Chapter 5
A CEO WALKS INTO A BAR…
Simone
For once, my sister was on time.
When I arrived for my shift at Fez, Selena and Kylie were waiting for me outside.
My sister had double-parked her dented Mazda outside the lounge’s clover-green awning that led to the entrance of a lounge housed beneath one of Back Bay’s classic brownstones, and she paced in front of the awning-covered entrance while puffing away on her vape pen.
Kylie was treating the stairs leading to the apartments above it like a jungle gym.
“You’re late!” Selena called out. “You said you’d be here by 5:50.”
I checked my watch. Typically, I did get to the lounge fifteen minutes before my shift started. Today, however, I’d been waylaid by Brendan Black looking like he was about to have a nervous breakdown on a park bench.
I still didn’t understand what had made me want to comfort him. But when I’d seen him take off from the hospital exit like a lost dog, I had simply followed into the park. And when the man who’d seemed so strong less than an hour earlier buried his face in his hands, I’d had to do something.
“I still have a few minutes before I start,” I told my sister as I approached.
I gave her a kiss on the cheek, then pulled her into a hug, which she barely returned. Sel had never been the most affectionate person. That seemed to be a gene only I got, despite the fact that we were identical twins.
“Aunt Simone!”
I turned to pick up my niece and whirl her around on the sidewalk, enjoying the way her laugh bubbled like soda. I accepted a sloppy kiss to the cheek and inhaled her scent of Goldfish crackers and grape juice. “Hiya, kiddo. How’s it going?”
“Good. Mommy’s worried, though.” Kylie, far more perceptive than most four-year-olds, spoke with solemnity that was balanced by her inability to pronounce the letters r and l. I adored her for both.
“I’m not worried, Ky. And I’ll thank you to mind your own business.” Selena reached for her daughter.
With a whimper, Kylie allowed herself to be taken from my arms and back on the ground. I took a deep breath and turned to my twin.
It might have been a carbon copy of my own face, but that expression was totally hers. Desperation mixed with a shifty plan of some sort that almost certainly led to chaos.
A knot formed in my belly.
“Ky can’t come into the lounge, so we need to be quick. What’s going on?”
Selena’s eyes darted down the street and back to me as she shifted her too-slender frame from one foot to the other. “I’m in trouble.”
“I gathered that from our phone call,” I said with a quick look at Kylie, who was taking in every word like they were coated in chocolate. “What’s going on? Do you need money for groceries? Bills?”
“No, nothing like that.” Selena shook her head. “It’s serious. I’m really fucked.”
I glanced at Kylie again, who blinked at me like a goldfish. “You mean fudged?”
I hated it when she swore around Kylie. In my opinion, kids deserved at least five full years before being forced to lose their innocence. Poor Ky was barely four, and she was a hell of a lot brighter than most.
When Selena rolled her eyes, I turned to Kylie. “Hey, baby girl. Can you count the bricks on that wall over there? My boss wanted me to tell him exactly how many we have. I’ll get you some jelly beans if it’s the right number.”
Kylie’s eyes lit up. “Sure! I’m getting really good at counting.”
She scampered the ten feet away to start labeling bricks with random numbers (and letters) between one and five.
I heard three at least four times. I didn’t love that my niece’s supervision at the moment was a dirty brick wall, but it was better than hearing her mother curse a blue storm while she unloaded on me.
“Okay, what happened?” I asked, shifting my duffel with a change of clothes onto my other shoulder.
The fear in her eyes was practically metallic, it was so sharp. “I’m just trying to find my hustle, you know?”
I rolled my eyes. “Your hustle?”
“I need money, you know that. And I hate working for other people.”
“Yeah, I’m well aware of both of those facts, Sel.” I checked my watch again. “Look, we can brainstorm future career paths after I’m off, okay—”
“Do you remember Ezra Huntington?” she cut me off in a rush of words.
I searched my brain. “Maybe. It sounds familiar.”
“We went to high school with him. His dad is—”
“Oh…” It was coming back to me. The lanky kid who transferred in our junior year.
Who skipped class and used to follow Selena like a lost puppy (along with half the boys in our graduating class).
