Page 5 of Best Kind of Trouble
The last person, an intern who’s not even on the payroll, throws a bottle cap at my feet as a final insult. All the while, that awful song is playing in the background. The song finishes and restarts, adding insult to the injury.
I look up from the bottle cap at my feet and stare in dismay as the whole staff leaves en masse, pouring out into the cold through the back.
At least they’re not hanging around for beers the way Cleet and Ross did.
I look at my father, hoping he’s going to fix this mess he coerced me into making with him. But he gives me a broad, satisfied smile and pats his belly. “You know what, I’m going to give you the brewery early, honey. We’ll sign the paperstomorrow morning. If you can make it back from this one, I’ll know you’re a real Sterling after all.”
Then he leaves too, and I’m left a huddled mass of a person. I want to curl into a ball and pretend none of this ever happened. But this problem is mine. This brewery is mine.
But there’s no brewery without a brewer. If Bubba has been bad-mouthing me, no brewer will want to work with me, let alone a talented one who could turn this business around.
No one will want to work for me, period.
I stumble into the tasting room, briefly thankful that at least Ross and Cleet have finally left. No one else is around, so at least the staff warned the customers before they up and quit.
My only conscious thought is that I need to leave too. I need my friends. I only stay long enough to flip the sign to CLOSED and lock up. Then I head toward Big Catch Brewing, my mind in a haze.
Unless a miracle happens, I’m screwed.
CHAPTER TWO
LIAM
“Mr. Miracle, huh?” asks a gangly, curly-haired guy I’ve never seen before. He gestures pointedly at my name tag.
Hi! My name isMR. MIRACLE,and I like toWOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW.
I grin, patting the name tag, a “gift” from the new retirement-age floor manager at Big Catch Brewing. I like him as much as I like anyone, especially since he’s friendly with my sister, Hannah, but he needs to lighten up. So I’ve taken it upon myself to help him out by messing with the name tags he forces everyone to wear.
He even brought them out tonight, for a party, so he was basically asking for people to revolt.
“That’s not actually your name, is it?” the curly-haired guy presses, raising his eyebrows.
A grin spreads across my face. “It’s my preferred nickname. I also answer to Sir Miracle.”
“Or ‘asshole’ will do too,” suggests Travis, Hannah’s boyfriend.
My grin stretches wider. I actually like this boyfriend. I hope he doesn’t screw up with Hannah and force me to tear him from limb to limb.
“It’s just a little joke between me and the new evening floor manager,” I explain to the new guy, who isn’t wearing one of the name tags.
“Oh, you mean my dad,” New Guy says, glancing around the crowded space for his father, one Eugene Peebles.
Huh. No shit. It’s a good thing I didn’t say any of the other crap I have on my mind. Like: Big Catch is boring as hell, and we have to make our own fun. Or: I got sick of working here before I started, and that was four years ago.
Four long, tedious years.
Boring is good,Hannah would tell me, even though she doesnotthink boring is good. None of us Moroneys do. We were born with a wildness at our core that nothing can fully satisfy.
What Hannah would mean is that boring is good forme.
I suppose she has some say in the matter, given that my sister is the only reason I’m employed right now. Yup that’s right. I was given this job as a favor to her. Hannah was working as an evening floor manager at Big Catch at the time, and I’d just lost my job at Mountain Morning Brewing for beating up the owner.
Trust me when I say he deserved it.
Other people did not agree with me, unfortunately. I got arrested and condemned to a year of probation and a round of anger management classes. In all likelihood, that’s whatIdeserved, although it would have made it hard for me to find a job if Hannah hadn’t pulled some strings for me.
Can’t say the classes did much for me. I met my buddy Mick at one of them, though, and he introduced me to boxing—theone activity in life where punching people is allowed and even encouraged. He owns a crappy little gym that I go to several times a week.
