“Kids do dumb things,” he says.
“They do. But they do less dumb things when they have smart things to do instead. And that’s why I want this building, Spencer.” I flip open my binder and whirl it around to face him. My finger jabs a page with a mock-up of the interior I plan on installing. “If anyone in the world understands young, dumb kids, it’s me. I wrote the book on it.”
He looks at me over the rim of his glasses. “You aren’t really helping yourself here.”
“This place is a bar. People think of bars as places lushes go to get tanked. That’s true to some extent, I guess, but not completely. This place keeps a lot of people from drinking down country roads. From staying home when they’re lonely and drinking themselves to death. Instead, they come here, catch a conversation, maybe a game, and then they go home. Alive. Maybe even feeling a little better than they were when they arrived. I want to recreate this with pool tables and game systems and—”
“And not turn a profit.” He closes the binder and sighs. “The truth of the matter is a business relationship like this demands a lot of trust, and that’s something I don’t give easily.”
I can’t argue with that.
My gaze lands on the binder. Sandwiched inside that plastic cover is weeks and months of planning. Of a harebrained, half-assed idea that consolidated into something I want to do. I need to do, really, in some weird way.
His hand goes to his briefcase, and I look up. He’s ready to walk out of here, money still in his proverbial pocket, and I don’t know how to keep him here. I don’t know what to say. I know what he needs to hear, but nothing I can say will work.
There’s nothing I can do that I haven’t already done.
What I need is a miracle, and it’s been proven I’m not the miracle-getting kind of guy.
Ten
Hadley
Having no plan is better than having a bad plan.
I think.
Looking up at the unlit letters of Crave, I wonder if Machlan plans to fix the ‘a’. It seems to drop a little more every time I see it. Knowing him, he probably thinks it makes the place seem less yuppie and fully expects to just let it hang until it eventually breaks free and falls to the sidewalk.
Kind of like me.
Rolling my eyes at my dramatics—although not completely untrue—I take my keys and stick them in my pocket. But I don’t move. I just sit in my car and look at the bar.
I don’t know why he loves this place so much—more than he might’ve ever loved me.
There are nights when I’m lying in bed thinking about my past, and I wonder, if Machlan hadn’t bought Crave, would we have had a chance? Was the bar the nail in our coffin or the stamp on an ending that was predestined from the start?
Samuel’s name flashes on my phone. I silence it while wishing I could silence myself.
Climbing out of the car, I take my time walking down the sidewalk. There’s no hurry because I don’t know what I’m going to say.
I tug open the door. Cool air rushes against my skin as my stomach tumbles at Machlan’s energy pummeling me from somewhere close. My eyes adjust to the light.
Machlan is standing at the end of the bar, wearing a pair of jeans and a black collared shirt stretched over his body. The sleeves are short enough to display the end of the colorful art decorating the top of his right arm. It’s only when the person beside him turns to face me do I even realize he’s not alone.
“Hadley?” Spencer Eubanks’s face breaks into a smile. “Is that you?”
“Mr. Eubanks,” I say, hoping I’m covering my confusion. “What are you doing here?”
Machlan stands behind Spencer. His hand motions between me and Spencer and ends with a shrug. I give him a subtle shake of the head.
“I was talking with Machlan about a business proposal,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
I ignore his second question and, instead, focus on the first. “A business proposal? This sounds interesting.”
“It’s not.” Machlan flashes me a look. “What do you need, Had?”
Climbing on a barstool a couple of seats down from the end to leave plenty of space between me and the men, I smile. “I wanted to talk to you about a proposal of my own.”
There’s a glimmer in Machlan’s eyes that tells me he took that the wrong way. My thighs pull together in an ill-fated attempt at dulling the combustion at the seat of my core.
The fucker somehow reads this, or at least predicts it, because the corner of his lip flickers toward the ceiling. I glare at him for good measure.
“Do you know each other well?” Spencer asks. His question feels like someone just walked in on me dressing, and I actually jump.