He shakes his head and I follow him to the door.
“I hope you know what you’re doing—”
“Don’t I always?”
Once the door closes behind him, I spend the rest of my day with my guitar, a notebook, and a pencil, putting down more lyrics than I have in months.
Ripley is one hell of a muse, and every time I think of her, I catch myself smiling.
I finally put away my notebook as the sun goes down, and take my phone off silent. I’ve got five missed calls from Nick, but I ignore them. Frisco’s call is the only one I return.
“What’s up, man?”
“You might want to google yourself.”
34
Ripley
“Ican’t tellyou how much I appreciate this. Seriously, I owe you¸” I tell Hope as I hop up in her pickup truck and we head for the White Horse Saloon.
She shoots me a sidelong look from across the cab. “You act like I didn’t offer you both my futon and a job the last time I saw you.”
“Yeah, but now I’m notorious.”
“Stop it. You’re still my best friend. I don’t care if you tell me you’re a mutant working for the X-Men, the futon and the job are yours.”
I laugh at her comic-book reference before considering another hurdle. “Will your boss be pissed that you hired me?”
“My boss doesn’t give a shit about anything but the receipts from every night. As long as we’re selling booze, he’s happy. He doesn’t care who’s slinging it as long as they’re not skimming off the till. That’ll get someone fired in a night.”
When she mentions employee theft, I finally tell her something I’ve been keeping to myself for way too long. “Brandy’s been skimming from the Fishbowl during every shift for the last year and a half, maybe longer.”
Hope stops at a red light, her mouth open in shock. “And you didn’t fire that skanky bitch? Why not?”
“Pop wouldn’t let me. He said I must not have been paying her enough.”
“Are you shitting me?” Hope’s voice rises an octave.
“Nope.”
She shakes her head. “Meanwhile, you didn’t take a paycheck for weeks at a time.”
I nod because we both know that’s a fact.
“I think I’m going to be sick. If that little ho shows up anywhere near me, she’ll walk away with two black eyes and a broken nose.”
“She’s not worth it.”
“Maybe not, but she still deserves it. She’s gonna run that bar into the ground. I give it a week or two, tops.”
My heart pangs at the thought, but there’s nothing I can do now. “If she makes it a month, I’ll be shocked. Then again, maybe we’ll both be wrong, and she’ll turn it into some slutty topless place and haul in more money than I ever did.”
Hope shakes her head. “She’d have to get approval for partial nudity, and we both know she’s not smart enough to do that.”
“I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t bother with approval before she whipped her tits out.”
Hope laughs, but the sound is rife with bitterness. “I really hate that girl.”