3. Gus
3
GUS
One Year Later
Please be chicken ’n dressing…please be chicken ’n dressing…
I repeat my silent prayer over and over, rushing down the hall toward the executive conference room, my stomach threatening to stage a coup if my legs don’t pick up the pace. There’s a warm, familiar smell filling the hall, but it’s one that I can’t quite place to know if my craving for the Southern specialty is going to be satisfied or not. I know that what is served will be delicious. Miss Harriett—who has been in charge of the Hayes Industries kitchens for most of my lifetime—has never let us down. But today…today I could really use the comfort food.
Throwing open the heavy double doors that lead to the large room, I pause just inside the entrance, letting my eyes scour over the catering table to my right, inventorying the selection. Salad, homemade yeast rolls, garlic bread, and baked ziti. Plus mini strawberry cheesecakes for dessert. Oh, this woman spoils us. My tummy gurgles in delight as the smell hits me head-on, the garlic filling my nostrils, making my mouth water. It might not be the chicken ’n dressing I had been hoping for, but it’s going to hit the spot.
“It’s a little…tight, that’s all,” Milo says. My ears perk up as I fill my plate, ready to eavesdrop on whatever it is that he’s trying so graciously to explain. “We’re figuring it all out.”
“You’re an idiot if you really think you're going to make that work. You can’t just move Brenna into the bachelor pad and think it’s all going to work itself out,” Willa argues back.
As much as I hate to take our sister’s side, she’s right.
After spending the summer secretly hooking up with Brenna, his best friend and business partner’s baby sister, Milo decided that moving her into the bachelor pad he and Brandt shared above Pour Decisions, the bar on-site at their brewery, was a good idea. Admittedly, it took me awhile to get used to the idea of him and Brenna together, but seeing how happy she makes him, I can’t deny that they’re good together. I can, however, disagree with the idea of all three of them living in a loft-style apartment over a bar.
I throw a look toward Ewan, the youngest of my brothers, who is quietly sitting to Willa’s right, pretending not to listen. At any given moment, it’s easy to forget that he’s even in the room, with the rest of us chiming in, throwing around ideas, insults, or whatever the moment calls for. Until all of a sudden he speaks, throwing out the most perfectly timed comment. As the introvert of the family, Ewan has the game down pat. We all know it too, but we let him have it. It’s who he is.
He returns my look, our silent conversation going unnoticed by the two still armpit deep in their own discussion.
“It’s been two weeks,” I toss out, sitting in my usual seat to Willa’s left. “You mean to tell me things are already uncomfortable? ”
Milo shrugs, dismissing my question. That's all the answer I need.
“Only when Brandt walks in on them,” Willa supplies for him.
“Again?” Hux asks, walking into the room. “Shower again? Dude, invest in a better lock on that bathroom door.”
“Or keep it in your bedroom?” Willa snarks. “No one likes shower sex that much.”
“Speak for yourself,” Milo retorts, waggling his eyebrows.
I let my fork drop, the clank of it against the table fading into the growing noise as Anton and Jace pile into the room and start to fill their plates.
“I’m eating…”
Milo lifts one shoulder casually, letting me know he gives zero shits that he potentially ruined my appetite.
“For the amount of times you’re not in your bedroom, you have no room to talk,” Ewan says. As I said, right on time.
Willa whips around, her whole body forcefully spinning the chair, landing Ewan with the definition of if looks could kill. He’s not the slightest bit fazed by her.
“You live above me. And you’re not quiet, remember?”
“Burn…” Anton mutters, parking himself at the other end of the table.
I roll my eyes, letting the conversation devolve around me. I have too much on my mind right now to join in. Don’t get me wrong, I love Munch—short for Monday Lunch—the weekly lunch meeting where the heads of each department get together to update each other on what is going on, talk strategy, and brainstorm if needed. And by heads of each department, I mean my siblings and me.
Enjoying this time together doesn’t negate that I have a list as long as my arm of things to do today and a clock that seems to be ticking faster and faster. Not to mention a father— who is also coincidentally CEO and in charge of this meeting—who is late. A man who for all his brilliance moves on his own schedule and timeline. Bless him.
“Where’s Auggie?” I ask, wondering out loud if anyone has seen the old man. Well, not old. Older. Need to be careful with my words. He could still kick my ass if he wanted to. Probably would too, without thinking about it.
“Who pissed in your Cheerios?” Jace asks, mouth still full of ziti. Sometimes, you’d think he was raised in a barn. Good thing our mama isn’t here to see that.
“No one. We’ve just got a lot to cover.”
“He’s just grumpy because he’s not gettin’ any,” Hux offers.
“Not all of us can sleep our way through Tifton and the other surrounding towns,” I remark, not bothering to crack a smile.
Hux’s playboy ways aren’t a secret. If anything, his reputation precedes him a little bit at this point. We’re all just waiting for the woman who makes him change his ways. My brothers and I have a theory on exactly who that is, but every time it comes up, Hux’s response is like clockwork.
