Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Kemp
Monday morning, it felt damn good to be in the brewery for a full day of work. Breathing in the earthy aroma of hops and malt plunged me back into the routine, the familiar, the thing I was good at and knew my way around, in, out, and backward—unlike, say, parenting a six-month-old.
Gianna, my assistant brewer, wasn’t due in until later, so I had the brewhouse to myself at the moment.
I’d seen Chance and Chloe walk by the two-story interior windows, but they’d been deeply absorbed in a conversation and didn’t notice me.
I knew the rest of the staff was around, but I was content to be in my own comfortable world for the time being.
Except…everything seemed a little less comfortable, because at the front of my mind was Oliver.
The brewery hadn’t changed a lick in the week and a half I’d been out, but I was a different person now.
My brain was a different brain. Now it was a dad’s brain, and a dad’s brain had a shit ton of worries.
As I put away the last of the hops that were delivered this morning, I wondered for the hundredth time how Oliver was doing at Quincy’s.
I knew Quincy was good with kids. The best. Holden and Chloe had entrusted Sutton to her care from the time Chloe’s maternity leave ended.
The other Henrys took their kids to Quincy too. She gravitated to kids and they to her.
But still…
“Hey, Pops,” Holden called out as I came out of the freezer. His voice echoed off the large equipment and high ceilings.
“Hey,” I said, happy to see my business partner after so much time away.
“Welcome back,” he said, joining me as I stacked bags of malt. “How’s everything going? Are you and Oliver adjusting?”
I looked at him with my brows popping up. “Adjusting?” I laughed dryly. “Not even close. I was thinking about checking in with Quincy to see how he’s doing.”
“He’s doing okay,” Holden said.
“How do you know?”
My friend chuckled and managed to look sympathetic rather than smug. “Quincy’s on top of it. If he wasn’t okay, she’d call.”
“I just worry he’ll fuss the whole time.”
Holden grimaced. “Did he fuss a lot over the weekend?”
I hoisted another fifty-five-pound bag of malt onto the stack, then shot him a look. “What’s a lot? He fussed. It felt like a lot, but maybe that’s just because I went from zero to baby in the blink of an eye?”
“Does he just fuss when he’s hungry, or does he fuss when you know his belly’s full?”
“He fusses if I take too long to get a bottle. I’m getting better at that. But he also fusses on and off regardless of whether he’s hungry or not.”
“Do you have a doctor’s appointment set up for him yet?”
“You think something’s wrong?” I asked, my blood rushing in a panic.
“I think he’s probably due for a six-month well check, and you could ask Doc Julian about the fussing. Maybe he needs different food.”
I remembered Chance mentioning something similar at the grocery store. “I’ll call for an appointment. What else am I missing?”
“From the looks of it, sleep, but I don’t have any answers for you there. Sutton didn’t sleep through the night for the first year.”
“And you’re voluntarily doing this again?” I asked, questioning how I’d get through a year of this or even six months. “How’s Chloe feeling?”
“A little rough this time, but we’re almost through the first trimester. We’re hoping the nausea eases soon. Nobody warns you how tough it is to watch your wife go through the hard parts of pregnancy.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, only half wondering what that would be like.
I had so many mixed emotions toward Valerie, but wanting her as my wife wasn’t one of them.
We hadn’t known each other remotely well enough.
I would’ve killed to have been around for Oliver’s birth though.
“You got a few minutes? I need to talk to you about something.”
“Sure,” Holden said. “Here? Now?”
“No time like the present.” I picked up another malt bag and stacked it on the pallet. Holden followed suit. “Ainsley Schwartz is stepping down as lieutenant. Moving to the East Coast.”
Holden set a bag in place and turned to look at me. “You going for her position?”
“I have to, man.”
He nodded.
“No idea if I’ll get it, but we need a plan,” I continued. “I don’t want to quit, but I don’t want to put the brewery in a bad place.”
He chuckled again. “You’re an owner, not an hourly worker or even just an employee. We’ll figure out a way to make it work.”
I expelled my breath, glad to hear he was so accepting but unsure how we’d make it work. “We’ve got time, and I’m not guaranteed to get it, but I want to be proactive.”
“What do you have in mind?” he asked, picking up another bag. “Handing over more to Gianna?”
“Probably. She could handle it, but then we’d need someone else to assist her.”
“Based on our preliminary year-end reports, we’re in the position to grow,” Holden said. “Whether you get the lieutenant job or not, you’re due for more help in here.”
“I’d love to get another full-timer. Someone on the day-to-day of production and maintenance. You think we can do that soon?”
“I do. Chloe and I were talking about it last night, especially now that you have a kid. Gianna’s worth her weight in gold, but she’s still only one person. If you get called out on an emergency and she’s not available, there are times when that could put us in a bad spot.”
“Right.” I stood, catching my breath after the last of the bags was stacked.
“That’d be a relief,” I said, imagining which tasks I could off-load so I could focus on the aspects that needed my attention most, like recipe development and community involvement.
I was spread too thin on a good day, even without a second full-time job or a kid.
