Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,8

to talk to if she was in the mood. If she wasn’t, she could sit at the bar and read or work on memorizing lines. She almost thought of it as an extension of her living space, which was a crappy studio. A communal living room of sorts.

She took a tiny sip of her wine. She always ordered a glass because she wasn’t about to sit in Benjamin’s bar without ordering anything. He wasn’t going to be able to accuse her of freeloading. But she never drank very fast, as she was aware that her almost daily presence in the bar would make it easy to start drinking too much.

Also there was the part where she had no money.

“So tomorrow is your last show, right?” Benjamin asked.

“Yes,” she said warily. Her summer play always coincided with Mermaid Parade weekend—there was a preparade matinee on the Saturday and an evening show on the Sunday. This year was Grease. She’d thought it would be a crowd-pleaser, but she’d sold only a third of the seats today, which made her panic when she thought about it too hard. She shoved aside thoughts of impending financial ruin. She was pretty sure Benjamin was about to start something, so she needed to be on her toes.

“I want half the parking spots tomorrow night,” he said. “I have Final Vinyl in for their last show of the summer, and it’s going to be packed.”

“Okay.”

He reared back a little, and she laughed. She’d shocked him with her easy acquiescence. They were forever battling over parking. The bar and the theater were separated only by the Moonflower Bay Monitor building, and the reserved parking spots right out front were in demand in the evenings.

“On one condition,” she added.

“Ah,” he said, “that’s more like it.”

“I’m thinking of adding wine to the concessions at the theater.” She was thinking of a lot of things, actually, probably none of which would be enough to make up for the blow of not getting the grant she’d been counting on, but this was one he could help with. Booze, according to her research, had high margins, and if she could get a deal on the supply end, she could turn an even bigger profit. “I’m not totally sold, as I’ll need cups and corkscrews and all that, and I’m not sure about the legality of my concessions guy, who’s a high schooler, serving.”

“Your high schooler has to be eighteen. And there’s actually some decent wine in cans these days. You could serve it straight out of the can with a straw—no cups or corkscrews needed. Act like you’re doing it on purpose—pretend you’re being trendy.”

That was a great idea. But no need to get overtly excited. “I don’t have to pretend to be trendy, Benjamin.” She narrowed her eyes.

“Says the woman wearing a tube top. Nineteen eighty-three called, and they want their outfit back.” He leaned closer over the bar and held her gaze. They did this. Staring contests. Glaring contests. She wasn’t sure when it had started, only that when you were in one, the goal was to not look away first.

She usually won, if only because he had actual work to do. As was the case now, when Carter came up to ask him a question. She smirked.

“So how do I get these cans of wine?” she asked after he was done with Carter. “Advise me and you can have the parking spots tomorrow. Do I just buy them in bulk from the liquor store?”

“No. You tell me what you want, and I add it to my wholesale order. Your per-unit price will be better that way. I’ll invoice you.”

That was unexpectedly generous of him. But that was the strange thing about Benjamin. Though they battled pretty much constantly, he would sometimes surprise her by doing something decent.

He left to serve other customers, leaving her to ponder the mess she was in. She had opened the theater with a start-up economic development grant and a big investment from her parents. She had kept it operating the past five years through a combination of arts grants and the money she made from ticket sales and the summer arts camps she ran for kids.

On paper, she should have been profitable by now—certainly past the point where losing out on one grant was enough to do her in. The problem was the building. It had started its life as a theater in the late nineteenth century and had been converted to a movie house