“Tsk, it’s sundown somewhere, and there’s a pretty little thing just waiting on me, you know this,” Hux says, as if on cue. “Beside, August…”
My full name makes my skin crawl, the grumpiness that was hovering at surface level fully settling in now.
“Don’t be jealous. Just because I know the difference between a three and an eight…”
That’s it. The proverbial line in the sand.
Usually it’s Anton who’s the instigator. The one pushing all the buttons. That said, if he were to have a second-in-command, it would be Hux.
“I know the fucking difference!”
“We know you do, son,” our father’s slow, deep Southern drawl greets. He saunters into the conference room, his confident, lopsided grin secure in place as he nods at each one of us. “What you don’t remember is not to pick up your beer with the hand that has a fresh phone number on it. Ah, ziti. Thank you, Miss Harriett.”
For fuck’s sake…
Willa reaches over, squeezing my arm. I’ve taken enough shit from my family over the smudged phone number this past year that you’d think I’d be used to it by now. Except not a day goes by that I don’t kick myself over it. Because picking up the beer was quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Except for maybe not trying to call all the potential versions of the number, like Milo suggested at the time. It felt weird—and borderline creepy—to randomly call up a number and ask if they were the woman at JFK airport, but now there’s a part of me that wishes I’d gotten over that. Because then I would have had a chance at finding her. Another part of me is surprised that this lot didn’t take it upon themselves to do it. Then again, if they had, they’d have nothing to taunt me about.
But we’re not going to dwell on that now. I have things I need to do today.
“Not to rush you, Auggie, but can we get started? I have to get those tax reports to Ernie and then go over payroll stuff with Patrick Rawlins for all the summer temp workers, plus see if I can squeeze in some time with HR about finding someone to take over guns and ammo and?—”
“We get it, Gus; you’re busy,” Anton cuts me off.
I flip him the single-finger salute, keeping my gaze trained on Auggie. Snickers surround us from the rest of the table, undoubtedly because Anton returned the gesture. We may be the executive team at a Fortune 500 company that employs the majority of our small, rural Georgia town, but no one ever accused us of being professional. At least not at Munch. We save that for out there.
“He has a point. We all need to get on with our day,” Auggie says. “And yes, we need to find someone for Guns and Ammo, but it has to be the right person. That might not be our only market segment anymore, but it’s still our largest and our legacy. I want to make sure that whoever comes in knows that they do so understanding the Hayes way of doing things.”
I nod, understanding exactly what he means. After all, it’s my division this person would be taking over. Almost twenty years’ worth of my work that they’d be carrying on with. That's something I care very deeply about. Especially when it’s the foundation our company was started on.
My siblings can call me grumpy or tease me about being too serious all they want, but I take a lot of pride in this company. I take nothing for granted. Being handed a company that has been around since before the Civil War means something.
Hayes Industries has come a long way since the two-man shop founded by Augustus and Llewelyn, a pair of brothers who somehow found favor with the Confederates. Their rifles started it all, and while we choose not to focus on the family history of the mid-1800s, they are still the reason Hickory Hills didn’t fade into oblivion like many other small rural towns. They’re the reason I get to sit at this table with Milo, Anton, Hux, Jace, Ewan, Willa, and our father, talking about things like beer brewing, a paper mill, personal safety, a bait and tackle shop, our charitable giving, and of course, the ever important three Ps—peaches, pecans, and peanuts.
“The new beer seemed to go over well at Rhythm and Brews,” Auggie says, steering the conversation to Southern Brothers Brewing, Milo’s operation.
Milo nods, updating the group on how the latest beer was received at the town’s massive beer and bluegrass festival over Labor Day weekend. I make a note that Bronwyn Ainsworth, our director of marketing, is working on a full launch for the spring, so we’ll need to coordinate that with…something. I can’t remember what though. She’ll know. She always does.
“Have you started the trademarking stuff?” I ask. Milo took all summer to settle on the name for the beer, coming in just under the wire, days before the festival. He was cutting it way too close for all our liking, but in the end he got it done, so I suppose that’s all that matters.
“Bronwyn said she was working with Percy down in legal. But if there’s something else I need to do, just let me know.”
I nod. I’ll add it to my list to make sure the paperwork is in order. Yes, that should be Milo’s responsibility, but that kind of thing has never been his focus. The beer brewing part, yes. The basic business part, sure. The grittier details? That's me.
We switch gears, letting Willa take over, excitedly reviewing the final fundraising numbers from Rhythm and Brews. Somewhere along the way she mentioned which extracurricular from the high school was to benefit this year—I think—but I missed it. I also know better than to ask. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to me, as long as the event was a success.
My phone lights up next to me, an email notification from HR popping up on the screen. I peek at it as slyly as I can, my anxiety blipping like the heart rate monitors on a medical show—blip blip blip—my to-do list seeming to grow by the second.
