Page 15 of Make it Real
Just two brothers, ready to party.
“How’s Pop handling the transfer of power?” Wade asked.
What a choice of casual convo. “Don’t do that. Don’t talk about work when I’m trying to enjoy myself.”
“That bad?”
“Imagine I’m Luke Skywalker and Pop’s Yoda sitting on my back, telling me what I should be doing.”
“At least he isn’t Darth Vader. Or worse, Anakin.”
I groaned. “Let’s not completely ruin my night by mentioning the prequels.”
“Good point.” Wade took a pull off his glass, making a sour face as though he’d forgotten it wasn’t his usual Guinness. “Maybe he’s not ready to give it all up yet.”
“I never asked him to give it up. This plan to step down and hand it over—that was all him. Now, it’s like I’m trying to steal his favorite toy.”
He’d pulled such a one-eighty, I couldn’t figure him out. After almost a year of retirement talk and preparing to hand over the reins, he’d just stopped. He dealt with customers, went over paperwork, and made plans for the orchards almost like I wasn’t even there. Instead of taking on more responsibility, I’d started to feel like he didn’t need me. Or didn’t trust me.
Couldn’t rightly blame him there. Outside of my military career, I hadn’t been the best at commitment, and taking on the family farm would mean a whole lifetime of it. The practical, day-to-day operations didn’t faze me, but the long-term planning? Making decisions that would affect not just this year’s harvest, but ten or twenty years down the line? I didn’t even know where to start.
In that light, Pop wasn’t so off-base to hang around, after all.
Still, the man had practically begged me to take on the orchards and then refused to see it through. I couldn’t help but have a hang-up over that kind of hesitation.
“Maybe it’s an extended Yoda training,” Wade offered.
“Not when he’s also making decisions without my input.”
A year ago, I wouldn’t have even noticed. I didn’t have some deep-seated need to be in charge of the farm, or an all-consuming lust for power. But when he spent months telling me he intended to step down and then made plans for new trees without a word to me, it got hard to ignore.
“So more like when Anakin marries Padmé without telling Obi-Wan.”
I pointed a finger at him. “That’s your last warning about that.”
He chuckled. “Always good for a laugh.”
Jokes aside, I couldn’t figure out what Pop wanted from me. He’d encouraged me to step up, but he’d stayed in control. He wanted me to commit to running the business, but he seemed unwilling to let a single responsibility go. The one thing he couldn’t have made plainer was how badly he wanted me to find a woman and settle in for the long-haul. Of all his expectations, that one proved the least realistic.
I was not a long-haul guy.
“He’s only sixty-six,” Wade pointed out. “That’s early to retire these days.”
“Maybe.” The work he’d kept doing behind my back still felt like proof he didn’t think I could cut it. Like maybe he’d had second thoughts and now regretted the offer in the first place. Didn’t love that possibility, but I’d put off directly asking. His disappointment went down easier when I didn’t actually face it.
“Hey, what’s this?” Wade looked past me, deeper into the bar. “A little chick without her mother hens?”
I twisted in my seat, and my gut rolled right over, unearthing something greasy. Callie trailed a guy to the bar and hopped up on a seat next to him. She wore jeans and a loose top, those blue Converse tapping time where she propped them on the barstool’s footrest. The guy was dressed nice enough, but I disliked him immediately. I knew a dirtbag when I saw one, and his body language screamed“I’m an arrogant prick.”He leaned in close to tell her something, setting a hand on her shoulder.
I spun back around and downed the last of my beer, ignoring the churning in my gut that made me want to leap out of my seat and smack his hand away from her. So this was why she hadn’t gone line dancing with Harper and the others tonight. She had a date. I’d suspected as much when she went mum about her plans, but—hey, good for her. All the best to her.
“Kind of surprised to see her without one of the girls glued to her hip.” Wade watched the scene at the bar with detached interest, like listening to a bit of gossip about someone he didn’t know.
Neither of us had spent all that much time with Callie. Some group interactions, a conversation here or there. But after our meeting in the coffee shop, something had shifted for me. Maybe I understood her a bit better than I had before. Maybe I sympathized a little more.
Or maybe,the voice I’d been shutting down all week said,you like her a little more.
“I get the feeling she doesn’t have a lot of other friends.” Hadn’t figured out why. She always had a smile and something to say to everybody—seemed like she’d be a natural in the friend-making department. And yet, from all I’d seen, Harper and the others made up her entire friend group. Of people her age, anyway. “She mostly hangs out with her grandma.”
