1. Handle It Just Fine
HANDLE IT JUST FINE
Two years later
“Welcome to Fierce Brewing,” Tasha said as she unlocked the door to let in the long line of waiting customers to purchase their tour tickets. “We hope you enjoy your time here. Please, come in and we’ll get your tickets purchased. The first tour starts in ten minutes.”
“How many people are on a tour?” someone shouted from the middle of the line.
“We do thirty people at once,” she said.
The person was counting heads ahead of him. “Dang it. I’m twenty-nine and my wife and buddies are after me. Any way we can all go at once? You know, letting a few more on?”
“Sorry,” she said, smiling. Good lord, it was worse than her fifth graders trying to get some extra time at recess.
She was scanning credit cards of the people while she talked and handed over red bracelets for them to put on.
“We have to follow the rules. You know, the code enforcers and all don’t like when you break them. ”
It was only a white lie. The code enforcer was Mason Fierce and there was no way she was not doing what she was told.
Her best friend, Margo O’Malley, who was married to Mason Fierce’s first cousin Liam, the head chef at Fierce-The Pub, was how she got this summer job. She wasn’t risking it. Not when it was the perfect summer job to work around her daycare needs.
Something she had to pay for year round to keep her spot as it was, so might as well look for another job to fill her time.
“Does that mean we can go ahead of them?” someone else asked as the line moved through.
The bands for each tour were already color-coded so she didn’t have to count. Once the colors were gone, the number was filled. If she had some left over, she tossed them in a bin to not mix up when that color rolled around again.
“If they will let two people pass, sure,” she said. She wouldn’t ask, because the one time she did that, people threw a fit.
“Go ahead,” the first guy’s wife said despite her husband’s frown. “I want us to go as a group. It’s only twenty minutes before the next one.”
“That’s right,” Tasha said. “We’ll give you your colored bands and you can wait in the bar and have a drink before your tour is called.”
“Really?” the guy asked.
“Yes. See, sometimes it pays to have to wait for the next one.”
That seemed to make everyone happy. She got bands on the next group of thirty within ten minutes and let them into the bar and held the line there for thirty minutes like she was told prior.
“This place is huge,” the next man in line said to her.
“It is. Have you been here before?”
Tasha liked to talk to the customers. Most asked questions she struggled to answer. Or not as much now after Mason’s wife, Jessica, gave her a crash course in beer knowledge.
“No. This is our first time. We are from Savannah on vacation.”
“I’m sure you’re going to enjoy your time here,” she said.
“Have you worked here long? This would be my dream job.” The woman behind the guy elbowed him. It was the way he asked. As if he were hitting on her in a bar.
She was used to that too and would ignore it for now. No reason not to be polite and friendly. She had no fear here. Never did.
There were always security walking around, the store to the left of her had employees in it, the bar to the right also. The walls were glass letting everyone see everyone else.
“Just a few months,” she said. “It’s a summer job. I’m a teacher.”
“Me too,” the woman said, pushing her way in front of the guy she came with. She wanted to tell the woman to run in the other direction if he was flirting with someone in front of her face. Just imagine what was going on behind her back.
But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t nudge her past drama onto anyone else.
Least of all paying customers.
“What grade do you teach?”
“Fourth,” the woman said.
“Fifth for me. It’s such an... interesting age.”
“Oh, tell me about it.” She shared a few funny stories of her students, then moved the customers through for the next group.
The next few hours went that way for her until an employee from the store came out. “Go on your break, Tasha,” Melanie said. “I’ve got you for thirty minutes.”
“Thanks.” She lifted the rope and walked toward the locker room where everyone could keep their belongings. There was a large fridge for their lunches along with jugs of water and a massive coffee station, free for everyone.
She filled her water bottle she kept at the stand with her, then unlocked her locker and pulled out her lunch and placed her butt in a chair at the table.
There were a few others in the room. People she didn’t know that well but saw them around. Men who worked in the brewery.
“Hey, Tasha.”
She turned when her name was called.
There were some snickers with that move, but it wasn’t as if she could get up and leave. Not from the woman who still owned a stake in all the Fierce holdings.
The matriarch of the family.
“Hello, Jolene. I thought for sure you’d be home relaxing after this past weekend.”
Jolene, who had more pep in her step than half her students, speed-walked closer, pulled out a chair and planted her ass.
“I still have as much energy as I did thirty-five years ago,” Jolene said. “When I was chasing toddlers around the house. You know, five at once. You’ve just got one.”
Tasha smiled. “I do. Micah. He’s a handful. And now that he’s walking.” She shivered. “I can’t imagine what he’d be like if I had more than one, let alone five.”
