She gulped more of her drink down and resisted the urge to fan herself.
They’d both win if she had her way.
11
MAKING LIFE EASIER
“This is fantastic,” Chance said while they were sitting at Jocelyn’s table and eating dinner.
He’d set the plates and silverware out while she put the food on platters.
She was still on her first drink, and he appreciated that she thought enough to pick up beer, so he switched to that.
He was half expecting wine. He could put it down like the next person, but it wasn’t his preference.
“It’s pretty good if I say so myself,” she said. “We talked about you at the firehouse and taking on all the other duties there too. What made you want to buy a bar? Just security for your grandmother?”
He got paid more for everything extra he did at the firehouse. It wasn’t a hardship for him. He hoped to move up in ranks before he retired and build that pension that Jocelyn picked on him about. Maybe he sounded like a boring desk jockey talking about those things.
But for a guy who might have to dig his own grave just to afford a burial, it was time to get his shit together. If not for himself, then to make things easier on his grandmother.
“My grandmother has worked there for twenty years,” he said. “The owner was selling it and she wouldn’t be able to find another job and she wasn’t ready to retire. I don’t even know if she has enough put away for it.”
Though he started a fund for her without her knowledge. Not a ton. Every little bit helped and with all those second jobs he had before the bar, twice a year he put a lump sum in an investment account for her.
“You wanted her to work less and by owning it you could accomplish that. You said that before. It’s a big ask to take on that risk and liability.”
“It was. It is. I’d been working behind the bar there for years. I knew that part of the business. My grandmother has run everything from the front to the back end but never got paid for her dedication. She’s the bar manager now. It was supposed to get her off her feet, yet she’s still doing what she was and then extra.”
They’d gotten into more than one argument over her not having to work more just because he was paying her a salary she’d never gotten before.
He couldn’t run that business without her. Hell, half the changes made had been her idea and the place was thriving more than it had with the previous owners.
If it stayed afloat and covered all his expenses, he was happy enough.
“She wants you to succeed. Can I ask about your parents? You talk about your grandmother.”
“Because my grandmother is the only mother I ever knew and who raised me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be intrusive. I didn’t know that.”
“Not many knew about my life.”
“And you don’t want to talk about it. Got it.”
He never talked much about his past with anyone. He didn’t have tons of friends back in school. Or not people he saw now.
All his friends as an adult just knew a summary of current events, not what he went through. He put that past life behind him.
But Jocelyn was part of that life.
“It’s history,” he said. “My mother got pregnant when she was sixteen. I don’t know who my father is. I’ve never heard his name or seen it on a birth certificate. She was more into partying than raising a kid and left me with my grandmother. One night when I was thirteen, there was a knock at the door and it was the police. She’d OD’d.”
Jocelyn reached her hand over. “I didn’t know her and I won’t say I’m sorry for your loss. I won’t insult you by thinking I know what you could have gone through or that you may or may not have been close to her.”
“Not.”
She nodded. “But you had your grandmother and she’s done a damn good job with you.”
