Brew Ha Ha Box Set: Books 1-4

by Bria Quinlan

  I was shockingly unsurprised to see it was Jenna.

  “Just wanted to make sure you were okay and had everything you needed.”

  Of course she did. I’m not sure what she would have done if I said I didn’t have something, but it was nice to be checked on.

  “Yup. All set.” I stretched and glanced out the window at new leaves shifting to yellow-orange on the trees hiding the building behind us. “This is the most relaxed I’ve been in…years.”

  I thought back trying to remember the last time I truly felt at ease and couldn’t remember a better time than tonight.

  “Great. Just, you know…checking we didn’t scare you off.” Jenna gave a little laugh as if she were joking, but I could hear the nerves behind it.

  It hadn’t dawned on me that she was serious about trying to find girlfriends. And, with Ben leaving, she was kind of in the same boat…not really, but the end result was still her guy would be gone. Of course he wasn’t a controlling, manipulative, cruel SOB. She was apparently way smarter about this guy thing than I was.

  “Nope. Not scared off. Maybe a bit nervous’ed off at first, but hey. You guys seem relatively harmless.”

  “Well, you haven’t met Dane yet.” She gave a little laugh, wished me good night, and hung up.

  This Dane guy must be something else…and still off limits.

  Mental Note: No matter how hot Dane is, stay far, far away. Think hoopskirts.

  Last night I dreamt of Max Darby.

  That was truly the last thing I wanted. I didn’t want to be waking up with a smile on my face thinking about the way he handled tough situations with humor, or the deep dimple that sinks into his right cheek each time he smiles, or the fact that he knew how to maneuver around Jenna’s quirks…or him and kittens, darn it.

  The entire dream was about tons of calendars of stupid Officer Darby holding kittens.

  White kittens. Grey kittens. Sleek kittens. Fluffy kittens. Kittens in little police hats.

  It was absurd.

  Okay, Subconscious. I get it. He’s a good guy.

  But, not for me. I was not going to fall for a guy like Max Darby. I wanted security and routine and similar tastes and values and hobbies.

  I did not want a cocky cop who seemed to thrive on mocking me.

  So, Subconscious, stick that in your vault and throw away the key. I had a plan to succeed as an independent woman and no guy, no matter how flat his stomach or how deep his dimple, was going to run this train off the tracks.

  So, this was going to be fun.

  Not.

  “Hello?” My mom’s high, stilted voice came over the phone. She was one of those people who even with a cell phone I’d programmed with my name and picture still acted like she didn’t know who was on the other end when she picked up.

  “Hi, Mom. It’s me.” I closed my eyes thinking about the last few days and followed up with, “Kasey.”

  You know—in case she didn’t know me was her only daughter.

  “Kasey. This is a nice surprise.”

  That’s not a bad start.

  Now I just have to break it to her that the guy she thought was perfect, was…not so much.

  My mom and the male gender as a whole were on some very rocky ground. Their relationship had turned a bit sour a few years ago. Ok, a few decades ago. Things were rolling along just fine, my mom not being bitter at all—or so she said—about giving up her potential career as a backup singer to be a wife and mother.

  When I was six, having a perfectly good day in kindergarten (it was my turn to get pushed on the swings and I’d just gotten an underdog so high my shoe flew off) my mom showed up at the school, damp tissue in one hand, the letter from my dad in the other, and dragged me home to explain that I was now fatherless.

  The problem wasn’t so much that he left, since he hadn’t been around a lot as far as my younger self could remember. The problem was more my mother’s perceived reasons for him leaving.

  My dad was a company man. He’d seen my mother at a club, told her she was pretty and smelled like spring flowers and chased her until she said yes.

  I’ve heard the tale of their marriage more than most girls have heard Cinderella. Beautiful, young, up-and-coming singer marries beneath her only to find out that two worlds colliding don’t make sparks, they just implode. Aged beauty is left on her own to raise daughter while teaching her to never make the same mistakes she made when she herself was but a lass.

