Chapter 12
TWELVE
ASH
The crash landing from the wedding back into what will become my day-to-day life is like hitting the ocean from five thousand feet up. Or like a cat crashing through the fucking ceiling.
I’m not sure what came over me when the Pip imposter cat came crashing through, stopping the spiral that we were going down. It was a weird sense of calm, almost, like everything but the situation at hand disappeared. The only thing that my brain could do was help Jada.
It felt…good. Like I was finally doing something right after the longest time. Like I was competent, even if it was just to calm her down and get the cat out of there.
Dread fills my stomach like concrete in a hole.
My bed is completely fucked, and there’s not space for an air mattress. My sleep sucks but sleeping on the floor will only make it worse.
We have to share a bed. That big, dreamlike bed of hers…right next to her.
I throw my car into park in the Stryker Liquors lot. The weight of sitting in the parking lot is the only thing that could distract me from what I’ll have to deal with when I get back to Jada’s: this job, whatever it’ll be.
I take a deep breath, looking over at the Stryker Liquors building.
I haven’t been here since I was a child, when I got dragged along with Mom or they had an event where the whole family needed to be photographed.
The sight of the building, which looks the exact same aside from an updated sign, makes my stomach flip up into my throat.
I’m already late, and I’ve already gotten a terse text from JD, but I need a minute.
I understand my dread—JD and I haven’t gotten along ever, really. But there’s fear underneath the dread. Fear of whatever job I’ll have. Whether I’ll be able to cut it or if JD will fire me before I can get the money I need.
I rake a hand over my face. It’s a regular fucking job.
I had one, briefly—a barista for a little while before we started making money off gigs.
Bartending would have made me more money, but I wasn’t going to do anything related to the family business.
Maybe if I’d done that, I’d feel a shred more confident.
I turn my car off and throw myself out of it before I ruminate any more. I’m a half hour late.
I walk inside—it’s also the same as I remember, besides the sign. A receptionist who is vaguely familiar looks me up and down, then picks up the phone without saying a word. I wait, my eyebrow creeping up as she says a few hushed words.
“Mr. Stryker will be here to get you shortly,” she says, pursing her lips like she’s tasting something sour.
“There are a lot of Mr. Strykers,” I say, unable to resist. “Including me.”
She gives me the look I expected, like she’s over my shit already. “You know which one. Please, have a seat.”
She gestures toward the seating area, but I don’t sit down. Instead, I wander toward the portrait wall that has a mini history of Stryker Liquors. The first portrait is of my great grandfather, who started the business—John David the first. He looks like a bootlegger from a movie.
My grandfather looks more buttoned up, but you can’t hide crazy eyes like his.
My dad’s portrait is next. He looks annoyed to be there, but then again, he usually looks like that. The portrait must be at least ten or fifteen years old, based on the amount of salt in his salt-and-pepper beard. Now he’s all gray.
JD’s portrait is last. He looks dead serious, as always, his beard dark and well-kept. All of us take after our parents in roughly equal parts, but seeing JD’s photo next to Dad’s shows how similar they look. Dad’s always been pleased about that. His perfect successor.
A knot of annoyance takes up space in my chest, as it often does when confronted with the family company’s legacy. I shove it down, even though it’s in my face at this point. I can’t ignore it, even if I want to.
I’m the spare parts.
“Ash,” JD says from behind me. I turn and see him and his dog Bubba standing at the end of the hall.
JD looks less than pleased to see me—unsurprisingly—but Bubba is doing his excited tippy-tap dance that he does before he rushes you.
At least someone is happy to see me. He’s the mascot of our family’s bourbon brand, Big Bubba Bourbon, and he might be the friendliest dog on earth.
I’m glad he is, because he makes JD somewhat bearable to be around.
“Hey, Bubba,” I say, putting a hand down. He takes that as an invitation and trots over to me, his whole butt swinging back and forth.
“You’re late,” JD says, stepping closer. I’m not a small man by any means, but JD has always been taller and broader than me.
“I know. I texted. I’ve had a morning.” I pat Bubba’s back half like bongos. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to playing an actual instrument in a while.
“Haven’t we all had one?” He tucks his hands into his pockets.
“Did your morning consist of a cat crashing through the ceiling?” I stand up straight and Bubba looks at me over his shoulder, looking betrayed.
“No. Come with me.” He turns and starts down the hall again. No questions about a cat crashing through the ceiling?
The office felt huge when I was a kid, like it went on forever, but it’s much smaller to me now. We pass by a few cubicles, which Bubba weaves between for a few pets before rejoining us, and the kitchen.
“No seafood boils?” I blurt, looking at one of the signs next to the kitchen entrance. The other says not to feed Bubba people food, even if he gives you the saddest face a dog could make. “Does that really need to be a rule?”
“Rules are often written in blood.”
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?”
“You’ve never been faced with a full seafood boil at eight in the morning.” He stops in front of the last door of the hall and Bubba nudges it open with his head.
It’s Dad’s old office. Despite JD being a cold asshole, he’s warmed the place up with a few things.
A small cluster of cacti sit in a dish on his desk, and Bubba has a huge bed with a few stuffed toys in it in a sunny spot.
Picture frames line the built-in shelves, some with art and several more with pictures of his fiancé, Katrina.
He sits behind his desk and nods for me to sit across from him. This chair is smaller than his and makes me feel even smaller than I already do.
I fucking hate feeling at his mercy. But there’s no way to convince myself that I’m not.
Bubba sits between my feet and rests his chin on my knee. I massage his ears the way he likes so I have something to do with my hands.
JD jiggles his computer mouse.
