"That sounds like a terrible idea," I said. "While this Ghost of Uteruses Future moment is really fun and all, I am still processing the notion of—of any of this. I can't live here and get married and have a baby and dress up like Sleeping Beauty."
Still laughing, Annette asked, "Has JJ even asked you to marry him?"
"In which universe do I strike you as someone who waits for a man to propose? It sure as hell isn't this one. If I want to get married, I'll tell him. It's a conversation, not a surprise attack." I glanced at her and tried to swallow around the foot in my mouth. "I don't mean—"
She held up her hands. "Nope. It's fine. The surprise attack worked well in my situation, and to be fair, there was a conversation beforehand. Several of them. I didn't expect he'd be in such a hurry to go forward after those conversations, but you know Jackson. He likes efficiency. It's too bad we haven't been able to apply that same efficiency to wedding planning."
"Okay," I replied, unconvinced that I hadn't kicked the puppy of our friendship. "I'm not trying to—"
"I said it was fine and I meant that. We don't get bent out of shape over things like this, Brooke. We don't let little nonsense divide us. You're spinning too fast to see that right now, but believe me, we're okay."
I bobbed my head. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me," she replied. "And don't leave because you're scared. If you really, truly want to go, I'm not going to stop you. I won't ask Jackson to chase you down the interstate or close the airports. If this is what you want, I won't try to change your mind. But I'll miss the hell out of you. I'll miss having you down the street. I'll be sad I don't have the same relationship with you, but I'll be happy you're getting what you want. You deserve that."
I layered my hands over my belly over the little blob of cells inside me. "I don't—I don't know what I want."
Annette's eyes softened as she smiled. "Then stay here and figure it out." She lifted her hands. "Or leave and figure it out in New York. I'll be here for you either way. I can think of someone else who will be here—anywhere—for you too."
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe I hadn't killed the possibility of us with fire.
But I couldn't.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
JJ
Liquidity: the ease and speed with which a purchase or sale can be completed.
It was one of those unusually quiet nights at the tavern, the sort where I checked the town calendar for big events and stepped outside several times to confirm the lights were on. As far as I could tell, the golden combination of glorious July weather, late sunsets, and minimal responsibilities meant everyone was cooking out, going on evening walks, or coming up with reasons to avoid the indoors.
I couldn't comment on the weather or the sunset. I hadn't noticed either today. The only thing I knew was Brooke left town first thing this morning after turning off her phone and spending the night with Annette. Jackson was kind enough to pass that information along to me. Brooke, not as much.
But I knew it was coming when she wouldn't see me last night. Annette swore Brooke needed time to process the recent events and she'd take care of my girl, but I knew she was as good as gone. She needed to do this and I needed to let her. Letting her had its limits, however, and there were approximately twelve hours left on this experience before I hit mine. As much as she inspired me to club her over the head and drag her home, I wasn't letting it go down that way. I didn't want her to be alone right now and I wasn't letting her do this alone for one more day. If that meant following her around New York City, I'd be hot on her heels.
I checked my phone at the off chance I'd missed a call or message. Nothing new.
The door creaked open, and for a split second my heart pulsed into my throat thinking it was Brooke. God, it would be so good to see her. Hold her. Instead, it was Cole McClish, the better half of lobsterman and town council chairman Owen Bartlett. I kept watch on the door, expecting to find Owen close behind.
"It's just me tonight," Cole said, following my gaze. He gripped the back of a stool and cast wary glances at the stragglers seated around the bar. "Is this okay? Should I—"
"Sit your ass down," I barked. I flung a coaster across the bar top, dropped a menu beside it.
"Yes, sorry," he murmured as he settled into the seat. "What do you recommend?"
I stared at him. Blinked. Exhaled like a motherfucker. "Narrow that down, would you? I'm not going to sit here and recommend appetizers when you're only interested in red wines. I got better things to do with my time."
