Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

W hy did you run ? Ashley's bear asked plaintively as Ashley bolted down the hallway. Someone to scratch our itches would be nice. I like back scratches. The bear dreamed up an image of vigorously rubbing its spine against a tree.

We can go for a hike in the morning and scratch our back on a nice tree, Ashley promised desperately.

But Penny will scratch it for us! And she's our mate!

That's not what 'if you've got an itch, I'll scratch it' means in human terms, Ashley whispered.

Her bear stared at her.

Ashley lowered her head into her hands a moment before bracing herself to go into the bar. The bear's silent confusion was more than she could imagine trying to clear up right then. Just trust me, okay? I'll explain later. There's work to do right now. She pushed the staff door open, going back into the loud, crowded bar where she could be distracted by people, work, and music instead of thinking about either her bear, or Penny Partridge.

Of the two of those things, the bear was easier to ignore. Penny came back into the bar several minutes later, wearing what must have been a fairly dry bra by then, and the t-shirt Ashley had given her. She managed to catch Ash's eye, gave a shimmy to show off her shirt, and beamed at her before going back to Gwen and Stacy. Ashley was still distracted by the effects of that shimmy when another of her cousins, Laurie, who looked almost exactly like his brother Jon, stepped into her line of sight. "Did you just dump a beer all over one of the Sixty Pix?"

Ashley sighed. "Yes. On Penny. Accidentally."

"Too bad I didn't get it on video. We'd have gone viral. Could you do it again? Oh! And she's wearing one of the pub's shirts now. That would be perfect."

"I am not deliberately pouring a beer on someone, Laurie!"

"Well, what if I did, then? You can film it. I bet she'd reshare it and we'd definitely go viral."

"Laurie!"

Her cousin sighed and went back to work, muttering, "Fine, but I'm telling you we're missing an opportunity here," over his shoulder at her.

"I can live with that!" Ashley snapped after him. "I have a lot of other things to do anyway!" Things that could conceivably keep Ashley busy for the rest of her life, thus removing the opportunity to ever really talk to Penny.

We can't never talk to our mate. Her bear, usually so calm, sounded actively distressed at the thought.

Ashley exhaled noisily. I know. I'll nerve myself up soon, but she does keep coming over here in the evenings, when I'm crazy busy. Just let me get through the weekend, and Monday, when it's calmer, I'll really talk to her, all right?

All right . The bear settled back down, placated, and Ashley promised herself she wouldn't disappoint the animal. Monday, after all, wasn't all that far away.

Penny was gone on Monday.

Bill, Ashley's oldest cousin, mooped into the pub early Monday afternoon and slumped in one of the booths, looking out the window with the most forlorn, pathetic expression Ashley had ever seen on his face. She slid into the booth across from him, worried. "What's wrong?"

"Gwen had to go back to Denver," Bill said despondently. "She and the others got everything worked out with Mike Piccolo's production company over the weekend, and once that was done none of them could put off going back to their day jobs any more."

A cold fist of horror seized Ashley's heart. "Wait, what? Penny's gone too? And Sandy?" she added, trying to cover her tracks. As if it was important to hide the fact that she was crushing on the drummer, never mind that Penny was actually her fated mate. But it was important to keep it quiet, in its way. She wanted to spend time getting to know Penny before dragging her into the whole mess of her massive, bear-shifting family.

"And Gemma and Myles left last week. I'm supposed to go into Denver this weekend to see Gwen, but…" Bill sighed heavily and sank farther into the booth seat. "Two weeks ago I never really thought I'd find my mate, Ash, and now that I've spent ten days with her all I want to do is lie on my face and be sad because she's not here. It's very manly of me."

Despite the frantic hammering of her own heart, Ashley couldn't help a little laugh as she reached out to her cousin, who grabbed her hand for a moment. "I think it's pretty manly to admit you're sad without her. Even your pompadour is drooping."

Bill released her hand to check his hair, which wasn't really drooping, but the fact he checked made Ashley smile. He was one of four brothers, and he claimed the pompadour was how he distinguished himself from his look-alike brothers. The truth was that Jon and Laurie were both a bit smaller and long-haired, and Steve, the brother who had left a few years ago, had always been less theatrical in appearance than the other three. Ashley was pretty sure Bill just liked having fancy hair. Having reassured himself the pompadour was still in full form, he slumped again. "I knew she was going to have to leave, obviously. It just sucks that she actually had to leave."

"So you guys are going to work this out long-distance?" Ashley asked tentatively.

"Well, that's why you're taking over management of the pub. Part of it, at least. The brewery needs less day to day supervision, so I can travel with her some. But yeah." Bill shook his head. "I guess I always thought finding a mate would mean settling down into a traditional lifestyle. It never occurred to me that it might mean uprooting my whole life, instead."

Ashley swallowed. "Is that what you want?"