“Ezra. Right. I remember. Everyone always joked that his dad was involved with the mafia or something.” I snorted.
“Because Woodstock, Vermont, is a real hot spot for the mob.”
She blinked at me with a pointed look.
“Wait. His dad was in the mob?” My stomach sank when I realized why, exactly, my sister was telling me this. “Selena, what did you do?”
“You always think the worst of me, don’t you?”
“No, I just—well, you don’t have the best track record, to be fair. And you did just tell me you’re in trouble.”
“Right.” She pouted.
I sighed. “Just say it, whatever it is.”
She ran a hand through her hair, a tangled, thinning mess that said a lot about how well she had been taking care of herself. “Look, I had the best intentions, all right? I just borrowed some money to start a sort of psychedelics-type business.”
“What do you mean, ‘psychedelics’?” I had a feeling I already knew, but I needed to hear her say it. “Mushrooms?”
Selena looked everywhere else but at me. “Mushrooms, yeah. Maybe some therapeutic MDMA. Ayahuasca. Stuff like that.”
“So, drugs. You’re telling me you were going to start dealing drugs to support yourself and your four-year-old, who would probably eat anything that looks like gumdrops.”
“Oh my God, you’re such a prude, Simmy. You make it sound like I was sitting on a corner with dime bags or something, but I had a shop picked out and everything.
I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t believe in me, like always.
My plan was to invite you to my grand opening and surprise you.
” She looked almost dreamy. “It was going to be in Providence. This cute little side street near the college. Those Ivy League kids love their drugs.”
I stared at her, genuinely wondering if I was going crazy.
“I see. So, are you telling me that you—a single mom who has never held a job for more than a few months at a time—were planning on starting a business where you sold mind-altering substances to people out of a little shop like cupcakes? Is that even legal in Rhode Island?”
“It was going to be.” She stuck out her bottom lip with the same expression Kylie wore when someone told her she couldn’t have another scoop of ice cream.
“The state was supposed to make it legal. That’s why I borrowed the money, to get in on the ground floor when it passed.
But then…well, I guess the law or whatever didn’t pass.
So my landlord pulled my lease. And…yeah. ”
“And you were surprised?” I honestly could not believe this.
“Yes, actually. Psilocybin is totally therapeutic! Oregon is opening clinics where you can go and take them with a trusted facilitator. We shouldn’t be far behind, you know, and I want to do that. I want to help people.”
“With magic freaking mushrooms?” I hissed the words to keep from yelling them loud enough for Kylie to hear.
Selena huffed, and suddenly, we were right back in high school, when she’d make fun of my clothes and ditch me at parties and tell everyone else I was just a frigid square but don’t worry, she was the fun twin.
“You can make fun of it all you want, Simone. It doesn’t matter anymore, though, because Rhode Island fucked me over royally. ”
I darted a worried glance toward Kylie, who was still happily counting bricks. She would make it to five and then start right back over again.
“Okay, so you can’t open the magical mushroom house you borrowed money for?” I asked quietly. “Is that the problem? Just give the money back to the bank. I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”
“That’s sort of the problem. I didn’t get it from a bank. I got it from Ezra’s family. The, um, the Huntingtons. And I, um…” She grabbed at her hair and bared her teeth.
That told me everything I needed to know. “You spent the money and don’t have it anymore.”
She just looked at the ground.
“Please tell me you spent it all on mushrooms that you can at least sell to give the money back?” I didn’t want my sister to sell drugs, per se, but at least that was one way to make it back. There was a market. Based on how many patients in the hospital came in looking for a fix, I was sure of it.
“No. I spent it on”—she paused, waving her hands around—“life, you know? Rent, food, gas. Having a kid—do you even know how much she eats?”
“Don’t even think about blaming this on Kylie.”
“I’m not—it’s just that, God, everything is so fucking expensive, Simmy.”
“Oh, please. All this stuff you do doesn’t only impact you. You have another human you need to think of.”
“You think I don’t? Why do you think I was trying to start a business in the first place?”
I sighed. “I’m not saying starting a business was a bad idea. I’m saying starting a business selling something that wasn’t even legal yet was a bad idea. And now, you owe money to Ezra Huntington’s family? What are you going to do?”