Cole glanced at the menu, a deep frown etched into his face. He was the newest Talbott's Cove import, all the way from sunny California. He was one of those tech sensations who'd earned his first billion before he was old enough to drink to his success. Somehow he'd found his way to our corner of the world and into Owen's heart. The two of them were damn near inseparable, which made Cole's appearance here even more unusual than the empty dining room.
He pushed the menu aside. "I could use a drink. How about a bartender's special? I don't have any strong preferences or aversions."
For a second, I thought about blasting him with some noise about having a drink menu for a reason, but I couldn't do it. I was tired as hell. I missed Brooke like I didn't think possible. If I stopped long enough to get my arms around the idea of Brooke being pregnant—and gone—and the distillery's uncertain future, my brain short-circuited.
"All right. Let's shake something up." I reached into a low cabinet for one of my small-batch gins and set to mixing the distillery's proposed signature martini.
Surprising the shit out of me, Cole scooped a handful of pretzels out of a communal bowl and shoveled them in his mouth. Then, he propped his arm on the bar, rested his cheek on his hand, and dragged the bowl in front of him. He selected individual pretzels, eating them one at a time as he said, "I stepped on Owen's overgrown toes tonight. That's why I'm here."
Not taking my eyes off him, I reached for a martini glass. "I'm gonna need you to be clear. Is this a metaphor or did you actually step on his toes?"
"It started when we were changing the sheets this morning," Cole said. "I told Owen he was doing it wrong—and he was. The fitted sheet was inside out and I merely told him this."
"Metaphorical, then," I said to myself as I filled the glass.
"We weren't finished with the sheets even ten minutes when Owen decides he wants to revisit a mistake I made last weekend," he continued. "I'd picked some berries in the woods near the house, but it turned out they weren't edible. They looked like wild blueberries. Like I said, it was an honest mistake. He didn't have to keep bringing it up as if I was an incompetent child who couldn't be trusted to play in the backyard without supervision."
I set the glass in front of him. "Not edible or poisonous?"
He closed his fingers around the stem, shook his head. "I'm not sure. Owen prefers an abundance of caution in all things."
I leaned back against the opposite countertop, crossed my ankles and peered at Cole. "Did he mention which kind of berry it was?"
"Pokeberry? I'm not sure. Something like that." He sipped his drink. "Oh. This is fabulous."
I warmed at the compliment. "Good to hear it, but those pokeberries are poisonous. A handful will kill a child. Two handfuls would take down either one of us."
Cole jerked a shoulder up and pulled a defiant frown. "Even so, it doesn't benefit anyone to treat your partner like a helpless fool and there's no sense bringing it up days later."
"Yeah, Owen should've gotten over the poisonous fruit you touched and brought home to eat much sooner," I replied. "It's outrageous to think he's ruminating over this incident."
"How do you know this?" Cole asked. "How do you know when it's a blueberry and when it's a poison berry? Owen said I should've noticed the color of the stalk.”
"The pokeberry has a pink-purple stalk. Blueberries have a green stalk."
Cole shook his hands at me. "How do you know this? I don't think m
ost people carry this kind of information with them. If I went back to Silicon Valley and asked around, I doubt I'd find anyone who knew these distinguishing characteristics."
"It's the sort of thing you learn when you grow up with Talbott's Cove as your backyard." I crossed my arms over my torso. It was all I could do to keep myself right here, rooted in this spot, rather than running and not stopping until I laid eyes on Brooke and convinced her we were in this together. "But, also, didn't you invent something where you can take a photo and the internet tells you what you're looking at?"
He set the martini glass down and leveled me with a glare. "Do not weaponize my tech against me." When he was satisfied that point landed, he continued, "Anyway, as I was saying, I must've stepped on all of his toes because it didn't end with the allegedly toxic berries. We had to dredge up the bad experience we had with the dog groomer and how Owen knew that person wasn't right for the job and I never listen to him and now we've traumatized the dog."
