by Meghan March
The first thought that comes into my brain is a new life, but that’s not what she means.
“I’m all set, thanks.” My polite tone sounds forced, even to me.
“I’ll take a Bud. In a can.”
And that’s a great indicator for how the rest of our lunch is going to go.
Downhill.
13
Ripley
When I leave the diner, I’m praying that my next stop isn’t going to be nearly as unpleasant, but part of me already knows that’s a naive hope.
Stanley Mullins was the accountant for the bar back when my parents were first able to hire one. Now it’s his son, Stan Mullins Jr., who handles the books, but he does it out of the same office his dad did for years. When I pull into the parking lot, I’m already drained from lunch with Pop.
I know that a smart woman would walk away from the bar and start over somewhere else, but I can’t. Not just because I don’t know how to let go, but because everything I have is tied up in that place.
Nearly every dollar in my savings account has been loaned to cover expenses, I live rent-free upstairs, and I haven’t taken a paycheck in long enough to make me question my own sanity.
The bottom line? If I walk away from the Fishbowl, I’ve got about three hundred dollars to my name and a stack of promissory notes that will never get paid unless I’m there to see it happen.
Stan’s receptionist takes me back to his office, rather than a conference room, and my brain is going in too many different directions to realize this may not be a good sign.
Stan rises from behind the desk and holds out a hand. “Hey, Ripley, you look as beautiful as ever.”
Being called beautiful always mystifies me because it’s such a pointless trait. I didn’t do anything to earn my thick brown hair, distinctive gray eyes, or symmetrical features, and they sure haven’t done me any good, so I always shrug it off when someone mentions my looks.
I slide my hand into Stan’s, and his grip lasts a few seconds longer than normal. That’s when anxiety sets in.
“How bad is it, Stan?”
He had a call with a few bankers this morning, one that he asked me to sit out so they could talk numbers plainly.
“You might want to have a seat.”
I plop down into a plush leather chair, trying to read the expression on his face. Nothing I see is promising.
“How bad?” I ask again.
“Bad.”
“It’s just a tiny line of credit. You can’t tell me that the building and the business aren’t enough collateral for fifty grand.”
My accountant clears his throat. “Your dad took out another mortgage on the building earlier this year.”
I blink twice as if that’s going to help me comprehend what Stan just said. “What? What mortgage? We own that building free and clear.”
Stan shakes his head. “No, you don’t. And I take it he never bothered to mention that fact to you.”
Slouching back in the chair, I lift a hand to my face and pinch the bridge of my nose. “How much?” I whisper.
“A hundred thousand.”
My mouth drops open and my hand hits my lap. “You’ve gotta be joking. What did he use it for? It sure didn’t go toward paying off his hospital bills, or any of the bar expenses. He lives in that senior community, which I pay for. What else . . .”
A thought dawns on me, one I’m afraid to give credence to by speaking it aloud.
He wouldn’t.
“You can’t think of anything else he would’ve used the money for? Booze? Gambling? Drugs?” Stan asks.
I’m not proud, but I answer, “I pay for the booze. As far as I know, he doesn’t gamble. He’s never done drugs beyond smoking the occasional joint.”
“So where would the money go?”
I reply with another question. “Has he at least been making payments on the mortgage?”
Stan’s expression turns rueful. “He was. But he stopped two months ago.”
When he asked for an extra $500 every month, and I told him I couldn’t spare it.
God, the hits keep coming.
“Is it . . . is it already in foreclosure?”
Stan shakes his head. “No, I called the lender this morning, as soon as I got off the phone with the other bankers, and I did you a favor. I told them your dad has been having some issues and has become more forgetful, and the payments never got mailed. I paid them over the phone, Ripley. You’re current now, and they’re not going to foreclose as long as you keep writing them a check every month.”
“You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, Stan. You’ve seen the numbers. My budget can’t handle another five hundred a month.”
Stan leans back in his chair, crossing an ankle over his knee. “I know.”
But he doesn’t know know. I doubt Stan has ever had to worry about where he could find an extra five hundred bucks, not when he slid right into Daddy’s profitable accounting firm where the vast majority of clients don’t have as much trouble paying their bills as the Fishbowl.
“What am I gonna do?”
“Look, you’ve got a few options.”
At the word options, I sit up straighter. “Like what? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve considered every damn option I could have.”
Stan nods and leans forward, resting both elbows on the desk. “Can you get more customers in the door? Is there any way you can increase receipts at all?”
“I’m trying. I wanted to start some new marketing and promo, but that takes money. And when I told Pop I was thinking about asking a few friends to come in and play so I could charge a cover, he about lost his shit.”
Stan knows all about my family’s dirty laundry, along with the fact that the most traffic I get on a weekend is the gawkers who come with their guidebooks, peek into the bathroom, and leave without buying a single drink.
But how do I keep them out if there’s a possibility they’ll even spend two dollars on a bottle of water? I’m desperate enough that I can’t.
“Look, Ripley, we’ve known each other a long time, and you know I’ve always had a thing for you, right?”
