Best Served Cold (Babes of Brewing #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

SOPHIE

“Uh, Otis?” I ask, waving the phone screen at my twenty-one-year-old cousin. My hand is jittering, causing my two-carat diamond ring to sparkle in the light streaking in through the kitchen window. “Can you come take a look at this? I need a second opinion.”

Otis sighs as he sets down the toast he was preparing, spilling a glop of jam onto his grandmother’s granite counter. If I don’t clean it up, it will probably remain there until we both die. He once found—and ate—a chocolate bar that had been wedged between the couch cushions for an uncertain amount of time. My cousin is sweet, mostly, but cohabitating with him has not been the highlight of my time in Asheville. Now, though…

I’ve never been a lucky woman. Bad luck follows me around the way other people are trailed by loving pets. I know better than to tell anyone this, but in my lowest moments I worry I’m cursed. Still, I’m hoping against hope Otis will be able to explain away the text message that just ruined my life.

My pulse thunders as he takes the phone in his sticky hand and peers at the screen.

“What the…?”

He glances at me in disbelief.

I feel my hope shriveling like a raisin. So, the text says what I thought it did…

BigCatchBabe: I can’t wait to see you this afternoon. I’ve been thinking about it all week. After I suck your cock, you can bend me over that barrel again. ;-)

“Uh, Soph.” Otis returns the phone, which I nearly drop, clumsy from nerves. “Doesn’t this person realize you don’t have a cock?”

“It’s not my phone,” I snap, slapping it down on the counter with a resonant crack. Hopefully, it broke.

Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out.

But panic has already cracked me down my middle, heartache seeping out. This is bad. So bad I have to borrow a phrase from Jane Austen to describe it: it’s a ruinous affair .

“You stole someone else’s phone?” Otis asks, his forehead furrowing. “But why?”

Without looking at him, I respond in a gush of words. “It’s Jonah’s. He just bought me a new one, and he set the wallpaper so it’s the same as his. They’re basically identical, and he took mine by mistake this morning. When I realized what happened, I thought it would be funny to text him from his own phone—he always uses his birthday as his password—but then this text popped up, and…” I swallow the rest of the run-on sentence. “You think someone’s playing a joke on him? Like one of his buddies?”

His mouth falls open, closes, and then opens again. I’m hoping some brilliant explanation will spill out. Instead, he rubs his chin and says, “Yeah, guys don’t joke around like that, Soph. Not unless they’re secretly blowing each other.”

“So you think…?”

He looks like he does every time I ask him to do something around the house—panicky. I can see sweat beading above his upper lip as he shifts his weight. Avoiding my eyes, he stammers, “You know what? I gotta go. I forgot, but I have this thing. It’s pretty important, and yeah…I’ll see you later. Sorry.”

“For what?” I ask numbly as he edges away, abandoning his toast.

He lifts a shoulder, shamefaced. “For…you know…being a guy.”

“You don’t have anywhere to be,” I accuse, the words sharper than they should be. He is lying, obviously, but he’s not the one who did this to me.

Jonah is.

Jonah Price is my fiancé of four months.

He told me he wanted to marry me after our first date and bought me an iPad three weeks later, loaded with my “favorite songs.” Truthfully, it was his favorite music, but it was still an attempt at thoughtfulness. So was the way he proposed, with a bouquet of handpicked flowers.

My great-aunt Penny would point out that he’d woven poison ivy into the arrangement, but he’s not a florist. How was he supposed to know?

Jonah has been my silver lining for months, my proof that my life isn’t as hollow as it sometimes feels. But if this text means what I think it does…

My knees go weak.

It’s like twelve years have been rewound and I’m sixteen again, stuck in the worst moment of my life. Rinse, repeat.

“Can I leave?” Otis asks as he scratches his head violently. “I think that might be better for both of us. I mean…Jonah hates me anyway. He’s definitely going to find some way to blame this on me.”

“How could it possibly be your fault that he’s running around town getting blow jobs?” The thought is distressing enough to reduce me to a puddle, and I grab the phone and sink down to the floor. It’s sticky, suggesting the toast isn’t the first snack Otis made today. I mopped it last night, and I’m going to have to mop it again later. Only this time, I probably won’t be able to tell myself, Only four months left before the rest of your life begins.

I was supposed to move in with Jonah after the wedding. We’d picked out new curtains together, and he’d surprised me with his very particular opinions about those and the bed linens. Why would someone with very particular opinions about such things cheat on his fiancée?

