The Better Side of Me - Jerry Cole Page 0,64

unto itself.

“You’re absolutely right,” Lance suddenly beamed. Honestly, why not? Life was good at the moment. “Let me re-make that for you. Banana free,” he finished with an over-the-top wink.

Spencer blinked back his shock, before quickly smirking his pride. He handed the shake back to Lance, trying his best to look as if he had won some great victory here today.

But his arrogance had no effect on Lance. As it currently stood, life was just too darn good.

It was one month exactly since Lance borrowed money from the Russian loan shark and all-round scary guy, Alexander Ivanov. And a lot had happened since then.

First and foremost, he’d started up his protein-smoothie bar idea, right in the middle of Hercules Gym. The bar itself was called ‘the Macro Bar’ and it turned out to be as big of a hit as Lance had expected. Even more so!

From day one of the bar’s opening being announced, Lance had people signing up and telling him how excited they were for it. Within a week, he’d already secured more customers than even his most optimistic plan had allowed for. He was even forced to increase his supply order.

“I don’t know if I can keep this up,” Lance had admitted to Kirk early on, after the first supply increase. “We didn’t plan for this.”

“For business to boom?” Kirk had responded dryly. “Not much of a plan then, is it.”

He was right, of course. More customers could only be a good thing, so Lance did what he knew he had to: he sucked it up and increased orders. This meant that the initial costs were going to go up across the first three months... but once the dividends of those increases came through, Lance would be in the money.

It took just three weeks for the bar to open. It was only a half-finished shell at the time, still lacking a paint job, zero signage to speak of, and literally just a chopping bench, a sink and a single blender for use. But the demand was such that Lance figured waiting another two weeks until everything was ready would do more harm than good.

So, he opened, only to quickly realize that he was going to need to hire at least one other staff member. There was just too much work to do! And even this caused a small headache, as Lance had estimated it would be months before another worker came on. This led to more money woes, and more reminders that eventually everything would be fine.

And indeed, one month on and finally, everything seemed to be coming together. The bar itself was now mostly built. It was the size of an ice-cream shack with the name Macro Bar painted in orange across the front. There were five blenders, three benches to do prep, two sinks and a heck of a lot of boxes of protein powders and other fruits and supplements.

“There you go.” As Lance finished up the fresh shake for Spencer – banana free – he realized that he had a lot to be grateful for right now. “And that one is on the house, for the mix-up.”

“As it should be.” Spencer took the smoothie and gulped half of it down in one go. “I can feel the gains already,” he joked as he walked away.

Lance watched him go in disgust as he took another huge mouthful, and then tossed the empty cup in the bin before even reaching the locker room. What a pig.

“Free?” Cassandra, the Macro Bar’s sole employee, sighed from behind Lance. “He was in here two days ago trying the same thing – only it was strawberries he didn’t like. I put extra in just to fuck with him.”

Cassandra was both a good friend of Lance’s, and a member of the gym. A Baywatch-style blonde ‘fit-girl,’ that looked as if she had more silicon in her than brains, Cassandra was also studying physiotherapy and sports movement. Truth be told, she had more brains than half the men she dated. Funnily enough, she and Lance had first met at the gym, when Cassandra started hitting on him. She realized her mistake within seconds, and the two had been friends since.

Lance laughed. “I know, I know. But one free smoothie is worth it if he keeps his mouth shut. You can’t put a price on good publicity.”

“Apparently you can,” Cassandra shot back. “One free smoothie.”

Cassandra was right. Giving Spencer a free smoothie every other day was a sure-fire way to increase costs. But