Possessive Best Friend

Sylvia shrugs. “That helps, but a warehouse is a very expensive piece of property. It would make more sense for me to purchase to then resell to Amazon or someone like that.”

“True,” I say. “But long-term, this would be better. It would be an attraction for Lofthouse… it might bring in more business from other towns.”

“A tourist attraction,” she says, her voice flat.

“Yes, I know how that sounds,” I say. “But Loftville could use a few tourist dollars.”

She nods once. “I see your point.” She sighs and looks back at the canvas. “I’ll consider it.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Lora says and nods at me. I step back and leave the room. I hear Lora say something else, but it’s muffled. She follows me out a moment later, shutting the door behind her. We descend in silence until we reach the bottom.

Lora turns to me and I’m surprised to see anger in her eyes.

“What was that back there?”

“Sorry?” I ask.

“That whole thing about you being involved like that’ll help.”

“I was just trying to make her feel better about that sort of investment,” I say.

“I can make that business work,” Lora says. “I didn’t need…” She trails off, clenching her jaw.

“You didn’t need what?” I ask, stepping closer. “My help? Because that’s exactly what you need.”

She glares at me. “I just wanted some moral support.”

“Oh, come on, Lora.” I reach out and touch her cheek, but she pulls away. “You want me involved because I’ve been in business. I’m not saying you’re not capable, because I think you really are. But you need me. Hell, I think you want me. And now you’re too stubborn to admit it.”

She clenches her jaw. “That’s not it. I just didn’t like the implication that I can’t do it alone.”

“I’m sure you could,” I say softly. “But let me help you. I can make things easier for you.”

She stares at me for a long moment then shakes her head. “It’s fine. I can handle it from here.”

I smile. “I don’t think so,” I say.

“What?”

“I’m not just letting you go. You did me a favor… and now I’ll do you one.”

She glares at me but her expression softens. “Still an asshole,” she says.

“And you love it. Now come on, take me out of his crazy maze.”

She smiles and leads the way. I get a nice view of her ass then follow along.7LoraI spend all day thinking about what I want to do with that warehouse, even though I don’t own it yet. I can’t help myself. Even though the idea of opening some kind of indoor fun park never once occurred to me until a couple days ago, now it’s the only thing I can think about.

It feels good. For the first time in a while, I finally feel like I have a project.

Around three that afternoon, the phone rings. I’m sitting out by the pool and I answer with a little smile. “Hi, Shaun,” I say.

“How’s it going?”

“Not bad, just hanging out. How’s LA?”

“Oh, you know, making tons of money.”

“I watched the premier of Divas Go Postal. I serious never thought a TV series based around pretty girls doing mundane postal tasks would be entertaining, but here we are.”

“That one was my idea,” he says and laughs. “Klara wanted to do Divas Get Financial and have them running some like fake hedge fund. But I thought that was a little too highbrow for our audience.”

“You have so much faith in them.”

“Well, it’s true. Postal won out in testing, so here we are.”

“Not gonna lie though, Financial sounds insane. It’d be even better if their prize money was based entirely on how well they did selling stocks and stuff.”

“Oh my god,” he said. “If the actual money they get is whatever they earn? That’s fucking genius. I’m going to tell Klara as soon as we’re off the phone.”

I grin. “Better give me a producer credit.”

“Yeah, right. Go ahead and sue me, I dare you.”

I laugh and stretch my legs. “So did you talk to Mom recently?”

“You know I haven’t,” he says. “I avoid that whenever possible.”

“Well, I have exciting news. Sort of, I don’t know if it’s real or not yet.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m buying a warehouse.”

He laughs then stops. “Wait, really?”

“Really,” I say. “There’s an empty warehouse down on Spruce, I think they used to ship toilet paper? Anyway, I’m going to buy it and turn it into an indoor fun park thing.”

He lets out a breath. “Like, go-karts and arcade games?”

“Yep!” I say and laugh. “I know it’s crazy, but I was talking to Dean and he said—”

“Wait, Dean?”

“Sure, you remember him, from high school?”

“Oh, shit, Dean Ashman. The guy you had a huge crush on and never did anything about it, right? You guys were like best friends.”

“First of all, okay, yes, but it’s fine now, we’re cool again.”