Love on Tap

by Karis Walsh

  Tace pulled into her driveway and turned off the engine. She looked at Berit with her brow furrowed in the adorable way she had. Berit tightened her hold on the straps of her bag—she always felt about a millimeter of willpower away from touching Tace. But Tace was part of this small world, and Berit was clawing at her cage and trying to get back to her nomadic way of life. Tace had the potential to tether her here, and she couldn’t let that happen. No touching. Well, maybe a little…

  “What are you thinking?” she asked instead.

  “I’m confused,” Tace said. “I thought your area of expertise was Ancient Greece. And you mentioned your grandfather and trips to Greece being a big reason you went into the field of archaeology.”

  Berit thought of her grandfather, with his sun-weathered features and gray mustache. His calm affection helped center her even now, as it always did when she thought of him. His memory was as steadfast and ageless as a temple’s column. “Yes, of course. He was the only reliable person in my life when I was young. Without him, I don’t know what would have happened to me. When he took me to Greece and introduced me to my own culture, I found something there. Roots, I suppose. Stability.”

  “And when you learned the language, was it as boring as you seem to think teaching it will be?”

  “Not at all. It was like speaking to the past. I loved everything about it from the sounds of the words to the shades of meaning behind them. It helped that I had a really great—”

  “Professor?” Tace prompted.

  “I was going to say I had a really great dictionary,” Berit said with a haughty look. Her pretense didn’t last, though, and she laughed at the way Tace had caught her contradicting herself. She had forgotten the connection between her love of the past and the people like her grandfather and professors who had encouraged and inspired her.

  “Fine, you got me. I had a really great professor. He was all over the place while he was teaching, jumping on tables and moving around the room like he couldn’t contain his passion for what we were discussing. I appreciate what he did to inspire me, but I can’t teach the same way. I can barely stand.”

  Tace shook her head. “Come on. Was it his actual movement that made him so motivating, or was it his enthusiasm? Because you don’t have to stand upright or leap around in order to share your excitement and passion with your students.”

  “I’ll try to remember your words of wisdom while I’m preparing my thrilling lecture on first-declension nouns,” Berit said with a dismissive snort. She opened the door and stood carefully, knowing Tace’s words wouldn’t be forgotten. She admired people who were driven and excited about teaching, and she was grateful for the ones who had helped her along the way. Could she be one of them? Did she want to be? She doubted it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tace changed out of her work clothes and drove to the brewery. She sat on the neatly mown lawn with her back against the woodpile while the cat ate a bowl of food only a few feet away from her.

  She closed her eyes and let the sounds of birdsong and the kitten’s hungry chomping soothe away the stress of her morning in the store. She felt less tired than usual, less anxious about her busy schedule and the nonstop list of things to do at the brewery. Her time with Berit, especially during their short drive together on Berit’s first day of class, had done more to untie the knots inside her stomach than anything or anyone else managed to do.

  “Who’d ever believe that I’d be giving advice to an uncertain college professor?” she asked the cat. “Especially one as talented and successful as Berit. The world has gone insane.”

  At least her tiny corner of it had. A little over a month ago, she’d been in the same comfortable rut she’d lived in since high school. Her life and work hadn’t been meaningless to her. Helping her siblings to a wider array of choices and possibilities than she had meant something. But her life and work hadn’t been interesting or fulfilling, either.

  Now she owned a brewery and she was actually getting involved in the process of creating an artisan microbrew. She’d been working with Joseph on perfecting the summer IPA, and she’d also made the decision to add a hefeweizen to their regular brewing repertoire. They lived in the heart of wheat fields, and Tace had grown up in and around them. They were as much part of her personal landscape as Walla Walla’s streets. Of course, most of her friends had hung out in the fields on weekend nights, drinking or making out in the shadows. Not her. She’d driven a combine every spring and summer, starting at age thirteen, as soon as she’d been able to convince the farmers to hire an underage kid. A brewery in this town without a wheat beer didn’t make sense to her. For someone who’d rarely had anything besides mass-produced, bland beer to drink, she somehow had ideas to spare once she let them start to flow.

