Neat

by Kandi Steiner

  Logan sighed at that, shaking his head slightly before making his way toward the back door of the warehouse. “Try to at least pretend you give a shit on this tour, could you?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, jogging a bit to catch up with him. “Really, I am. It’s just that I know this distillery like it’s the house I grew up in… because, honestly, it practically was. This tour seems like a waste of time to me.”

  “You know the layout,” Logan agreed, holding the back door open for me before we both slipped back out into the cold. Logan zipped up his jacket while I flipped up the hood on mine, tucking my hands in my pockets against the chilly wind. “You know the name and the processes. But, do you know the history? The selling points? The fun facts and figures that tourists will want to hear? The stories that will stick with them and have them telling their friends about the amazing tour they had when they get home?”

  “Like that my grandfather died from an infection of a finger injury that he never told anyone about? Or how we use the fresh spring water on our property and that’s why our whiskey has a distinct taste that no one can emulate?” I challenged.

  Logan paused where we were walking, facing me for the first time since we left the warehouse. “Those are both great examples. But, they’re also facts that can be found online. Tell me something no one can find with a quick Google search.”

  I opened my mouth, paused, and shut it again.

  I couldn’t think of a single thing.

  The truth was that I should have known more stories than Logan Becker — being that I was the daughter of the owner and the granddaughter of the founder. But, I’d been trying to get away from this town and the legacy my family had built in it since I was fourteen.

  I’d blocked out almost every story I’d ever heard my father tell, and any time someone asked me about my last name, about this town and the whiskey distilled in it, I gave them base-level information that anyone could find out on their own — simply because I didn’t want to talk about it.

  I didn’t want to be a part of any of it.

  Logan nodded. “I’ll take your silence as an admission that you don’t have an answer. Come on,” he said, steering us in a new direction. “We’re almost done, and then we can end your torture for the day.”

  We walked through various warehouses — where the single barrels are held, where the tasting takes place at the end of tours — before he gave me a quick overview of the gift shop and lobby area. His younger brother, Michael, was in the gift shop when we passed through.

  He looked just as miserable to be there as I was.

  “Is something wrong with your brother?” I asked when we left the gift shop, making our way through the back halls that led to the tour guide offices.

  “Noah?”

  “Michael,” I clarified. “I’ve been in the gift shop a few times with friends who visited from out of town, and he’d always been so cheerful. But today… I don’t know. He kind of seemed like he was going to bite the head off the next tourist who asked him how to order a Scooter barrel.”

  Logan’s face soured. “He’s just going through a rough time. But… you’re right. He wasn’t being the friendliest. I’ll talk to him.”

  I blanched. “Oh, I didn’t mean…”

  I was mid-apology when Logan stopped, glancing down the hallway at an office door I knew all too well. It was Grandpa’s office, the first one to ever grace this old building. For years, it had been unoccupied. Then, it had been damaged from the fire that took place inside its walls. Now, the door that had been closed since that day, other than to clean out the fire damage and make sure it was safe again, was open.

  There were men walking in and out of it, carrying old, damaged furniture out and bringing in new furniture that looked similar to it. I noticed them removing a large canvas art print that I used to love, one I stared at when I visited Grandpa. It was of a young girl in a bright yellow dress dancing on the beach, her dress mid-twirl, golden hair spinning around her.

  It was burnt, and the only reason I could even tell it was that painting was from a bright splash of yellow in the middle that had escaped charring.

  “What are they doing?” I asked.

  Logan’s face was long and pale as we watched the workers. “I guess they’re finally cleaning it out…”

  “They’re moving stuff in, too. I wonder if they’re going to build it how it used to be, make it part of the tour?”

  Logan stiffened at that, and he didn’t respond to my question before he continued walking down the hall toward his office.

  My throat tightened as I realized what that would mean for him, if what I suspected were true. That was the office where his father perished. It had to be hard enough to be in the same building with it, let alone walk a group of tourists into it every day and tell them about the man who used to work there… without mentioning the man who died there, too.

  I caught up to him, unzipping my jacket and slinging it over my arm. “I really do like your bookcase,” I said, trying to lighten the subject.

  Logan raised a brow, eyeing me from his peripheral. “You like to read?”

  He didn’t ask in a sarcastic way, more in a way that he doubted I actually liked his bookcase and was instead wondering if I was making fun of him.

  “Not particularly,” I admitted. “But, I love anything that brightens up a room. And in your office, that bookcase is about as bright as it gets.”

  Logan actually smirked at that, and I noted the dimple on his cheek before it disappeared again. “Ah, right. As an artist, I’m sure my office is too bland for your taste.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “You have no idea. You need to hit up a craft market in Nashville or something, get something other than cream paint on those walls.”

  “I thought about it,” he said, which surprised me. “But, I’m kind of banking on a promotion soon, so I was going to wait until I got into the new office.”

  He swallowed once those words were between us, glancing at me with a touch of discomfort before he opened the door that led to the tour guide quarters for me.

  The promotion he was referring to was one he obviously knew I wasn’t oblivious to. My Uncle Mac was his manager, and had been very vocal that he planned to retire within the next year. Logan being the Lead Tour Guide now, it made sense that he assumed the position would be his.

