Acceptance is the First Step
Ranar
“She’s going to put me out of business.
It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
Grace frowned, her blue eyes narrowing as she tried to find a hole in his logic large enough for her to stick her shot glass through, wrinkling her nose when there was none.
Ruma had been overjoyed when Grace turned up that evening, delivering a tote bag patterned with that same damned bubble tea-sipping rabbit and a discreet bottle of tequila behind her back.
Ruma insisted her favorite human stay for dinner, and Grace’s beaming smile and bubbly personality distracted long enough for Ranar to lean against the sink and close his eyes, resting his face for a few moments.
He was not going to let his daughter’s summer with him be ruined by this, he’d promised himself.
That meant putting on a cheerful, brave face each and every day — for her, for his oblivious parents, for the whole damned family, keeping every plate spinning without falter, and he was exhausted from the effort of smiling when all he wanted to do was sulk.
Once Ruma went to bed, Grace cracked open the bottle, her smile flattening out.
The transformation was so swift, it might have been comical under different circumstances.
“Okay, let’s strategize.
How bad is this going to be?”
Ranar laughed, dropping back onto the sofa, letting his tail uncoil and stretch as he accepted a shot.
“Well, I’m going to be closing soon.
I don’t know where you would put that on your disaster scale, but on mine . . .”
“Come on, I’m being serious! You can’t catastrophize—“
He struggled to sit up enough to swallow without choking.
“Gracie, I’m not catastrophizing and there’s nothing to strategize.
I had three orders today.
Three.
And they were all piddly little thirty-dollar vases; I can’t even justify delivering that. She’s going to put me out of business. That’s not me being fatalistic. That’s what’s going to happen. I’m not sure how quickly, we won’t be able to tell that until after the next few weeks, but it is an inevitability.”
Grace opened her mouth to challenge him, but Ranar was ready.
“Do you remember, back in your hotel days? Did you ever have those big baskets of little ferns? The mixed variety?”
“Of course, all the time.
We had a partnership with a local shop.
We used to get those every—“
“That used to be a guy.
That was a distributor we used for years.
He covered the whole tri-state area, so every flower shop you called in all those years as you organized banquets and for weddings and proms and graduations, they all dealt with him.
He was everyone’s plant guy, which means, even though you didn’t realize it, he was your plant guy too.
Last time I talked to him, he was driving a school bus in Bingham. Do you know where all the flower shops get their fern baskets from now?”
She was quiet for a moment, dropping her head back against the single human-accommodating piece of furniture he had in his home, there for her alone.
“Bloomerang?”
“Bloomerang.
We used to have a different distributor for everything.
I had a vase gnome.
A basket guy.
A company who did the boxes. Where are they all now? “
“Well, I’m assuming they’re out of business, or else you wouldn’t be telling me this particular happy story.”
“They are all out of business.
Every one of them.
Along with more than a dozen flower shops just in the metro area.
Do you know who’s doing better than ever?”
She blew out an aggrieved breath, pushing to her feet to scoop up the bottle and top off his glass.
“Let me guess.” Waiting until she had filled her own glass, dropping into her chair once more, Grace rolled her eyes, kicking back her shot.
“Bloomerang?”
Ranar raised his shot glass.
“Fucking Bloomerang.” He pulled a face at the burn, scowling at her once he had returned the empty glass to the table beside the sofa.
“I hate tequila.
You couldn’t at least spring for the fancy elvish shit?”
“You’re not going to have the budget for fancy elvish shit soon.
I didn’t want you to develop a taste for it.”
Ranar dropped back to the cushion, rubbing a hand down his face as he laughed.
He was fucked.
There was no way around it.
But at least he had good friends.
What do you have, Sumi? Other really sparkly eyes and great tits and a beautiful laugh? Hmm? Just a corporation pulling your strings. He shook his head, pushing the thought away. That’s not helping.
“Who’s going to do my weddings if you go out of business? Like, that’s really going to fuck me over.
Thanks for nothing.”
Ranar snorted.
“That’s the way it works.
I rely on you, and you rely on me.
We all rely on Xavier and his sister to get us through the week.
Xavier ages his beans over at Enoch’s winery, and Enoch relies on Cal to make sure the menu is supplied.”
“And Cal relies on Rourke,” Grace added.
“He’s a parts supplier, keeps all the machinery running.”
Ranar raised a hand, emphasizing the point Grace was proving.
“And I’m sure he has another small business partner that he relies on.
It used to be easy.
This all used to be easy.
And then these big companies get involved and they fuck us all.”
Grace poured herself another shot.
“Seriously though, are you just gonna throw in the towel? You’ve been talking about selling the building for as long as I’ve known you.” She paused, swirling her glass for a moment.
“This is a good opportunity,” she said slowly, at last.
“Maybe that’s the way you have to look at it, right? You know you’ll get a ton of money for it, and I would really hold Jack’s head to the fire on that.
He owes that to you. And I would make him manage an investment portfolio for free afterward.”
“I really don’t think I want to trust these fucking werewolves with any other part of my life.”
Grace snorted.
“I mean, I get that, but making money is the one thing he’s actually good at.
Look at this town.
Let him ensure you never need to work again. “
Ranar tipped his empty shot glass back, ensuring that there was not a single drop left.
This was a financial decision.
Can’t keep propping up failing businesses.
“Anyway,“ she went on dramatically, “this can be a fresh start for you.