When he drained his glass, I picked it up, asking, "Another of the same or something different?"
"Surprise me," he replied. "I agree, Sasha was horribly groomed and we'll never go back to that shop. I understand that he's putting all his stress and anxiety about our poor girl's bad haircut—plus a dozen other things that have nothing to do with the dog—on me and I know he's doing that because he trusts me with that stress and anxiety, but sometimes, it's tough to absorb it all."
On any other night, I would've tuned out this story the same way I tuned out all the others, picking up enough to chime in at the appropriate time with nods and murmurs of agreement. But listening to Cole only pressed the sharp edge of Brooke's absence deeper. It made me realize I wanted to argue with her about sheets and poisonous berries and dog grooming. Or, some version of that. I wanted to fight with her about everything, every day, and I wanted to do it until I ran out of days.
Goddamn, I should've told her that. I should've stopped and said that before I said anything else. I should've said nothing but that. As I shook Cole's next beverage, I shot a glance at the wall clock. It was too late to catch a flight to New York. The best I could do tonight was call or text.
Setting a fresh drink in front of him, I said, "This one is a little floral. The gin is steeped with beach rose. If it's too strong for you, I'll make something different."
He sipped, glanced at me over the rim of the glass, and sipped again. Then, "How is it I've lived here almost a year and I'm just now having a beach rose gin martini?"
I wiped my hands on a towel and busied myself with rinsing out the shaker. "I don't know your life, man. Maybe you should come in here more often. Get that boyfriend of yours to socialize a bit."
"That will be my next order of business after fixing his bruised toes," Cole replied. "I can't believe this drink. It's amazing. When you said floral, I thought I'd be choking down some hand soap, but this is the right kind of rose martini." He took another sip. "My original CFO from back in our startup days loves gin. He kept a trophy case of gin in his office. It was very strange. He lives on a chain of islands he bought in the South Pacific now. Rumor has it, he's building an end-of-days bunker. Not sure the South Pacific is the right place for that sort of thing, considering how oceanic it is." He lifted the glass up, studied it in the light. "I've missed the days of drinking good gin martinis with him."
I glanced at the clock again. "No hand soap served here."
Cole swirled the liquid in his glass. "Which brand is this? I'd love to send him some. He'd get a kick out of my tastes evolving for the better."
Against all my better judgment, I replied, "It's my brand. I distill small batches of gin and vodka in-house."
Not missing a damn beat, Cole said, "You need to develop a national distribution strategy."
Laughing, I said, "I've explored several expansion opportunities. They haven't panned out as of yet."
Giving me his best that doesn't sound right face, he asked, "What kind of opportunities and why didn't they pan out? Was it a licensing issue? Distribution? I know certain states have blue laws that go back to the Puritan days and those can create headaches, but it's a simple matter of locating your warehouse in a more legally friendly state."
"It's not that."
"Then…what is it? This is phenomenal liquor and there's no reason to keep it a secret. Why isn't it flying off the shelves?"
I wasn't one for sharing. Not my stories and not those of others. But tonight, with a near empty tavern and every vital organ aching for Brooke, I didn't have the strength to hold back. "It's not going anywhere because my financial backer bailed on an initiative to convert the local apple cider house into a distillery and gathering place with dining and event options."
Cole stared at me, bobbing his head slightly. "Who owns the property? The apple juice place, I mean."
"I do. It was cheap enough to grab on my own," I replied. "Rather, the cider house is owned by the tavern."
"One of these days, you can explain the difference between apple juice and apple cider to me, but not tonight," he said. "What's it going to cost to turn the apple juice place into the type of location that will yield the kind of traffic you want?"
A dish towel clenched in my fists, I gazed at him for a long moment. "It's great that you like my gin, but I don't want to talk about money with you."
"Why not?"
Because I hate talking about money with people who have more of it than I do. "Because this isn't the time."