“The terms of our inheritance state that you need to work for Stryker Liquors or one of its subsidiaries for at least one year,” he says, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“I have no idea what your skill set is beyond music and selling shitty weed in the high school parking lot when you were a junior or senior. Is there anything you’re interested in trying?
You never got back to me after I sent that email. ”
I blink, my mind going blank. He knew about the terrible weed thing and didn’t snitch to our parents? Maybe Wes told him after I graduated.
“I’m not sure,” I admit.
“I figured.” He clicks around for a few moments.
“I’m going to have you float between departments in month-long chunks.
If you really take to one, you can just stay there or extend your time in it if you aren’t sure.
I was thinking of starting you at the bar with Wes, then you can work in production, then in some of the departments around the office. Sound fair?”
“Yes?” The question creeps into my voice unintentionally.
It sounds…nice, honestly. Exactly what I need, because I have no idea what I’m doing or even what I’m best at.
“What’d you think was going to happen?” he asks, an eyebrow going up. “That I was going to deny you a job because you drive me insane sometimes?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. Part of me thought that, yeah. But saying it out loud would make me feel like a teenager again, so I stay quiet.
“We aren’t children, Ash,” JD says. “This company matters to me and believe it or not, I don’t want you to crash and burn.”
I hold my tongue again, even though the slight condescension hits an old wound that he created.
Our whole existence has been a weird competition, or at least a conflict. He was always so smug and arrogant growing up, always reminding me of the rules and how I wasn’t following them. Some of them weren’t even rules—they were just things he didn’t like about me.
He didn’t like that I talked back to Dad (which was kind of a shitty thing for me to do, but Dad was being an asshole).
He didn’t like that I was always writing (terrible) lyrics in my stacks of notebooks and practicing my instrument of the moment in our shared room, even though I played when he wasn’t there.
The fighting eventually got so bad that I switched rooms with Waylon, so Wes and I shared a room.
It helped a little, even though Wes and I just started stirring up different problems. But having JD’s voice in the back of my head all the time, just as I was trying to do the things that brought hormonal, teenage me a shred of happiness, pissed me the fuck off.
JD has no problem with silence, so he doesn’t say anything. He just types something, then prints out papers. Bubba steps in his way as he grabs them from the printer and hands them to me.
“Fill out these forms. The employee handbook is last. Read it.” He places a pen down, too.
I scan the forms—it’s all basic stuff, including my salary. It’s not bad, to my surprise. More than enough to supplement the legal stuff and pay bills.
“Are my tattoos fine?” I ask, checking the table of contents in the employee handbook.
“What, you need to color them in every morning or something? Would it make you even later than you were today?” he asks.
I scoff. “No.”
“They’re fine. Other bartenders have them, too.” He turns back to his computer. “I’ll tell Wes to text you about starting early next week. This week is pretty busy for them with some events, so just take the next few days to get familiar with the handbook and the company.”
I fill out the forms and slide them back to him. He scans them for a moment before nodding, then glancing at the door.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“For today, yes.” He gives me that look that pisses me off every time, like I’m insane for asking a question.
I pet Bubba a little more before leaving, a weird mix of emotions stirring in my chest. I see the evidence of JD not being that awful in front of me, but why can’t I shake the feeling that things won’t be different between us when the pressure’s on?
I head back home to an empty apartment, besides Pip. He greets me like a dog, trotting up to me with his tail in the air. I pet him, kick off my shoes, and head to the kitchen table since the living room is still fucked up.
Shit, the living room.
I look at the big tarp on the ceiling, and the second one across the couch.
Jada and I need to share her bed.
“Fuck,” I say. Pip chirps in response, butting his head against my legs. His doppelg?nger fucked me up.
I open my laptop, which I left on the table, and it wakes up to my email inbox.
Which is exploding with messages.
I look up at the ceiling and sigh. Maybe another hole will open up above me and knock me out so I don’t have to deal with this.
I take a few deep breaths with my eyes closed and open them again. Pip had silently hopped onto the table and is sitting next to my computer, staring at me with wide green eyes.
“At least this is a distraction,” I say, half to myself and half to him.
He tries to step onto my keyboard, so I take him off and put him on the ground. After a few rounds of doing that—he can’t take no for an answer, apparently—I put him in my lap instead. He settles down, finally.
I check my first email from the band’s manager, which clarifies why my inbox is stuffed. They released a statement saying that the band is on an indefinite hiatus due to conflict and creative differences. Of course, they had to throw in the conflict part to drive drama.
The rest of the emails are from media outlets that our manager forwarded to me. I’m not answering any of them until I talk to Dylan, so I call him right away.
“Your email’s exploding, too?” he asks, instead of saying hello. Some kind of farm animal makes a noise in the background, so he must be at his parents’ again.
“Yeah. You see this statement?” I ask, skimming over it. My blood pressure rises as I read it again. They didn’t even consult us about the wording or the timing of it.
“It could be worse,” he says. Of course he thinks that. He rolls with anything and can find the bright side to a lot. That’s how I knew the band was completely wrecked—he lost his patience with it all, finally.
“Sure, but it could be better. Fucking assholes.” I skim my emails. “They could have let us know they were doing this today.”
“At least it’s done. We don’t have to worry about fans being in limbo and we can keep chugging along with the legal battle,” he says. “I’m not replying to any requests for comment. I’m just not going to touch it at all.”
“Same.” I pet Pip, whose purr is so loud that Dylan can probably hear it. “And I’m not touching social media, either.”
“Definitely not.” He hardly liked to use it even when everyone encouraged us to. “I’ve gotta go. It’ll be okay.”
“See you.”
He ends the call and I put my phone down. After a moment, I shut my laptop, too. What else can I do? It really is done. The weight of being in between is off my shoulders. Now we just need the legal shit to go in our favor.