Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
NORA
“Well, I say it’s a beautiful solution to your problem,” Hannah says with a grin. “Pansy Pants is satisfied, and you and Cormac might actually stop bickering. Are you going to start sucking face with him the way Sophie did with her fake boyfriend?”
“Oh my God, no,” I say. After executing an eye roll to teenage-angst perfection, I glance around at my friends.
Hannah, Briar, Sophie, and I are sitting at one of the little round tables in the tasting room.
Most of them are empty now that Garbage Fire is playing crowd favorites to the guests gathered on the dance floor.
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” Sophie says with a satisfied smile, lifting her glass of Ginger Ever After.
Her diamond engagement ring sparkles in the light streaming through the windows. She and Rob surprised us all last month by announcing they’d gotten married—not just engaged, married—last month.
Sophie hadn’t wanted to go through the whole wedding to-do after breaking her previous engagement. There was also some unpleasantness with Rob’s family, given Rob’s shitty half-brother, Jonah, is the waste of life who brought all of us ladies together by dating us simultaneously.
Yes. She got with the brother of the man who did her wrong. Needless to say, I have given her all kinds of high-fives for being a legend.
Briar and Liam just got engaged last night, the next two dominoes to fall, and Hannah and Travis have been looking very marriage-y lately.
It’s only a matter of time before I’m the last single lady left standing in our little group, but that’s okay.
My brewery is better than any romantic partner.
It only requires my complete, devoted attention and every second of my free time.
Besides, the fact that I was willing to actually marry real Marco to make my life easier is probably the red-flag indicator that I should never be in another actual serious relationship.
I wave at Sophie’s ring. “Sophie married her fake boyfriend. My situation is purely for Pansy Pants’ benefit. No kissing will be allowed.”
Still, I run a finger over my bottom lip, and my mind skips back to that almost-kiss from earlier. It didn’t mean anything, but it was sweet, the way Cormac came to my rescue. It was probably also undeserved.
I’ve put him in an uncomfortable position.
Sure, he doesn’t know José or Pansy, so lying to them shouldn’t matter to him. But he’s an honest person. It’s one of the things I like about him. He’s honest to the point that one would almost wish for a touch of dishonesty, but excessive honesty is preferable to casual, easy lies.
He’s a better person than I am, for sure.
I sigh and stuff a bite of cake into my face.
After the chicken-surprise dinner, I didn’t have high hopes for dessert, but the three-tier mocha cake was made by Dottie’s partner, Bear, who runs a local bakery.
Maybe it’s hunger that has driven up the cake’s rating to eleven out of ten stars, but either way, it’s top-notch.
Turning toward Briar, I pointedly change the subject. “You just got engaged. Let’s talk about that instead.”
I had a front seat to the start of her relationship, partly because she came to me for advice about dating a co-worker.
Liam’s the brewmaster at her brewery, just like I’m the head brewer at The Ginger Station.
I told her it might get messy, but it’s worked out for them.
It doesn’t seem to matter that Briar is Liam’s boss; they have the kind of supernova spark that makes everything else fall into shadow.
Is dating your subordinate awkward? Absolutely. But who cares when you can have hot sex in the barrel room?
In fact, if Liam hadn’t left a while back to deal with some minor but annoying issue at Silver Star, Briar probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now. They’d have snuck off to a closet or one of those hammocks.
“Yeah, we’re going to be sister wives.” Hannah grins as she nudges Briar’s shoulder.
“Very funny,” Briar replies dryly before shifting her attention back to me. “I don’t think this is the solution to your problem. If you play along with this, you’ll have to lie a lot, and so will Cormac. No one likes lying.”
I wave my fork at her, a few chocolate crumbs tumbling onto the table. “Oh, some people definitely like lying. Look at my dad.”
Thinking about him steals my appetite, and I push the delicious cake away.
The plate it’s on looks familiar, so I lift it up at an angle and snort when I see the stamp on the bottom.
It was borrowed from the Lakeshore Elementary cafeteria.