He held up his hands, glanced around. "What better time than now? I'm enjoying your product and I want it to be widely available so I can enjoy more of it and brag to my friends about finding a hot new label before they did. This is the perfect time." When I didn't respond, he continued, "All I want is a loose estimate. I'm wondering what this sort of project costs. Consider it pure curiosity on my part. I could guess, but I shouldn't. Guessing gets me into trouble because I meander down long mental paths until five days have passed without me noticing it."
"You're not leaving until I tell you."
"No, definitely not," he replied with a laugh. "Owen needs more time to cool down and I want to know everything about this distillery."
With a sigh, I grabbed a cocktail napkin and scribbled a figure on it. I pushed it across the bar. "Consider your curiosity quenched."
Blinking rapidly, Cole stared at the napkin. "Characterize this amount for me. Is it bare bones, middle of the road, bells and whistles?"
I dumped several jiggers, stirrers, and mixing spoons into the sink, unconcerned with the bracing clatter of those items hitting the stainless steel basin. "Somewhere between middle of the road and bare bones."
He pushed the napkin back across the bar. "Write down the bells and whistles number. For my curiosity."
I pointed my pen at him. "You know something, McClish? Most people come in here, get a drink, watch the game. They don't tell me about the poison berries they brought home and they don't expect a business plan to garnish their martini."
"I've never once succeeded at doing the things most people do," he replied. "Everything that's ever gone right in my life is the result of following my own path, fucking it up along the way, and acknowledging that conventional wisdom doesn't work for me." He pointed at the napkin. "Since I'm not going to watch the game and you've already heard about my berries, why don't you write down that number and see what happens?"
"Fuck it," I mumbled, snaring the pen's cap between my teeth.
Cole didn't look at the napkin when I pushed it toward him. "What happened with the investment partner?"
"He liked the idea of building a food and beverage destination here, but he wanted to exploit every trend in the market. Ciders, seltzers, pirates." I ran the dish towel over the lip of the bar. "For better or worse, this place is about craft gin and vodka, and that didn't excite him enough. I'd rather see the distillery fail before getting off the ground than die a miserable, trend-chasing death."
Cole finished his drink and then reached
into his back pocket, pulled out his phone. He tapped out a message, nodded at the screen, and tapped another message. "Expect a call from my aide-de-camp. Her name is Neera Malik and she'll need your bank information. She'll send some legal paperwork for you to sign. All boilerplate. Your basic covenants and restrictions and such. If you get it back to her tomorrow, you'll have the full amount"—he tapped his finger against the second figure, the bells and whistles—"by the weekend."
"What the hell did you just say?"
"Neera Malik," he repeated. "She'll call you—"
"No, I caught that much," I interrupted. "Why are you doing this? What are you getting out of backing my distillery?"
Cole scratched his jaw. "Why? Because Owen loves it here and I love Owen. This town desperately needs new ideas. Small places like Talbott's Cove are struggling because there's a painful absence of innovation. Nothing new has come to town in fifty years, maybe one hundred, and those things aren't new anymore. Hell, people have no real options beyond leaving. Change is fucking scary, but without it Talbott's Cove won't survive another twenty or thirty years." He glanced to his phone and typed out another message. "And what do I want? For starters, a case of gin each month. Beyond that, I want to connect you with branding and marketing people who know their shit. I'd like a seat on your board of directors, but I know fuck all about running a business so I'll keep quiet."
"That's it?" I twisted the towel around my hand. Untwisted it. "You drop some cash because you believe in Small Town, USA, sprinkle some marketing on top, and cross your fingers?"
He placed his phone on the bar, clasped his hands. "It seems like you want this to be more complicated. I can ask Neera to do that for you, but I have no desire to do that myself. I'm offering you a clean deal. Take it." He glanced at the clock, nodding. "I think Owen has had enough time to cool off."
"How do you know that? How do you determine the right amount of time?"
Far Cry: A Talbott’s Cove Novel Page 24