  Shaking up her world even more was Berit, even though Tace didn’t see much of her these days. They hadn’t been avoiding each other, but they’d both been busy with work. Tace had two careers to juggle, and Berit had spent hours at the college preparing for classes and attending faculty functions and the convocation. They’d passed each other in the kitchen every once in a while and had chatted over a cup of coffee or piece of toast, but conversations had remained light. Tace was content with that. She’d been intimidated by Berit’s reputation, career, and education. Spending time with her in small doses, without pressure to carry on an interesting and deep discussion, was making her more comfortable. She was starting to see Berit as a normal person now, not as someone too far out of her sphere to talk to.

  Well, not exactly a normal person. Tace had met plenty of women, and none of them had been capable of controlling her pulse rate just by walking into the room. The sight of Berit’s sharply intelligent eyes or the pink curve of her lips made Tace’s heart beat as fast as if she’d been scaling a mountain. She was as out of reach to Tace as Mount Everest, though, and would soon be just as far away. Tace couldn’t let herself forget that, and anytime she was tempted to get closer to Berit, she just had to look at her book’s dust jacket to remember that Berit belonged in some foreign land, having fascinating adventures.

  The cat finished his food and remained near her, his tail whipping back and forth as he watched a bee hover around some wildflowers growing through the rotting logs. Tace moved a little closer and rested her hand just inches from him. She wasn’t meant to be with someone like Berit, and Berit would never settle for someone like Tace, but their companionable and casual relationship was good for Tace. Berit had helped her with the seasonal ale, and last week Tace had actually been able to help Berit lose the worried look after her first day of classes. Tace didn’t believe for one minute that Berit’s classes had been anything less than spectacular, but Berit had definitely been upset. After a short car ride with Tace, she’d seemed to feel much better.

  Joseph came over with a notebook tucked under his arm and a glass of beer in each hand, like he’d had when she first met him. He handed her a glass of pale gold liquid and sat down. They’d taken to having informal business meetings out here by the woodpile whenever Tace came to the brewery. If she came in the morning, before work, he brought lemonade. When she came after work, he brought her a beer. She tried to work as many morning shifts at Drake’s as she could.

  She took a sip and nodded in appreciation. “You’ve nailed it,” she said. The lavender notes in their first attempt at a seasonal beer were bold and risky, but they were tempered by the earthy lemon-mint tones of the basil. A splash of local fireweed honey enhanced the natural sweetness, usually barely discernible, of the base IPA. An explosion of hoppy bitterness held back the cloyingly perfumed flavor they’d tasted on the first few tries. “I hope you remember the ratios, because this is excellent.”

  Joseph tapped his notebook and gave her the shy, pleased smile he got whenever she praised his brewing abilities. She had been tempted to hide her admiration for his skills and avoid any effusive compliments because he’d eventually have to wonder why the hell he was wasting his talents in a deserted wa
rehouse when he could find a job anywhere he wanted. She couldn’t be less than honest with him, though, and she wouldn’t keep him from moving on if he had the desire to go. She took another drink of her beer and sighed, leaning back against the rough logs. She’d even write him a damned good letter of recommendation. He’d earned it just with this one ale.

  “Unfortunately, you’ve perfected our summer seasonal, but it’s almost autumn. We should start working on a holiday beer now. I suppose pumpkin is the usual choice.”

  “Pumpkin’s been done to death,” Joseph said. “Cloves, too.”

  “Sage? Sweet potatoes?” Tace tossed out some ideas from remembered holiday meals. She had tried to make Thanksgiving and Christmas special for her family, but her main memories were of long hours waiting on customers and toiling over the meals. Once Chris had moved out, Tace had given up on special holiday meals and usually got takeout for herself instead.

  “Celery? Cinnamon?” Joseph added.

