Chapter 27
“Mom, what time are we supposed to eat tomorrow?” Karter asked as she popped a grape into her mouth.
“Around two. I’m going to put the pies on tonight, and your dad is going to put on the ham early in the morning. So, the only things we’ll need to worry about tomorrow afternoon are the sides.”
Karter nodded before popping another grape into her mouth.
Thanksgiving was one of her favorite holidays.
She enjoyed eating all the foods she wouldn’t typically eat during the year.
They rotated the holiday. For odd-number years, they would spend it with extended family, and even-number years were spent with just the four of them.
She was happy it would just be her, her parents, and Creed.
It was the first Thanksgiving they would spend together where she and Creed were dating, and she was glad it would just be them.
Karter knew that one of her cousins had a crush on Creed, and the last thing she wanted was to have the other woman shoot daggers at her because she knew it would happen.
Whenever her cousin didn’t get her way, she threw fits, and Karter would hate to have to put her hands on her.
“Speaking of Dad, where is he?”
“He’s out picking up a few more things for tomorrow. I was surprised you weren’t with Creed today since the two of you don’t seem to know how to be apart,” her mom stated with a smirk.
“We aren’t together all the time. He’s with Abe and Clint. They’ve hired him to consult on the bar they want to open. They’ve chosen a location and are going through the closing process.”
“Is it smart of him to consult on a competing bar?”
Karter ate another grape, shaking her head. “It’s not a competition. They’re opening their bar up an hour away.”
“Do you know what style they’re going for?”
“No, and Creed hasn’t said anything about it.”
The two women lapsed into silence as her mother focused on cooking the pasta she was making for lunch, and Karter ate her fruit.
She’d been tempted the entire time she was there to ask her mother for the gift she’d asked her to hide.
Creed’s birthday was on the thirtieth, and she’d gotten his present a few days ago.
Karter had always been impatient when she bought something for someone, wanting to give it to them immediately. To keep herself from doing that with his birthday, she’d given it to her mom to hide until it was time for her to give it to him.
It was the first time they’d be celebrating his birthday as a couple, and while they had gone away for the weekend for hers, Creed was adamant that he didn’t want to do anything but spend the day with her. She’d been bummed about it because she wanted to do something special for him.
However, she realized she could still do something special for him and comply with his request. She’d planned an entire forty-eight hours in for them, and Karter was more excited about it than she should have been, considering it wasn’t her birthday.
She’d also been able to keep it a secret from him.
That she could do, it seemed she only had an issue with gift-giving.
When the pasta was ready, Karter got up from the bar and grabbed two bowls from the cabinet, placing them on the counter beside the stove. While her mom filled them, she grabbed two forks from the drawer and two sodas from the refrigerator.
They sat at the bar with their food, and she asked her mom if she’d gotten any more orders in. Her mother would make pillows, blankets, and other comforting things for the holidays. She tended to get a large number of orders for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Once they finished eating, Karter put the leftover pasta away for her dad and washed the dishes while her mother went to pull out a couple of the orders she had made in her craft room. She joined her when she finished the dishes.
She looked at the items her mom had finished and was getting ready to ship out. As always, they looked terrific, and Karter wondered what her mother would make for her this year. Last year, she received the softest blanket in existence, and Karter used it almost daily.
She sanitized her hands, deciding to help package up the orders, and volunteered to drop them off at the post office on the way to her apartment later that afternoon.
Ravage looked over the different lists of suppliers Abe and Clint were showing him.
On the list of produce suppliers, he saw two that they should under no circumstances use.
Not only were both expensive, which wouldn’t be an issue if the products were top quality, but they weren’t.
They often tried to pawn off spoiled produce by placing them under a few fresh items to hide them.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure how either of them was still in business.
He took a pen and marked both of them off.
He set that list aside, looked over the others, and marked off four other vendors before turning his attention to the television. Abe had connected his laptop to it, and he and Clint were going over pricing for the liquor they planned to sell.
Ravage studied the numbers for a couple of minutes. He didn’t see a problem until he came to the beer they planned to have on draft.
“If you price your draft beer at that, you’re going to lose money,” he informed them. Both men turned to look at him.
“How so?” Clint questioned.
“The way you’re charging now is per glass.
If you charge four dollars for a short, let’s say you’ll get a hundred glasses out of the keg and make four hundred dollars.
If you charge four seventy-five per tall, you’ll only get about seventy-five glasses out of the keg and make about three-hundred and forty. ”
Ravage paused for a moment as the two men turned their attention back to the television as if they were studying it. He figured they hadn’t considered that they would get fewer glasses out of each keg with larger glasses.
“You need to charge by the ounce. If you charge fifty cents per ounce and your short glass is twelve ounces, that’s six dollars a beer and six hundred dollars for the one hundred glasses.
That would mean your tall glass at sixteen ounces would cost eight dollars per beer, and you’d still make six hundred dollars for the seventy-five glasses you get out of it. ”
Of course, he was just giving them simple figures. They could charge whatever they wanted per ounce, but they did need to charge per ounce. Ravage knew of a few bars that charged per glass, but he was sure they weren’t making what they had the potential to.
He was a firm believer that if you went into something, you needed to do so entirely, and there was no point in running a business if you weren’t going to try to make it the best success it could be.
Which meant making money, because whether or not people liked to believe it, it made the world go round.
“That makes sense,” Abe responded. “I don’t know why we didn’t realize that.”
“It’s because we’ve never owned a bar before. Just put on contests,” Clint reminded him.
For the next hour, they went through the other plans and prices they had in mind.
Clint and Abe were aiming toward a sports bar that sold a few simple dishes.
It was a good idea, in his opinion. When they hired him to consult for them, he looked into the surrounding bars, and there wasn’t a sports bar within fifteen minutes of the building they’d chosen, which was in a prime location.
Once they finished going over everything, Abe disconnected his laptop, closing it before turning his attention to Ravage.
“Big plans for the holiday tomorrow?” he questioned.
“I’m spending it at Karter’s parents’ house.”
“Will your parents be joining you all?” Clint asked.
“No,” Ravage started. “My parents died when I was young.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Abe stated.
“It was a long time ago, and it took me a while to make peace with it, but I eventually did.”
Like any child who had lost a parent, Ravage had taken his parents’ deaths hard.
He acted out, got into all kinds of trouble, and was arrested a few times as a juvenile.
He’d met Demetri when he’d tried to rob his office at seventeen.
With his help, he turned his life around, eventually going to college and starting his own business.
Ravage wasn’t sure where he’d be today if it weren’t for that encounter.
After another fifteen minutes, the three men said their goodbyes, and he got into his car, heading home. It would be a little after five when he arrived, and he figured he’d continue working on the Christmas gift he planned on giving Karter.