  And now that he’d said it out loud, I wondered if there was more to my father’s deal than dear ol’ Dad had let on. Was it a coincidence that he wanted me here, in this department, right when a Scooter was about to retire and a Becker was possibly to be promoted?

  “Well, I think I’ve submitted you to enough torture for one day,” Logan said as we passed through the tour guide lobby.

  It was a small area, with two large tables where Logan told me earlier that they ate lunch and had team meetings. It was also a bland room, and he and my uncle were the only ones who had offices to themselves. Everyone else had a locker and a small area to place their belongings — which made sense, since they were all out giving tours each day and didn’t need an office to do the planning and behind-the-scenes work like Logan and my uncle did.

  “You’ll have the standard orientation for the next two days, so I won’t see you much. You’ll be watching a lot of videos and doing the mound of paperwork Scooter likes to dish out to new employees,” he said as we walked back into his office. “But, on Thursday, we’ll reconvene and pick up with your training plan.”

  I nodded. “Sounds thrilling.”

  Logan chuckled, but the small smile fell as he looked me over. It was like he’d been trying to avoid actually looking at me all day, but in that moment, he watched me like he didn’t give a damn if it made me uncomfortable.

  And it didn’t.

  I liked the way his pupils dilated the longer he looked at me, and the way his breathing shallowed, his jaw tightening. He didn’t look at me like I was a pain in his ass then — more like I was a temptation he didn’t want to fight against a
ny longer.

  I smirked when his eyes flicked to my lips — lips I’d painted a dusty rose with my favorite tube of lipstick that morning — but he pulled his gaze away quickly, filtering through some papers on his desk as he cleared his throat.

  “You’ll get your uniform tomorrow, too — which I’m sure you’ll be equally as thrilled about. Other than that and the orientation, I don’t think there’s anything else to go over before we meet again on Thursday.” He tucked the papers inside the folder with my name on it, but still didn’t look up at me. “Do you have any questions for me before you go?”

  For as much as I didn’t want to be there earlier, for some reason, I now found I didn’t want to leave.

  I walked to the bookcase behind him, and he avoided looking at me again until my shoulder brushed his as I past him. “Which one should I read?”

  I glanced at the wall of color before looking back at him, and he looked more confused than I’d seen him all day.

  “That is, if you can part with one piece of your perfectly put together puzzle here,” I added with a smile.

  Logan blinked. “You want to read one of my books?”

  “I do. In fact, I want to read your favorite one. You said we should get to know each other better, right?” I shrugged. “I imagine reading your favorite book is a good place to start.”

  The corner of Logan’s mouth tilted up marginally, and he took a step, reaching for a leather-bound book with gold letters on the spine.

  “Wait,” I said, wrapping my fingers around his forearm. He paused as soon as I touched him, the book hovering halfway off the shelf. “Something written in the last century, please,” I amended. “I haven’t read anything outside of required textbooks. Go easy on me.”

  I smiled, but Logan’s face was completely blank as he stared at where my hand touched his arm. I pulled it back tentatively, not realizing how warm he was until I felt the brush of cold over me once we were no longer touching.

  He replaced the book he had originally grabbed, reaching across the shelf in front of me for a hardback wrapped in a paper sleeve, instead.

  “Try this,” he offered, and as soon as I had the book in my hands, he took a step back.

  “All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr,” I mused, running the pad of my thumb over the beautiful cover. It was a blue-tinted photo of what looked like a coastal town in Europe somewhere, and a shiny, gold emblem boasted that the book was the winner of a Pulitzer Prize. “What’s it about?”

  Logan finally smiled again. “That’s the point of reading it, Mallory — to find out.”

  I bit my lip against my own smile, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he was joking around with me, rather than looking at me like I was a mosquito, or if it was because he’d said my name in a way that only a long-time friend would.

  I wondered if it could be possible — a Scooter and a Becker being friends.

  “Thanks for the tour. I guess I’ll see you Thursday?”

  He nodded, taking another step back so I could pass between him and the desk behind us. “See you Thursday.”

  His eyes darted to a space beside me, and I followed, chuckling when I noticed the now-blank space where the book had been.

  “You’re going to fix that before you leave, aren’t you?”

  “As soon as you’re out the door.”

  I laughed, shaking my head as I slipped past him. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” I paused at the door, and couldn’t help but smile at the difference in how I felt leaving as opposed to when I’d arrived. “Bye, Logan.”

  “Bye, Mallory.”

  Before I’d even made it out of the tour guide lobby, I heard him shuffling the books on the shelf.

  Logan

  “That was one hell of a game tonight,” I told my older brother, Jordan, Friday night as I heated up leftovers from dinner for him in our mother’s kitchen. I opened the fridge and offered him a beer as soon as the microwave was started, but he shook his head, reaching into the cabinet behind him for a whiskey glass, instead.

  I smiled, putting the beer back and opting for the bottle of Scooter’s Winter Whiskey Mom had on the counter. It was a special release we did each fall that went away again in January, and it was one of Jordan’s favorites. I poured him two fingers in his glass, and cheersed my own to his before he took a sip.

