I will always love Robert for being there for me. Even if I’m nothing more than his little secret.
I give him a peck on the lips, grabbing ahold of his shoulders. “Have fun tonight; I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Brody
“It’s good, isn’t it?” Griffin’s question comes with the hollow thunk of his empty glass hitting the bar-height table in the back corner of the brewery. “The best recipe yet.” He double taps the bottom of his tasting glass after throwing back the small bit of what was left in it.
The sweet taste of hops is fresh and, more importantly, smooth.
I take another swig, letting it sit for a moment before swallowing it and pushing my glass forward on the hard rock maple. “It’s damn good.”
Griffin smiles as he pushes his hair out of his face. I swear when we were younger his dark brown eyes matched his dark hair perfectly. I guess the sun is making his hair lighter down South. His foot doesn’t stop tapping on the barstool even if he is grinning like a fool. The nervous energy about him is nothing but excitement.
“You know it’s good,” I tell him and take in the place. We’re at the only table in the brewery. All the shiny metal reflects the lighting from above in the old storage center. It’s perfect for brewing. Tall, twelve-foot-high ceilings and a single open space. That’s all we need. A place to brew. “Now we just need to get it going and start selling.”
“See, that’s the problem.”
He bought this place and I love it. It’s only the first step of many for what we have in store, though. Nailing down the recipes for the beer doesn’t matter if:
It isn’t a damn good beer.
We can’t sell it.
“The beer is good, but we still don’t have a license for South Carolina.” My best friend shrugs with his gaze fixed downward at the empty glass and lets out a long exhale. It’s the first time I’ve seen him look like this since he moved down here.
“I thought everything was moving along right on schedule?” I ask him, feeling my back lengthen as I sit up straighter. “You set up shop, then I come down and we get to work on the brewery and the bar.”
“I set up the brewery and we’ve got everything we need, but we don’t have a license to distribute.”
My nod is easy and short as I rub the stubble at my jaw mindlessly. “I thought you got it last week?” With a pinched brow I stare at him, waiting for an answer as unease runs through me.
I had the money, he had the knowledge, and together we had the same dream.
“Just a license is all that’s standing in the way, right? We’re still doing good on budget.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he answers and leans back. That restless tapping comes back, though. “We’re good on the budget. They just aren’t reviewing the application and I don’t know why.”
“I thought you knew people. Don’t you have connections?”
“I’m hardly connected,” he tells me. “My uncle lives down here but not in this township. But this is where the money is. The tourism and lots of generational wealth are all here. This is where we have to sell it. I just need a way in so we can get this license approved.”
“No connections … At least you have the accent, though,” I say, hoping the joke will lighten things up. Everyone down here sounds different from me. A hint of a twang is part of the Southern charm. It reminds me of a girl I hooked up with when I went to visit Griffin once. My nerves prick at the memory. I can’t shake the thoughts of her since I’ve been down here. I haven’t thought about Rose in a while, but this past week, she’s been coming to mind more and more. I tell myself it’s because Griffin and I came up with this plan back then when I met her.
“All right, well,” I say and let out a sigh, my thumb now tapping on my jeans in time with Griffin’s foot against the bar. I guess the nervous energy is contagious. “Let’s get the hell out of here and see if we can’t make some headway at the bar?”
“What are we going to do if we can’t get the license?” he asks with his voice low, true uncertainty written on his face. “You want to move the bar to my hometown?” He’s younger than me, fresh out of college. Broke as all hell and he spent the last eight months doing all this work, spending all my money. I can tell he needs the payoff. He needs something good to go our way.
With my hand on his shoulder, I squeeze once. “We have the brewery and the recipes, so we can always sell somewhere else, it just means more costs and we’d have to sell the bar … which …” Which would be fucking devastating, a time suck, and a waste of money. I don’t finish the sentence. I’m not going to kick the man when he’s down.
“We’ll do whatever we have to do. This beer is better than any of the shit in the liquor stores around here and on tap in their bars.” I slap my palm down on the table and tell him, “We worked too hard to go home now.”
“You didn’t do shit,” Griffin says and finally cracks a smile as I slip on my jacket, ready to get the hell out of the brewery that ate up my savings and might have been useless to build down here. That sense of unease from earlier starts to eat away at me again and that tells me one thing: I need to get moving and focus on something else.
“You’re going to stay down here, right?” Griffin asks as he stands up, the legs of his stool scratching against the concrete floor.
“Yeah, I think so,” I say half-heartedly. My lease ran out when Gramps died and I have no desire to go back home. There’s no reason to at all, besides my mom’s cooking on Sunday family dinners. She gets why I had to leave, though. She understands how close I was to the old man.
I answer him absently about whether or not I’m staying. “I’ll be here at least until we get the liquor license and make sure things are back on track.”
Griffin scoffs as he takes the two glasses to a larger basin sink. “That could be a few weeks, or it could be a few months. They approve very few applications for those who aren’t from around here and given the lack of response I’m getting ...” he trails off and shakes his head, looking past me at all the brand-new equipment.
“We have the state license. We can sell. Just not in a bar. We’ll make it work for now.”
Standing straight up, Griffin’s my height. It was a running joke among our friend group back in high school that that’s why we saw eye to eye. We grew up the same in more ways than that. He’s leaner, though, and smarter than me in a lot of ways. I’m good with my hands and I’m willing to take risks that most people don’t. Together, we’re going to figure this shit out.
“Stop worrying. Some things take time and we’ve got that. I’ll stay as long as it takes.”
“If we don’t get that license,” he starts to say, continuing to dwell on it as I walk past him toward the large steel double doors, not bothering to stress about something I don’t have control over yet.
“Let’s head over to the property anyway and see how the construction team is doing.” Turning to look back at him I add, “I need a break from beer tasting.”