  The end.

  Yup. For my mom, that is literally the end. There’s no more grand adventures or a chance to go back to school or a new job. She’s just going to stay the personal aid to Mrs. Ferske and avoid all men for the rest of her life.

  Shockingly enough, she loved Jason.

  Proof that while bitterness isn’t hereditary, maybe bad decision making is.

  “I hope I’m catching you at a good time.” I really, really hope so.

  “Yup. I’m just about to reorganize the tax files, but…” Mom’s voice drifted off as if she dropped the phone and doesn’t realize it.

  This could go on for a bit, so I brush my teeth. Might as well fill that part of the morning with good hygiene.

  “Sorry about that. I’m back. I was trying to use that ear thing. Mrs. Ferske likes to call me when I’m driving, but this thing never works. Anyway, how are things with you?”

  “Well, I have some news about work. And about Jason.”

  Loaded silence and then, “Oh?”

  “It’s just, there’ve been some changes at work and they’re going to impact my relationship with Jason, and—”

  “Is your office moving you? Did you get another promotion? I am so proud of you.”

  “No. No, actually…” I bit my lip, hard. Trying to break this to her. All she ever wanted was for me to have a successful career in a glamorous field. When Mad Men came on the air, she all but applied to grad school for me. In retrospect, Jason was probably a power-couple accessory in her mind. “Actually, there were some things going on at the office and it opened a new door for me,”—Yeah. The exit—”and because of this new opportunity I’ve been able to head out on my own.”

  “You mean, you’re working at your own branch?”

  “No. I mean I had the chance to start my own company. I actually met with my first client yesterday,”—If Jenna really does hire me—“and I’m excited about the work we’ll be doing together.”

  “Your own business?” The way her voice went up at the end told me just how excited she was. I didn’t need to hear her clapping her hands together to know. “Oh, Kasey. This is so exciting. You’re a business owner. I can’t believe it. Wait until Pam hears this. Her daughter, Joy, just built a school in the Congo and she thinks that’s just such a big deal.”

  Um…

  “But, she’ll never own her own business while she’s running around the globe building things for other people. It’s not as if a school is saving lives.”

  I have learned when to just keep my mouth shut.

  “What does Jason think of this?” she asked.

  “Well…” If I was bending the truth, I might as well stretch it as well. “Jason and I couldn’t really agree on what we wanted. It’s not that he didn’t want me to start the business. But he definitely liked how things were and wasn’t looking for any type of big change.”

  Yeah. Not bad. Basically all true.

  “But, didn’t you move in with him this week?” The suspicion was starting to creep back into her voice. “You’re not telling me everything, are you?”

  “No.” I tried to keep the lying to a minimum. But at the same time, I knew anything I said about Jason was just going to feed the Men As Disrupters of Happiness fire. “So, Jason…the thing is, when I told him I had big news, I kind of expected him to be happy. I mean, I know it was going to be a huge adjustment, but couples go through this every day. I thought we’d be fine. I thought he was ready for this.”

  And, I had. I really hadn’t even worried abou
t my change in employment status being a deal breaker.

  Talk about blindsided.

  “Oh my word. You’re pregnant. Oh dear, sweet, lord Jesus. I knew it. I knew you’d end up pregnant and not married and he’s going to be thinking now about how maybe he doesn’t want to get married. Maybe he doesn’t want a baby. Sweetheart, you can move home. Actually, you should move home. You can just do all that work for your new business remotely, right? Everything’s online now. Just the other day Pam showed me how she was talking to her daughter all the way across the ocean on that new thing…Skype, have you heard of it? It’s just the darndest thing. You could work like that. And then we could raise your daughter here. Oh, that could be fun. A little baby. I can paint the back room pink. Or maybe yellow. I read that girls don’t like pink any more. What do you think?”

  All five stages of grief and I hadn’t even told her what was wrong yet. My mom, the optimist.

