Page 3 of Gin and Bear It

“Fabulous, as always.” Mrs. Jenkins squeezes her husband’s hand, and her radiant smile fades. “But a little different. I’m so sorry again for y’all’s losses.”

We lost my grandparents just before Thanksgiving last year, both within the span of a month. They built this hotel up together, and every part of the space has their touch. I wonder how weird it is for the Jenkinses—this fixture in their lives, gone, even if they only saw them once a year.

“Thank you,” I say as a reflex. It’s hard enough to be confronted with Mimi’s handwriting in the old guest book or Pop Pop’s endless filing boxes in the office every single day. But condolences, as appreciated as they are, make my chest ache deepen even more than the constant reminders of their absence. “And we’ll surely have the construction on the new bar done by the time you come back next year. Apologies again for the noise during the day.”

Hopefully done, that is. This new addition to the hotel has been a fucking nightmare that’s dragged on and on for over two years at this point. I need it to be done, but it’s been hitting every single roadblock possible besides an infestation. I don’t even want to consider that because I might think it into existence.

And the new addition might not even be worth it if I don’t actually inherit the place. Which is also my fault.

I’ve worked in the hotel for as long as I’ve been old enough to contribute, but my practiced customer service face isn’t strong enough to withstand this anxiety spiral.

I pretend the computer is slow to excuse my expression and finish checking them out. Mr. Jenkins, like my grandfather, loves having every receipt printed even though we’ve emailed them for over a decade at this point. I hand it over to him and he thanks me.

“Thank you for choosing to spend your time away with us,” I say, truly meaning it. “Have a safe drive back to Nashville.”

“Thank you, dear. See you next year for our thirty-fifth!” Mr. Jenkins nods, then opens the door for his wife.

I manage to maintain my smile until they’re in the car, then I let it fall with a sigh.

I hope we’ll even be here for their thirty-fifth anniversary.

“You good?” Grace, my assistant manager and friend, asks when she comes out from the office.

“Just the usual.” I check around the lobby for guests and find that they’re mostly mingling near the front doors out of earshot. It’s a Saturday, so a lot of our guests have already started their day with a short walk to downtown Jepsen, or on the walking tour of the historically Black side of Jepsen. The hotel is the first stop on the tour, where guests get a walkthrough of the small exhibit I put together about the hotel’s historical significance.

“Mm.” She nods. Out of all of my friends, she gets the business side of my stress the most. We met in our hospitality master’s degree program and both dropped out of our ill-fated hospitality PhD program at the same time. “Need a break?”

I check my phone and see a text from my twin brother, Jeremiah. “Please. I’m meeting Jeremiah in a little bit in town.”

“No problem. Just bring me back a little treat.” Grace slips past me to stand behind the front desk.

I grab my purse and head into town to Sarah Jane’s Bakery. My best friend Waylon’s cousin, Sarah Jane, opened it after running a popular stand at the farmer’s market. It’s a short walk, and not nearly long enough for me to come down from my anxiety spiral.

Jeremiah can tell the moment he sees me, and his eyebrow lifts. He looks exactly like our dad, but with locs that he has in a casual knot on top of his head. Especially when he gives me looks like that.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“What isn’t?” I want to lie down right on the sidewalk.

“Here, let’s get something to eat.” Jeremiah puts his hands on my shoulders, spins me around, and guides me into Sarah Jane’s.

We order some of Sarah Jane’s incredible cookies, plus coffee and a treat for Grace. It’s busy this morning, but we find a little table. Jeremiah’s a big guy so we have to squeeze in tight.

He splits the cookies so we can both try each flavor, then he picks one for each of us to try first. I appreciate it because sometimes even deciding on a flavor of cookie makes my brain want to melt out of my ears.

I open my mouth to speak, but the look on his face tells me to eat something before I unload on him. The cookie does help ease a bit of the anxiety, as does the coffee. Whatever caffeine placebo the coffee gives me helps me sort out where to start with the shit-storm that is my life.

“Still no luck on the husband front, so that means no luck on the inheritance front. And then throw in the whole mess with the contractors for the hotel and I just…” I swallow. “I don’t know what to do. This has to be karma for lying to Mimi and Pop Pop.”

Jeremiah sits back in his little seat, at least as much as he can. He knows me better than anyone else, so the discomfort on his face makes me uneasy.

I really am screwed, though.

My grandparents were incredible people, but their insistence on giving all their grandkids a fair shot at the hotel kind of fucked me over. My grandparents’ will stated that one of their four grandchildren—me, Jeremiah, our older sister Kendra, or our cousin Danika—would inherit the hotel if we had our bachelor’s degree.

Jeremiah has his bachelor’s and master’s, but he’s locked into being a high-school math teacher. He’d find a way to give it to me anyway, knowing him. Kendra is an OB-GYN over in Nashville, so she’s got degrees to spare, but she’s not tossing her career and passion away for the hotel. Danika…well, she’s been trying to get her degree for ages but can’t just pick a lane and stay in it.

So that would have left me. If my grandmother hadn’t changed the will after my grandfather’s death to say that we’d need to have our bachelor’s degree and be married to our true love to inherit the hotel, or it would be donated to a historical society a year after her passing.