Her cousin took a deep breath and let it out slowly, obviously giving her question some real consideration. "Honestly, Ash, it's hard to say right now. I've been so snowed under by managing the pub and the brewery that I don't think I've known what I wanted for a really long time now. You and Gwen really kind of kicked me in the butt about that and made me realize it, so…" Bill's eyebrows drew down, although he smiled. "So if I didn't say so, thank you."

"Oh. You're welcome. I don't think I meant to do anything helpful like that."

Bill's smile turned to a quick laugh. "You succeeded despite yourself, then. But to answer your question, I don't not want to uproot things. I'm still figuring myself out right now, I think. I want to travel with Gwen, for sure. I could never ask her to stop being a bonafide rock star , so if one of us is going to change our lives, it has to be me."

Ashley laughed, too. "She was a rock musician until last week, Bill. The whole rock star thing is new, I think. You're both going through a lot of lifestyle changes right now."

"Yeah, okay, you're not wrong, but you know what I mean, right? If we're going to be together, it'll be between her gigs, or with me going to where she is. And no, it's not what I expected, but yeah, it's what I want, because it's what'll make it work for us ."

"What if…" Ashley shivered, thinking about Penny's sparkling brown eyes and her quick, loud laugh. "I mean, what if you really didn't want to go on tour with her? What if what you really wanted was just to be right here, doing the thing you loved doing?"

"She's my mate, Ash. If fate is for real, and it sure feels like it is, then I guess if that's what I really wanted, then that's what would work for us."

"Even if it meant not being together all the time?" Ashley hadn't even realized she had any of these questions, but now, talking to her cousin, she was starting to think it wasn't just Disaster Lesbian-ing that had kept her away from Penny the past week. She obviously had deep personal concerns—she wouldn't call them fears , dammit—that had made approaching the redheaded drummer seem genuinely impossible, no matter what fate was telling her.

"We're already not going to be together all the time," Bill pointed out philosophically. "I do have the brewery to run, and Gwen's going to be running her ass off doing gigs for the next year while they hype the new album. She's talking about moving out here to Renaissance, but her bandmates live in Denver. If they want to practice when they're not on the road, either everybody's going to have to move out here or somebody's going to have some insanely long drives for rehearsals, and getting four near-strangers to move two hundred miles so I can be with my girlfriend whenever she's home is a big ask."

"So you don't think you're moving to Denver," Ashley said cautiously.

Bill shrugged, palms up. "Not right now, for sure, and honestly I hate the idea in general. But I've got to believe fate means something, and we'll work it out. How are you doing?" he asked, in less of a subject change than he imagined. "I know you've only been managing the pub for a week, and it's been a crazy, crazy week, so on a scale of one to ten, how overwhelmed are you?"

"Oh, about a seventeen." Ashley laughed shakily, then shrugged. "No, not that bad. Eight, maybe? It's not like you were doing a bad job, Bill. It's just that you were juggling too much. And between Oktoberfest and the Sixty Pix blowing up the airwaves this past week, business has been booming. Now that both of those things are over…well, I guess the real work begins now."

Her cousin leaned forward, arms folded on the table. "We haven't talked much since you took over, and I know that's mostly my fault. I've been with Gwen the whole time. But you said you had a vision for the brewpub, Ash. You want to talk about that?"

"The past week and the band have helped launch us in the direction I want to go in," Ashley admitted. She gestured around the warm, clean pub, which had more people in for lunch than they usually did. "A younger clientele, for one thing. No disrespect to your parents, but the jazz evenings and soft rock Muzak weren't exactly calling out to the young and hip."

Bill grinned. "Because the young say 'hip,' just like we Millennials do."

Ashley grinned back. "Yeah, exactly. So there's that, just aiming for a younger clientele, but also, look, what's one thing that this town really lacks, Bill?"

His eyebrows rose. "I feel like the list could go on for quite a while and yours probably doesn't include an excellent adult ball pit, so you tell me."

"A ball pit? Really?" Ashley blinked at her cousin, who ducked his head.

"It was the first thing that leaped to mind. Go on, what are you thinking?"

"I was thinking Renaissance needs a good gay bar, or at least somewhere that's an obviously queer-friendly space!"

"Oh." Bill wheezed laughter. "Yeah, I can see why that might be more useful than a ball pit. That seems like a good idea, Ash," he said more seriously. "It's not something I'd really thought about, but it'd probably be not only popular locally but could get skiers in during the winter, and even faire people in the summer. Although there's already a lot of beer at the faire."

"Tons, but the faire closes at seven and the pub is open until two," Ashley said with a smile. "That's a lot of time to mosey into town and have dinner and some drinks. Same with the ski resorts in the winter. Most of the skiing shuts down by four or five in the afternoon because it gets too dark. Having a queer destination in town could bring in a bigger clientele. I'm not planning to throw the whole cozy log cabin vibe out or anything. I just want to make it clear, visually and in advertising, that this is a safe space for queer people to come enjoy themselves."

Bill spread his hands. "It's your party, cuz. Go for it."