“I don’t want to come inside,” I said, then sighed. “Look, asshole. We know you did it. You burned our place down. You’re trying to sabotage us.”
For a moment, his eyebrows raised and he looked confused, then angry. I saw him reach for something beside the door and tensed, relaxing when I saw it was only a coffee mug. He took a sip and sat it down.
“I’ve told you and everybody else who asks me about this, and God knows there have been enough damn people asking about it, that I don’t know the first damn thing about how your bar burned down. I’m not going to cry about it, mind, but I have no idea how it happened. So, unless you have an officer with you and some proof, I’m going to ask you once to get the hell off my property, because this conversation is over.”
He began to shut the heavy door, and I kicked at the screen door’s frame.
“Just let me buy you out!” I yelled.
He stopped pushing the door closed and opened it again. I looked at his eyes, burning with hatred and anger as I spoke to him. I was sure mine were just as angry, and just as filled with hatred as his.
“Just let me buy you out, and you can move away. Somewhere way the hell away from here. And we can all be at peace. Just name your price,” I said.
Danny looked up as if he were searching for strength, and the gesture angered me even more. He was treating me like I was an annoying door-to-door salesman. Half his body was still behind the semi-shut door, and he shook his head.
“I told you already,” he said. “I don’t want to sell. It’s my bar, and I like owning it. Besides,” he chuckled, and my blood boiled, “business has been booming since your bar went up in flames. I’ve been making money hand over fist, and I didn’t need any dumb-ass gimmicks to do it. Just serving beer. Novel concept for a bar, I know, serve people who like to drink the drinks they like to drink. Anyway, I’m making money, good money, and I have zero reason to take yours unless you are bellying up and buying a round. And even then I don’t know if I want to serve you.”
“Danny,” I began, but he cut me off forcefully.
“I said it once already, and now is my second warning. Get off my property, or else I am going to call the police and have you arrested for trespassing. And on top of that, I might have to stand my ground and defend my homestead, if you know what I mean. So get on out of here. And don’t show me your smug, sniveling face again.”
He slammed the door, and I spun on my heel, stomping back to my car. The son of a bitch had a great way of making me feel like ripping his head off and playing soccer with it, but he was right. Without proof and an officer of the law, all I was doing was proving to him that what he did was worth it. He got under my skin and was making money hand over fist.
He was winning.
And I hated losing.
26
Amanda
I unlocked the door to my apartment and walked inside. It had been almost two months since I was there. The door closed behind me, and I let out a gust of breath as I dropped my bags to my feet and looked around.
It felt strange to be back there. Not in the way that I thought I would never come back. More just that I never could have imagined coming back with this sort of heaviness and finality hanging over me. Something should have been different when I walked back in for the first time. I didn’t know exactly what or how, but it shouldn’t have felt that way.
It was almost like this wasn’t my space anymore. It was exactly like I left it. Everything was in place just the way it always was, and there was even the familiar hint of fabric softener smell that wafted over from my neighbors doing laundry.
The only thing that was visibly changed from the morning when I flew out to Oregon thinking I was just going to bring Tom his laptop, then come back was the small stack of mail sitting on my side table. Emily had been gathering it for me since I realized I wouldn’t be coming back as soon as I thought.
Her having a key to my place was always a matter of convenience before. It meant she could let herself in if we had plans and I hadn’t gotten home yet or I was in the shower when she got there. It also gave us a sense of security in case I managed to lock myself out or if there was some sort of emergency. But this was the first time she needed to use it for any practical application.
When I walked into my kitchen and opened my refrigerator, I was even more relieved to have been able to trust her with taking care of my apartment while I was gone. All the food that was in there when I left was now gone. She had replaced them with a few basic staples. By the expiration date on them, they were a new addition. Probably purchased after I called her from the airport to let her know I was coming home.
But even seeing everything look as I left it and knowing I could go right back into my regular rhythm didn’t make it feel right. I was still out of sorts, like I didn’t quite fit in the environment anymore.
I told myself it was only temporary. It was just because things had been so shaken up by me being gone for several weeks unexpectedly. I would get comfortable there again. I had to get comfortable there again. There was no other choice. This was my reality, and I was back to it now. All I could do was force myself to settle back in and wait for things to feel normal again.
Going back into the living room, I got my bags and brought them into my bedroom. I spent the next several minutes unpacking. Leaving in so much of a hurry meant I didn’t get a chance to wash any of my clothes before coming back. I tossed what was dirty into my hamper and put away why it was clean. When that was done, I tucked away my luggage and dragged the hamper into the laundry room so I could get a load going.
Once I felt like I was washing away my time in Astoria and putting things back into order, I got my phone and called Emily.
“Are you busy?” I asked.
“Not if you need me,” she said. “I’m never too busy for you.”
“Drinks?” I asked.