I jerk my gaze up to meet Stan’s. “What?”
“Come on, Ripley. You know that practically every guy that meets you goes home thinking about what it’d be like to have all that fire in his bed.”
The chicken pot pie I had for lunch flips in my stomach.
“Are you trying to make a point here, Stan? Because this is not helping matters.”
“All I’m saying is that if you really want my help, I’m happy to give it, and I don’t think what I want from you would be any hardship on your part.”
My mouth drops open for the second time since I stepped foot in the office, but I quickly shut it and spring to my feet.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”
“Come on, Rip. I’m not trying to be crude, but I did just lay out a grand this morning to save your ass, so I think that buys me a little room to speak my mind. Unless you want to work it off a different way.”
I swallow back the bile rising in my throat. Stan’s not ugly. No, with his pale blond hair and brown eyes, he’s actually attractive in a bland starched-shirt kind of way. That’s not what’s making me sick.
No, it’s the picture of his wife and two kids sitting on the credenza behind him, and his assumption that he can throw this offer at me because of who I am.
“Go fuck yourself, Stan.” Silently I add, I’m nothing like my mama.
14
Ripley
“Did you kick him in the balls?” Hope asks as she slides another drink across the bar to me.
When was the last time I was on this side of the equation? Forever ago, is all I can come up with. Which explains why I’m already buzzed after three drinks.
“No. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of having any part of me touch any part of him.” I swirl the cocktail straw in the glass, mixing the booze and soda. “But I did tell him
to go fuck himself.”
Hope throws back her head and laughs. “Nice. I bet that wasn’t what he was expecting. He comes in here at least once every other week and leaves with his arm around some girl barely old enough to drink.”
I jerk my gaze to hers. “Seriously?”
Hope, my best friend since bartending school over a decade ago, runs the bar at the White Horse Saloon, one of the most successful honky-tonks in town. It’s always packed with tourists hoping to get a glimpse of a few country stars, and the amount of money and alcohol that flows through here in any given week could probably pay off the mortgage I didn’t know Pop had taken out.
“Dead serious. A few months back, he spent all night flirting with one of my new waitresses, hanging around until she was done with her shift. Not more than fifteen minutes after she walked out with him, she comes storming back in, pissed as hell.”
I suck down a swig of my Crown and Coke, on the house or I wouldn’t be drinking it. “What happened?”
“His MO is to get them into his cherry-red ’Vette and tell them the party doesn’t start until his dick gets sucked. Normally, the girls he leaves with are blitzed, so I’m guessing they fall all over themselves to do it. But she was totally sober and told him he could suck his own dick to get the party started.”
“Burnnnn.” I tip back the glass for another sip. “Why’d she go with him to begin with if she wasn’t up for . . . that?”
Hope leans forward on the bar, her boobs threatening to spill from her low-cut shirt, but I avert my eyes.
“Apparently, he had blow and she wanted it. Just not bad enough to blow him.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Blow as in . . .”
“Yep. Coke. And not the kind you’re drinking.”
“But he’s an accountant. How does that make any sense?”
Hope straightens and laughs. “Honey, it doesn’t matter if he was a priest. Everyone’s got a vice.”
A tourist in one of those straw cowboy hats hollers from down the bar, while Hope’s three other bartenders are hustling drinks and putting on a show tossing bottles here and there. Just the thought of taking a chance of breaking one is enough to make me cringe.
“I gotta sling some more drinks. I’ll be back when I can.”
Wednesday night is the slowest night of the week for the Fishbowl, which makes it perfect for my one day off. Before my last boyfriend and I broke up, I’d usually stay at his place on Wednesdays, but that ended months ago. He was pissed I couldn’t make more time for him, and I thought he was playing a double standard since he was gone every weekend playing drums with different bands, trying to make it big.
Hope used to give me shit about Joey, saying I was bending my anti-celebrity rule, but I disagreed wholeheartedly. Sure, he’d get women hitting on him just like any band member did, but it wasn’t because of who he was. It was only because they saw him onstage. It’s not like anyone actually knew his name when they saw him play, and certainly no one would ever remember him five minutes after he stepped away from his drum kit.
I’ve never quite understood the allure of banging a guy in a band. So what if he’s in the spotlight for a few sets? Why does that make him any more attractive than a guy in the crowd buying you drinks and having a good time?
“Wow, I didn’t expect to see you here. What with you being the anti-fun.”
Brandy’s smoke-roughened voice cuts into my semi-intoxicated contemplation.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Her cackle sets me on edge. I swear, my aunt must have done drugs or drank while she was pregnant with Brandy, because the girl just isn’t right. I want to say it’s not her fault, but the nastiness she displays isn’t an accident.
“Why do you think?”
She shoots me a look, and it doesn’t take a genius to fill in the blanks. I’m sure there are plenty of clueless tourists here to buy her drinks while she feeds them some bullshit story about trying to make it in Nashville. Cue eye roll. Then I remember I’m pissed at her for a specific reason instead of my normal general annoyance.