“I was sort of hoping you’d have some ideas.” She gave me a hopeful look that charmed many but made me want to strangle her.
“Of course. You want me to pay it back for you.”
My stomach rumbled. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast because I’d stayed in the ICU so long, waiting for Mr. Black’s family to show up.
Now I’d have to make do with nuts and pretzels from the bar.
Which was disgusting, considering not only how many people touched them, but that Herb, the owner, saved whatever was in the bowls at the end of every night to use the next day.
“How much is it?” I asked after checking my watch for the fourth time. I needed to get inside.
Selena sighed, then reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, and handed it to me.
My eyes almost popped out when I saw the amount. “Selena! What in the—” My palm fell over my mouth. “Why did you take so much? Mushrooms cost like twenty bucks in high school.”
She toed her scuffed black boot into the sidewalk. “There are a lot more expenses involved than in high school, obviously. You have to get a business license, find a storefront to rent, then furniture and marketing and, and, and… I made a business plan. Do you want to see it?”
My ridiculous sister almost looked hopeful. Like I’d pat her on the head and say “good try.”
“No!” I exploded.
At the wall, Kylie finally turned around. “Aunt Simone, are you okay?”
Oh, Kylie, you sweet child. You have no clue what okay even looks like.
“Fine, honey bug,” I called back. “Keep counting, okay?” I turned back to Selena. “You think I have this kind of cash?”
“You have savings, don’t you?” My sister propped one hand on her hip.
“Not that much!” I shoved the paper back to her and turned toward the lounge.
“Simone, please.”
That tone, that stupid, cracked, broken note in her voice stopped me. Just like it always did. When I turned, Selena was blinking back tears.
“I just need a little bit now to keep Ezra at bay,” she whimpered. “My first payment is late, and I had to leave Providence because he kept sending his goons over.”
“You left your apartment?”
“I know, I know…” She pushed tears away with fingers tipped with glittering fake nails. “Please, Simmy. If not for me, then for Ky.”
At the sound of her name, Kylie stopped counting and skipped back to wrap her pudgy arms around Selena’s legs. “It’s all right, Mommy. Aunt Simone’s going to make it all better. You said, remember?”
And then those little blue eyes turned upward to me.
Damn. Oh, damn.
With a heavy sigh, I pulled my house keys out of my pocket. “Go to my place and lock up. You remember the address?”
Selena nodded as she took the keys.
“I’ll be there when my shift is over. You and Ky can take my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning.”
Selena threw her arms around me and squeezed.
I hated how good it felt. I hated how the best hugs I ever got from my sister were when I was saving her butt.
“You’re the bestest sister in the whole freaking world,” she whispered fiercely. “I knew I could count on you. I’ll see you after work.”
I watched them walk toward her car with a heavy heart.
“Simone?”
I turned to find my boss standing in the lounge entrance. “Hey, Herb. Sorry, I know I’m running a few minutes late.”
My grumpy old boss tapped his watch. “Your shift started two minutes ago.”
I huffed. I still needed to change, and typically, I liked a few minutes to redo my hair and touch up my makeup before starting my shift. Patrons tipped more when they thought I looked pretty.
Instead, I changed quickly in Herb’s office and went straight out to the bar. A fair number of people were already there, enjoying happy hour.
Steadily, I worked my way from one end to the other, refilling drinks, making new ones, and basically going through the motions until I came to a man in a dark suit sitting in the far corner nursing a Scotch.
“Hello,” I said, more cheerily than I felt. The man’s gaze was fixed downward onto his drink. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
Brendan Black looked up at me, dark eyes full of green-flecked onyx. “Hello, Simone.”
I stumbled back, making a shelf of tumblers clink behind me. The force of the man’s gaze was that strong. “Hi. Hello. Um…it’s nice to see you again. What are you doing here?”
He tipped his head, reminding me of a big cat on the hunt. Or maybe not a cat at all. Maybe a wolf.
“I’d like to thank you for your kindness today with my father,” he said before taking a long sip of his drink. “And to make you an offer.”