Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
R arity…
“That’s bullshit.”
I didn’t need to say it. Big Dawg had it handled. He wasn’t about to take any gaslighting off Charlie, and I wasn’t either. I didn’t say anything. I just let my resting bitch face do all the talking.
Several of the Iron Horse’s employees had already quit and walked out. I was still on the fence but would quickly make up my mind based on how the argument about to go down between Big Dawg and upper management shook out. Right now, Charlie was sweating bullets, and the old adage people didn’t quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers was floating around in my thoughts.
I didn’t think Charlie was going to survive this argument or the incident as a whole. The owner was doing the math, the calculations clearly going on in his deep brown eyes, even if the rest of his face was inscrutable.
I’d known Rob since I was knee high to a fuckin’ June bug, as my gram and gramps would say.
He and my dad had gotten along. My dad even helped Rob with some metrics and financials at one point.
I could never remember being so disappointed in my “Uncle Rob” as I was right now.
He should probably fear my mom calling his ass up. I’m sure she’d thought about it. I didn’t know if she had already or not.
Rob’s eyes flicked in my direction and I knew he noted how unhappy I looked, but I just kept my mouth shut.
Did I want to keep my mouth shut? No. Did I know that if I did, it would bother the shit out of Rob, and he might take me more seriously and ask my opinion?
Yes.
I was playing the game to get the best results, and the best results would be to get rid of fucking Charlie and get somebody in here to manage the place who had the iron pair of testicles necessary to call the unpleasant shots.
Shit, I could do a better job than Charlie. I just didn’t have the experience or even the time to until the boys were in school, and even then, I didn’t know if that was what I ultimately wanted. Running a bar like the Iron Horse was… a lot. Way above my pay grade right now, that was for sure – but that was the point I was trying to make. Charlie sucked at it that bad. Sure, he made sure we never ran out of things or whatever, but the actual security side of things, and things besides just the payroll and ordering and stuff?
Yeah, he sucked.
“Rarity, what ‘cha thinking?” Rob asked,
“Depends,” I said. “Am I talking to Rob, my boss and the owner of the Iron Horse, or am I talking to ‘Uncle Rob,’ who I grew up with?”
He grinned at me and asked, “What’s the difference?”
“Whether I’m being real or not,” I said with a shrug, and there was a smattering of laughter.
“Let’s start with Rob the boss,” he said.
“Okay. The last couple of nights of operation were a train wreck on the security side of things. Charlie doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t always enforce the rules or he tells Big Dawg to let it slide. Dawg should have pushed back more on night one – but when night two went down?” I shook my head.
“And Rob the uncle?” he asked, looking uncomfortable.
“You should have been here last night from the time that we opened. The cops should have been called, and the Scorpions should have been 86’ed before the Bastards even showed up. You know how these cock goblins work. It’s been the same shit since the fifties and the sixties. They might as well whip their dicks out and piss on their territory, and this —” I flailed my arms, gesticulating wildly. “ All of North Florida is Bastards territory, so you knew they were coming. Big Dawg was already down for the count. Charlie,” I looked at him with disgust, “clearly isn’t up to the task, and if my dad were alive, he’d have some serious shit to say right now.”
The staff around us all sat or stood with their mouths open, and Rob burned with embarrassment as he stared into my eyes, one of them looking even worse for the tinge of purple and deep bruising around it.
“Last night was bullshit, and everyone here knows it. You’ve already lost half your staff. You need to lose him.” I pointed at Charlie. “And you need to be present for a while until you replace him. And if my mom doesn’t stop bugging the shit out of me to quit, you can deal with her. I’m tired of hearing it, and honestly, you’re on strike two – three strikes, you’re out. The money is the only thing keeping me here. Your wages are some of the best ones around the area, and the tips can’t be beat. That’s the only reason I’m even considering staying because point blank? I want my brothers to be there when I get married. I want to be able to get married. I want to live a long life and die of a ripe old age and not die in some stupid bar fight turned firefight between a bunch of guys making up for their small dicks.”
Rob’s eyes shone with laughter, even though I knew he wasn’t laughing at me – just at how I wasn’t afraid to mince words and how I’d phrased things. He sniffed, nodded, and said, “Tell us how you really feel.”
“I believe I just did,” I said, grinning. Charlie looked like a landed fish and I shot him a dirty look.
“You’re fired,” Rob said, and for a split second, I thought he was talking to me, so I hopped off the bar stool.
“Not you , Peanut. This asshole.” He pointed at Charlie, who sputtered. “You can come get your last check tomorrow,” Rob said.
“As for the rest of you – if you stay, you’re getting a dollar-an-hour raises, we’re sticking to the goddamned rules , and if you know anyone looking for security work – we’re hiring temps until we get back to normal.”