“Well, Pop’s not here to narc to, so clearly that’s not it.” I reach for my drink and tip the rest of it back.
Brandy glares at me. “He should know what’s happening. It isn’t my fault his daughter is a complete screwup, running the Fishbowl into the ground.”
Her insult stings when it lands, and I desperately want another drink. Thankfully, Hope spots my anxious look and comes down the bar toward us.
“Is there something I can get you, Brandy? Or are you just here to take up space while you wait for some poor bastard to buy you a drink like you do every other time you show up?”
Brandy rolls her eyes. “Give me a shot of 151.”
Hope’s nose wrinkles, and I have to believe mine does the same.
Brandy scoffs at both of us. “What? If I’m buying, I gotta make it count. It’s not like Ripley pays enough for me to buy the good stuff. Guess I should’ve gotten more money out of—”
My arm swings out and I knock my glass over with enough force that a remaining ice cube flies straight into her cleavage.
“What the hell!” Brandy screeches, attracting an audience to watch her fish the melting ice from between her mostly exposed boobs.
Hope shoots me a questioning look and raises her brows.
“I’ll tell you later.”
She nods. “Another?”
“Make it a double. And maybe a shot.”
An apologetic look settles over her features. Hope knows how much putting up with Brandy stretches my patience. Before she turns to make my drink, she ducks her head close to mine.
“Babe, you know that anytime you want to jump ship and let your pop figure out his own mess, I’ve got you covered. You could make more in one shift here than you pull down in a week.”
“And be homeless?” I don’t mention the part about losing my remaining connection to Ma, because in my current mood, I’ll end up being the sad sap at the bar with tears falling into my drink.
Hope’s answer comes quick, like it’s one she thought out in advance. “I’ve got a futon with your name on it.”
Before I can reply, she slides away and down the bar, grabbing bottles and making drinks. It gives me a minute to realize that I have no idea what I did to deserve such a good friend. Apparently, for once in my life, I got lucky. Hope is good people.
“Oh my God, is that really him?” a woman one stool down from me shouts over the music as she climbs onto the cushion, balancing on her knees.
While I’m busy worrying about whether she’s going to face-plant on the floor, the atmosphere in the bar changes in an instant. There’s only one reason for it—celebrity sighting.
The artist onstage pauses mid-song and yells into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen of the White Horse Saloon, please welcome Boone Thrasher to the stage!”
15
Boone
One hour earlier
“That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had,” I tell Frisco as I lean back into one of the chairs on my porch, my shotgun resting beside me with an empty shell box on the table. Now that the sun has dropped below the horizon, we’re done shooting skeet, and Frisco is talking out of his ass.
“I’m pretty sure that time he wanted to streak through the parking lot in Denver in January was a worse idea,” Quarter, my bass guitarist, offers. “He’ll never live down those pics of his dick.”
“It was cold! Shrinkage, dude. Not fair.”
“That’s what George said on Seinfeld too . . .”
“Shut up, you assholes.” Frisco tucks his shotgun back into its case and cracks a beer. “Just hear me out. Nick and Charity told you to lay low, but this whole thing is going to play out on the stage of public opinion. Your fans love you because you don’t take shit from anyone. Remember when you called that guy out for shoving that chick in the crowd, and had security yank him? You aren’t the kind of guy who goes to ground when shit hits the fan. You come out
swinging, showing the world what you’re made of, and they worship you for it.”
“As much as I want to say he’s an idiot, Frisco actually has a point there,” Quarter says, popping the top off his beer.
“So you think showing up on Broadway, walking into a bar, and playing a set like I used to is somehow going to make a difference?”
“Not just any bar on Broadway—the White Horse. It’s always packed with all those tourists dying to see someone famous. You step onto that stage and mention you’ve been having a rough week, and then you play your new single and talk about how the girl you thought would be riding in that 442 with you turned out to have different plans, so you’re rolling with the curveball life threw you.” Frisco’s beer sloshes over the lip as he gestures with his hands.
Quarter chuckles low. “Oh man, they’ll eat that shit up. You’ll have so many pairs of panties on that stage by the time you’re done . . . You gotta do it.”
I don’t give a shit about panties on the stage, or the women throwing them.
Frisco jumps up from his chair. “You’re Boone fucking Thrasher. You ain’t shy about people knowing you’ve been knocked down. You show them you’re tough as hell every time you get back up, and tell ’em to bring it on. No one takes you down and sends you into hiding, especially not Amber Fleet.”
Frisco’s words finally penetrate, because he said exactly what I’ve been thinking. I don’t hole up and lick my wounds. That’s not the kind of man I am. I haul my ass up every time it gets kicked, and dare the world to throw another punch.
A rush of determination fills me, something I haven’t felt in months.
“You’re fucking right that’s who I am.”
Quarter springs out of his chair. “So we’re going?”
“Yeah, we’re fucking goin’.”
The crowd parts like the Red Sea, and Frisco, Quarter, and I head for the stage at Broadway’s famous White Horse Saloon.