Les Be Honest, page 16
Moving locations would be an incredible amount of money out of my pocket. We were already more than halfway done with renovations on the current space, and having to redo those efforts in a new location would double the start-up costs. Not to mention all our business information, legal paperwork, and marketing had been done with that specific address. That would be a bit easier to change but an absolute time-sucking headache for me.
“I can’t.” My feet literally wouldn’t move on the pavement.
Isa turned back to look at me. “What?”
“I can’t strategize right now,” I repeated. “Tomorrow. I’ll meet you at KiKi first thing tomorrow morning, and we’ll hit the ground running figuring all of this shit out. But not tonight. I have to…I have to go.”
She looked slightly concerned, but the trust on her face reminded me why I appreciated her friendship so much. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, Yas. We’re going to figure this out.”
I attempted the smallest of smiles and nodded my head. “See you tomorrow.”
It wasn’t lost on me that Isa had nothing to gain personally or financially by working so hard to help me make KiKi a reality, and that she was using her time and connections to benefit me. I was beginning to realize that her friendship meant a lot more to me than I had ever realized. When Mila had gotten married and had a baby, Rachel and I had both drifted apart a little bit, and I had been very cognizant of the hole both women had left behind.
But Isa had stepped in and filled it seamlessly—not in a way that replaced Mila, no one could do that. And, of course, Rachel was still a part of my life as often as she’d let me. But Isa brought an excitement and security to friendship that felt like an antidote to a nameless period of deep loss in my life.
By the time I arrived on my sister’s doorstep in Oxon Hill, Maryland less than thirty minutes later, tears were streaming down my face, and my contemplative Lyft ride over had me completely lost in my feelings.
Nia opened the front door to her three-bedroom, three-bathroom house that she’d gotten for the same price as a studio in Washington, DC. It was unbelievable how much the landscape could change even in such a short distance, but I’d always been so proud of her for saving up her own money from her job to buy this piece of property all on her own.
My older sister took one look at me and frowned. “Oh, Lord. Get inside.”
Shoulders slumped, I walked past her into the foyer and made my way right to her living room. Nia lived alone except for her long-haired gray male cat with white paws and a black nose that looked like a giant dust bunny and was currently sitting on the arm of her couch. I ignored him and threw myself onto the cushions.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said in the most dramatic fashion I could muster as I buried my face in the couch cushions.
I let out a growl-scream-type sound into the fabric then flopped over onto my back and kicked my feet up on the coffee table in front of me. Nia’s house was a walking advertisement for Home Goods, and as many times as I’d told her a house could only have so many live, laugh, love signs, she wanted no part of my opinion on it.
Nia had followed me more slowly and apparently took a detour to the kitchen because when she sat in the armchair across from me, she suddenly had a large mug of coffee in her hand. “I just brewed a pot. Want any?”
I closed my eyes and crossed my hands over my chest like I was in my own coffin. “Is it Folgers?”
“Maxwell House.”
A loud wail left my mouth. “Could today get any worse?”
Nia laughed. “Listen, I’m glad you’re here. I need some help.”
“Can I do it while not moving from this spot?” I came over to her house for help, and of course she’s got me helping her instead. “My legs are broken after the parade.”
“That’s fine. I only need your hands.”
A loud metallic clanging sound made me open my eyes really quick, and I saw Nia scooting a giant five-gallon water jug in front of me. The entire thing was filled with pennies, however. Not water.
“What the hell is this?” I sat up now and peered over the edge of the couch and into the jug. “Did you rob a bank or something?”
Nia shook her head as she took the seat next to me and reached into the jug. “No, I collect these and then go through them every year to find the coins of value.”
She extracted a penny that looked pretty dirty. “See, this one says 1985. It’s worth nothing. I mean, it’s worth a penny, but nothing more. We’ll put those ones in rolls.”
She handed me a stack of coin-rolling papers. “If you find one that’s from before 1982, put it to the side because that’s worth at least two and a quarter penny. They are mostly copper, but the ones they make since then are majority zinc and nobody wants that.”
I lifted my gaze to Nia’s face and just blinked a few times. “You are a coin collector?”
Had I ever even met my sister before? How did I not know she did this? There were thousands of pennies here—literally.
“Of course not,” she countered, extracting the next coin. “I sell them for a profit. It’s my side hustle.”
“At two and a quarter penny for an hour of sorting?” I reached in and grabbed a handful of coins and flattened them in my palm. “That is the worst side hustle I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Nia shrugged. “That’s rich coming from you.”
She had a point.
For the next thirty minutes, we sat quietly and just sorted through pennies. I actually found one penny that was from 1980, and although I’d never admit it, that was quite thrilling. I could kind of understand why my sister liked doing this—not that I’d ever do this unprompted on my own.
But still…I found one!
“Do you want to keep it?” my sister asked.
I palmed the dirty penny and rolled it over into my other hand. “Are you sure? It’s worth a whole two cents.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Nia replied, taking the coin from me and holding it up between her thumb and index finger. “Another way to look at it is that it’s worth double its value. That’s pretty impressive for something that’s been through so much wear and tear. Even after all these years, not only did it hold on to its worth, but it doubled it.”
