Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
brIAR
Text conversation with Hannah
Liam didn’t try to seduce you, did he?
He’s been warned, but I’ll cut off his balls if he so much as looks at you the wrong way.
No, he brought me to his boxing gym.
Ugh. That place smells like feet.
It does.
He thought I needed to hit something.
He was right.
Shit, I should have thought of that.
Did you deck him in the face?
I saved my aggression for the heavy bag.
It felt good, to be honest.
Want to get tanked? The party’s over, but Sophie and I are still here with the guys. Don’t you dare say you’re getting up early to do yoga.
I’m getting up early to do yoga.
Of course you are.
OK, we’re meeting Dottie at the tea shop tomorrow at FIVE P.M. Don’t be late. We’re going to work everything out, you’ll see.
Thank you, Hannah. THANK YOU. I love you.
I can’t tell you how much this means to me.
Liam might be the only person who could help me save the brewery.
I think he needs this too.
Good luck at work tomorrow.
Thank you.
I love you too, BTW. You’re a badass bitch. That’s your new mantra. Chant “I am a badass bitch” in the morning while you fold yourself into a pretzel.
The next morning, after I finish my yoga session, I sit on my mat and try to do as Hannah suggested. She saved me, and in return, I intend to give her every single thing she ever requests. Even if that means chanting “I’m a badass bitch” to myself like a total weirdo.
Who knows? Maybe it’ll even work. I could use a confidence boost—I’m meeting my father at his lawyer’s office this morning to sign the papers that will make Silver Star mine.
So there’s no better time to start believing I’m a badass bitch.
Or at least tough enough to sit across from him without showing any signs of emotion.
Still, I feel kind of dumb saying something like that out loud, especially since the only “person” around is Karma, my Siamese cat, who gives me a withering look whenever I do stupid things.
He also enjoys leaping onto me while I’m doing bridge or wheel pose, as if I’ve formed a useful table shape for him to rest on.
I love him madly.
Then again, I have a history of falling for emotionally aloof men’s BS.
Jonah wasn’t the first, but his betrayal hurt the worst, because I’d really thought all the yoga I’d done and hours of therapy I’d endured had gotten me somewhere.
I’d promised myself that I would never fall for someone else’s lies, the way I had with my business partner and past boyfriends.
Great-Aunt Sky once told me that I have a natural instinct for reading the energy people put out into the world, but that I ignore my better judgment because I’m too accommodating and let other people paper their version of the world over my own.
Lo and behold, she was right, because I’d dated an engaged man for months, totally oblivious.
It’s mortifying to think about the promises we exchanged, which meant nothing to him and everything to me.
Jonah was supposed to help me run Silver Star Brewery.
I had the creative vision, and he’d use his talents to get the brewery’s beer into all the right places and keep my staff and customers satisfied.
He’d claimed his people skills were superior, and let’s be honest, he was obviously right.
He’s so good with people he convinced four women to believe they were his one and only.
I’d certainly believed in the vision he’d created.
I’d thought I loved him.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last six months wondering why Jonah went to all the trouble of lying to us. Was it only for an ego boost, or had he been forming tidy little backup plans? Separate lives waiting for him in case he decided he wanted or needed to slip into them.
Sometimes I wish I had a backup life—an existence separate from the one I have as Briar Sterling, my parents’ greatest disappointment.
My mind drifts to those alternate lives whenever I try to meditate.
I imagine myself as a barista in Seattle, or a musician scraping by in New York City.
An artist in some tropical place where everyone walks around drinking alcohol out of pineapples. Anything but me, here.
“You’re a badass bitch,” I remind myself. My gaze drops to Karma, who has padded up to my thick yoga mat. He gives me a look that says, Please, who do you think you’re fooling?
I suppose he has a point.
“Should we move to Seattle?” I ask out loud. “I know it rains a lot, but maybe that means there are perpetual rainbows.”
He meows.
“I am a badass bitch,” I make myself say one final time before getting up and rolling up the mat.
I get another doubtful look from my cat. He nudges me with his front paw—an are you for real? gesture if ever there was one.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m feeling sorry for myself, but I’m going to stop, because…drumroll, please…I am a badass bitch. Hannah says so, so it must be true.”
