“Whatever you’re thinking, forget it. You don’t know anybody with that kind of money.”
“I might.”
“I know Johnny’s got his heart set on owning a bar and believe me, I’d love to make that happen for you two. Nobody knows this place like him. But there’s no way in hell you can even ballpark the offers I’m hearing.”
“What’re the offers, Mitch?”
“Around six hundred grand,” he said.
Lola looked at the floor. More than Beau’s proposition—but people took out small business loans all the time, didn’t they? Maybe not for that much, but the difference? She cleared her throat. “If Johnny and I could come up with the money—”
“Hey,” Mitch said, shaking his head. “Come on. You and Johnny are good kids. You’ve always been straight. Don’t tell me that’s changed.”
“Hypothetically.”
Mitch bit the end of his pen and reclined in his seat, studying her. “If you can make me a decent offer, and if you’re upfront with yourselves about the hard work ahead of you, then you should. Hypothetically? Buying this bar would be easier than Johnny starting his own, but not much considering the state of things. It’s not like I want to see my dad’s place destroyed, but I can’t feed myself off my principles anymore. Once I get my check, it’s out of my hands.”
Lola returned to the front of the house. Johnny poured three shots in his bartender’s rhythm, one at a time and without stopping. Lola stayed off to the side. He said something to the three girls in front of him as he patted his beer gut and laughed. That beer gut had been a valley nine years ago when she’d started dating a tall, skinny, twenty-four-year-old Johnny with darkish hair past his ears—hair that was now down to his shoulder blades and always in a ponytail. The valley was now a small hill. That beer gut had history. She liked it and what it stood for.
Johnny wouldn’t survive a new owner. He’d been doing things his way for too long. And she sure as hell wouldn’t stick around without him. Nobody liked change, especially not Johnny, and it was on the horizon, speeding their way.
* * *
The ride home that night was quiet. Lola went over the numbers in her head again and again. If Walken bought Hey Joe, she figured they could be out of their jobs within weeks. She listed alternatives. They’d both have to hustle, because even though Lola had been thinking lately she might like to try something new, they couldn’t survive on Johnny’s wages alone. She’d have to work while she figured her shit out. Fall classes had already started, so school was out of the question for a few months at least.
She looked over at Johnny as he pulled into their apartment complex. He’d been preoccupied, but not about losing their jobs. It was as if he expected everything to just figure itself out—the way he expected getting married, having kids and owning a business would happen on their own. He was thirty-three. They’d been driving through a tunnel for the last eight years, and they were about to come out of the darkness. She couldn’t see what was on the other side, but at least she was trying.
“Johnny?” she asked when they’d parked and he reached for the handle.
He looked back. “Yeah?”
“You’re my best friend.”
“It’s late, babe.”
She smiled, a little resigned. “I know. But you are. When we’re young, we think we’re invincible. Then we get older, and it’s like we realize not everything works out all the time. If you want certain things, you have to put in the effort for them. Or even make sacrifices.”
Johnny put his hand over hers on the seat. “What’s bringing this on?”
She squinted out the windshield. “Money was a big deal to my mom. She would say ‘The toaster’s broken. We got no money, so we have to live with broken toasters and ripped screen doors that won’t even keep out a fly, forget about a robber.’ I had no idea who’d want to rob us. We had nothing. She said that was naïve and stupid, because desperate people were everywhere.
“She told me money was the reason my dad left. There wasn’t enough. So I believed money and happiness were inextricably linked until I met you and decided love was more important. I was in a dark place, but you came in and saved me. Since then, I’ve tried hard to convince myself money isn’t important at all.”
Johnny sniffed. “Now you realize it is.”
“Mitch said something to me today. He said, ‘I can’t feed myself off my principles anymore.’ It’s kind of the same with love. Those things are so much, Johnny, but they aren’t everything like I wish they were. Money can give us stability and freedom. It can give us choices.”
Johnny released her hand and ran his palms down his pants to his knees. “Life is easier with working appliances,” he said flatly.
“If someone buys the bar, we’ll probably lose our jobs.”
“I know.”
“Do you know? You’re more concerned about Hey Joe being glamorized than you are about how we’ll survive.”
“I don’t see the point in worrying about it until we know more,” he said. “Something could still happen.”
“Something like what?” Lola asked. If Johnny said it out loud, she wouldn’t have to. Not knowing if he wanted her to accept the offer was almost worse than if he’d just come out and tell her to do it. She was stuck, and she had no idea which door would lead to their happiness.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But there’s still time.”
“There isn’t any more time,” Lola said. “Are we stupid not to take the only exit we’ll ever get? Buying the bar isn’t just keeping our jobs. It’s following your dream. It’s building a life and having a steady income and saving a legacy. All in one night.”
“So what’re you saying?” Johnny asked. He wouldn’t look at her. “You want my permission to sleep with another man?”
Lola turned in her seat to face him. “I don’t look at it that way,” she said. In fact, she had been very good about not looking at it that way. When she thought of Beau, she didn’t let her mind stray too far to the man she’d thought he was before he’d tried to buy her. That was the man she’d thought about during sex with Johnny. Just as she’d had his attention, he’d had hers. But that wasn’t the man he’d turned out to be. “All I see is what that money could do for our future. I could do this, for us, and it would never mean a thing because you are what’s important to me.”
He was quiet for a few tense seconds. Suddenly, he slammed his fist against the steering wheel.
She bit her lip. “It’s not that I want to—”