I grinned slowly, but I could feel the weight on my chest lightening ever so much. “Is this a big sister teaching moment?”
She shrugged and handed the old penny back to me. “You asked for my two cents.”
I laughed.
There was a whole period in my twenties where I pitied myself for not growing up with my mother in my life. Losing her so young, I’d never even gotten the chance to know her, and that had been a hard pill to swallow when I’d seen friends at college go home to their parents or call their mothers or anything like that.
It wasn’t until I was about to turn thirty and my sister was already forty-one years old that I’d realized a lot of what I’d been grieving missing out on had been in my life, just in the form of Nia, my big sister. It wasn’t her role to be my mother, and she never should have had to fill those shoes. But she had. She mothered me my entire life, and I never said thank you. She never asked me to.
I glanced around her empty house as she kept sorting more pennies, wondering if her giving up so much of her life to take care of me meant that she’d lost the chance to pursue her own. I hoped that wasn’t the case, and that if she still wanted to find a partner one day, she would. I knew if I asked her, she’d cut her eyes at me and tell me I was being stupid.
So instead, I just leaned my shoulder into hers and pressed in slightly. “Thanks for the penny, Nia. I think I’ll keep it.”
She nodded, but didn’t look at me. “The guest room is set up if you want to stay the night. I’m making smothered pork chops for dinner.”
My brows perked up at that. “With your white sauce?”
“Yup.”
Signed, sealed, delivered. “I guess I can stay.”
Nia handed me another fistful of pennies. “Keep sorting. We have a lot to get through if we’re going to finish tonight.”
There was zero chance we were getting through five gallons worth of pennies tonight, but I kept sorting anyway. It was every bit the distraction, and somehow also the reminder, that I needed today.
Tomorrow, I’d go back to the bar and figure out how to move forward with Isa. I’d apologize to Tyler and maybe send a fruit basket or something to her dad—whatever she wanted. This bar was going to happen somehow, even if we hit road bumps like this licensure issue. I’d hit bumps in the road before and let them steer me off track, but not this time.
Because in the end, Nia was right. I was someone who didn’t just hold on to my worth after all this time—I doubled it.
Chapter Twenty
I fucking knew it.
“It could be a coincidence,” Isa stammered as she leaned her elbows against the bar top and watched my reaction. I should have known when she first handed me her phone with a look of hesitation on her face that I was about to see something I didn’t like, and holy heck, was that true. “The chair of the Pike Neighborhood Association probably golfed with a lot of different people—not just Tyler’s dad.”
I squinted my eyes at the Facebook photo posted publicly on the association’s page of the chair with his arm around Walter Adams’ shoulders this past weekend playing a round of golf at Washington Golf & Country Club together. They were announcing the sale of another property on Columbia Pike to Walter Adams and how his goal was to revitalize the neighborhood with his influx of cash and renovations.
He bought a dry cleaner attached to a mini-mart, and they were turning it into office space for the association so that they could “really dig into the work,” and a stationary store for the chair’s wife.
“This is definitely bribery, right? Like he absolutely bought their votes—with a fucking building,” I said, looking up at Isa and placing my phone down on the bar top.
Isa shrugged. “We can’t prove that it’s related at all.”
But of course it was. There was zero chance I was buying this all as some sort of tangential occurrence. Walter Adams didn’t want his daughter’s name attached to a queer bar—or queer anything—but he wasn’t going to be the one to dash her hopes. Instead, he’d pay someone else to do it. It literally read like a privileged stereotype.
“Has Tyler seen this?” I mean, it completely proved I was right, but this felt like the hollowest win ever. “Because she’ll connect the dots if she does. She has to.”
“Your relationship dynamics—or dysfunction—are not my concern right now,” Isa replied. “We need to move forward with a new location, because the current one isn’t happening.”
I groaned, closing my eyes and dropping my head backward. “I really don’t know how I’ll be able to do that financially. We’ve already put a lot of money into this place, and we’re set to open in literally two weeks. This is actually insane.”
Isa held up a file folder that had been sitting in front of her. “That actually brings me to the good news. Tyler’s building is offering to recoup the renovation costs so you can walk away with a clean slate. It won’t save us time, and we’ll have to find someplace that is move-in ready if we even have a remote chance of a soft launch in a few weeks, but at least we won’t be out everything you’ve already spent.”
My eyes widened. “Wait…really? He’s going to refund us everything?”
She nodded. “All the way down to the application fee.”
“So, what’s the catch?” Old Beady Eyed Adams was not out here trying to do me any favors, so I knew without a doubt that this gesture was coming with heavy strings. “What does he want in exchange for that?”
Isa slid her finger down the front of the paper and stopped on a line in the middle of the sheet. “The new location needs to be at least one mile away from this space—for non-compete purposes. They plan to give the space to another bar since it’s outfitted already that way and don’t want them to have competition from the jump.”
Stupid, but I honestly thought it would be worse. “Even though there’s like four other bars within a few blocks of here? I mean, fine. Sure, yeah, if that’s the only stipulation, then let’s get our money back.”
