Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Kemp
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like shit, dude.” Chance spoke the blunt truth as I sat down across his desk from him in his office at the brewery.
I looked him in the eyes, noted the shadows underneath, and chuckled. “So do you. Lila Rose, I assume?”
“The one and only.” He grinned. “Good thing she’s irresistibly cute.”
“Good thing,” I agreed. “I got called out to an accident on the highway at two thirty a.m.”
“Ah, so you can’t even blame the baby.”
“Not this time.” I shook my head. “I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever get a restful night of sleep again.
The other night, I woke up in a panic because Oliver was three hours late for his usual bottle time.
Sprinted in there thinking something awful must’ve happened. Little guy was snoozing away.”
Chance chuckled sympathetically as he shook his head. “Of course he was. And let me guess. You didn’t dare go get more sleep then because you knew he’d wake up as soon as you passed out.”
“Exactly right.” As rough as sleep was with a baby, it was a relief to know someone else was going through the same things. “What’s on the agenda today, Mr. Marketing?”
Chance switched into business mode and woke up his laptop. “I’ve got some good stuff,” he said. “The Morning Dish invited you and Cash to be guests on their live show.”
“Hey, that’s a huge coup.” The Morning Dish was a popular show on a Nashville network that featured a celebrity segment and a food segment each day, often highlighting regional restaurants. “How’d you land that?”
“I’d like to say it’s my magic powers, but this was just persistence. I’ve been working them for nearly a year.”
“That’s why we pay you the big bucks.”
Chance laughed. “It’ll be Valentine’s week, and they want you two to talk about how you feed each other’s creativity and collaborate on new beers and dishes.”
“Cool,” I said enthusiastically. I loved talking about beer and flavor profiles.
Cash and I could get going on the subject and would have to be shut up, because he was as into it as I was.
“Live TV. That’s a first for me.” I rubbed my hands together.
When Henry’s had been featured on Small Town Smorgasbord a couple years ago, Cash’s and the restaurant’s popularity had soared. “I’m gonna be a star,” I joked.
“Last thing we need is it going to your head,” Chance tossed back with an eye roll.
“Date and time?”
He rattled them off while I accessed the calendar on my phone to enter it.
“Hell,” I said, all my excitement disappearing like a grease fire smothered by a box of baking soda. “That’s a Monday?”
“That’s right. You need to reschedule something?”
Dammit. “There’s no rescheduling possible,” I said. “That’s test day at the fire department. Anyone going for lieutenant has to show up and take it.”
Chance leaned his elbows on his desk, frowning. “All day?”
I nodded, racking my brain for a way to manage both. No solutions came to me.
“Shit, Kemp. I worked them hard to get this spot.”
The publicity that segment would generate was priceless. We couldn’t let it go. “Gianna can do it,” I said.
His brows furrowed as if he didn’t love the idea. “She’s not the one who creates the beer.”
“No, but she could be. She knows her stuff. She’s made suggestions before. I think she’s got it in her; she just hasn’t had the opportunity yet.”
“That’s all fine, but she’s still not the one who developed Shore Thing and Stout of Your League,” Chance said. Those were our two seasonal beers we’d be unveiling next month.
“I can brief her thoroughly. She can use the word ‘we’ when she talks about how we develop them. We’re a team. She can handle this, Chance.”
He looked away, thinking it over, tapping his finger on the desk. When he looked back at me, he asked, “You’d be okay with that?”
“We can’t squander that opportunity,” I said, avoiding the question, because truth? I was disappointed as hell. “Gianna can handle it. You can do some practice sessions with her and Cash.”
“That’s a good idea. We’ll have you sit in with us so you can give her your input.”
I shrugged as I sat back, striving for indifference. “I can do that.”
“It’s not ideal, but we’ll make it work.” He typed something on his computer.
“Is this where you tell me I’m crazy to try to balance the brewery and the fire department?” I asked, starting to think maybe I was.
He finished whatever he was typing, then met my gaze. “You’re a big boy. It’s your business what you do with your life. As long as you keep making good beer, you can do whatever you want,” he said with a grin.
“I’ll keep making good beer. What else you got on the agenda?”