  They bandied flavors back and forth for a few minutes, and nothing sounded right. They were still behind in the seasonals, but Tace was trying not to feel pressured into creating a beer that wasn’t exactly what they wanted. The leaves on the trees around them were just beginning to show hints of yellow on the edges. The sun was nearing the horizon earlier every day, and they’d just discovered the recipe for their ideal summer ale. Maybe by December they’d have an autumn beer. She had to keep her focus on the long-term prize. She was making plans and developing strategies for the next owner to implement, plans that would add value to the physical worth of the brewery. Whoever bought the brewery from her would benefit from the sales of these beers—a year of them already perfected and ready to go. She was working toward someone else’s success, to make someone else’s dreams come true. The way she’d lived her entire life.

  “We’ll keep thinking about it. There’s no hurry,” she said, wanting to change the subject. She wouldn’t be here next autumn to actually market and distribute the beer. She was happy about that, of course. She’d be relieved to get this shabby brewery off her hands and have the money she needed to repay some of her loans. “I wanted to talk to you about adding a wheat beer to our regular stock. We’re in the heart of wheat country here, and it makes sense to showcase some local produce.”

  Joseph got the dreamy look he wore when he started brewing in his head. He opened his notebook and wrote a few notes, crossing one out and adding another while he muttered to himself. “We’ll need the right yeast, and maybe some German malt. Sixty-five percent wheat grain…no, sixty-two. Just a touch of hops. Mount Hood? Do you want a hefeweizen or kristal? Um, unfiltered or filtered?”

  Tace took a moment to realize he had asked her a question and wasn’t still talking to himself. She was about to say she had no idea—she hadn’t tasted a wheat beer until she did some research online last week and went to the store to get a bottled one to try. It had been okay. Mild and clear. She thought about the fragments she’d just heard Joseph saying and pieced them together in her mind. A mild, fruity hop, yeast-forward flavor. She remembered the smell of threshing wheat when she’d driven combines as a summer job. The air around her had been thick with dust and chaff, and the smell had been bittersweet.

  “Unfiltered, definitely,” she said. What a great way to round out the brewery’s offerings. Joseph already had great bright ales, both an amber and an IPA. Tace didn’t like the heavier porter and stout as much, but she was slowly getting the confidence to believe she could start messing with those recipes until she was happier with them. The light but thick hefeweizen would be just right. Of course, the beer could be nectar from the gods, but without people to actually buy and drink it, it might as well be sewer water.

  Joseph finished taking notes and turned to a different page in his notebook. “I have some drawings,” he said, not meeting her eyes, “for the tap pulls. Even labels, maybe, if we bottle the beer.”

  Just last week—sitting in this same casual triangle of brewer, brewery owner, and the slender cat who remained stretched out and asleep near his food bowl—Tace had tentatively brought up the name Bike Trail Brewery. What had seemed like a good idea in her head, when she was still excited from sharing breakfast and the impromptu tasting with Berit, sounded presumptuous somehow when she spoke it out loud. Who was she to even consider running this brewery, let alone naming and marketing it? She had sketched out the picture she had in mind for the label, all the while thinking she should take Realtor Joan’s advice and raze the property, but Joseph had perked up. He’d contributed some thoughts, and soon they’d been creating a logo in their imaginations. That had been the first unofficial meeting of the brewery staff. Tace had considered making them more businesslike, and had even searched for information about writing agendas and chairing meetings, but she’d soon given up. She wanted to give the brewery every chance to succeed—because she had to sell it for close to the amount she’d paid Kyle—but she couldn’t do it by becoming someone she wasn’t. She inched a little closer to the cat, and he didn’t do more than flick his tail. The woodpile meetings worked for her, and she wasn’t going to change them.

  “Let’s see what you have,” she said to Joseph. He hesitated, then handed her the notebook. The page had a charcoal outline of rolling wheat fields and a cloud-dotted sky. A meandering asphalt road cut through the field, and an old-fashioned wooden signpost pointed to the right, with the words Bike Trail Brewery written in blocky print. The sketch had been washed with colors—yellows and ambers and blues.

