Using my key, I opened the bar and held the door for her. “How low?”
Darcy stepped inside and took one of the chairs down from where it was turned upside down on the tabletop. I stepped in after her and then joined her. She sat, spreading out some papers for me to look at. “Half of asking.”
“Half!” I screamed, pulling up a chair next to her. “No way.”
Darcy nodded, her slick blonde ponytail bopping as she did. “It’s a laundromat, so they have no use for the bar. They plan to gut it.”
I sighed. Maybe that was best. Gut the memories from this shithole and I could move on with my life.
“You want a drink?” I asked her and stood.
She shifted uncomfortably. “It’s two in the afternoon, Ashton.”
Darcy went to church every Sunday and dreamed about dating bad boys like me, but in reality I wasn’t what she wanted.
I winked. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Sometimes I went a few days without drinking just to prove I could. Just to prove I wasn’t like my dad.
When I returned to the table with a whiskey on the rocks, I looked down at the papers. “Half my asking?”
She nodded. “But you get to keep the apartments above. They’ll do a property split. Half asking for the bar and you keep the apartments.”
That was decent. At least Mrs. Pennyweather in 1B wouldn’t be out on her ass and I’d still have somewhere to live. And once I finally rented out Jenna’s apartment across the hall from mine, maybe I could break even on the mortgage. But half asking … I did the quick math in my head. After paying the bank, personal loan from Gran and the second … no. I couldn’t.
“I can’t do that, Darc. Ask for more, okay?”
She frowned. “Ashton, it’s been on the market a while, and … if I ask for more, they might walk.”
“It’s half my asking,” I reminded her, reaching out to tap the offer.
She eyed my tattooed arm with a hooded gaze.
She nodded. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do, but just think about the offer, okay?” She stood just as I poured my whiskey into the Starbucks coffee she’d brought me.
Her eyes fell to my chest and the tip of the scar that peeked out of the top of my t-shirt. It was a hard scar to hide, especially in summer, and I knew she was dying to ask about it.
“You know some friends and I are going out tonight … if you want to close early and meet up?” She smiled and it only made her more beautiful, more tempting.
Darcy Becker was pure and I wouldn’t taint her.
“Nah, you go on and have fun.”
She chewed at her lip again and I started to rethink my plan. Why the fuck was I passing up a night with Darcy Becker on account of attempting to be a gentlemen?
“Keep your cell on! I’m selling this place!” she called out behind her before I could change my mind and ask her up to my apartment.
It wasn’t good to mix business and pleasure anyway. But her ambition was almost as sexy as she was. Shaking Darcy and her bottom lip from my mind, I started to go through the motions of opening the bar, all the while thinking about the offer.
Half of asking. If they could just come up a little bit. Another twenty-five grand or so…
That would just pay off the loan my dad took on it twenty years ago, and the second I took on it to put him through rehab two times, and the third personal loan I’d taken from Gran to put him through rehab a third time. It would leave me with nothing, but I’d be free. Free to use my business degree and get a decent job, something that didn’t require mopping up vomit or roughing up drunkards. But if I was being honest, I liked owning the bar. Well, maybe not this failing bar, but I liked being my own boss, having my own business, not working in a cubicle.
A laundromat.
To see my father’s lifelong dream get turned into a laundromat might be worth selling at half of asking.
The phone rang, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Wayne’s Place, this is Ashton.”
“Ash, it’s Cruise.” My fry cook only called before a shift to say he wasn’t coming in. He sounded hungover.
“No, man. You can’t cancel. Maria left and I have no backup.”
“I’m sick, bro. You want me to bring the flu in and get all the customers ill?” He didn’t sound sick, he sounded tired.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t care,” I told him. I was selling this shithole soon anyway.
He let a big fake cough rip. “Bro. I can’t.”
Mother fucker.
When you worked in the restaurant business as long as I had, you learned the difference between a real and a forced cough. A girl suddenly giggled in the background.
“You lying motherfucker!” I shouted, losing my temper. Maybe starting off my day with whiskey wasn’t a good idea.
“Hey, I have rights. I have rights to days off when I’m sick!” he snapped.
“Fuck you, Cruise. You’re fired.” I slammed the phone on the counter and the mouthpiece cracked. This place was going to go down in flames and I didn’t care anymore. The fryer was on its last leg anyway. I just wouldn’t serve food for a few days until Darcy got me a better offer. I would need to convince my grandma to sell it. She was co-signer on the bar for that third personal loan, so I’d have to run everything by her.
I glanced at my watch.
One hour until opening.
I should go for a walk, get fresh air, but it was too damned hot out for that.
My phone alarm blared, and I glanced down at it.
Meds.
Heading behind the counter, I started to robotically pop off the lids of the four different medications I took to keep my body from rejecting my