“You’re not listening,” Willa calls me out. I know it’s me her comment is directed at simply by the sound of her voice. Busted .
“I am too,” I lie. “Record number for the mathletes. Everyone’s very excited.”
“Mathletes were last year. This year was the art club.”
“Oh, well, yay for the artists.”
“Gus!”
Her shrill admonishment is deserved. I won’t deny it. And she deserves an apology.
“Sorry, continue.”
“Actually, I gotta run,” Ewan says, pushing back from the table. “I got a delivery due in ten and Johnny down in accounting says that I’m the only one who is allowed to sign for anything potentially lethal.”
“You own a bait and tackle shop. Isn’t everything in there ‘potentially lethal’ if you’re on the wrong end of it?” Jace laughs.
Ewan shrugs. “Camo gear, the orange safety vests and beanies, fish lures…”
“Unless you’re the fish,” Anton mutters.
Ewan shrugs, not bothering with a comeback, which surprises me a little. Then again, I can’t argue that the fish would side with the lures being lethal so, there’s that.
“Then if there’s nothing else…” I say.
I don’t give anyone a chance to counter that, following Ewan’s lead, pushing to my feet and nodding in the direction of my father. He nods in return, putting a silent but official end to the meeting. Thank goodness.
Now, I can get on with it.
Bursting back into the hall, I scan through my email, checking to see what else popped up while I was at Munch. Thankfully, not much. I focus in on the email from Carl Roberts in HR, the number of attachments making me dizzy. Yeah, that’s going to require an actual computer.
“Gus!”
I stop and turn on my heel, looking up to see Percy Adams, the head of our legal department, jogging toward me. A few years younger than Auggie, Percy has worked for Hayes since I was a kid, working his way up from associate to top dog. I’ll never forget the excitement of the Adams family moving to town, the pretty new girl in class sticking close to my side since our dads had introduced us at the company picnic that summer. She was my first real kiss that fall—and a first couple of other things later in life—but that’s not something that we talk about now that her dad and I are colleagues.
“Glad I caught you. Got a minute?”
“Not really. Just got out of Munch, and I’m rushing down to meet with Patrick Rawlins in payroll. Can it wait?”
“Actually, that’s perfect. I’m headed that way too. Just wanted to introduce you to our newest associate, who, I ironically left in payroll since I forgot some paperwork.” He holds up a folder, guilty smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. “I think you’ll like her.”
“We have a new legal associate?”
My brow scrunches in confusion. I didn’t realize we were hiring one of those.
Percy nods, handing me the folder. I flip it open, scanning over the resume. Margeaux Finnegan.
“Yup. Graduated from Pepperdine in May and just passed the bar exam.”
“Whoa!”
I stop dead in my tracks. Legal is not my area of expertise. I leave that to Percy here. That said, there are a few things I do know, and this is one of them—we don’t hire new legal grads. We require experience. Practical experience. Percy explained why to me once. He had a whole rant about it. Something about how in order to take on the responsibilities of a company like Hayes, you needed to cut your teeth first. Or something like that .
“Since when do we hire new grads? What happened to all those requirements about so many years in practice and proving that you know the law? Can hold your own in court, not that we ever end up in court. But all that was the whole reason you wouldn’t hire that Gwyn woman, and she’d been a lawyer for, like, fifteen years.”
“This one’s different. Yes, she just graduated, but she spent the last year interning with Dexter Wynn out in LA.”
Dexter Wynn.
Okay, that does change things.
Again, all things legal is not my specialty, but I’ve been in business long enough to know the name Dexter Wynn. Mr. Intellectual Property Law himself. He’s an old law school buddy of Percy’s, the two of them still using each other regularly to consult on different cases. If this woman interned with Dexter Wynn, then I can see why Percy made an exception to his own rule. If there was ever a gold star of approval, that would be it.
I look down at the resume again. Margeaux Finnegan.
“I assume this is pronounced Mar-go?” He nods, confirming the pronunciation. “That’s a hell of a way to spell it.”
“Cajun mother, Irish father,” he tells me, starting our walk again.
“And she didn’t want to stay on working for Dexter?”
“Originally from Louisiana, and was looking to move closer to home after school. Hayes was able to make her an offer to do that. Did her undergrad at LSU, then got her MBA from Northwestern. After that she spent three years with the Sulonen Group, including two in Amsterdam…”
Percy’s voice fades into the background, my mind whipping into a frenzy. My skin prickles, my chest tightens, the whole world stopping and spinning backward in an instant. I blink, once, twice, three times—each one harder than the last.
Sulonen Group.
Amsterdam.
Law school in LA.
Louisiana.
Margeaux, not Marlo. I misheard that. Good to know.
There is no way. Absolutely no way.
Only, maybe there is.
“Ah, here she is!” Percy declares.
And I forget how to breathe.
It’s her.