Chapter 4 #3
Lily’s big brother Harrison looked around at all the faces, and said, “I don’t see the problem, then. Keep it. Run it.”
Maria put her hand over his. “That would mean givin’ up his career as a country singer,” she said.
Ethan nodded, too. “So, I don’t know. I thought you’d all have input. But Lily said I should ask you to be objective about it, you know, rather than emotional. I know you’d all prefer me to stay, but?—”
“We get it,” Orrin said, looking around with one eyebrow raised. “But that’s easier said than done, Cuz. We freakin’ miss you.”
Everyone murmured agreement, and they all got out of their chairs and surrounded Ethan. Everybody had a hand on him. He wondered whether Lily was among them. He couldn’t see her, the way the cousins had closed in.
Then she cleared her throat, from the direction of where she’d been sitting and apparently still was. “I don’t see why you think you have to choose,” she said.
The sea of cousins parted to reveal her sitting there, sipping beer from a long-neck brown bottle. She’d worn her hair down. It hung like a silvery cloud around her shoulders. The firelight caught and reflected in her blouse, somehow.
“You said you had some ideas,” he said.
“Yeah, later on those,” she said. “But why not take a short time off from the road, and focus on the cantina? Make it into whatever you want it to be. Use your name and celebrity status to have an amazing launch. Then hire somebody else to run it for you and go back on the road, if that’s what you still want. ”
Baxter got up, paced to the table for another slice, and took a thoughtful bite, nodding while he chewed. “She’s right. Lots of country stars own bars and restaurants. It’s probably a great tax shield, not to mention a backup in case things go wrong in the singing career.”
“Or never go right,” Ethan said.
“See that, right there?” Lily pointed at him. “That attitude, that belief that you’ve failed? That’s what’s keeping your career from taking off again.”
Everyone gasped, and she bit her lip. Ethan could see how uncomfortable she was that she’d blurted what she had. It hadn’t seemed intentional.
“That’s what my mom would’ve said, anyway,” she finished softly, then rolled her eyes.
“That’s exactly what she would’ve said.” Her brother Harrison got up. “She’d say to spend some time doing something you could feel great about. Get your focus off what’s not going right. Give it…” he paused, and then he and Lily finished the sentence together. “…room to breathe.”
“You’re smothering it with your doubt,” Lily went on, grinning as she quoted her mother again. Maybe she could fill in for her a little bit, here and there.
“Yeah,” her brother added, throwing in another old chestnut. “Stop arguing for your limitations.” Then he leaned over to high-five her and said, “That was good.”
“Like she was right here,” Lily agreed.
Trevor leaned forward, reaching for a fresh beer as his chair was near the cooler. “Might be somethin’ to be said for lettin’ the fans miss you for a little while. Folks want somethin’ more when they can’t have it.”
Orrin nodded his agreement.
Ethan went to his chair, right next to Lilly’s, and sat down. “I didn’t think about doin’ both. Hirin’ someone to run it seems like it could work.”
“And findin’ somebody who can make tacos like Manny’s,” Maria Michele said. “You have to save the tacos, Ethan.”
“My dad’s on that,” Lily said. “He’s been getting hands-on lessons from Rosa. He even sweet-talked her out of her secret seasoning blend.”
Ethan looked over at her and wondered where the hell she’d come from.
It was like Harrison Hyde, the man who’d come to Texas to sweep his cousin off her feet, had brought an angel along with him.
He’d dropped her right into the middle of their lives, and she’d been glowing and gleaming there ever since.
Everybody felt better when Lily was around.
He tapped his beer bottle to hers. There was a satisfied look in her eyes. Then he said, “I really want to hear your ideas, Lily. The ones that kept you up all night.”
“Shoot, she could run the place for you, if you wanted,” Harrison said. “By the time Dad retired, she was managing the diner more than he was.”
Lily raised her chin a little at Harrison’s praise and said, “I was managing it entirely. Dad was just cooking. But then he retired, and I went to nursing school.”
But her brother’s words burrowed into her heart, and into her mind, too. And they settled in there, like they were planning to stay a while. They felt good. And then they felt like a spark, and the spark said, I really could run it for him.