It was a start, but like with most things anymore, I’d listen to my dad, who’d always told me don’t listen to what a man says, watch what he does.
Seemed like solid advice, especially in a case like this.
“We’re closed for the foreseeable future. Our liquor license is suspended for the next thirty days, so we need to get the booze off the shelves, and the place cleaned up and maintained. We’ll reopen sans liquor- which we can do – so we need to book some entertainment.” He ticked off on his finger. “Get the smokers going and the barbecue up and running.” He ticked off another. “And get everyone back to serving and whatnot before those thirty days are up. I’d honestly like to be down for only a few days at the worst. Do you think we can handle that?” he asked.
I thought so. Heads nodded around the bar.
“Alright, if you wanna bounce, do it. If you plan on staying, let’s make a plan, and if your ass just got fired, get the fuck outta my bar!” He barked the last at Charlie, who jumped and left forthwith.
I stood there, and Rob looked over at me and said, “I appreciate you calling me out on my bullshit.”
I nodded. “It’s what my dad would have done,” I said.
“You’re right, it is, kiddo.” He looked over my face, disappointment on his own, as he shook his head and said, “I’m real sorry this all went down like it did, and you got hurt.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “Let’s just not let it happen again.”
He nodded, and I went around the bar and hugged him.
“I’m going up to bar two to pull the liquor and beer,” I said.
“Appreciate it, kiddo,” he said, and off we all went, scurrying like ants to pull the booze and finish cleaning up.
It was getting on toward evening when I walked out the side gate to head for my Jeep. I got in and, sighed tiredly, racking my neck back and forth.
I didn’t know how effective a bar would run without alcohol sales, but I had to hand it to Rob. He was trying. I mean, I knew he’d been through this kind of thing before, but it’d honestly been years since a dust-up of this magnitude. We’re talking more than a decade since trouble this bad. The last time the Iron Horse had its liquor license pulled was in the early 2000s around the time I’d been born.
Eugh… I thought to myself. I really was just a baby . I probably sounded obnoxious as fuck back there and should be grateful that Rob had listened and hadn’t just fired me on the spot.
Fuck me.
I leaned my head back onto the headrest of my seat and sighed out, closing my eyes and just trying to take a minute for myself before heading home to three poorly little boys who had been an epic fucking yak-fest the night before all the way into the wee hours of this morning.
Whump! Whump!
“Ahgh!” I screamed and whipped my head around to my driver’s side window, where the two knocks had come from.
“Jesus,” I muttered and rolled down my window.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Gemma said. I sighed, waiting for my heart to drop back down into my chest from my throat and nodded.
“All good,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to say thanks. What you did in there was ballsy. You just made life a whole lot better for the rest of us, and because of it, I’ve decided to stay.”
“Yeah?” I asked, and she nodded.
“That scared the shit out of me, but I actually feel like it won’t happen again. Like, I’m hopeful. If Charlie had stayed on, I would have been gone .”
“Not gonna lie, I have mixed feelings about what you’re saying right now,” I said with a tenuous laugh.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because if the shit goes down again, and you’re caught in the middle, I’m going to feel like it’s my fault,” I said.
She laughed and shook her head.
“I’m a big girl, too, Rarity. I think as long as you’re around, I’ll be all good. You go, I know it’s time to go, though. For sure.”
I laughed at that and said, “If I go, that’s your sign it was time to leave ten minutes ago.”
She looked at me, her eyes going a bit wide, and we both started laughing.
“I guess I’ll see you when we all get back together,” she said, and I nodded.
“Yeah. Right now, I gotta get home. Aden Braden and Caden all have some kind of nasty stomach bug and were up pulling an exorcist all night last night.”
“Oh, ew!” she cried. “Have fun with that .”
“Oh, the fun just never stops,” I cracked sarcastically, rolling my eyes.
She giggled and stepped back, going around the back of my Jeep to her little car on the other side. I let her pull out first, and when she’d gone, I carefully backed my Jeep off the grassy shoulder and onto the pavement of the side street.
No sooner did I put it into first and start to let up on the clutch, a motorcycle turned in off the boulevard. I rolled down my window to tell the rider that we were closed until further notice and to check our social media when he stopped next to my driver’s side and lifted his mirrored aviators to hold back his dark hair.
“Well, well, well, fancy meeting you here,” Striker said with a grin that looked a whole lot like the cat that ate the canary.
“Hey, you,” I said with a soft smile.
“Wanted to come by and leave this for you,” he said and produced a postcard from his back pocket. “I think I’d like to stay in touch,” he said.