He and his mother had also controlled every stage of the wedding planning. I’d wanted to DIY the invitations and favors, but his mother had thought I was joking—and then responded with genuine horror when she realized I wasn’t. She’d chosen the invitations. Jonah had selected the venue, after rejecting my idea of holding it at Buchanan Brewery, where I work as a taproom server and part-time manager. I couldn’t contribute financially after blowing most of my personal savings on my wedding dress, so I hadn’t felt like I was in a position to argue. My parents weren’t helping either, given we weren’t on good terms, and I wouldn’t accept a dime from my great-aunt.

“What am I going to do?” I ask. “What am I going to do ?”

Otis makes a worried sound, then opens the fridge and removes a beer. He pops the top with the bottle opener fridge magnet and hands it down to me. It’s from the six-pack of Hair of the Dog IPAs I brought home from work last night. I’d gotten the beer for Jonah, but he’d turned up his nose and insisted Big Catch’s IPAs were superior.

Now, that seems doubly insulting.

“It’s 9 a.m.,” I say numbly.

My cousin pops open a second beer for himself. “Yeah, but I don’t know how to make a mimosa. The proportions always get messed up.”

“You’re staying?”

He sighs and settles onto the sticky floor beside me. “Yeah. Sorry I tried to leave. I know you don’t have any other friends. Grandma would have been disappointed in me if I’d left.”

One of the pieces of my shattered heart digs into my chest, in danger of metaphorically puncturing a lung. He’s right. I don’t have any friends here. I moved to Asheville less than a year ago, after Otis’s grandmother, my great-aunt Penny, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

At the time, she was living alone, and she’d refused to move in with Otis’s parents, who’d vacationed in Florida five years ago and stayed. Otis had moved in with her, but he frequently forgets to feed his goldfish, so the family had insisted she needed someone else to take care of her—and everyone knew I was the most in debt when it came to Ginnis family karma points. So I’d ditched my plans, left Greensboro, and moved into this house.

For the first time in my life, I’d felt necessary to someone. But Aunt Penny had pushed me to get out of the house, insisting I needed to meet other young people or I’d “wither on the vine.” It was true that she hadn’t needed help around the clock, so I’d gotten the job at Buchanan Brewery.

To be clear, I don’t have a huge interest in beer, but our next-door neighbor’s family runs the brewery. She’d agreed with my great-aunt that it would be unthinkable if “a sweet young thing” were left to wither, and the next thing I knew, I was working in the taproom.

I met Jonah that very first week, after accidentally spilling a beer on him. (Don’t ask.) He’d been wearing an expensive suit, because he’d been there in an official capacity. He was a distributor who helped breweries get wider distribution for their beer, and guided stores and bars in choosing the local, or local-ish, beers that would sell well for them. Basically, he made a profession of being charming. He joked that he was the best middleman money could buy.

Instead of flipping out about his ruined suit, he’d asked me out.

I’d never had a charmed life until that moment. In my experience, bad luck usually led to more bad luck, not a date with a man in an expensive suit. So obviously I’d said yes.

Meeting him had felt like a turning point.

Right around then, my aunt, who’d been reacting badly to the chemo, had started drinking a tea blend our next-door neighbor, Dottie, had made for her, which helped her tolerate the treatments. My first date with Jonah had gone shockingly well, and he’d asked me out again, and again.

I’d felt useful and wanted.

True, Aunt Penny had never really taken to Jonah, whom she’d called a huckster, but she thought every salesperson was a huckster.

My aunt’s cancer had officially gone into remission last month, thank goodness, and she’d left on a three-month long European vacation with her best friend to celebrate “kicking death in the balls.”

For all intents and purposes, my role in Asheville is over. I could quit my job at the brewery and start working toward my dream again, but the thought makes me strangely anxious, as if it’s a balloon lost to the wind.

And now this…

I take a sip of the beer, then a glug of it.

That’s the spirit,” Otis says as I start coughing. “So…I can’t think of a chill way to say this, but we both know what’s going on here. If you tell Jonah, he’s going to make up some excuse. Maybe he’s already on his way over here to switch the phones back. He’s got to be panicking.”

I take another glug of beer, trying to dampen my own panic. “He…he’s got a meeting this morning, at one of the breweries he distributes for. He won’t be able to leave without offending the owner.”

“Is it at the blow job place?” he asks.