You could literally do anything you want! And as someone who started over again, I can tell you, it definitely has its perks.
We should all get a do-over after we’re thirty.
We make all of our major life decisions when we’re too stupid and young to see the long-term.
When you start over again, you can be smarter. You have the benefit of experience that you didn’t have as a twenty-four-year-old. Maybe you go back to court and get full custody. You and Ruma can travel all over the unification. See the biggest everything. The biggest ball of tinfoil. The biggest piece of cheese. All of that.”
“You’re starting to slur, Grace.
And I can’t wait to see the judge’s face when I tell them I want to redo the custody agreement so that Ruma can have a childhood of roadside attractions instead of private school.” He struggled to sit up as Grace laughed, pulling his tail in closer, hoisting himself up upon it, swaying as his head swam.
“And I know I’ve been talking about selling, but that was different.
I need to extend this as long as I can for my dad’s sake.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with him once we close the doors, this is all he knows. This is the only routine he’s ever had. Yes, I’m going to have to sell the building eventually, and I’m going to rake whoever buys it over the coals. But I’m not giving that up easily and I’m not going quietly. That’s what they all want. She can put me out of business, but I can make her fucking miserable first.”
Grace laughed again, downing her drink and sinking low in her chair.
“This makes me sad.
She was flirting with you so hard that day! I thought she was gonna be perfect for you.”
Ranar pursed his lips, the end of his tail thrashing in agitation, thinking of that morning at the Black Sheep.
“Did I tell you I asked her out?”
From the arm of her chair, Grace’s eyebrows shot up.
“We ran into each other outside the coffee shop.
It was before the construction barrier even went up.
She said yes, too.
We were trying to make our schedules line up when—“ Ranar cocked his head, pausing, remembering why Sumi was in Cambric Creek that morning in the first place.
“Motherfucker, that was the day she got her permit. That’s the only reason why we didn’t set a date right then and there, she got a call from City Hall and had to get back to a meeting . . .”
She had looked so beautiful that morning, full of nerves, and he’d done his best to ease her mind.
Ranar dropped his head back, groaning.
“She told me she was having trouble with a permit and I .
.
.
I wished her good luck.
You’re right. I am just a stupid snake.”
Grace was curled up on the seat of her chair, holding her stomach as she nearly convulsed with laughter.
“How? How are you this unlucky? You finally meet someone, she’s making eyes like she wants to fuck you on the spot, and it turns out she’s the business rival who’s going to put you under.
Who else has luck like this?!”
“Don’t throw up on my floor,” he grumbled as she continued to wheeze in laughter.
“I don’t know how I’m this unlucky, it’s not fair.”
Grace gasped, still laughing.
“Ranar, wait! Maybe that is how you get out from under this.
What if she’s still the one? Maybe you just need to fuck this out of your systems!“ She looked incredibly pleased with the suggestion, nodding against the padded arm of the chair.
“You should call her tomorrow and make the offer.
I’ll bet once she gets the double dick down, she won’t even care about having a shop anymore. She’d probably be willing to work for you!”
“Shhhhhhhhh!” He twisted in his seat, throwing a glance down the darkened hallway, feeling the room pitch as he did so.
Fucking tequila.
“Lower your voice! Gracie, I am begging you to see a doctor.
That mothman has scrambled your brain.”
“I think we’re drunk,” she stage whispered, still curled in the seat of her chair.
“But this is a very good idea.
You’re just a silly snake, you wouldn’t know a good idea if it slithered up and bit you.“ She sat up quickly, pantomiming his side-to-side undulation, both of her hands cupping the air around her thighs.
“You just need to give her a taste of the stacked salami, and I’ll bet this will all go away.
Oh shit, I’m dizzy.”
Ranar closed his eyes, willing the room to stop spinning.
He would never drink tequila again.
You can’t trust something made by centaurs in the desert.
He wished it could be that simple.
If all he needed to do was pin Sumi down beneath his weight, the tip of his tail holding one of her legs open as he fed one of his cocks into her . . . Who knows? Maybe she’d be up for taking both. If all they needed to do was fuck this division out of the way, he would go knock on her door right now. He was certainly horny enough.
But you’re not that lucky.
And you were horrible to her.
It was a terrible character flaw, Ranar thought, that he was unable to be mean to someone and not feel guilty almost immediately.
He had meant what he’d said that day, the afternoon she had turned up in his shop — or at least, he had in the moment.
But he had wanted to bite his traitorous tongue out of his mouth the instant the hurt reached her eyes.
Her words back to him were just as sharp, just as biting, but he had made the first strike, and everything that came after could be chalked up to defense.
If he could take that back, if he could smooth over this little tiny issue of her shop that would absolutely put his under, if they could tiptoe around the gulf that lay between them and put their differences to rest by fucking, he would.
Bury the hatchet.
And then bury it again a little while later just for good measure.
And then again in the morning.
Just to make sure there’s no resentment.
But he wasn’t that lucky.
It didn’t matter if the thought of her sparkling eyes and full lips made him hard, which they had, several times since the day outside the coffee shop, and it didn’t matter if she had flirted with him once or twice.
He was only attracted to her because Grace had put the notion in his head in the first place.
It didn’t matter if she had agreed to go out with him that morning in front of the Beanery’s doors, that she’d actually seemed happy at the prospect.
Didn’t matter whatever possibilities had been there once.
They were enemies now.
That was the way it was, and that was simply the way it had to be.