“Let’s make it a priority,” Holden said.
Nodding, I let that sink in. “Thanks. That’ll help.”
Holden gestured toward the fire department pager I wore at my waist. “On call today?”
“Yeah. Hoping for no calls. I need eight straight hours in here to catch up after being away.”
He frowned. “What about nighttime now that you have Oliver?”
I grabbed a broom and swept away the debris from the malt bags. “I’m getting a roommate. Anna’s moving in.”
Holden reared back. “Say what?”
“I asked her yesterday, and she said yes. She’ll get to live rent-free, and I’ll have someone for Oliver whenever I get called out. Win-win.”
The grin that crawled across his face put me on alert, and I turned away, heading to check the fermenters.
“It’s about damn time, my friend,” Holden said to my back, following me.
“About damn time for what?” I grumped.
“You and Anna to get closer.”
“You heard me say roommate, right? That’s all this is.”
“Anna could never be just a roommate for you, and you know it.”
“Considering we’ve been friends since we were in diapers, that’s true.” We were tight. She was one of the most important people in my life.
“Maybe this is what it’ll take to push you into more than friends.”
I kept my back to him and fiddled with the fermenter for longer than necessary. When I finally stood and faced him, I said, “Never gonna happen.”
“Come on,” he said. “You can’t expect me to believe you don’t feel more than friendship toward her.”
Remembering a part Gianna had asked me to order, I headed to my little box of an office in the corner of the brewhouse. I wasn’t surprised when Holden followed me, just irritated.
“Your scowl feels a little over defensive,” he said, sitting on my guest chair before I settled onto my own chair and woke up my computer. “You two have always been close. Is there really not any attraction there? I could swear you have chemistry.”
The computer took a while since I hadn’t had it on for a few days. I leaned back in my chair while it booted up, closing my eyes, deciding what to admit to.
“Anna’s my person,” I finally said. “There might be some attraction there, but I won’t act on it. It’s a hard line.”
“Why though? What if—”
“We played that game once,” I snapped, needing to shut him up. “It didn’t work out, and I vowed never again.”
“Wait,” Holden said. “Back up. What game? Did you two…?” His brows crawled up his forehead as regret flooded me.
I shouldn’t have said anything.
“Kemp?” he persisted. “Did you and Anna hook up?”
Shit, shit, shit. My regret morphed into the deepest mortification. I rubbed my hands over my face and wondered if I could sidestep this conversation.
Holden’s tone went more serious when he frowned and said, “Something happened between you. You can tell me. Maybe then I’ll understand why you two aren’t a thing.”
I needed him to shut up about Anna and me going forward.
We got enough comments as it was, making me suspect that the reason a man and a woman couldn’t be friends was because nobody ever believed they were just friends and gave them shit all the time.
Until Holden understood our history, he’d never let it drop.
I expelled a long, heavy breath. “You can’t tell anyone this.”
“You know I won’t.”
I did know I could trust him. But I’d never admitted this to anyone.
Was I really going to now?
I closed my eyes, noting how they burned with fatigue. When I opened them, I didn’t look at my friend.
“Back when we were twenty, one of the times Anna came home from college, we…” I blew out another breath.
“We’d been drinking, and things heated up somehow, and next thing you know, we’re naked and getting intimate.
” I swallowed, humiliation nearly drowning me.
“Except I…” I shook my head. I didn’t know if I’d ever blushed in my life, but my face felt hot and flushed now. “I couldn’t carry through.”
Holden made a sympathetic face. “Whiskey dick?”
“How fucking embarrassing. In hindsight, I think the problem was mental. I freaked out. I remember thinking, What are we doing? What if this screws up our friendship? And dude… I can’t ever let anything screw up my friendship with Anna.”
He nodded as if he understood. “Thoughts like that could definitely deflate a guy. But you two are still close as clapboards on a house.”
“We pretended like it never happened.”
“Denial has its place,” he agreed.
“So you see why it’s off the table to be more. Anna and I are good as we are. Adding sex to the mix is too risky. Labeling us as more than friends can only mess things up, and I can’t lose Anna.”
Holden seemed pensive. “I get that. But that was a long time ago. You’re different people now. Maybe this time it would work out.”
I shook my head, the mortification intensifying at the very thought. “I can’t go there. I don’t think Anna would ever want to go there.”
“I think you might be wrong,” he said.
“Dude, think about it. After that first time? If she ever did have any attraction to me, that was enough to extinguish it.”
“Anna’s not that shallow.”
“It’s not about being shallow. It’s… Shit. Let’s not talk about this anymore. I told you my most embarrassing secret so you’d quit chirping about us hooking up.”
“I’m just going to say one more thing. Then I’ll shut up going forward.
I get why you’re so embarrassed, but you and Anna have a connection.
You always have. I’ve always thought someday you’d pull your head out and take the relationship deeper.
I still think you should, because if she’s your person, as you say, then why not make it official? Make her your wife, dude.”
I laughed, but it wasn’t because anything was funny. Having more with Anna was not in the cards. Pursuing anything deeper was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.