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Bennett
I DROVE BYLyra’s house, but the lights were off.Damn it. Is it Sophia’s dance-class night?I used to have her schedule memorized, but it seemed to change every season. I couldn’t keep up.
Fuck.Each moment that went by made me feel worse. I should have rushed after her and apologized immediately. I cringed every time I remembered what I’d said, and I could only hope that Lyra wasn’t thinking about it as often as I was. I’d been a total ass, even more so than usual. Her being a single parent wasn’t her fault. Well, not entirely. Anyway, that wasn’t what mattered. Lyra was a kickass mother, and Sophia was a happy, well-adjusted little girl with plenty of uncles acting as father figures.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. Beside me, Larry thumped his tail against the seat, looking at me as if to ask why we weren’t going in. “Sorry, bud,” I told him. “Your dad messed this all up.”
Sighing, I backed out of the driveway and headed toward the Banks Brew Co. This made two nights in a row that Grandpa Charlie had manned the bar instead of me, and it was making me twitchy. My discomfort with having a night off was a relatively new phenomenon. Since I’d taken the lead role, I didn’t like staying away too long.
I hooked the leash on Larry’s collar, and he looked at me again, this time with aHuh?expression. “Sorry, dude,” I told him. “We’ll only be here a few minutes.”
I secured him to a lead inside the fence of the empty outdoor seating area and didn’t make eye contact as I opened the door to go inside and leave him in the cold.Aww, hell.I backtracked, opened the outdoor closet, and wrestled a heater out. I plugged it in close enough that he could curl up to it but not so close that he could knock it over. That would do for the short amount of time he’d be outside.
When I walked into the Brew Co., the first thing I saw was Declan behind the bar.What… the…?
I stomped toward him. “What the hell are you doing?”
He halted midpour. “Drafting an IPA?”
“I can see that, but why? You don’t belong there. Where’s Grandpa Charlie?”
“I’m right here,” came his voice from the end of the bar. He raised his glass in greeting. “Declan is in training.”
“The fuck he is,” I muttered.
“Screw you,” Declan said.
“Why don’t you take a fifteen-minute break?” Grandpa Charlie climbed to his feet and walked around the bar, clapping Declan on the shoulder as he strode toward the break room. My grandfather stopped in front of me and simply stared at me, saying nothing.
Fuck.Some people ranted and raved when they were pissed, but Grandpa Charlie was not one of those. His silence was deafening.
“He should not be behind the bar,” I insisted while my internaldon’t piss off Grandpa Charlieradar was wailing at me to shut up. I’d never been good at heeding warnings. “He could poison someone.” It was a weak argument, even to my ears.
Grandpa Charlie calmly gestured to the bar area. “Do you keep arsenic, antifreeze, or ground-up daffodils back here?”
Daffodils are poisonous? How the hell does he know that, and more importantly, why?I frowned, wondering if I should be concerned that he knew about so many poisons offhand. I wasn’t so distracted by this random trivia that I missed his point, though. Worst-case scenario, Declan would mess up someone’s order. Tending bar wasn’t brain surgery. Still, the Banks Brew Co. had a reputation to uphold. The last thing we needed was a bunch of angry reviews on Yelp.
I scowled. “He isn’t trained.”
Grandpa Charlie put his hands flat on the bar and leaned toward me. “How will he get trained if he doesn’t get behind the bar?”
“I see your point, but—”
“Nobuts. That young man is your brother. He might not have a stick up his ass like you always have, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have potential.”
I took a moment to unpack that statement. I’d always been responsible and acted older than my age. So what? Someone had to step up when my biological father walked out on the family. If that meant I had a permanent stick up my ass, then so be it. There were worse things.
I wasn’t ready to roll over on the issue of Declan working the bar. “He regularly screws up the inventory.”
Grandpa Charlie crossed his arms. “So do I.”
Damn it.He had yet another point. This was two times in as many days that one of my siblings had rightfully told me to screw myself.But is it so wrong to take pride in my business—to want things done right?
Grandpa Charlie sighed. “Bennett, I admire your work ethic and what you’ve done with the place. You’ve taken it up a notch since you took charge. But loosen up.”
“Excuse me?”
He leaned his forearms on the bar. “You want to know the thing I regret the most? I wish I’d hired more help before your grandmother passed. No amount of money saved or earned is worth the time I could have spent with her.” Sadness colored his features in a way I’d never seen, not even in the immediate aftermath of my grandmother’s death when I was fifteen.