I flinch. “No. Big Catch is owned by one of those megacorps. They do their own distribution. His meeting’s at Silver Star. The owner is really touchy about technology. He doesn’t let any of the employees use their phones while they’re working.”

“Well, Jonah’s going to panic when he realizes he messed up, and he’ll have some explanation, and…”

“You’re worried I’m going to believe him,” I say flatly.

“Yeah. I mean, he’s persuaded you to go along with his BS before.”

Just then, the phone buzzes again. I drop it like it’s a hot potato and the music just stopped.

Otis meets my gaze, sighs, and grabs it.

He checks the screen and flinches. “Uh. I don’t know how to tell you this, but it’s another one.”

“What?” I squawk.

He hands it over, and I take it with a shaking hand. It’s a conversation with “SilverStarBabe.”

Do you have time to get breakfast after your meeting? I know you’ve been busy, but I’ve barely seen you for weeks.

My therapist says we need to find ways to reconnect.

I glance at Otis in disbelief. “How is this happening? Is this a bad dream? Jonah told me just this morning that he can’t wait to wife me.”

He grimaces.

“He was being sweet,” I say automatically, because defending Jonah to Otis and my aunt has become a reflex. Shaking my head, I say, “No, it was stupid. But…seriously. Is this a dream? I don’t understand…”

He reaches out, and I’m about to hand the phone to him so he can take a second look when he pinches my arm instead.

“Ow,” I cry out. “What was that for?”

“Sorry,” he says, nearly fumbling his beer. “Just wanted to make sure. You know, I’m surprised too. I never would have thought Jonah had this much game. He owns five pairs of Crocs, and he thinks Africa’s a country.”

“So did you,” I point out. I was the one who’d filled them both in. Otis had taken it with his customary easy acceptance, but Jonah had given me the cold shoulder all day.

You don’t need to correct people, Sophie. You’re not a teacher. It was a barb he’d known would hurt, since the dream I’d abandoned was opening a crafting business with classes for young children.

Jonah’s like that sometimes. He can be sweet and so adoring, but he can also be a bit of…

Well, a jerk.

I’ve told myself he’s just not good at reading other people’s emotions. Some people are naturally empathetic, and others need to be reminded, constantly, that other people have feelings. I’m a type one, and he’s a type two. No big deal. But maybe I was making excuses for him because I was desperate to hold onto the only silver lining I had.

I swallow, trying to regain control of my emotions. “So, we think Jonah has been cheating on me, right? Like…possibly with more than one person. There’s no other explanation?”

That would mean the man I’d fallen in love with didn’t exist. That he was a fantasy created to fool me.

But why would he do that?

If he wants to flounce around town screwing everyone, why have a girlfriend at all, let alone a fiancée?

Otis gives a sympathetic shrug before admitting, “I don’t think there’s an innocent explanation, but maybe you should, you know, see if there are any other babes saved on that app.”

I look and then gasp, because there’s one more.

“There’s another,” I choke out. “GingerBeerBabe.”

“Oh man, that’s shitty. I think you need to text all of them.”

“The women?” I ask, my voice quavering. “What would I even say?”

He shrugs again, then runs his hand through his shoulder-length light-brown hair. “I don’t know, but you deserve the full story, and that dude’s not going to be honest with you. When he found out I like disc golfing, he claimed he held a local record, but he doesn’t even know what disc golfing is. He saw my pack and asked why I had so many frisbees.”

“He does like to be the best,” I say on an exhale.

“His own brother hates him,” he adds.

“His brother’s a dick.”

Rob is Jonah’s half-brother, from their father’s first marriage. He’s only a year and a half older than Jonah—thirty-one to Jonah’s thirty. Rob’s mother went to rehab for the first time when he was eight years old and afterward she only had visitation, so the two of them basically grew up in the same house. They didn’t get along growing up, and they barely speak to each other now.

Rob’s a musician—a “free spirit,” Jonah’s mother always says with a pinched expression. I’ve only met him half a dozen times, including at Christmas last year. I tried to be kind to him—and even sewed him a new guitar strap as a gift—but it’s obvious his dislike of Jonah extends to everyone connected to Jonah. He calls me Pollyanna. At first, I figured he got my name wrong, but my great-aunt clucked her tongue and told me to use “that Google you’re so fond of.”

“That Google” informed me that a Pollyanna is a woman who puts a positive spin on everything. It was obviously intended as an insult.