  Great to see all that faith she had in my relationship.

  “On the upside, I’m definitely not pregnant.” So no need to move home. Small blessings. “But, Jason and I broke up.”

  “Because of your new company.”

  My new company.

  “Kind of. He didn’t like the idea that I wasn’t working for a corporation anymore. The lack of stability really bothered him and he thought we weren’t…you know…equals any more.”

  I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the bed. Had we ever been equals? Had Jason always seen me as the student? The girl he helped teach and took under his wing and walked through the hiring process. Even now, a few years later, running my own department for a multi-million dollar company, did he see me still as the kid he slept with?

  That sounded totally different in my head than I meant it.

  “Well, then, don’t you worry about that honey.” My mom sucked in a deep breath and let it out.

  I waited for the anti-man rampage, but instead she said, “You’ll just find someone more worthy of you.”

  I glanced at the calendar…nothing about Hell or ice or pigs or anything. Maybe I should consider not leaving the house today.

  14

  “So, you finally left the jackass.”

  “Jayne?” This was exactly who I needed. I just hadn’t known it until I heard her voice on the other end of the line. “Have you been talking to my mother?”

  As if. Jayne had been the voice of reason to my mother’s man-hating ways since we met in Driver’s Ed. The chances of Jayne hanging out with my mom were up there with a cozy dinner between all the Middle East leaders.

  “Yeah. Right. Barbara and I have been having tea and knitting scarves for the homeless every Sunday.”

  “It’s still a little too warm for tea and scarves.”

  “A little too pleasant to ruin it with quality time with Barbara.”

  Well, there was that, too.

  “So, how’d you hear about Jason?”

  “You obviously haven’t looked at Facebook recently.”

  “I’ve been a little busy.”

  Understatement.

  “Jason has a nice little smear campaign going on.”

  I was already firing up my computer before she even got to smear.

  Pictures of his car in the parking lot—rims on the ground. Pictures of his wine stained sweater. Pictures of my boxes piled in his bedroom. Complaints about my attitude. And one really long post about how I’d gotten fired.

  Unbelievable.

  “I was under the impression that he was smart enough to know what libel was.” Apparently everything I’d thought about him was wrong.

  His name probably wasn’t even Jason.

  “So you haven’t broken up?”

  “Oh, we have definitely broken up.” I scrolled through his page amazed the only thing he had to post was about us-past-tense. And I thought I needed a life. “We so have.”

  “But you didn’t pour wine on him or slash his tires?”

  “I totally did those things, too.” I reran the night through my head, enjoying the wine thing especially. “Actually, I didn’t slash his tires. I just let the air out of them. I highly recommend it as a stress reliever.”

  “And you were fired?” Leave it to Jayne to get back to the important point that quickly.

  “Not really. I got laid off. They got rid of a bunch of the first level managers so, there I went.”

  I still wasn’t over the fact that they thought an upper management person could take on all my people, accounts, and workload when no one could even tell you what they did except for dress nice and play golf. But, that wasn’t my problem anymore, was it?

  “And?” she pushed.

  I ran Jayne through the entire time from losing my job through my breakup with Jason to meeting Jenna at the Brew Ha Ha and moving into Ben’s before I mentioned as casually as possible starting my own business.

  When I finished, Jayne was still laughing at me.

  And this was my support system.

  “Kasey, why didn’t you call me?” Instead of being annoyed, she just sounded exasperated.

  That was part of the entire problem. I’d let my world narrow to my job and Jason and whatever Jason thought our world should look like. Not only was I completely embarrassed by this, but I felt guilty. So guilty. I was that girl. The one who disappeared because of a guy.

  “I felt like I didn’t have the right to call you just because I’d hit a rough patch.”

  For once I didn’t know what the silence on the other end of the line meant. Maybe this is where she told me I was right, I didn’t have the right to call her, to lean on her just because things had gotten rough and I had no where else to turn.

