Chapter Twenty Six
Ben
I’m at the Pint just as the sun is stretching over the horizon.
The air’s got that wet, river-cool edge that only exists in the early morning hours, and Main Street looks like it’s still rubbing sleep out of its eyes. I fish out my keys, let myself in, and stand for half a second in the hush.
It smells like wood and citrus—the way a bar should smell when it’s empty and clean.
I walk around doing my automatic morning check. Lights up, back hall on low.
Kegs check—pressure’s good. Lines look clean. I can feel the residual chill coming off the cooler when I pull the door, and I do the stupid thing I always do and put my palm against one of the kegs like I’m checking a kid’s forehead.
Hoffman Heritage is in the front row. New keg on yesterday, bright brass coupler glinting like it’s showing off. I touch that too, a quick tap like a superstitious baseball player tagging home plate.
“Morning,” I mutter to it, because I’m a lunatic when I haven’t slept well.
I didn’t sleep. Not really. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw that grainy crescent blinking like a tiny star and Paige’s hand shaking just a little when she slid the printout toward her mom on the porch.
I shake it off and go to find the chalkboard.
The folding A-frame lives behind the coat rack.
It’s got remnants of last week’s IPA flight announcement in white.
I wipe it down, cough at the chalk dust, and carry it to the front window where the light’s best. For a second, I just stand there, chalk between my fingers, and look out at the bakery next door.
The windows of Sweet Confessions are lit.
The brown paper covering the place has been gone since yesterday, but it still hits me to see it bright in there. The sign above the door—Sweet Confessions—not yet lit up but still bright and cheerful.
I bend, put chalk to slate, and write the thing we talked about: TODAY ONLY: SHOW YOUR SWEET CONFESSIONS BOX, GET 50% OFF HOFFMAN HERITAGE + FREE REFILL.
I draw a box with a ribbon and a pint with a little crown of foam—badly, but legibly.
Under it, smaller: Pair something sweet with something strong. —The Wandering Pint.
It’s corny. It’s perfect.
The pen-and-paper stuff’s next. Flyers we mocked up on my laptop, printed on the ancient printer in the office that eats color ink insatiably.
There’s one for our door, one for the inside at both ends of the bar, one for the back hall where people catch it coming from the lot. I tape them up and step back to make sure they’re straight because even if nobody else cares, I do.
Lilly texted me five minutes ago—on my way. She and Charlotte will be coming in for the early shift to help with the promo with Sweet Confessions.
Behind the bar, I pull down the Hoffman Heritage tap handle.
It’s the only one that isn’t branded by a distributor—the wood’s old, the letters carved by someone who definitely isn’t an artist. The O’s are off, a little egg-shaped.
The H’s are thicker at the bottom, like the person who cut them got tired by the end of each line.
Me. It was me. And I’m no artist.
The drink, however, that’s not mine. The Hoffman Heritage was my grandfather’s.
The only thing I know about William Hoffman is that he had a pub in Paducah and he died before I was old enough to form memories. Thirty years is a long time, and my own dad never told me much about his dad.
I was born in Paducah, but when his father died, my dad moved us to Ballard. Then, years later, he moved me back to Paducah, where he was born and raised. The recipe was like a family heirloom, the only one, really.
Maybe I should see if Gwen can print it for one of her squares, I muse.
The Hoffman Heritage. It tastes like biscuit and toffee and a little orange peel if you pour it just right.
At the time William created the recipe, it was unheard of for such flavors to exist in a brew, but it’s persisted for decades.
My dad never had any interest in brewing, but I remember vividly the day he passed me the stained card his father had given him. And how it had put me on the path I’m on now.
I run a cloth over the bar until it shines. I stack coasters like soldiers. I calibrate the register because I know today is going to be a busy one. I brew coffee and pour the first mug for myself just to have something hot to hold.
A car door thunks out front—quick, eager—and I look up automatically.
Paige.
It’s a glimpse—just her crossing the frame of my window in the half-second before she disappears into her doorway—but it hits me in the sternum.
Hair up, apron strings flashing, a bakery shirt I haven’t seen yet with the name in tidy script at her shoulder.
I don’t realize I’m smiling until I feel it crack my face. I knock it back down before someone walks in, and I have to explain it.
I put the chalkboard in front of The Wandering Pint, a little off to the side so I’m not blocking any of the space in front of Paige’s shop. People always slow down in front of a chalkboard. They can’t help it; it’s the law.
“Boss?”
Lilly’s at the back, hair smashed under a beanie, apron thrown over her shoulder, eyes showing the early hour.
“Big day,” I say.
She glances toward the bakery and back at me. No commentary. Good woman. “You want me on the floor or in the kitchen?”
“Kitchen,” I say. “I’ll run interference. Charlotte will be in at 10:00, but you know how the Farmer’s Market floats the schedule. If it gets bad, text me and I’ll come flip pancakes.”
By 8:00 there’s a line at her door. Not full-on iPhone launch, but enough to form a little crowd on the sidewalk. Gwen, in a soft sweater, is standing to the side where she can see without being in the way, talking to someone I don’t know. I look for Don and don’t find him.
Jason is there too, trying to look he’s happy to be. Jason has never been an early riser, but for his sister, he’ll do it.
Guilt stabs me.
I haven’t seen him since the night before Paige sat across from me at the bar and told me she was pregnant.
It wasn’t intentional at first. Then it was. I made up every excuse in the book. Busy, man. Double inventories. Health inspection prep. Headache. Forgot I had a thing. All true. But all bullshit.
He’s here now. So am I.
And there’s no avoiding him.
The way the line lurches forward tells me that Paige’s door just unlocked.
I’m halfway to the door before I stop myself.
Focus, Hoff.
I pivot, go back behind my own bar, and pull the first Heritage of the day to give it a taste test. The tap gives me that half-second of resistance new kegs always give, and then it lets go and the beer arcs clean into the glass, amber sliding up, head forming slow and tight.
I sip for quality then set it on the back bar like it’s a shot in a magazine.
“Mark,” I say, “when the first blue box comes in, you comp it yourself. Make a big deal out of it. Loud, but not obnoxious.”
“Loud but not obnoxious,” he repeats. “My autobiography title.”
“Shut up and go polish something.”
It takes nine minutes. A couple I’ve never seen slips in with a blue box banded by a white ribbon I know Paige probably agonized over.
I point at the box like it’s a trophy. “You two are either my first robbery victims or my favorite people,” I say. “Promo’s for Hoffman Heritage. If you don’t drink beer, I can convert you.”
They share a look that says they’re people who will try anything once. “He will,” she says, nudging him. “I’ll do a ginger ale.”
I pour, I comp, I chat like a professional, and when they leave with their receipt and a plan to come back later, I let myself glance through the glass again.
I can’t see into the shop from here, but I picture Paige in my head, moving behind the counter with a smile on her face. The kind that says she’s proud of her own success.
“Boss,” Mark says quietly, like he knows where my head just went and has decided to gently tug me back to the room. “We’re getting bodies.”
I move. It’s still too early for lunch, but people seem to be eager to take advantage of the discount that comes with a purchase next door.
The special does exactly what we thought it would. Blue boxes walk in and out all morning.
At noon, Charlotte swings in with a braid and an expression that says she will not accept today being less than perfect. “I grabbed two boxes on my way in,” she hisses like she’s handing me contraband. “Put them by the office so Mark can’t steal them.”
“Mark’s been over there twice already today,” I say.
She raises both eyebrows. “Oh, we’re in a generous mood.”
I decide to take that as a compliment and not a dig.