I shook my head. “The system will prevail. The goal is commitment. The goal is marriage.”
“Shouldn’t the goal be falling in love?” she asked.
I shoved the contract into my bag. “What’s the point of falling in love with the wrong guy?”
Her laugh was light and affectionate. The sound of it drew Edward from the bedroom, where he leaned against the door and watched her devotedly. “Are you implying I was the wrong guy, Roxy darling?”
She looked over her shoulder, grin half-cocked. “You know you were.” To me, she said, “Sometimes the guy you think is wrong is your fucking soul mate. Pretty sure you told me that half a dozen times when I was pretending not to be falling in love with Edward.”
I reached down to hug Busy Bee one last time. “Don’t you worry. My soul mate will fit every single attribute on this list.”
“And what if he doesn’t?” She asked.
“That, my dear sister, is an impossibility.”
3
Max
I propped my boot against the brick wall of the shop and took a moment to enjoy the gorgeous view. My mom had been right. Bar Harbor was fucking beautiful. Even the bike shop where I’d landed a fast-and-easy mechanic’s job faced the ocean.
I grinned, passed a hand over my mouth. Caught the eye of a cute woman walking her dog across the street. She gave me a shy, slightly flirtatious wave.
I winked back and enjoyed the flush that rose in her cheeks. She kept on walking. But the look she tossed me over her shoulder made me guess she’d be back for my number by the end of the day. I’d be happy to give it to her.
Bar Harbor, Maine, had been my temporary home for two months now, and I could see the appeal. My job was straightforward and no bullshit. The shop was the usual blend of grumpy mechanics who reminded me of Pop and never asked too many personal questions. Not that I minded—I was an open goddamn book, all things considered. But during the day, the shop was filled with the sounds of classic rock on the radio, of tools and engines and grunts from my coworkers.
My favorite kind of job. Easy. Fun. No frills.
I ran a hand through my hair before taking out my phone. I swiped past a few text messages from a woman I’d met at the bar last week. She knew I could be counted on for a night of no-strings-attached sex. Then I blinked in surprise and almost dropped the thing when it started vibrating with a call while I was holding it.
It was my dad.
Glancing over my shoulder to make sure my boss wasn’t looking for me, I took the call and smiled. “Hey, Pop. Whatdya want?”
My father grumbled a bit in greeting. I was an expert translator of my gruff father’s not-entirely-verbal responses. “Hey back.”
“You okay?” I asked, squinting into the sun. Had it been… shit… three weeks since our last call? I shrugged off something like guilt and stared back at the ocean.
“Kinda,” he said. His voice was rough from years of cigarette smoke and the physical toll of running The Red Room, one of the oldest punk rock clubs in New York City. “You got a second to talk, Maxy?”
I glanced back over my shoulder then moved further away from the door. Pop only used my childhood nickname when it was bad. “Yeah, just tell me what’s up.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. It had only been seven years since I’d been back to the city. It was easy in my mind to picture Pop the last time I’d really seen him, waving to me from the front door of The Red Room as I roared off on my motorcycle to my first of—many—new homes and new jobs. The day I’d come home with my first motorcycle—when I was all of nineteen years old—he’d nodded and clapped me once on the shoulder.
Even then, he’d known which parent I was most like.
I won’t be gone for long, I’d said when I officially left New York City at 21. You’ll see. Five years from now and you won’t be able to get rid of me, old man.
“Listen, I don’t like to bother ya with stuff from home. But things have been… a little tough for me with the club.”
“Money?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. The courage it took to utter that one syllable probably shaved a year off his life. Pop was a lifelong boy from the Bronx who’d worked in clubs his whole career. An aging punk who would bleed rock music if you cut him. He wasn’t a classically paternal guy. But it’d been only him and me together since he and my mom got divorced when I was ten and she moved out.
Pop was a man made up of pride, stubbornness, and steel-toed work boots. Money—having it and talking about it—was his idea of a nightmare.
“What’s going on with the money?”
“I’m, uh… I’m a little over my head. Hard to stay on top of this city’s prices. It’s been hard, I should say.”
“Yeah, I get that,” I said sympathetically—still waiting. Conversations with Pop had always been about patience.
“I got a letter in the mail this morning, a notice of petition. Landlord is suing me for $50,000 in back rent.”
“Wait… what? You mean Stevie’s suing you?” He’d been the landlord there since before I was born. He and Pop had a long friendship that had helped in the past when times were tough.
“It’s not him,” Pop said. “It’s his son. Took over for him. And I’ve been… a little behind each month, and it added up faster than I thought, I guess. Stevie and me, we’d always work it out. I always paid in the end. But not this time. It’s the law. Fourteen days to pay or I gotta go.”
Each sentence grated over me like sandpaper. I blew out a breath, let my head fall back against the brick wall. “Fifty grand is a lot of cash.”
“Yeah.” Pop gave a humorless laugh. “And I don’t got it.”
I tilted my head back and dropped the phone to my shoulder. I’d been dreading a call like this for a while now. I had so much love for The Red Room and the musicians who had helped raise me—in one way or another—after the divorce. It had been almost communal, my time there. Punk rock was in my bones. But this was what I was always trying to talk Pop into—pulling up his roots and leaving. He should have cut ties the same day I did and hit the road. Then this shit would have been someone else’s headache.
Mom got it. Every time we talked, even though it wasn’t often, she was always on to the next adventure, enjoying the bends in the road and all the detours.
“I need your help,” Pop said, voice soft at the edges. “I need you to come home, Max.”
The plea in his voice stilled me. “Yeah?”
“Please. You know I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t scared out of my damn mind.”
“I’m not sure what I can do,” I said. “I don’t know a lot about fighting landlords or finding money when we’ve got none.”
Pop let out a short bark of a laugh. “Well, me neither. But my other option is… well, fucking no option. So yeah.”
He didn’t come from a family that had things like savings or retirement plans. The Red Room was his retirement plan.
So yeah.
“Can you quit your new spot? Where are you anyway?”