Jennifer L. Hayes

“Do you know why people would say cheers before they drank?” Ben asked with his boyish grin. He loved little bits of trivia. He always retained the most useless facts. People always felt it added to his charm. “Because it was polite? Why?” I asked, taking the bait. He’d told me this already on several occasions but I never let on. He liked the story so much I never wanted to spoil his telling of it. “Because in medieval times, it was common to poison your enemy.” He paused to take a long sip of his ale. “And so when you banged your glasses together, a splash from each was supposed to fall into the other’s cup. It slowly became a mark of trust.”
― Jennifer L. Hayes, The Wayfarer