“I guess it’s a good sign if the Yard can cause this kind of a reaction in them.”
“When did they even get here?” I asked.
“Right before you did,” Brody responded. “But after they spent ten minutes badgering Drew and me about how things were going, they hotfooted it down to the band. I don’t even know why he had so many questions. I talked to him two days ago and laid out our plans for launch. The man just likes to bullshit about business.”
“And shake his ass,” Carter added.
“Gross, dude,” Brody said.
“They look happy,” I observed. “That’s gotta be a good sign.”
Drew almost looked sheepish. “Yeah, they actually seemed pretty impressed.”
I gave him a smile. “I’m sure they were.”
Aamee’s voice pulled our attention back toward the bar. “Hey! Why do Xander and I have to work while you two clowns get to stand around and enjoy the view?” She was piling some martinis and glasses of wine carefully onto a tray, and I held my breath as she stooped down to lift it.
For people who had no experience bartending or waiting tables, Xander and Aamee had definitely surprised us with their abilities.
“I asked Brody the same thing,” Drew told her.
“I’m going, I’m going,” Brody assured them before heading toward the bar.
“And what about you, boss man?” Aamee asked Drew.
“I’m making sure things run smoothly.”
“And just so you know,” Brody said to her, “the view we were all ‘enjoying’ was my parents dirty dancing.” He visibly shivered at the thought.
Aamee had to steady the tray when her entire body reacted to Brody’s statement. “Let me drop these off first, but I gotta see this.”
“You won’t be able to unsee it!” he called after her as she scurried off.
Chapter Twenty-Two
D R E W
So much had led up to the opening of the Yard, I was a little surprised that the night had passed so quickly. I barely had time to remember much of anything. And I’d been completely sober the entire night.
Xander and Brody had been great behind the bar, and we’d gotten so busy around ten, we had to ask Sean if we could borrow Wyatt. He hadn’t been bartending at Rafferty’s very long, but he knew what he was doing, and since the inside mostly held the regulars, Sean figured they could handle things in there without him.
I did my best to talk to everyone who’d come out to support us, which kept me even busier than I would’ve been otherwise. I hadn’t spoken to Sophia much, and we weren’t able to talk privately all night. If I were being honest, that was probably for the best anyway. I had no idea what I wanted to say to her because I hadn’t even had time to process our conversation from earlier, but I knew a talk was coming later because neither of us was able to let something like this linger longer than it needed to.
I’d noticed the crowd beginning to thin a little around midnight, but the ones who remained seemed like they planned to close the place down. For the most part, the people left were a mix of family, friends, some of the girls from Sophia’s sorority, and people we’d never seen before.
Once the bar seemed slow enough, I told Brody he could be done for the night. I knew he wanted to relax for a bit, and Wyatt and Xander could use the tips more than Brody anyway.
We were all standing on the edge of the lawn watching a few people argue over cornhole when Mr. and Mrs. Mason came over to Brody and me.
“I think we’re going to get going in a few minutes,” Mr. Mason said. He inserted himself between the two of us and put a hand on our shoulders. “This was fun, though. We had a great time. You guys should be proud.”
“Thanks,” Brody said. “We are proud.”
“Thank you both for coming out tonight,” I said. “It means a lot to both of us.”
“We wouldn’t have missed it,” Mrs. Mason said. She looked like she was swaying a little, and I wondered how much she’d had to drink. “I haven’t let loose like this since I went to college here. We ended up running into a few old friends of ours earlier.” She looked at her husband and said, “You remember that night we had to sleep in Christina Everett’s old Nissan Sentra because we were too…” She stopped short of finishing the sentence, but it didn’t mean the rest of us