Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
LIAM
Text conversation with Cormac
Thank you so much, man.
I can’t believe I’m going to be in the band.
Can we meet up for a drink sometime?
Wait, do you drink? Or would that be like mixing business and pleasure?
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a brewer who doesn’t drink.
It would be like being a chef who hates food.
I think I’d hate food if I had to cook it all day.
Yeah, we can get a drink sometime.
When would be good for you?
I’ll get back to you on that.
I tuck my phone back into my pocket after sending that last text, feeling like a bit of an ass. Because I’m not sure I meant what I said.
I like Cormac. He’s good people—interesting, which most folks aren’t—but I don’t want to encourage him to think of me as a friend. I’ve got too much going on, and I’m no good at connecting with people.
I sigh as I move another bag of grain in the storeroom, verifying that this label bears bad news too, which is when someone starts knocking on the front door of the brewery loud enough to wake the dead.
I ignore it at first, figuring it’s someone else who can only selectively read and has chosen to ignore the CLOSED sign.
I’m dealing with a serious situation.
I know Bubba, the former brewer at Silver Star, from a few homebrewer competitions around town.
Guy’s an idiot who doesn’t know how to run a tap room, let alone a brewery, so it came as no surprise that the supply room was disorganized.
After digging in deeper today, I have confirmation of a suspicion I formed that first day, when I noticed the labeling on the supplies we used for the pale ale.
There’s something else in this brewery Bubba screwed up good.
Briar isn’t going to like it, but it’s my job to pass on the bad news, like a doctor telling a patient the lump they’ve been worrying about really is cancer.
Shit, she’s going to give me that same unimpressed look she gave me this morning after accusing me of having a sense of humor.
Hell of a thing. Women have always liked when I make them laugh, until they don’t. Of course, I know what the real issue is. I said something shitty to Briar the other night, and she’s still pissed about it.
Maybe she doesn’t understand why I felt the need to define the line between us.
Just because I feel a tug toward her doesn’t mean it goes both ways.
That asshole Jonah is a pretty boy who wears fancy suits and probably gets weekly manicures.
He practically pissed himself when I told him I’d kill him if he got within five feet of my sister again.
I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy the memory even more now.
But if that is what Briar likes in a man, there’s no way she’d ever be interested in me.
Sure, there was a definite moment between us the first night, but she was probably still tipsy. High on her plans for this place and on what is basically high-stakes gambling. Win big or lose it all.
The knock lands again, and I wipe my hands on my jeans and make my way to the tasting room, grumbling about whoever’s dumb enough to interrupt me at a moment like this.
When I reach the front door, the kid from the other day—Sophie’s cousin—waves at me through the glass with a goofy grin on his face and a couple of bulging boxes in his arms. He’s wearing a red knit hat.
Will he keep grinning like that if I leave him out in the cold?
I point to my makeshift CLOSED sign, and he laughs as if he thinks I’m joking. I’m not. However, Briar is already pissed at me, and I know this kid is supposed to work in the tasting room. I have no real reason to keep him out.
Sighing, I unlock the door, and the kid trips on his way in, dropping the top box. It explodes open, silk flower garlands spilling out like it’s a magician’s snake trick.
“What’s that?” I ask darkly.
The tasting room is already decked out with holiday garlands, twinkle lights, and that tinsel tree in the corner. We don’t need it to look like a preteen girl’s bedroom.
“It’s a surprise for Briar,” he says as he tries to stuff the garlands back into the exploded box.
“Looks like an underwhelming surprise.”
He gets to his feet, leaving the destroyed box behind. “She picked out all this stuff with Sophie. They both have great taste.”
I grunt.
“Briar asked Sophie to help her decorate the barrel room. She has this idea to host pop-up dinner experiences in there. Didn’t she mention any—”
“No,” I grumble, annoyed with myself more than Briar. I’ve effectively shut down our channels of communication, so no wonder she didn’t tell me she was moving on her idea.
“Well, she picked out this stuff, and since she’s so busy, Sophie and I figured it would be nice if I could get everything set up while they’re out to lunch.”
“What about furniture?” I ask. “She get a table and chairs for this dinner experience, or are the rich people going to spend hundreds of dollars to eat on barrels?”