  “Did you draw this?” Tace asked in disbelief. He’d taken a thought existing only in her head and had brought it to life.

  “You described it. I just drew it.”

  “I didn’t know you were an artist,” Tace said. She was thinking ahead, planning the way they could alter the label for each of the regular beers as well as the seasonals. She was seeing it on posters and advertisements and T-shirts and baseball caps. Etched on glasses.

  “I was an art major at Whitman.”

  Tace looked up in surprise, her fantasies vanishing as she was brought back to the present. Whitman. She’d spent her life avoiding the college and the people associated with it. Now she had Berit, Joseph, Lawrence, and Allie…she was making more ties to the school than if she’d been a student there. “How did you end up working here?”

  Joseph shrugged. “Couple of my frat buddies decided to stay here after school and start this place, and I offered to be the brewmaster. I think we were drunk at the time, but I ended up liking the job. They figured they could make a fortune since microbrews are so popular in the Northwest. This is a wine town, though, and they couldn’t get the place going.”

  Of course he’d been hired at one point. Tace had never given much thought to how he got here—he’d just been a fixture around the place since day one. What’d she think? That he’d been delivered one day in a bag of hops? “Are they the ones who owned it before I got it?”

  “Nope. There’ve been four owners in between.”

  “Four,” Tace repeated, dumbfounded. Four, plus the original owners and herself. Six altogether. “Did any of them make money here?”

  “Nope.”

  Of course. College graduates hadn’t been able to make this a viable business. They’d probably had degrees in economics. Maybe some of the owners had MBAs. Bankruptcy—the great equalizer. One thing Tace had learned from her conversations with Berit, and now with Joseph, was that a fancy college degree didn’t make one immune to either self-doubt or failure. The knowledge wasn’t particularly comforting given her precarious situation here, but it was interesting.

  “You’re different, though,” Joseph said, as if reading her thoughts.

  “How?” Less likely to succeed? More likely to be the one to completely and irrevocably ruin the business?

  “You have good ideas.”

  Simple as that. Tace didn’t know how to answer, but she felt a twinge of something unfamiliar. Pride? The same way she’d felt when Berit seemed t
o appreciate her company. Her emotions where Berit was concerned carried more complexity, more arousal, and, if possible, even more doubt. In both cases, though, Tace was in unfamiliar territory. Dangling from a precipice, with no idea what waited below if she fell. Or above, if she somehow, against all conceivable odds, managed to climb.

  She’d better get back to business, either way. She took out her phone and flicked through some photos she’d taken on her hikes and showed them to Joseph.

  “Could you put a different mountain in the background for each of the seasonal labels? Mountains surrounding this area, that you could see if you were out on a bike trail. Here are a couple of pictures I took of peaks in the Blues. Maybe Blue Summer Ale? Umatilla Autumn Amber?”

  “Seven Devils Spring Stout.” Joseph held her phone in his left hand and started sketching in the notebook with his right.

  “Wallowa Winter Wheat,” Tace said with a clap of her hands. She might not have time now to meander through the mountains on her days off from the store, but she could use her experiences here, with the brewery.

  Berit came into her mind again—not that she left Tace’s thoughts very often. What had she said about people through the ages? They learned through experience, apprenticeship, and self-seeking. Tace was needing all three in this new job, temporary as it was. At least she wouldn’t lose the knowledge she was gaining, even when she sold the place.

  “Tell me about this German malt you need for the hefeweizen,” she said. Berit had just paid next month’s rent and Tace was about to spend it. Her money was a blessing and would help Tace with this foolhardy venture. But more important, Berit was helping in less definable ways. She’d given Tace things to think about, different ways to see her life and experiences. Berit would leave after a few more months, but she’d made an impact on Tace that would last much longer. And the memory of her, the fantasy of her, would stay with Tace for a lifetime.