Chance consulted his laptop and ran through a handful of summer beer events he wanted Holden and me to attend. I noted the dates so I could schedule the fire department around them, regardless of what position I was in by then.
We discussed a social-media series Kennedy Clayborne had developed that would morph me into the face of the brewery along with Holden while taking followers behind the scenes.
It would require some photo and video shoots and lots of info exchanged between me and Kennedy.
I was all for it, even if I didn’t know when I’d fit it in.
We hit on several other topics—whether to retire Sandbar Wheat, which couldn’t seem to compete with our other beers, preliminary ideas for our fall flavors, and local sponsorship opportunities.
When we were finished talking business, I asked when Rowan would be back to the brewery full-time. She’d done three months of maternity leave and was now working a part-time schedule as Chloe and Holden’s assistant.
“She’s planning on the six-month mark,” Chance said. “Which is coming up fast. That brings her back just as we kick off spring and the busy season.”
“How did you two end up going from roommates to married?” I asked clumsily, thinking of Anna as I did a thousand times a day.
“What do you mean?” he asked, leaning forward on his desk.
“After you found out she was pregnant, you two were planning to keep it strictly friends, weren’t you?”
He laughed as if to say, Yeah, we were fooling ourselves. “We were.”
“What happened? You just kind of fell into more?”
“It took a while,” he said. “We went a few weeks as friends, getting to know each other, but the chemistry was off the charts.” He shook his head. “It’s impossible to deny chemistry when you’re living under the same roof.”
“Yeah,” I said on an exhale, knowing the truth of that in my bones.
“Do you and Anna have chemistry?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
I hadn’t walked in here with any intention of talking about Anna, but now that he brought up chemistry, I found myself hoping for some clarity. “I would’ve said no a few weeks ago because I thought my feelings were one-sided.”
Chance’s brows shot upward. “Something happen to make you think otherwise?”
“She kissed me.”
He let out a laugh. “That’ll do it.”
“It’s different with us though,” I said.
Chance hadn’t grown up here, so he didn’t know our history.
“We’ve been friends since we were in diapers.
Her family lived kitty-corner behind mine.
We’ve been through everything together. She’s my oldest, closest friend, the one who got me through my parents’ deaths.
I was there for her when her sister died. ”
“Those are some deep bonds,” he said. “But you’ve never been more than friends?”
I shook my head. He didn’t need to know about that one embarrassing night at age twenty.
“I guess I don’t need to ask you if you have any regrets for crossing that line with Rowan,” I said.
“That’s a big hell no,” he said, laughing again. “Best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Did you worry that crossing the line would screw things up?”
He blew out a breath. “Like you wouldn’t believe. With Rowan being pregnant and us planning to co-parent, there was a lot at stake. If we didn’t end up compatible, it would’ve made raising Lila Rose together a challenge.”
“So you understand. Different stakes but same concerns. I can’t lose my friendship with Anna,” I emphasized.
Chance nodded. “Did you two discuss her kissing you?”
“We agreed it was a mistake.”
“But now you’re thinking it wasn’t.”
“I still think it was, but I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.”
Chance’s eyes lit up in an annoying, amused way. “Sorry, man, I think you’re screwed. You feel how you feel.”
“You don’t have to be smug about it,” I growled.
“Look, I’ve been there. It’s a giant risk to act on the attraction, but it’s all you can do to not act on it.”
I raised my brows, waiting for him to go on.
“As close as you two are, you already know a lot about each other. You’ve built trust between you. So while it feels like a big risk, there’s a damn good chance it’ll work out.”
“What if it’s not what she wants?” I asked, feeling anxious at the thought.
“I guess then you know,” Chance said, simple as could be. “But dude, she kissed you.”
“She agreed it was a mistake.”
He shot me a sympathetic look. “You could be missing out on having everything. The fact is, you’ll never know unless you give it a try.”
I didn’t like that answer because it didn’t come with a guarantee that we’d be okay if we tried and failed. Chance said he understood, but he’d never had thirty-some years at stake.
I nodded once and stood. “I need to tell Gianna she’s going on live TV. See you later.”
As I walked from his office to the brewhouse though, his words ran through my head on repeat.
You’ll never know unless you give it a try.