Right now, the barrel room has nothing inside but barrels of aging beer, both on racks and on the ground. No windows. Sounds like a miserable place to have dinner, but I’m curious to see where Briar is going with this. Balls to the wall, again. She’s good at that.
The past couple of days, I’ve watched her go about her business, making phone calls, taking meetings. Muttering to herself and playing with that long, silky golden hair.
I’ve been snapping that hair band on my wrist plenty. Taking in its smell of flowers until it stopped smelling like anything but me. I tried not to be disappointed about that.
“The furniture’s out in the car,” Otis says, practically chewing on his cheek. “I was wondering if you would maybe…”
“Lead the way, Oats.”
He gives me an uncertain look. “Sophie asked you not to call me that.”
“What about you? Are you asking me not to call you that?”
I’m not just giving him a hard time because I’m an asshole. A man needs to learn how to stand up for himself, especially around bigger men. It’s a lesson my dad taught me, but clearly this kid hasn’t learned it yet.
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny throat, then says, “Yeah. My name’s Otis.”
“Well, all right, Otis.” I reach for his hand and shake it. “Show me the way. We’ll get everything set up for her.”
“You’re going to help?”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
Maybe it’ll make up for the bad news I’m about to unload on her when she gets back from lunch.
“Oh, that’s so great,” Otis says, his face lighting up.
I grunt in response and open the door. We walk outside together, the cold hitting me in a good way. Waking me up.
“Aren’t you, like, cold?” the kid asks. “Or do your muscles keep you warm? I read that somewhere, that someone with a lot of muscles doesn’t get as cold. I was wondering if it was bullshit.”
“Most things are bullshit.”
I follow him to an illegally parked green Subaru with a taped-up bumper.
A small table is attached to the roof of the car upside down, like a bug flipped onto its back, and two chairs are arranged on its underbelly.
The ropes are twined around so many times it looks like someone was trying to make a mummy.
“I take it you never worked for a Christmas tree farm,” I say with a sigh.
“No, why?”
“No reason. I’ll be right back.”
I run back inside to Silver Star’s basement and return with a pair of shop shears.
“Oh, no, we can just unravel—”
I cut the rope. “I’ll teach you how to tie a proper knot later. If you want to finish this while Briar’s at lunch, we have to get moving.”
“Right,” he says, perking up. “I can’t wait to see the look on her face.”
He obviously means it. This kid would probably give up his right nut for Briar Sterling. Maybe the left one too, if she asked nicely. Then again, something tells me Briar Sterling could have as many men’s balls as she wants—a whole collection of them she could wear as earrings.
The thought makes me grin, but the grin fades as a voice inside my head says, You practically offered yours up the other night.
I clap the kid on the back—too hard, I guess, because he stumbles a step. “Let’s get you that smile.”
We spend the next forty minutes or so getting the barrel room set up. The table and chairs are heavy—mahogany, he says, from an estate sale—so I bring them downstairs myself, telling the kid he should get going with the flower shit.
“There are lanterns too,” he says excitedly.
After I get the furniture set up in the dark, slightly dank room, I help him weave the flower garlands between the barrels.
It feels counterproductive, given that we’re eventually going to need to take those barrels down to use them for their intended purpose, but it does look better.
Especially once we get the small copper lanterns hung, along with some twinkle lights that stream down the side of the brick wall opposite the barrels.
“She picked all this out herself?” I ask again as we get a thick purple tablecloth arranged over the table.
When I looked at this room, I only ever saw a dank space—a place that served a purpose but otherwise added nothing to the brewery.
Briar, though…she saw an opportunity.
The woman has vision.
I don’t use this word lightly, but the barrel room looks fucking magical.
“Mostly,” Otis says excitedly. “Sophie says she’s ‘got a good eye.’ Briar’s pretty great, right? You’re so lucky you’re working with her. God, you must get to spend, like, all day with her, right? That’s the dream.”
I give him a sidelong look. “You’ve got it bad for her, huh?”
He pulls off his knit cap, revealing a mass of messy dark hair.
Wringing the hat between his hands, he says, “I know she’s never going to go for me.
Sophie tells me that all the time, but I was hoping I could at least change the way she looks at me.
You know. So she doesn’t think I’m, like, a little brother.
I was kind of hoping you could help me with that. ”