I plucked the card from between his fingers and looked at the mermaid on its face, Ponce Inlet written in block text below her. It was a pretty postcard.
“Anyway,” he said, revving his bike motor, distracting me from the postcard. “Call me!” he shouted, and then he disengaged the clutch, gave the throttle a twist, and rode down the way past me. Mystified, I set the card aside on my passenger seat and pulled forward, stopping at the stop sign and turning on my right signal.
I watched in my rearview as he swooped in an elegant turn and rode up behind me before ditching off to my left to put on his signal to head back for the interstate. Likely to go north to St. Augustine.
I realized he wasn’t wearing his cut as he pulled up even with me. It came as a shock when it hit me that he’d come incognito, especially to see me . W hy did that warm me to my damn toes?
“I’ll call!” I shouted at him over the combined noise of our engines, and his smile split into a wide grin.
I made my turn and headed for home. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hurry up to get there just to see what the postcard said.
I pulled into my driveway and parked, turning off the ignition and setting the parking brake. With shaking fingers, I picked up the card and let my eyes rove the mermaid on the front, the coral she was nestled among, the way her hair floated freely, her curving teal-blue tail, and how the fins swept out and around her. It was a beautiful piece of art, and I loved that he’d picked it.
I turned the card over and blinked in surprise at the elegant script it was written in.
Rarity…
Can’t seem to get you off of my mind. Would like to just talk some and see where it goes. Gimme a text or call any time. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll take the hint, I promise.
Yours,
Striker
He left his phone number and then…
PS. There’s no time limit on this. Hours, days, weeks, months, or heck – even a year or two. I can wait.
I didn’t know what to make of it. I certainly wouldn’t keep him waiting years . Days, maybe, depending on how the boys were doing.
Shit.
I better move my ass. The boys. I’d promised them snuggle time on the couch and a watch of their favorite movie, How to Train Your Dragon.
I got out of the Jeep and gathered up my stuff, taking it in with me. I found Mom on the couch with three little blanket-covered lumps around her.
“Still feeling bad?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Aden called mournfully.
“We jumped the gun and already watched How to Train Your Dragon, ” Mom told me.
“Well, that’s alright,” I said. “I was late. I’m sorry. Let me go put this stuff down, rinse off really quick, and I’ll come out and join you guys, okay?”
“Okay,” the boys chorused and my mom nodded, but I could tell by the look in her blue eyes, which were so like my own – she was worried.
I tried to give her a reassuring smile and went around to duck into my room. I sighed, set things down, put my phone on the charger, and stuck the postcard in the edge of my mirror to keep it displayed.
I showered, redressed in comfortable pajamas, and joined my mother and brothers in the living room, cozy on the couch and watching Disney until it was late enough and all three boys were sleeping to the point we had to carry them to bed.
When their light was out, and Mom and I were in the kitchen about to go for our own beds, the tension reached its peak. She broke first, asking, “So, what’d Rob say he was going to do about it?”
“Well, I got Charlie fired,” I said with a sigh. “The bar’s liquor license has been suspended for a month, and we’re scrambling to get the liquor and beer off the shelves and put away. We’re switching gears to food and soft drinks, focusing on putting live talent on the stage and hoping we can weather the storm. Rob is hiring more security and buckling down on the rules like never before. I decided to wait it out, and if I even get a whiff of things going sideways, I’m out. For good this time.”
My mom looked at me, and her expression was torn.
“On one hand, I want to be so mad at you for being so pigheaded. I swear to God, you’re just like your father that way, and it was one of his least endearing qualities sometimes,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears. “On the other hand, I’m so proud of you… and I honestly don’t know what to say.”
Of all the things she could have said, that wasn’t on the list of shit I’d expected.
“You blaze your own trail, that’s for sure, baby girl.”
The waterworks really started then, not just from her but from me, too. I went around the kitchen island and hugged my mom tight, and we stood there and cried together. Definitely wasn’t the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last time, either – but it’d been a while since I’d cried for something that, to me, was a good reason.
I mean, oh, my God!
“I worry about you,” she said.
“I know, Ma,” I said, sniffing when we finally broke apart.
“Just keep being careful. I’d die if anything happened to you, too.”
“I promise,” I told her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She nodded, and we both sort of drifted to our respective rooms. I dropped onto the edge of my bed and looked across to my mirror with its mermaid postcard tucked in its frame.
I got up, went to it, and flipped it over, bringing up my phone from where it was charging to punch in the number and make a new contact.
I took my phone back to bed with me, snuggled under the covers, and texted out with shaking fingers… I could use a friend…
It was late, and I didn’t expect a response, but I got one anyway, and in just a few seconds.
Talk to me. I’m right here.