“Absolutely. I’ll see you in an hour,” she said.
An hour gave me enough time to take a shower, get dressed, and wait for the load of laundry to finish washing.
Emily got to the bar a few minutes after me, and I was already sipping my way through a cocktail. She eyed it as she sat down across from me.
“Already getting started?” she asked.
“Yep,” I said. “And there’s another on deck.”
“Give me a second to catch up,” she said, holding up a hand to beckon the waitress. When she was done ordering, she looked at me. “Alright. Spill. What the hell happened? The last I talked to you, everything seemed to be going so well. You and Tom were happily heating up the sheets together.”
“Yep,” I said, putting my glass down from another sip, “and apparently that’s all we were doing. According to Tom when he was talking to his brothers and didn’t realize I was listening, I am nothing but his secretary and our relationship is completely professional.”
She stared at me for a few seconds. “Are you serious?”
“So much more than I would ever want to be.”
“He actually said that?” Emily asked.
“He did. We were at his mother’s house after dinner, and his brother asked what was going on between us. And that was his response,”
I was hurt and upset, but still not crying. The tears just wouldn’t come. Almost like this was too much to cry about, like the tears would be futile.
“What did he say when you talked about it?” she asked.
“We didn’t talk about it,” I said.
“What do you mean you didn’t talk about it?”
“I left. After he said that, I had his sister-in-law bring me back to the hotel. I got an early flight home, and here I am.”
“You didn’t even wait around long enough to confront him about it?” she asked.
“I didn’t feel the need to,” I said.
Emily shook her head. “That was not a good choice, Amanda. I can’t believe you would leave like that.”
“What do you mean? I was supposed to just sit around th
ere and let him humiliate me like that?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “But you left in a really bad way. And far too soon. You really should have stayed and talked to him. You needed to tell him how you were feeling and what hearing him say that meant. Given him the chance to answer to it.”
I shook my head and downed the rest of my drink. “I’m tired of waiting. Once everyone pointed it out and I saw it for myself, I realized Tom had been flirting with me for years.”
“Just what I’ve been telling you,” she said. “He’s had these feelings for you for that long.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And didn’t do anything about it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“He flirted with me for years without ever wanting to make a move. Obviously, his feelings weren’t that important to him, and he didn’t have any intention of doing anything about it. But then we were in the situation, and he ended up making a move, only to have that kind of reaction to it. I can’t help but feel like he was having regrets,” I said.
“Why would he be having regrets?” she asked. “He’s the one who started this.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And the only reason he did was because we were in a completely different place, under totally different circumstances. He let it get the best of him and made a decision in a time of vulnerability he later realized he shouldn’t have made. He was having regrets overcrossing that line. So, he decided he was just going to erase the whole thing and pretend it wasn’t going on.”
“And you know that for a fact?” she asked.
“Well, no, not for an absolute fact,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said, mirroring my response. “And that’s because you didn’t talk to him about it. You don’t actually know how he was feeling or what was going through his head when he said that to his brothers. Maybe he just wasn’t ready to talk about it with them. Or, he didn’t want to divulge any details to them, and that was the only way he could think of to divert the conversation. You said the two of you hadn’t had any sort of conversation about what was going on between you.”
“We hadn’t,” I said.
“So, put yourself in his shoes. Do you think you would have just opened up to them and started spilling out details about what was going on between the two of you without having had that conversation? Maybe he realized it would have been inappropriate, and he wanted to have some discretion and tell you both talked it through and knew you are on the same page,” she said.
“Was it inappropriate for me to tell you what was going on?” I asked.
“Well, no,” she said, shifting a little in her chair as she realized she’d been caught up in a logical fallacy. “Telling me is completely different.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because there’s only one of me,” she said quickly. “And there’s like thirty of them.”
“Not quite, but I think I might see your point.” I shook my head. “No. It doesn’t matter. Even if he was just trying to have some courtesy and not give out all the details, he didn’t have to respond like that. His brother asked him what was going on between us, not if we had been naked together. There are any number of ways he could have responded that would have not been embarrassing, but also would not have been that. No. He meant what he said.”
My phone rang, and I reached into my purse to get it. Glancing at the screen made me roll my eyes.
“What? Emily asked. “Who is it?”
I turned the phone toward her to display Tom’s name. “Who do you think?”
I tossed the phone back into my purse and set it down.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
The phone went silent, but that only lasted for a few moments before the ringing started up again. We ignored it through that cycle, but by the third, I rolled my eyes again. Emily gestured toward my bag, her eyebrows raising sharply.
“You need to answer that and find out what’s going on,” she said. “People don’t just call on repeat for no reason. He is still your boss, you know. Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with your awkward departure. It could have something important to do with your work, too.”
