Page 51 of Best Kind of Trouble
He gives me an uncertain look. “Sophie asked you not to call me that.”
“What about you? Areyouasking me not to call you that?”
I’m not just giving him a hard time because I’m an asshole. A man needs to learn how to stand up for himself, especially around bigger men. It’s a lesson my dad taught me, but clearly this kid hasn’t learned it yet.
He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny throat, then says, “Yeah. My name’s Otis.”
“Well, all right, Otis.” I reach for his hand and shake it. “Show me the way. We’ll get everything set up for her.”
“You’re going to help?”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
Maybe it’ll make up for the bad news I’m about to unload on her when she gets back from lunch.
“Oh, that’s so great,” Otis says, his face lighting up.
I grunt in response and open the door. We walk outside together, the cold hitting me in a good way. Waking me up.
“Aren’t you, like, cold?” the kid asks. “Or do your muscles keep you warm? I read that somewhere, that someone with a lot of muscles doesn’t get as cold. I was wondering if it was bullshit.”
“Most things are bullshit.”
I follow him to an illegally parked green Subaru with a taped-up bumper. A small table is attached to the roof of the car upside down, like a bug flipped onto its back, and two chairs are arranged on its underbelly. The ropes are twined around so many times it looks like someone was trying to make a mummy.
“I take it you never worked for a Christmas tree farm,” I say with a sigh.
“No, why?”
“No reason. I’ll be right back.”
I run back inside to Silver Star’s basement and return with a pair of shop shears.
“Oh, no, we can just unravel?—”
I cut the rope. “I’ll teach you how to tie a proper knot later.If you want to finish this while Briar’s at lunch, we have to get moving.”
“Right,” he says, perking up. “I can’t wait to see the look on her face.”
He obviously means it. This kid would probably give up his right nut for Briar Sterling. Maybe the left one too, if she asked nicely. Then again, something tells me Briar Sterling could have as many men’s balls as she wants—a whole collection of them she could wear as earrings.
The thought makes me grin, but the grin fades as a voice inside my head says,You practically offered yours up the other night.
I clap the kid on the back—too hard, I guess, because he stumbles a step. “Let’s get you that smile.”
We spend the next forty minutes or so getting the barrel room set up. The table and chairs are heavy—mahogany, he says, from an estate sale—so I bring them downstairs myself, telling the kid he should get going with the flower shit.
“There are lanterns too,” he says excitedly.
After I get the furniture set up in the dark, slightly dank room, I help him weave the flower garlands between the barrels. It feels counterproductive, given that we’re eventually going to need to take those barrels down to use them for their intended purpose, but it does look better. Especially once we get the small copper lanterns hung, along with some twinkle lights that stream down the side of the brick wall opposite the barrels.
“She picked all this out herself?” I ask again as we get a thick purple tablecloth arranged over the table.
When I looked at this room, I only ever saw a dank space—a place that served a purpose but otherwise added nothing to the brewery.
Briar, though…she saw an opportunity.
The woman has vision.