Surprisingly, my first thought is that I’d like to tell Cormac. He’d probably make some dry-as-dust remark that would take everyone five minutes to recognize as a joke.
Briar studies me as she plays with a lock of her golden hair. “Are you sure you want to keep working with José?”
And there goes the smile.
“Of course I do. We’re a dream team. We’ve been working together for a decade. This was just…an off day. Everyone has off days.”
But that sore spot in my chest hasn’t eased up. It felt like José shoved a fun house mirror in front of my face and told me the distorted reflection was how I really looked. How I’ve always looked. I thought he appreciated me for who I am, but maybe I’ve only been seeing what I wanted to see.
It strikes me that this is the table he and Pansy were sitting at earlier, but there’s no sign of them, not here or on the dance floor or in line at the bar. Did they dip out early without saying goodbye?
I hesitate as Rob belts out the lyrics to “Livin’ on a Prayer”—Take that, Pansy. Shouldn’t have left early. Then I admit, “I can’t afford to buy José out. He put in most of the seed money.”
My gaze shifts to Sophie, who has kept pretty quiet. “What do you think about all of this?”
“Cormac is not too smart for you,” she says in a hard voice. “What an unbelievably crappy thing for José to say. He’s obviously never played Words with Friends with you.”
Hannah wags a finger at her. “José doesn’t actually think Cormac’s too smart for Nora. He realizes he suddenly has competition for her attention, and he’s totally jealous.”
“We don’t like each other that way,” I object. “I told you. We tried, and it wasn’t great.”
“Like not great how?” Hannah says. I can tell she’s been wanting to ask for months. “Does he have a weird—”
“Hannah,” Sophie chides.
I just laugh. “No. It’s perfectly normal, but after the initial curiosity was sated, I didn’t really feel like seeing it again.”
Hannah waggles her brows up and down. “So he doesn’t know how to use what he’s got.”
“There was no spark,” Briar says.
I point to her. “What your sister wife said.”
Hannah shrugs, silently indicating she’s still convinced José is bad at sex and nothing can persuade her otherwise.
Given that I’m pissed off at him, I’m not inclined to try.
“Doesn’t matter,” Hannah says flippantly. “The thing is—she’s always been his Nora. He doesn’t like that you’re in a relationship he knew nothing about. It makes it seem more serious.”
“So I’ll tell him the truth, and it won’t be an issue anymore.”
She lifts one pin-striped shoulder. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. Let him realize it doesn’t feel so good when your best friend is the one who suddenly has a life.”
“I already had a life.” I scowl. “A good life. Just look at this place.”
Okay, it’s probably not the best example.
The brewery, which is normally immaculately clean, has abandoned cake plates and cups on every surface.
Someone has woven a pink and purple feather boa around one of the exposed wooden beams. There are also about two dozen AARP members shaking their booties on the dance floor, along with representatives from every other generation.
Then again, a brewery at rest is just a soulless space filled with casks of liquid at various stages of fermentation. The heart of a brewery is the community it creates.
Not to be grandiose, but that’s what I’ve always wanted our business to be: a hub.
A place where connections are made and hearts are won and lost. People have gotten engaged in this tasting room.
They’ve held business meetings here. They’ve cried here.
They’ve made big decisions that have altered the course of their lives.
Bad things have happened here too, but tragedies also need a setting.
This is a place worthy of being saved.
Briar shakes her head, her long blond locks splaying out. “Don’t get me wrong. The Ginger Station is great, but a brewery is not a life.”
I bite my tongue to keep from making a knee-jerk disagreement.
I know she’s not saying it to be critical, and there’s no denying she knows her stuff. Silver Star Brewery is at least fifty to seventy-five percent of her life.
The thing is…
I don’t want what my friends want.
They may believe in marriage and romance and happily ever after, but my views on the subject aren’t all that different from Cormac’s. I had a front-row seat to my mother’s misery for years. My father didn’t just cheat on her. He shattered her confidence and self-image.
