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Perhaps Zoe wouldn’t have said as much as that or used those words exactly if not for her cousin’s home brew, but they were out now. Certainly Nick’s reaction would have been different if not for the home brew. He would have shouted or fired her on the spot. Instead he just stared.
“For what it’s worth,” Zoe continued, taking a deep breath, because once you’d started saying something like this you had to see it through, “I don’t think you’re unhappy because you turned out to be bad at your dream – although you clearly are – it’s because you’re still trying to be something you’re not. And that can be tempting – believe me, I know. This last week I’ve been enjoying more and more all the things you’ve introduced me to. It’s easy and comfortable and, dammit, it’s actually sexy to be someone else. It’s thrilling. But there’s a void at its center. It’s weird – I’m enjoying it, and yet it doesn’t make me happy. I don’t know if you wanted to own a bar, but I’m pretty sure you never wanted to run one – it’s not you. What you wanted was to work behind one. That’s who you are and it’s something you’re good at. But you’re a Rothberger, and however much you think you might have rejected your family’s legacy, there’s enough of it in you that the idea of interviewing for a job in a bar never even occurred to you as an option. You had to own the bar, you had to run it, you had to have your name on the front. Then you could just work there occasionally and enjoy those snatched moments of freedom. And that was a plan doomed to failure because, like I said: you suck at it. You’re not a businessman. I get that being a Rothberger who’s not a businessman can’t be easy, but the sooner you accept this basic truth about yourself, the happier you will be.”
Again, Zoe had said more than she had initially intended, but there wasn’t a word of it she would take back. She waited to see how Nick might respond.
He looked at her and it was hard to tell if he was dead serious or dead drunk. “I am still your boss, you know?”
“I know.”
“Just saying; most people don’t talk to their boss like that.”
“Well, I think the world would be better if more people did.”
“It’s not as easy to be the boss as it sounds you know.”
“I know.”
“Rothberger isn’t just a name or a family, it’s a lifestyle into which you’re born.”
“I get it.”
“And you’re wrong -- sort of. I do want to own a bar and I do want to run it and I do want it to make huge amounts of money and prove what a business genius I am because I’m a Rothberger and that stuff is coded into my DNA. That stuff is my life blood. That stuff is oxygen. That stuff…”
“Doesn’t make you happy?” suggested Zoe, as kindly as she could manage.
Nick deflated. “It might. I don’t know. I’ve really no way of knowing, cause none of it is happening. I’m sort of working on the premise that financial success will make me happy cause financial failure has been a bit of a bummer, to be honest.”
“Well,” Zoe admitted, “I suspect you’d rather make money than lose it. And it might get Adam off your back. But I don’t think that’s what’ll make you happy.”
“It’s weird,” slurred Nick, who had – against all good advice Zoe tried to give him– continued to swig home brew throughout their conversation, “how you can enjoy stuff but it doesn’t leave you feeling happy. Take sex.”
“Maybe we should leave the conversation there?” suggested Zoe, who was happy to get closer to her employer but preferred to draw the line at discussions of his rapacious sex life.
But Nick had gone back to tuning out her responses. “I definitely enjoyed myself with those girls last week…”
“Nice to know, but let’s not dwell on…”
“But I’m happier right now, here with you,” Nick concluded.
Zoe had been about to say something but found herself oddly short of things to say.
“And we’re not even having sex!” Nick laughed.
“No,” Zoe agreed, her skin oddly hot and prickly. “No, we’re not.”
“Weird huh?” said Nick again.
Their eyes met, and for a moment the bleary drunkenness seemed to go out of Nick’s and they refocused, sharp and clear on Zoe’s.
“Don’t ever change,” he said. “I mean there’s so much about you that needs changing. So, so, so much. So much that’s wrong. But it all works together. Somehow. All your imperfections make a perfect whole. You’re better than Vanessa. Actually you’re even better than Sabrina.”
“Who’s Sabrina?” asked Zoe. Her heart was in her mouth at hearing these words.
Nick stared at her a long while, his eyes drifting back into glassiness. “I’m sleepy,” he declared. He looked at his empty glass. “I’m starting to think that there might have been some alcohol in this.”
And with that insightful observation, he slumped into a drunken stupor and began to snore.
Zoe stared at her boss: an inebriated, snoring mess who was now starting to drool from the corner of his mouth.
He had been right: it was weird what sort of things could make you happy.
Chapter Six
The train of thoughts that passed through Nick’s head when he awoke made for a little Odyssey all of their own.
Where was he?
Why was he here?
Was there a glass of water nearby?
But chief among these thoughts was: what was I drinking last night?
And this thought was accompanied by a hangover that bored into his skull and proceeded to apply a pneumatic drill to his nerve endings. He lay very still and hoped that the room would stop
spinning. As he did this he tried to piece together the rest of his life; starting with his name and working his way up from there. He seemed to have woken up alone – always disappointing, but you couldn’t win ‘em all. Despite this, and despite his current fragile state, he found an odd sense of well-being suffusing those bits of his body that were not stricken with related agony. He had no idea why that might be but apparently he had had a good night.
Perhaps the girl had left already. That was considerate. He liked girls who left before he woke, thus avoiding the awkwardness of finding out their name and getting them to leave without seeming rude.
As the jigsaw pieces of his brain gradually fitted back together he started to remember that he was at Zoe’s parents’ house, and that there had been a birthday party last night, and that there had been some deceptively delicious drink that had taken him by surprise and then thoroughly kicked his ass. He had a vague memory of talking to Zoe but no more than that. He hoped he had not done or said anything stupid – he had enough problems to deal with.
He would have liked to remain there in bed for another hour or so at least but his bladder was full of home brew and there seemed no way to remedy that other than going to the bathroom (or at least not one that would have left any good impression of him as a guest).
Slowly and gingerly, Nick went through the process of getting up, visiting the bathroom, drinking his bodyweight in cold water, dressing and heading downstairs. He found the rest of the family in the kitchen, far more noisy and boisterous than he would have liked them to be given his current state. No one else seemed to be showing any effects of the festivities from the night before.
“Morning,” he said, his voice grating slightly over his sandpaper vocal cords.
“Morning,” Zoe smiled pleasantly at him. Being in the country seemed to take the anxious edge off of her for some reason.
“You had a good night’s sleep,” said Olive Blanchard, ushering Nick to a chair and setting a cup of thick, coffee in front of him, black as tar.
