AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If there’s some fluke, and we can’t sign her, I’ll make sure that someone else does. She’s too good not to be going places, and she needs to be playing places way bigger than Green Hills.
I pull up to First Shot, and my stomach rolls with dread. My phone vibrates, and I see that it’s Charles. I answer. “That was fast.”
“Damn, are you in the middle of a rave?”
I forgot I had Anna’s music on, and I turn it down. “Just listening to a prospective artist. Sorry.”
“Right,” he says. “I just wanted to let you know that I looked further into Glenn, since that’s more urgent. He’s clean, nothing in his records conflicts what’s in your records. You guys are obviously beyond profitable with no end in sight. Asshole he might be, but he’s not a liar. At least not about this. No apparent reason why he’d try to pull this stunt, but I’ll keep digging.”
Dread pools in my stomach. “Thanks, Charles.”
“No chance you can just find someone to marry, right?”
I can tell that he’s joking. Mostly at least. “I’d really rather not do that.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Well, I’ll keep you posted.”
“Thanks.”
“Bring us home someone great.”
“I’m trying,” I say, and I absolutely mean it. “I’m about to meet with Glenn and see if we can come to an agreement.”
“Sounds good,” he says. “Try not to do anything that would fuck up a court case though, will you?”
I laugh even though it’s not funny. “I’ll do my best.”
I hang up and sigh. Shit. I was hoping that this would be easy, that Glenn would have taken out a huge loan or something and hidden it from Wallace and me, that he needed the extra income to cover some fuck up and that’s the reason he was doing this. Damn, why couldn’t this be simple?
The bar isn’t usually open this early, but it was an easy place to meet. Wallace is going to be here as well. It’s much darker than it was the other night, though Glenn and Wallace are in nearly the same place they were when I came in a couple days ago, Glenn behind the bar and Wallace on a stool. They both stop talking when I approach.
Glenn lifts his chin. “Have you come around? Getting ready for your month of debauchery? I saw that you took the list.”
“I took the list so that no one else would see it. I don’t want people in an establishment that I own seeing random lists of women like they’re property. That’s not good for business, not to mention that it’s generally gross.”
He frowns, and Wallace is glancing back and forth between us. “If you’re not coming around to the idea then why are you here? And it’s not like you can play innocent about the lists, we’ve had them for years.”
“You were the one who had lists. I haven’t had one since high school, and I’m here to figure out what the hell you actually want. I had my lawyer do some digging. I was hoping that you’d lied about something, had some ulterior motive for screwing me out of my share of First Shot. I have a hard time believing that you would do something like this without a good reason.”
Glenn makes a face. “I think that enforcing a contract is a perfectly legitimate reason.”
“It might be a reason, but it’s not your reason.”
“Maybe I just want to do something nice for my friend who hasn’t been around in a while. Maybe I want him to have a good fucking time.” His emphasis isn’t accidental.
“Have you ever considered that maybe I’m not kidding, and that I genuinely have no interest in doing this? That I don’t want to have that kind of good time? That’s not who I am, Glenn. It’s actually never been me. And I’m not going to do it. I’m seeing Annabelle again, and this time I’m not going to fuck it up.”
I’m not expecting the explosion of his anger. “Are you fucking serious? Her? Again? It was a good day when she left you, man. She was frigid, not putting out nearly enough and she was holding you back.”
I keep myself in check, barely. “I was in love with her. And not all relationships are bad. I would say Wallace agrees with me too. He was head over heels in love with—”
“But I’m not anymore, Frankie. Sometimes these things end for a reason. Because they have to. Be careful you don’t get in too deep.” Wallace’s words are swift, and I take the warning. Don’t drag him or Tia—the woman he used to love—into this shit between Glenn and me. That’s fair enough.
Glenn waves a hand. “Well, at the very least, keep her around until your birthday. She can count as the first of your thirty. I’ll make an exception. The rest of them have to be new though.”
