Page 73 of Bounced!

“Then you call me, but there won’t be an emergency.”

“You don’t know that. The last time you left me in charge of something, it was the group chat, and look how that turned out.” He was already vibrating with the responsibility of it. “I’m going to do such a good job. You’re going to come back and weep.”

“I believe you,” I said, which was true in more ways than one. I got Finn out the door before Benji could start deputizing people.

We drove separately, him behind me the whole way. By the time we got to my place, the afternoon light was going long and gold through the kitchen. It should’ve been a nice hour, but it wasn’t. I got a pot of coffee going, because we were both going to need it, and I set my cell on the island, face up and dark, waiting like a thing you have to work up to.

We stood there and stared at it.

“You ready?” Finn asked.

“No.”

“Good. Neither am I.” He wrapped both hands around his mug. “I’d be worried about the both of us if we were.”

I’d been in business seven years with this man, our friendship stretching even further back. We’d had seven years of opening and closing and slow Tuesdays and the one flood and the two bad health inspections and the time the toilet backed up on New Year’s Eve. I’d built the place, but I hadn’t built it alone. He’d signed the same papers I had. It was his name on the same walls.

And there we were in my kitchen, two grown-ass men afraid of a phone.

“Whatever the number is,” I said, “we hear it, we don’t flinch, and we don’t decide anything. We just get it. That’s all this call is. A number.”

“Look at you, so very calm and rational.”

“I’m not calm, Finn. I’m trying not to throw up.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Me, too, but you’re doing the voice. It’s nice. Keep doing it. One of us should sound like a grown-up.”

I picked up the phone before I could think about it any longer, I put it on speaker, then I set it back on the island between us so we’d both hear it land, whatever it was.

It rang twice.

“Mark?” Gerald answered, sounding warm and tired. It was late for him, at four o’clock. “I had a feeling you might call again.”

“Gerald, I’ve got Finn here with me. You’re on speaker. I hope that’s all right.”

“’Course it is. Finn, how are you, son?”

“Been better, Gerald,” Finn said. “Been a lot better.”

“Yeah.” There was a long breath on the line. “I imagine you have. I’ve been sick about it, if it helps, which I know it doesn’t. What can I do for you boys? I think I already told Mark all I’ve got.”

“You told me it was done,” I said. “And I believe you. I’m not calling to fight it. I’m calling because we want to try to buy the building back from Meridian, and before you say anything, I know how that sounds.”

The line was quiet a second.

“Mark,” he began gently, the same voice he’d used on our first call. “I don’t think you understand what you’re up against, and I say that with love. These aren’t people. They’re a fund, a pool of money in a suit. They didn’t buy just my building. They bought the whole block, your side and the side across the street, all of it. They didn’t buy it to flip it back to a bar owner in six months. They bought it to knock it all down.”

“Knock it down for what?” Finn asked.

“High-end condos.” Gerald said it like a bad word. “They want the land and the location, Finn, not the buildings. The buildings are just what’s standing on the land they want. There’s no re-selling one storefront out of that. It’d be like asking them to leave a bad tooth in.”

I looked at Finn. Finn looked at me. Neither of us said anything, because that was the real bridge we had to cross, right there, the one I’d been half hoping wasn’t as far as it looked. It was much, much farther.

“So there’s no number?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You kind of did,” Finn snapped, his redheaded frustration boiling over.