themed party plates, cups, like-colored streamers and balloons, and a second basket filled almost to overflowing with bags of fake snow.