“Like I mentioned the other night, they are called puck bunnies, who just want to say they slept with a hockey player or try to land one as a boyfriend or husband.There aren’t a ton of them, and they’re not for me,” he continued when she looked at him skeptically.“Yeah, I’m not going to lie, it’s weird having some random woman smooshing her tits against you.But on the other side of the coin, we have season ticket fans that I genuinely enjoy meeting.They’re amazing with their signs and support on social media.That I don’t mind.”
“Tough not to engage when they practically rub their boobs in your face.”
“Now that does sound like jealousy.”
“No.”
“I like it.The jealousy, that is.”
“Too bad.Not jealous.”She toyed with the square napkin under her beer mug.“Let’s get back to this.Why was your response with Trish different than the women from the other night?The whole dinner, really.You seemed so angry, so...Mister Bluster Britches.”
“Mister Bluster Britches,” he said incredulously.“Seriously?”
“You know what I mean,” she paused.“It’s the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room we haven’t really talked about.Why were you so agitated the night of our food truck dinner?I mean, you were the one who said we should go out, and then returned with a massive thunder cloud roaring above your head.”
It was all Wolfe could do than to share the shit that went down with his dad, but the words sat in concrete in his throat.
“Just work stuff,” he tried to shrug it off.
His reply resulted in BB lifting up the perfect arch of her brow higher.“Try again.”
Silence stretched between them.
The stubbornness Aspen exuded with her shop extended to this moment and her don’t-give-me-your-bullshit excuses.No one dared to challenge him like that.He was ConnorfuckingWolfe.
Before he realized it, the words began pouring from his mouth.
“Just had a rough phone call with my dad.Par for the course.Let’s just say we don’t see eye-to-eye and sometimes his phone calls affect me far more than they should for far longer than it should.”
“That’s fair.”
A big gaping hush fell over the table.The only sound that could be heard featured the clanking of plates and the low murmur of the other diners in the restaurant.
“Want to share more?”Aspen asked, a look of concern across her face.
“No.”
“I totally get the parent thing,” she said, neatly ignoring his protest to continue the conversation.“I don’t know the particulars of your situation, but for me, I felt so betrayed by my folks when I bought the bakery.They didn’t share the depths of the issues.I thought I could take over and go up, not have to climb out.You’ve seen firsthand how little they did around the shop for the years they had the place, and, instead of helping me dig out from what they’d thrown me into, they needed every single penny to pay for a place they bought in Florida.And, as if that wasn’t enough of a slap in the face, they needed additional financial support from me.That said, they call me to tell me how to run the business all the time when it’s obvious they weren’t stellar in operating the business in the first place.”
She promptly cut off her words.
“That’s bullshit, BB,” Wolfe was even more appalled at the situation she battled through.“You’d almost be better off selling the business due to the primo location and finding a new spot where you could start fresh.”
“Not willing to do that, Connor,” she said with conviction.“My place is right there.I’ve spent my life downtown.I’m not ready to give it up.”
“What about investors?”
He’d write her a check tomorrow if he thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she’d take the money.
“That’s fair, but I want to do this on my own, not owe anyone else.”
“Which is why you won’t take anything from me other than the labor around the shop.”A statement, not a question.
He began to understand her perspective.He didn’t like it, but comprehended it.
“Getting back to parents in general, although they mean well, sometimes they aren’t the most helpful in situations,” she circled back to Wolfe’s original confession.“I speak for myself when I say that time might be the biggest healer of all.For me, the longer my folks are in Florida, the more I’m starting to feel like the bakery is really my own, even though they try to tell me how to run it.”
Wolfe pondered her sensible words and thought about every single conversation he’d had with his father since he was twelve.Each chat ended the same way: A drunken berating about how Wolfe wasn’t good enough and that it should have been him that died, not his sister, topped off with a serving of you killed your mother.