“You’d be able to handle it just fine. How is your son? Got some pictures for me?”
“I always have pictures to share.”
She pulled her phone out of her back pocket where she kept it even while working. Not that she’d text or check emails, let alone social media, while on the clock. But she wanted to be reached if there was a problem with her son.
She unlocked her phone and went to the photos, then scrolled through them with Jolene leaning close and laughing over each one.
“He looks like a handful.”
She finished chewing the bite of her sandwich while Jolene was glancing at the carousel of pictures. “If he weren’t such a sweet-natured child with it, I’d be pulling my hair out. But he’s all smiles and laughs, even when he’s doing something he shouldn’t be.”
“Oh boy,” Jolene said, shaking her head. “One of those? That was Cade. But I learned early on that he was going to be my little joker too.”
“I hope Micah doesn’t turn into that.”
“Was Micah’s father like that as a child?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled, then went back to eating. It was how she always answered when her cheating ex came up.
The man no one knew about. They didn’t know she was dating him back then and she was glad she’d kept it quiet.
Not really true. Margo knew because Margo knew everything, but the fact Jolene didn’t, meant that Margo kept that secret. Not that she had any doubt.
Hell, even her parents didn’t know who Micah’s father was. Since the man who fathered her son didn’t know, she wasn’t about to let anyone else.
Jolene patted her hand. “Micah will be the man you help him into being.”
She smiled. “That’s how I think of it.”
Jolene pushed back from the table. “I’ll let you finish your lunch before you need to get back out there.”
She nodded and returned to her sandwich.
“Oh boy. How many times has Jolene come over to talk to you?”
The grin filled her face when Hope Andrews sat next to her. Hope was married to Devin, who was also Jolene’s nephew. A first cousin to Margo by marriage.
Tasha knew most of the family from being Margo’s best friend. She’d been part of the wedding, part of the baby shower, and just part of her life in general.
“A few.”
Hope leaned in close. “I don’t need to tell you what she does.”
Her head shook. “Nope. I’m fully aware and completely immune. No worries there,” she said, knowing Hope was referring to Jolene’s matchmaking schemes.
“Everyone says that and everyone falls.”
“Not me,” she said firmly, but still kept her smile in place.
She’d never been mean to anyone. Well, not most people. Her ex saw her anger that last night, then never saw her again.
And if she had her way, she’d never again cross paths in this lifetime with him.
“Where are you going, Mom?”
“Hi, Mason,” Jolene said. She thought she could sneak through the halls toward the distillery. She should know by now that she couldn’t sneak anywhere with the stupid, bright, gaudy safety gear they made her wear around the building.
“Just walking around. Shouldn’t you be working?”
“I am working,” Mason said. “And you’re going to be a nuisance.”
She patted her son’s cheek. “I’m never a nuisance.”
He snorted, just like she thought he would. “Baker is busy.”
“You’re all busy. You always are. I hear it daily. My children are so successful.”
“And we are smart enough to know when you’re blowing smoke up our asses.”
Mason’s squinted eyes told her there was no way to get past him without being honest. Not that she lied because there was no reason to. Everyone knew what she did and why she was in the building most times. Unless she had one of Mason’s kids with her.
“I was going to check on Baker and see if he enjoyed the party on Saturday. It was the first time he had come. I’m not sure why you couldn’t get him there before.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure why he came this time,” Mason said, scratching his chin. “But hey, he knows you by now, so go at it. Don’t get pissy if you don’t get anywhere.”
“I never get pissy,” she said, crossing her arms. “That’s rude.”
He let out a half laugh, his shoulder lifting with it. “Who is it you’ve got in mind for him?”
The smile filled her face. “So you can help me?”
“No.” He was shaking his head. “So I can warn him. You never know when to quit. You don’t know him that well or his past. Maybe he wants no part of it.”
“Everyone says that, but they come around.”
“If you say so. And you still didn’t tell me who.”
“And I’m not going to,” she said, nodding her head and marching right past her middle son.
It was only recently that she’d decided Tasha might be the perfect fit for Baker.
Both were nice, funny, outgoing and yet single.
Tasha, she could understand that. A single mother, no word on the father, probably had some baggage there also.
But Baker. The guy had been employed a few years and she’d never heard one lick of a significant other. Nothing more than maybe he’d dated on and off.
Whatever his reasons were, or what might hold him back, maybe Tasha had the same problem.
Getting people to bond over those things could be a good way to get a spark lit.
It never hurt to try.
And she was famous for trying and getting it right!