line at the next race I’ll be happy to sign something for you but right now I’m trying to have lunch with a friend so I don’t have time for this.”
“Sure thing,” she says with a sweet smile, totally unaffected. “I’ll be here when ya’ll get back! Jace, let me know if you need anything.”
“Holy shit that woman is insane,” Park says as we climb into his brand new truck.
I nod. “This is the hell that I have to live with now. Mr. Fisher better fire her or I’ll have to fire myself.”
“Not if we get our business up and running,” Park says, cranking the engine. “I have about fifty percent of the work already planned out. We could be in business in about three months. That is of course, if you have about fifty grand to pitch in.”
“You know I’m good for it,” I say, reaching for my seat belt. “I’d have to convince Bay but she’ll probably be on board. Shit…” I feel my pocket, then my other one. My heart accelerates when I realize that all of my pockets are empty, minus my wallet. “I left my phone in my office.”
“I’ll wait here while you get it,” Park says, turning on the air conditioner.
I shake my head. “The last thing I want to do is go back in there and deal with that girl. Screw it, I’ll just leave it there. We won’t be gone long.”
Park puts the truck in reverse and chuckles. “I don’t blame you one bit, man.”
We head to a little hole in the wall Chinese food place that has the greatest eggrolls in the world. Park lays out his business idea for me, one scribbled sheet of paper at a time.
“Okay so, there’s thirty acres in Groovewood county, it’s just on the outskirts of Lawson and about thirty minutes from Mixon,” Park says, pointing to a printed out section of Google maps. He also has the printed out listing of the land from the real estate company. “They want a hundred grand for the whole thing, which is a damn steal for thirty acres.”
“Yeah, I’d guess that’s a good price,” I say, not knowing a damn thing about real estate in our area. Or in any area. It’s part of the reason why Bay and I are still hanging out in an apartment that’s a little too small for the three of us instead of buying or building a house. “This might be cool because it’s between Bay’s home town and Mixon. I think she’s a little bummed that we live further away from her family and friends, so this could bridge the gap.”
Park lifts an eyebrow. “Dude, you’d just move back to Lawson if we do this. What’s keeping you in Mixon?”
I think about it for a minute, realizing that he’s right. “Nothing but this job,” I say with a shrug.
“Hell, you and Bay could build a house right next door to the land and live there.”
“You could do that too,” I say, thinking of the possibilities. “You could build a house next to mine and we’d be business partners and neighbors.”
He smirks. “Can’t do that actually.”
The look on his face has me dying to know more. I suddenly feel like Bayleigh does when she’s gossiping about girls they hate with Becca. “What do you mean by that? Don’t want to be my neighbor?”
He chuckles and grabs an eggroll off the plate of appetizers we ordered. “It’s a possibility. But I’ve already made an offer on this badass Victorian house that’s just down the street. It’s been abandoned a while and it has this perfect studio space upstairs and—”
“Studio? Like for photography or something?”
He shakes his head and looks off to the side, peering out of the restaurant’s windows as if something super exciting is happening in the parking lot. “It wouldn’t be for me, actually.”
My brows furrow as I try to extract meaning from that cryptic comment. Then I remember the painted canvas hanging in our living room that says Live, Love, Family in Becca’s unique artistic style. “Are you making a painting studio for Becca?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, if we work out and