He looks dubious, but I really felt like a badass bitch last night. It was satisfying to beat that bag with my fists at the boxing gym. My knuckles are still sore this morning, but sore in a good way. Sore from being used.
My mother would have an aneurysm if she knew I’d been to a boxing gym.
She’d definitely insist I bathe in sanitizer after putting on those dirty, scuffed gloves.
Then again, my mother has never known best. Practicing at the gym made me feel the kind of bone-deep enjoyment I get from spending time with my friends, from doing yoga, and from planning my upgrades for the brewery.
Could I join a gym like that?
I mean, surely it’s not just for men…
My next thought, I’m ashamed to admit, is to wonder what my parents and their friends would think if they found out I’d joined a boxing gym with a bunch of burly, sweaty men.
Liam wouldn’t ask a question like that.
He also wouldn’t daydream about being someone else.
He’s such a big man and sticks out in any crowd, but he’s comfortable in his own skin. No doubt. No fear. No second-guessing himself.
What would it be like to live like that?
I’m guessing Liam would never let anyone else put up the wallpaper in his internal room. His reality is his, and his alone.
I want that for myself. I yearn for it.
My mind flashes back to last night. To him saying, Princess, if this is what you think good behavior is, you need someone to show you a good time.
His words sent a tremor through me, but it wasn’t because he said them.
He was right. I’ve been living on the razor’s edge for months, waiting for my father to finally give me the brewery or snatch it away like a child’s toy.
Other than my hangouts with Sophie and Hannah, I haven’t let myself have much fun.
My favorite escape used to be making jewelry.
Twisting the wire to hug the stones used to fill me with the satisfaction of making a small addition to the world’s beauty.
But that joy seeped away when my jewelry became tied to failure.
Aside from a set of crystal pendants I made for Sophie, Hannah, and me, I haven’t created any jewelry in over a year.
People had loved my jewelry. I probably could have figured out a way to continue the business, despite what Theresa had done, but I’d lost the spark and didn’t know how to bring it back.
No beauty can be made without at least a speck of joy.
I give Karma some more love, then stow my yoga mat and get ready to go to the lawyer’s office. Dealing with my hair takes the most time, as it has to be brushed in sections.
I’ve let it grow too long again. I know I should trim it, but cutting my hair will never be a simple act for me. Not after what happened to me in high school.
“I am a badass bitch,” I murmur to myself as I brush it.
Maybe if I say it often enough I’ll believe it.
Or maybe, a voice in my head suggests, you can find a way to prove it to yourself.
The receptionist leads me into the conference room at John Joy’s, the law firm my father has used for the past thirty years since he and John Joy, otherwise known as “Uncle John,” are golf buddies.
My father has already arrived and is sitting at the table in the unremarkable black-and-white conference room—windowless, to make it more depressing.
His hands rest on his belly as he grins at his lawyer, seated beside him.
John is wearing a slick suit, his thinning hair combed forward to create the illusion that he’s unstylish rather than balding.
My father’s grin stretches wider when he sees me, and he taps on his phone. Seconds later, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” flows out from the speaker, tinny and aggravating.
I dig my nails into my palms.
My father made his no-phone ruling at Silver Star after reading an article that indicated cell phone use made workforces at least twenty-five percent less effective. But he’s never cared about following his own rules. Other people have to fall in line; he’s the one who draws the line.
I press my bruised knuckles with the pad of my finger, reminding myself of what it had felt like to hit that bag last night. Keeping my expression stoic, I say, “Very funny, Dad.”
He chuckles as he stops the song—thank God—and I take a seat opposite him and his lawyer, as if we’re on opposing sides of a custody battle. It feels like it.
“Let’s get this settled,” I say as the receptionist leaves us and closes the door behind her.
My dad nods to Uncle John, who gives me the sympathetic smile of an unskilled actor.
“You’ll get the building and all the supplies, of course,” he says, nodding.
“You and your father have already agreed on all of that, and he’s also giving you an operating budget that will last you through the end of the year. ”
My mouth falls open. My gaze bounces between them before settling on my father. “The end of the year? That’s less than three weeks away.”
There’s a hard glint in his eyes that tells me he won’t be moveable, but I still have to try.