She looked at Ethan. He was looking back at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. “I do have some ideas,” she said. “About making the place into a proper honky-tonk.”
“Knockin’ out a wall to expand, puttin’ in a dance floor,” Ethan said. He’d been turning her suggestions over in his mind ever since she’d expressed them.
“And maybe put the parking lot in back. It could be way bigger if you did, and the front could be repurposed for?—”
“More outdoor tables?” Ethan said. Then he snapped his fingers. “We could host private parties, wedding receptions.”
He said we. Okay, okay, stay cool .
“I have some sketches.” She opened her phone’s photo app and handed it to him.
He expanded the images of her drawings. She’d made several versions of a decorative, sound-buffering barrier between the road and the area in front of Manny’s.
She’d also drawn ideas for providing shade, from colorful shade sails to transplanting 20-year-old live trees native to the area.
Her ideas for an outdoor serving station, placed in various locations, were there too.
She watched him looking, nodding, and then he looked up from the phone and met her eyes, smiling,
“These are great. No wonder you didn’t sleep last night.”
“I got inspired.”
Their eyes held until Drew cleared her throat. They both looked up, and Lily realized they’d kind of forgotten anyone else was there. Everyone was looking at them, expressions ranging from speculation to full-on amusement.
Trevor said, “You gotta put in a mechanical bull, Bubba. No matter what.”
“The tacos are what’s important!” Maria said. “You have to get them right! And we all have to be there for Manny’s final night in business, too.”
“I like where this is going,” Baxter said. “Ethan, you probably know enough country singers to keep big acts circulating. And you could use local bands in between, even perform yourself.”
“Say more about moving the parking lot to the back,” Willow said. “I think it might be brilliant.”
“Say more about the dance floor!” Drew added.
Everyone was smiling, throwing ideas around, talking over each other. But not Ethan. Lily watched him looking from one cousin to the next. His expression was kind of vacant. Yeah, they were doing just what Lilly had predicted they would.
She leaned closer. “They’re acting like it’s a done deal, aren’t they? Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all.”
Then Orrin, who’d been silent throughout, spoke into a lull in the noise. “Place has a basement, you know.”
That silenced everyone. The gift of being the silent type was that when you did speak, people listened. “I didn’t know,” Ethan said. “How do you ?”
“Was getting quesadillas with friends when that twister came through, my senior year. Manny hustled us into his sótano . It was so quiet down there you wouldn’t’ve known there was a storm.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Might make a good recording studio.”
Lily shifted her gaze in time to see the change in Ethan’s face. Behind his eyes, she thought she detected the same kinds of sparks and tiny fires that were hopscotching across her own brain. There was definitely a light that hadn’t been there before.
And then Willow said, “Or, you could sell it to strangers who’ll do whatever they want to it, and go back on the road like before.”
Baxter tipped back his beer, lowered it, thumped his chest with a fist and burped simultaneously.
Drew rolled her eyes and Willow laughed at him.
“If you want to change the output, you have to change the input,” he said.
“You keep doin’ things the same way, you can’t get anything other than the same result. ”
“Basic science,” Harrison agreed.
Maria’s husband tended to be way more vocal when he agreed with his in-laws than when he didn’t, but that was okay. He was a good guy, for a Yankee. Fit with Maria like he was made for her. Though Ethan wouldn’t have believed it on paper, seeing them together left no room for doubt.
Everyone was still discussing. Drew was reciting a wish-list of restroom features, that had Maria and Willow shouting back affirmations like hallelujahs in church.
Trevor was wondering aloud about how much land came with the place, and whether there was enough for a rodeo ring.
Baxter argued that a rodeo ring beside a bar would be a recipe for disaster.
Orrin was quiet, like always, and Ethan was just taking it all in.
Lily leaned closer to him. “I don’t know, Ethan. I’m not hearing too many arguments against keeping the place. At least for now. Do you actually have any yourself?”
“Yeah,” he said, tipping his head, so it came nearer, speaking to her alone. His mouth was so close to her ear she felt his warm breath with his words. She shivered, and it was delicious, and she imagined him saying something sexy or at least flirty to her, and shivered even harder.
But what he said wasn’t sexy or flirty at all. It was a plea. “One big argument against it,” he said softly. “What if I fail?”