He’s not entirely wrong about me. After my life blew up when I was sixteen, I made a promise to get along and play nice. I’ve lived up to it, even though life has been full of more downs than ups. But he isn’t right about me either, dammit, and every time I see him, I feel an inexplicable itch to prove it.

“Rob’s not all bad,” Otis says, scratching his nose. “We bumped into each other at Buchanan Brewery one time, and he bought me a beer.”

“You only enjoyed yourself because you were both bad-mouthing Jonah.”

“Maybe. But I’ve seen him at a couple of his shows, and he was nice then too.” Otis takes another swig of his beer. His gaze lingers on my face. “You’re not crying.”

“I must be in shock.”

“Or maybe the glass is shattering,” he says. “You’re realizing what Gram and I have known for months: that Jonah is a controlling douchebag. A liar.”

I feel Otis symbolically tugging at my silver lining, and part of me is tempted to protect what’s left of it. “There could still be an honest explanation.”

“Text them,” he says, acting surprisingly invested. “Do it now.”

Hand trembling, I click into the SilverStarBabe chat.

This isn’t Jonah, but I have his phone. Who are you?

Three dots appear instantly.

Did you kidnap my boyfriend????? What do you want?

I glance at Otis, who is unabashedly reading over my shoulder. “She says…”

“Tell her.”

Finger shaking, I type:

I’m Jonah Price’s fiancée, Sophie. We’re supposed to get married in four months. Who are you?

She starts typing, but I switch to the chat with BigCatchBabe, because I know my cousin is right. I took one of those personality quizzes a couple of months ago, and it informed me I was an ostrich. If I stop digging now, before I have irrefutable evidence, Jonah might be able to talk me around. Because I really, really want to believe this isn’t true.

Taking a deep breath, I send BigCatchBabe a message too.

This is Jonah Price’s fiancée, Sophie. Who are you?

There’s a knock on the front door, and my eyes lock with Otis’s.

“Hide the phone, man,” he says. “Put it in the freezer, or stuff it in your boobs or something.”

I look down at my flat chest, distracted for half a second before I shake my head. “I’m not hiding from this.”

A surge of anger breaks through the shock and hurt. Jonah is always talking about the pressures of his job. He’s always gone. Working, he says. But it’s starting to look like the only thing he was working was me.

The phone buzzes in my hand, and I glance down.

It’s SilverStarBabe.

That’s not funny, Jonah.

So she doesn’t know. It makes her blameless and him worse. Do the others know? I haven’t texted GingerBeerBabe yet, but it feels like I’ve run out of time.

Another knock lands on the door as the phone buzzes with a new text, this one from BigCatchBabe.

Well, shit. I didn’t know, but I should have. All the trips. The unavailability. I’m Hannah. Want to cut off his balls together?

A sound escapes me that’s half sob, half laugh.

“Sophie.”

I glance up at Otis as the knock lands again.

I hand him the phone.

His expression firms up. “I’ll guard it with my life. He’ll have to fight me for it.”

It’s a sweet offer, but I have a feeling Jonah would only have to look at him funny for Otis to hand it over.

“I’ll handle this,” I insist through a dry mouth.

I pick up my beer bottle, surprised to find it empty, even though I don’t remember drinking more than a sip or two. Then I get up off the sticky floor and prepare to do something abnormal for me. I’m going to make a stand.

I try to harness the fire of BigCatchBabe as I make my way to the door. Inside, I’m teetering between devastation and fury. I want to latch onto the fury. I need it.

But when I open the door, Jonah’s not standing on my stoop. It’s his brother, Rob, dressed in a black band T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. His dark hair is shaggy, his face unshaven. His eyes are hazel, like Jonah’s, but more yellow than mossy green. He always looks like he’s heading home from a bender or some woman’s bed. He looms over me, several inches taller, even though I’m five foot six, hardly tiny.

Right now, he feels like the embodiment of his brother’s sins. It’s not fair, but I hate him. I loathe anyone with the last name of Price. I’m unimpressed by most people in possession of a Y chromosome, although Otis is currently exempt for being sweet and helpful. I want Rob to sink into the earth and drag Jonah with him. Their cold, intimidating father can join them.

I press a bracing hand on my hip and give him a cool look. I can feel the tears pressing at my eyes now, and I refuse to give into them in front of Rob, of all people. Swallowing all of the awful feelings down, I ask, “What are you doing here?”