“There’s one more,” Isa responded, her finger trailing slightly lower on the paper. “They can’t financially compensate anyone affiliated with the building, so in order to get the money back, Tyler has to give up her percentage of the business as an investor. They are citing it as a conflict of interest for him to basically pay out his daughter, so she’d need to step away and the money would go to you only, the sole owner.”
And there it was.
Isa was already rounding the bar just based on whatever expression was on my face because she grabbed a bottle of tequila that was sitting on the back and popped it open.
Forget the glasses, she just handed me the entire bottle. “Here. Drink.”
I drank. No need to tell my therapist about this maladaptive coping skill.
When I came up for air, I let out a loud belch of righteous indignation. “Well, what if we fight fire with fire? I could ask my dad to investigate her dad, dig something up on him and force him to leave us alone.”
“Before we get into this fight, maybe you should think about what you actually want.” Isa crossed her arms over her chest and leaned sideways against the back bar. “I know you want this bar—but do you want it enough to lose the girl?”
I groaned. “Why does it have to be one or the other?”
“You tell me,” Isa replied. “Where is Tyler? She’s not here. You look like a sad, kicked puppy. She lives in a penthouse her dad owns and, presumably, loves him. You two have been secretive about everything going on between you, but I’ve also never seen you this twisted up over anyone. You were ready to tell her you love her yesterday, Yasmeen.”
“I’ve loved women before,” I countered, but refused to make direct eye contact with her because she’d see right through me.
Isa lightly scoffed at me. “You and I both know it’s never been like this before—at least, not in the time I’ve known you. Those are your words.”
Her phone rang on the bar top, and she grabbed it, swiping to answer on a FaceTime call. “Mila, can you take over here?”
My best friend’s face appeared on the screen, and seeing her was a breath of fresh air.
Isa handed the phone to me.
“Are you two in a fight?” Mila asked me. “Because I’m not getting in between that again.”
“Oh my god, that was one time, Mila,” Isa called out from the background, even though she wasn’t visible on the screen.
“It was enough to traumatize me for life,” Mila replied. “What’s going on, Yas?”
I quickly filled her in on everything that had transpired over the last forty-eight hours, and Ari came on screen in the back behind Mila. “Holy shit, Yasmeen. That’s so fucked.”
“I know, right? Does the Washington Times want to write a story on this?” I asked not so slyly. “I mean, I’ll give you the exclusive scoop.”
Ari walked closer to the camera, and she was holding their toddler on her left hip. “I’m about to leave on assignment to cover a trial at a hospital where a baby was decapitated during delivery and the hospital is trying to silence the parents with only ten thousand dollars.”
Real story, but this kind of shit is exactly why I didn’t chat with them daily. Mila and Ari’s life was weird. Period.
I sighed. “Okaaaaay, never mind then.”
“I could send someone else to cover it if you want?” Ari offered.
Mila looked at me. “I mean, do you want the story out there? When Ari did the story I gave her, I lost my job and my license to practice law.”
“I don’t have a job to lose,” I pointed out. “Hell, at this point, I don’t even have the bar.”
Mila shrugged. “Sure, but you have the girl. Or had? I’m confused on if you two are together or not right now. Either way, if you take down her dad in the court of public opinion, she might have some thoughts on that.”
Oh, she would definitely have thoughts. “I mean, if my dad was doing shady stuff like this, I’d want him to be caught and held responsible for his actions.”
Isa barked out a laugh. “That’s bullshit. If your dad called and said he murdered someone, you’d be helping hide the body. Anyone in your family would.”
“Okay, but that’s what family does.” I sighed. “Fine. I see your point. I’ll talk to her about it first. See what she thinks.”
“Gently,” Mila added. “Not in an I-told-you-so kind of way.”
“Fiiiiiine,” I repeated. “But just to be clear, I called all of this and you’re all witness to that.”
Isa rolled her eyes.
“We see you,” Ari added. “But in relationships, you either fight to be right or you fight to preserve the relationship. You can rarely have both.”
“If this is about the breakfast cereal for Gracie thing again,” Mila began, now turning to look at her wife. “She’s way too young for that much sugar.”
Ari looked past Mila to me. “See? I could be right and introduce Gracie to the joy that is Cookie Crisp, or I could let Mila have her way on this. Happy wife, happy life.”
Good to know the bullshit sayings from the patriarchy have infiltrated queer relationships now. I also hated the fact that it was kind of right…I could prove to Tyler that her dad was the monster I considered him to be, but that was absolutely going to drive a wedge between us that I wasn’t sure we’d be able to come back from.
Did I want to come back from it?
The question was swirling around unsolicited in my head. It felt in some ways like I was at a crossroads—my business or my relationship. Guilt swirled in my belly as I realized I didn’t know which one I would choose. That was bad, right? Like I should be the person who says I’d pick Tyler over anything and everything. That’s what a girlfriend was supposed to do. That was the right thing to do.
But was it? Something inside of me was screaming self-preservation. I had no control over Tyler, and losing her felt inevitable at this point, but the bar was something that I could have a say in. It might sound dramatic, but it felt a bit like all I had left—even if feelings aren’t facts, as my therapist would say.
