Page 1 of Trusting You
Prologue
Cecelia
I never intendedto be a total failure. It certainly wasn’t part of my grand life plan. But even with the best intentions, I still ended up back here. Maybe I could become a motivational speaker? Speak to high school kids about my failure to adult properly? Launch some kind of self-help empire for the chronically underachieving? I would think about that later. Now, I just had to breathe.
It takes a special kind of underachiever to wind up back in your hometown with no job, no boyfriend, and no apartment at age thirty-one. It wasn’t as if I was ashamed of my recent breakup or layoff. I knew deep down that neither was a good fit. And I’d had enough jobs and boyfriends to know how to pick myself up and dust myself off when things went south. But things were different this time. Because I was faced with the very unsettling realization that after thirty-one years on this planet, I had very little to show for myself. I didn’t love my career as a pharmaceutical marketing executive. I didn’t even like it most days. And I certainly had not loved Xavier, my creeper ex. I didn’t love my harried, anxious life in New York. My life was just devoid of passion and fun and excitement. And that was a far bigger blow than losing a mediocre job and a mediocre guy. So, in addition to being single and unemployed, I was also in the middle of a Grand Canyon-sized rut.
If I was capable of getting out of my own head, I would have seen the beautiful views, smelled the salty sea air, and realized that it actually was nice to be back. Instead, I was just living in my own doom spiral of shame.
My heart rate rose as I crossed the bridge over the swelling Haven River. The large “Welcome to Historic Havenport, founded in 1685” sign greeted me as my car crossed over into town.
So here I was. On the other side of thirty with not a clue what was going to come next. But I knew one thing for sure. I was done with men. For good.
1
Liam
It wastime to face the truth. My business was floundering.
I took a deep breath. “So what you’re saying is that I should close?” It was the last thing I needed to hear today.
“Of course not. What I am saying is that you need to find some ways to generate more income so you can keep brewing amazing beer.”
“But if I can’t do that in the next few months then I have to close?” I was well and truly screwed. And not in the fun way.
Callum, my older brother and financial advisor, sighed deeply. “I’m just saying. Your building is worth a lot now. The south side of town is experiencing a huge boom and I know there are many developers who would love to convert it into luxury condos.”
“I hate luxury condos.”
“I know you do. I’m just saying. As your financial advisor, you have a very valuable asset. If you need to shut down you will land on your feet.”
“But what about as my older brother?”
“As your older brother, I want you to keep brewing and build your empire. But if you want to keep the brewery going, you need to change things up a bit. I don’t know, maybe accept some fucking help once in a while.”
I let out a big sigh. “Okay, thanks.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this. But you need more support. You need to take on investors and focus on new areas of growth. And you also need to hire someone who can handle the marketing side of things, social media, events, that kind of thing. You are an incredible brewer, but the greatest beer in the world still needs to be marketed and sold.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You need to hire a marketing and social media person. Promotion is eighty percent of the battle and you don’t have the time or the knack for it, bro.”
“But I don’t even have the time to advertise and interview applicants. Not to mention, who wants a part time job that pays shit right now?” As much as I needed help, I couldn’t take my eye off the ball for one minute right now if I was going to save this place.
“Hey, keep your chin up. You are doing great and this is a temporary blip.” Cal was always such a good motivational speaker. “Who knows? The perfect person could walk in the door tomorrow.”
I had heard this song a thousand times over the years. My family was incredibly generous and supportive, but they were not shy about calling me out on my shit. Callum was a financial genius and one of my biggest supporters, and I knew he was right. I just wasn’t sure what to do about it. “Okay. I gotta run, bro. But I will see you tomorrow night.”
I hung up and rubbed my temples. The conversation was basically the same one we had every week. I needed to be making payments on my loans, I needed to diversify and come up with some new revenue streams, and brewing award-winning beer was not enough if you weren’t a fucking hashtag or distributed around the world. And I would love to hire someone, but finding someone who could handle this shit show for very little pay was basically impossible. And as attractive as outside investors would be, I was not yet ready to give up control of this operation. I had been burned in the past, and Binnacle Brewing was my baby and I didn’t want too many cooks in the kitchen. I was generally a laid-back guy. I was the youngest, the peacemaker, the one who could be counted on to crack a joke when things got tense. But when it came to my business, I was a dictator. The stakes were too high and I had worked too hard to risk screwing anything up.
I leaned back in my chair as I surveyed my desk. My laptop was open, my inbox screamed for attention, and the piles and piles of paperwork mocked me. It was only eight a.m. on a Monday morning. I had thought I could do this. I had thought I could handle things, and I had thought I could scrape by. But each day it was looking more and more like this was just another epic failure.
Opening a brewery had been my dream since college. A dream I had carefully and slowly worked toward. I got my degree in microbiology and then took every internship, apprenticeship, and fellowship I could find. I traveled the world learning about the craft of beer, visiting Belgian Monasteries and German hop farms. My first venture went bust a few years back due to some bad luck and poor management, and I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and scraped and saved until I could try again.
A timely inheritance from my grandmother gave me the opportunity to buy this old warehouse and get my brewery set up, and for the last four years, I have been busting my ass to make it. I have worked seven days a week, sometimes twenty hours a day to brew, distribute, and market my product. It was exhausting, but it was my dream.
I loved this town deeply. It was strange and fun and downright weird sometimes, but it was home. Havenport is a pretty quirky place. We had a storied history of great thinkers, revolutionaries, artists, and rebels. The town had been through so many transformations over the years, what was left was a melting pot of artists, activists, yuppies, fishermen, and working families. In the eighties, Havenport emerged as a friendly hub for LGBTQ folks fleeing discrimination elsewhere. In fact, Havenport elected America’s first openly gay mayor in 1989. Burt, who had retired after serving four terms, was now a sort of town mascot and could be found riding his Vespa around town. I wanted Binnacle Brewing to succeed so badly. Both for myself and for this unique and crazy town.