As noble as that sounded, I didn’t believe for a second she was actually concerned about me missing a work call. Especially not when we were having drinks. She was adamantly against anything professional related going on when we were supposed to be having a girls’ night.
Considering this was the first of those we’d been able to have in almost two months, it just seemed like a very convenient shift in philosophies for her to be so encouraging of me taking a work call now.
“I’m pretty sure I know what this is about,” I said. “And I will call him back in the morning during normal work hours just in case it actually is about work.”
“Fine,” Emily said with a slight pout, taking a sip of her drink.
“Besides, he really needs to be focusing on everything that’s going on there, anyway. It’s getting complicated, and they need to get it sorted out so he isn’t so stressed. Then he’ll be able to actually focus on work again,” I said.
Emily nodded. “Alright. I can see where you are coming from there. But it doesn’t change my point.”
“What point? That I should answer the phone and talk to him about what happened?” I asked. “Or that I should have stayed in Astoria longer to talk about it?”
“That you are obviously completely in love with him and need to just admit it,” she said.
27
Tom
My stomach grumbled and churned, but I wasn’t hungry. Or at least I wasn’t in the mood to eat. Nothing sounded good, and nothing seemed like it would sit on my stomach well anyway. I’d rather just inject caffeine into my veins and keep moving along without stopping. At least that way I wouldn’t have to confront the thoughts bouncing around in my head.
Then, I was on my way to sign the papers to buy the new building. This was something in the positive category. It was actually even genuinely exciting, but no matter how joyous the situation might have been, in the back of my mind it was joined and ruined by thinking about Amanda and how I managed to fuck up every single thing about our situation, when it was going better than anything I had ever experienced in my entire life.
She wouldn’t even talk to me, which was making it a million times worse. I tried calling multiple times but got sent to voicemail every single time. Texts went completely unanswered unless they were about work, which got one-word responses. We had a video conference the day before, and she wouldn’t even look at the screen, opting instead to pretend to busy herself with paperwork at her desk. She responded strictly with business talk and referred to me as “Mr. Anderson.”
It was worse than if nothing had happened. It was colder than that.
Making my way into the building, I tried to focus on the moment, on the work at hand. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to get through the paperwork with minimal fuss, and when I walked out of the building, I called Mason to tell him the news. He was beside himself with relief and happiness and insisted on a celebration.
“I don’t know, Mason. I’ve got a ton of work to catch up on,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Mason said. “Let’s just go out and have a few beers. Just us boys. You can catch up on all your work after you leave and go back to San Francisco. How much longer are you going to be in town and can just have a beer with your brothers?”
He made a good point. When the old bar was running, I was making a habit of splitting my time between my home and the bar, but I wasn’t ever having enough time to sit down and just have a beer. I was always on the move, always on the go for the next thing. Either I had to get on the plane back to the coast, or I had a video conference in the morning. There was always another reason not to relax.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Just a few beers, and then I have to get my shit together.”
Ma
son cheered on the other end, and I smirked as I shook my head.
“Do you remember Southside Mulligan’s?” Mason asked.
“The bar we went to when Matt was still underage?”
“That’s the one. Meet us there tonight. We will see if we can get that stick out of your ass.”
“Very funny,” I said. After I hung up, my thoughts returned right back to Amanda. As much as I wanted to see my brothers and hang out with them, hanging out with Amanda would have been better, but that wasn’t an option now and might not ever be again. I sighed and got in my car, starting it up and heading for the hotel for a nap.
Arriving at Southside Mulligan’s, the oldest bar in town—the closest one to the high school, and thus, the rite-of-passage bar—filled me with nostalgia. A lot of memories were made there, and I walked into the bar to notice that not a whole lot had changed. The carpet was different, though one would hope so. The stuff I remembered had been there since the seventies. There was the old karaoke setup in the corner for the Wednesday night karaoke nights, but the old wooden deck with the CDs and complicated sound gear was gone. Instead, just a small stage with a railing in front of it, a mic stand and a mic, and a laptop bolted onto a small table next to the stage were all that was there.
My brothers were crowded around the table we always sat at when we were younger, and I made my way to them. Mason pulled me into a hug when I got there, and I noted that he had already had a few beers before I got there. Tyler offered me a seat, and I plopped down beside him while Mason and Jordan went to find the waitress. Apparently, the service also hadn’t changed much in Mulligan’s either.
“Hey, bro,” Tyler said. “I think Jordan wants us all to do a shot now that we’re all here. After that, I already put in an order for a pitcher of the good stuff.”
“Ah, good,” I said. “I’d hate to have the stuff Matt drinks.”
The rest of the brothers arrived at the table with the waitress and a round of shots. Another waitress followed closely behind with a giant platter of fries that she sat in the middle of the table. Lifting our shots to the air, Mason nodded toward me, indicating that I was expected to say something.
Taboo Boss: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance Page 15