Then I dated that loser Jonah, who was seeing Hannah, Briar, and me all while he was engaged to Sophie.
I’d never been all that into him, but learning the truth about him had felt like a sign.
My heart is meant to be mine, and mine alone.
This brewery may not be a life, but it is a real, tangible thing.
Creating ginger beer is a reliable process.
Certainly, new test batches might be undrinkable.
Such is the risk you take. But the steps of the process can be relied on.
If you put certain ingredients in, you will get an alcoholic ginger beer at the end, guaranteed.
There are no guarantees in games of the heart.
Look at José. When he met Pansy a year and a half ago, it was cold out, so she was probably wearing all long sleeves.
Odds are, he had no idea she had a Bon Jovi tattoo until he’d already gotten himself invested.
Now, he’s probably going to have to listen to “Livin’ on a Prayer” for their first dance.
“The brewery’s the only life I want,” I insist. “That’s why I’m doing this. I have to keep it.”
My friends all display varying expressions of disapproval.
“I don’t think you should tell José about your secret fake relationship,” Sophie says after a moment. “You’re doing him a favor if you keep pretending it’s real. That way he won’t have to lie to Pansy.”
“I was thinking the same thing earlier, but…” I trail off, working up to it, then faintly admit, “I can’t let him marry that woman. She’s horrible.”
“Yeah, she’s hot, but she’s the human equivalent of a hemorrhoid,” Hannah agrees. “What does that say about him, though?”
I rub my temples, feeling the abrupt return of my hangover. “It doesn’t necessarily say anything about him. I mean, we all dated Jonah. I hope that doesn’t say anything horrible about us. José’s just pussy-whipped.”
Sophie frowns at me. “Gross. But…” She shrugs. “Yeah, maybe she’s different with him.”
“She is. So I have to figure out a way to unmask her.”
Hannah’s eyes widen. “Like in Scooby-Doo. You know, I watched that with Ollie the other day, and I’ve got to say, it holds up.”
“It does not,” I disagree.
She laughs as she snags my plate and starts eating my cake. “You better work quickly. I saw those interior design photos. If you don’t act soon, this whole place will be pink and covered in baby lamb skins before long.”
“Oh my God, you’re right.” I drop my head into my hands and massage my scalp. I may have avoided making a commitment to Pads by Pansy today, but the woman isn’t exactly patient.
Hannah pokes me with the tines of my own fork. “Hey, you know what? Maybe you should hire her. If she’s in here, poking around and making a nuisance of herself, covering everything in ugly fuzz, he’ll figure shit out soon enough.”
“He didn’t figure it out when she was covering his whole apartment with it,” I say with a sigh.
Which is when an idea strikes.
José invited Cormac and me on a double date with him and Pansy. If we spend “quality” time with them, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to unmask her.
I sit back in my chair and begin to plot all the ways I could expose Blonde Satan. I’m not entirely sure Cormac will love me turning our double date into a spy mission, but he’s been surprisingly agreeable today.
“You have your idea face on, Nora,” Hannah says. “Share your evil genius plan with the group.”
“I think I’m going undercover. I just have to convince Cormac to help.”
“How much have you had to drink?” Sophie asks, giving me a probing look.
Possibly a lot, because I think this might actually be a good idea.
My gaze drifts to the stage. I can barely see Cormac, tucked in behind his bandmates as he is, but he has a far-off expression on his face, as if he’s been transported by his music.
There’s a strange wrenching sensation in my chest as I remember the way he stood up for me earlier.
It was…kind. And protective in a way I definitely didn’t expect and don’t really understand.
I figured he thought I was a harpy, the same way José apparently does. Cormac definitely used to think that. We got into a squabbling match after he finished the mulled wine last Christmas, and then he had the nerve to challenge my Scrabble words.
But his eyes were so stormy and intense when he said fuck the glass—like he took José’s insult to me personally.
It may be early June, but there’s no reason I can’t form a late-in-the-game New Year’s resolution.
I’m going to be Cormac Peebles’s friend, whether he likes it or not.