  “It was more fun to watch than to coach, I assure you,” he said, sucking in a breath through his teeth as the whiskey settled in his stomach. “We had too many errors. It shouldn’t have been that close.”

  “Ah, but that’s what makes it a good game,” I offered, clapping my hand on his shoulder. “Have them run some drills on Monday, but tonight, we celebrate a win.”

  He tipped his glass toward me. “Hear, hear.”

  It was tradition for my brothers and I to get together at Mom’s every week for family dinner, but during the fall, when dinner fell on a Friday, Jordan was always absent. He was the head coach of the town’s high school football team, and that meant a game every Friday night for him. So, we’d have an early dinner, and then head to the field to watch the game. And after, we’d all meet at Mom’s again, heat up some food for Jordan, and have family dinner round two.

  Noah and Mom were at the table when Jordan and I made our way back to the dining room. Mom sipped on her sweet tea while the rest of us enjoyed our whiskey, and Jordan shoveled food into his gullet like he hadn’t eaten in years.

  “Careful,” Mom warned with an amused smile. “The plate isn’t edible.”

  Jordan made some noise that could have been a chuckle, if his mouth wasn’t full, before shoving another bite in.

  “Where’s Mikey?” Noah asked.

  Mom shifted, sliding her finger over the rim of her glass with a sad look in her eyes. “Back in his room. He was playing guitar for a while, but he’s been silent for about an hour now… think he might be asleep.”

  My brothers and I exchanged worried glances of our own, wondering how long our youngest sibling would wallow in misery. His high school sweetheart had broken up with him last month, leaving school to chase her music dreams in Nashville. It had always been their plan to go after school ended… together. But, like we all feared, Bailey changed her mind and asked Michael for time and space to do her own thing.

  It’d been the biggest betrayal to my little brother, who’d put Bailey above everything else — including his own dreams. Now, he was single for the first time in years, and just a half-a-year away from graduating high school with all the plans he thought he had thrown out the window.

  “He’ll be alright,” I assured my mom, reaching over the table to squeeze her hand in mine. “He’s heartbroken, but he’ll bounce back. Just give him a little time.”

  Mom nodded, squeezing my hand in return and smiling as much as she could. Mom was a beautiful woman — always had been — and even in that moment, with her eyes rimmed with dark circles and her face long, tired, and worn, she was stunning. I loved how much of her I saw in me when I looked in the mirror — same hazel eyes, same full-faced smile. Noah was a spitting image of Dad, and sometimes I envied that he got so much of him, but I was proud to take after the strong woman who had raised us — when Dad was here, and after he passed.

  “So, how did it go with Mallory this week?” Noah asked me, kicking his feet up in the empty chair Michael usually sat in. “Seemed like you two were ten seconds away from ripping each other’s throats open in that tour run through on Monday.”

  Mom’s face screwed up with worry, but she didn’t speak, just sipped on her tea while she waited for me to answer. Something told me she was just as concerned as my brothers and I were that I was training a Scooter — especially one with a reputation like Mallory’s.

  Still, just the mention of her made my blood warm — and not in the way that my brother thought. From the moment she walked into my office that first day, I’d been fascinated by her. Hell, I’d been fascinated by her my entire life. But, that fascination was balanced out by
my need to protect myself, by the fear that crept in every time I had a second to think and realized I could very likely be training the woman who would take the job I was rightfully owed in the end.

  She infuriated me with her gum popping, her sarcastic remarks, her blasé attitude about being at the distillery — and yet, she still made my pulse race, made my hands ache with the desire to reach out and feel that silky, platinum blonde hair between my fingers.

  “It was… fine,” I said, deciding that was the best word to describe it. “She definitely had an attitude the first day, but by the time she left, she was playing nice. She was in orientation the rest of the week. I saw her briefly yesterday, and took her around for her first shadow tour earlier today.” I shrugged. “It’s weird. It doesn’t seem like she wants to be there, but Mallory Scooter has never been one to do something she doesn’t want to do. So, I can’t really figure out why she’s all of a sudden starting a career at the place it seemed like she’d been avoiding her whole life.”

  Jordan leaned back from his now-empty plate, his hand resting on his stomach now that he was up for his first breath of air since he started eating. “I saw her and her father checking out that empty shop at the edge of the Main Street shopping center on my way to the field today,” he said. “I wonder if that has something to do with it.”

  “The spot where Rita’s dress store used to be?” Noah asked.

  Jordan nodded, reaching for his whiskey. “That’s the one. They were walking around with Tracy from the real estate firm in town.”

  I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would she be buying a store when she just started this new job?”

  “Maybe it’s Patrick who’s buying it, and she was just hanging out with him?” Mom suggested.

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of girl who would just hang out with her father willingly,” I mused, running my fingers over the stubble on my chin. “Anyway, I feel like she’s going to give me some trouble, but she’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Mom laughed bitterly. “Oh, I have more than a feeling she’s going to give you trouble. That whole family is just… just…” She shook her head, lips pursed together and face turning red. Mom was always a lady first, and I knew she was biting her tongue to keep from saying a whole string of curse words and other foul things about the Scooters.