  “So…” I dragged it out, knowing I owed her an apology and realizing how amazingly lucky I was to have a friend who came to the rescue without even a mayday call being made. “I felt horrible. I hadn’t realized how insular I’d become until I was sitting in The Brew realizing I had no one to call to come get me. No one to go out and get chocolate cake and cheap wine drunk. I’d let Jason take over. How was I supposed to just turn around and be like, Oh, Jayne, I need you?”

  I heard Jayne let out a deep sigh. Whatever it was, I definitely deserved it.

  “Kasey, we’re not those girls.”

  “I kn—”

  “No. I don’t mean we’re not the girls who get lost along the way. I mean, we are not and we will never be those girls who can’t forgive each other.”

  “But this is a mistake that lasted years.”

  “If I believed in karma, I’d say you prepaid this mistake by dealing with Jason all that time.” The swoosh of Jayne sucking in a breath on the other end filled my ear. “I never liked him. I never liked how he talked to you. When I came to visit, you were already so serious and anything he said you’d jump to make happen. You changed your look and your plans. If I’d been there, if I’d done a better job at staying in touch when I started school, I might have been able to nudge you away from him. But, I was so involved in my own drama that I didn’t even notice he was controlling you to such an extent. Then, I was afraid if I rocked the boat I’d lose you completely.”

  I let my eyes drop shut, surprised at the venom in Jayne’s voice.

  “Kasey?”

  “Yeah.” It was my turn to suck in a breath. I didn’t want her to think things were always horrible. “You’re right about how I let him treat me. He was…controlling. And I should have seen through that sooner. But, I’m not your responsibility.”

  I was no one’s responsibility and that’s how it was going to stay.

  “Maybe not.” Jayne gave in that much, but stayed firm. “But, I feel like I didn’t have your back when you needed it.”

  “We’re both here now and we’re not going to let bad decisions damage our awesomeness again.” I prayed that was true. That she’d forgive me even as I fought to forgive myself.

  “Cheers to that! So…tell me about these new friends you’re making and if I’m going to have to fly o
ut there to clear them this time.”

  I rushed through descriptions, letting her know about Jenna and Ben. About hitting the tree and Max showing up. About how Max had been the cop who had already almost arrested me twice. I told her about the apartment and the move and getting pizza. As the words came out, I realized I needed to say them as much as she needed to hear them. That I needed to hear how well things were going, too.

  “Holy cow, Kasey. You have to get with this cop.”

  Okay, so…that was adamant. And out of the blue.

  “Um, no. I just told you he’d just be another man telling me what to do. He’d make Jason look like a push-over. Jason mentored me right into a trophy girlfriend. I was pretty enough, and smart enough, and I had the right job title and I fit in his life. I understood things we enjoyed like the symphony and jazz and—”

  “Do you even like the symphony?” Jayne’s voice dripped with more doubt than would fit in a bathtub.

  “Well, sometimes. I mean, some of it’s really great.”

  “But, let’s say, we’re driving in your car—”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “In the real world you’d have a car. And, we’re driving in it. And the top’s down—”

  “My imaginary car is a convertible? I’m doing pretty darn well in this new reality.”

  “As I was saying, the top’s down and the sun is shining and we’re about to go shopping—”

  “Since apparently I’m rich.”

  “—and you reach for the radio to turn on the CD you put in just for the drive. Don’t think about it. Quick, what comes on?”

  “Kesha.” Wait, what?

  “Really? Kesha?”

  “Well, we’re going shopping and the top’s down, so Kesha.”

  “Do you even own a Kesha CD?” Jayne sounded more shocked by that than anything I’d told her so far.

  “No. But, I’m downloading one right now.” I pulled the phone from my ear, hearing Jayne’s voice drift away. “Hold on, she has a couple. What’s the one with her when she dressed nuts? Oh. Here it is.”

  I hit the purchase button and raised the phone back to my ear.