Page 63 (2/2)

“You’re paying for those,” Matt replied “Tom said even we have to pay for the top-shelf stuff”

“Toht now?”

Mason laughed “It’s fine, put it on my tab if you need to We deserve this”

It had been a good quarter The o over the nuun with the old bar burning down, and then several weeks of nothing as we tried to find out who did it and rebuilt in a new space, we expected a pretty heavy loss Especially when the advertising for the new spot and all the fees caood portion of the up-front costs, and we hit the ground running with thehts and a lot of empathy from the community over how the old bar went up in flames

Yet, when it was all said and done, we actually cut a profit after all It was unbelievable how busy we had been since we opened up, and the extra tables and booths the new space afforded us gave usin more sales A s, wasn’t even blinked at, and our sales were absolutely through the roof When Mason said we deserved the extra drink, he wasn’t lying We’d worked our asses off for that moment

“When does Ava come in?” I asked Ava was Mason’s wife and the hts Her as essential to our success, along with her ability to run the bar like a ician

“She’s co in around six,” he said

“Aw,forward to a nap”

“Poor baby,” I said, and Jordan shoved ly

I stood up to follow Mason to the back when I heard a knock on the door Figuring it was so, I turned back to tell them to come back later, but when I saas at the door, I broke out into a wide smile

“Hey, Mason,” I called, “I’ll help you guys in a minute!”

I walked over to the door and opened it, pullinghim inside

“Hey, brother,” Nick Watson said, “do you have a few minutes?”

“Yeah,him to a booth near the bar “You want a drink?”

“Just a beer, if that’s alright I still have to drive”

“No problelass of our favorite local porter Soht need uy and had been rade school Recently, with the death of our father and his recent divorce, we had been leaning on each other pretty hard