The Solid Grounds Coffee Company

by Carla Laureano

  The Uber was just pulling up in front of the hotel’s glass doors when she reached the lobby. Bryan gestured at her from the curb and opened the back door for her, while she hurried across the tile floor.

  “Ready to prove your barbecue devotion?” Bryan teased.

  Ana flashed a smile, glad they were back to their usual playful banter. “You’ll be sorry you ever doubted me.”

  But it was doubt that registered on his face when the driver dropped them outside a disreputable-looking brick building in an older part of St. Louis. Bryan looked at the restaurant with its peeling sign and whiteboard by the front door and threw a glance at Ana. “Are you sure you want to go here?”

  “Both the Yelp reviews and our driver said this place has the best ribs in the city. Are you having second thoughts?”

  “Not a chance,” Bryan said. He yanked open the glass door and held it for Ana, then stopped short. The line from the counter stretched all the way to the door.

  “See? It wouldn’t be packed if it wasn’t good. It’s not even noon yet.” The interior was just as she’d expect from a barbecue joint: picnic tables covered with red-checked plastic tablecloths, dark wood paneling, old metal signage from gas stations and markets. Ana fell into line without question, then looked at Bryan, who still had the doubtful expression on his face. “What? I thought you were the type who ate crickets and grubs in South America.”

  “I was climbing, Ana, not starring on an episode of Survivorman. It was more like camping and living off trail mix and beef jerky.”

  “Then this should be a step up.” She flashed him a grin and hoisted her handbag more securely onto her shoulder.

  Despite the length, the line moved quickly, and when they got up to order, she could see why. It was a simple process: pick a meat and two sides. Everything came with corn bread. Ana ordered spare ribs, as did Bryan, and just in time; after the girl at the counter called back their order, she removed ribs from the whiteboard showing what was available.

  “Now aren’t you glad we didn’t hesitate?” Ana said after Bryan paid and they took their red plastic glasses to the fountain drink machine. “When they’re out, they’re out. We’ve got good luck.”

  “Getting the roaster for fifteen hundred under asking and then getting the last batch of ribs? I think you are my luck.” Bryan winked at her, a tiny bit of that trademark flirtation creeping back in, and Ana’s heart gave a little leap. They grabbed a corner table that had just been vacated and plunked their table tag on the edge. Ana cleared her throat, looking for something to say to fill the suddenly awkward silence. Or maybe it only felt awkward to her. Bryan seemed completely comfortable.

  She didn’t have to wait long because a waitress brought their barbecue out on two rectangular metal trays, the plates piled with sauce-covered ribs, collard greens, and barbecue beans. “There’s enough food here for three people,” Ana said.

  “I’ll eat your leftovers if you want.” Bryan made a move to steal one of her ribs, but she slapped his hand.

  “Hands off. I didn’t say I wasn’t going to eat them.”

  “Now that I would like to see.”

  “Sounds like a challenge.” Ana picked up a rib. “Watch and learn.”

  As it turned out, she couldn’t make good on her boast—there was just too much food for her after an adulthood of dieting. But she made a good-enough dent that Bryan looked at her approvingly. “I’m impressed.”

  “Being able to eat almost an entire slab of ribs is all it takes to impress you? I wish I had known that earlier. I wouldn’t have had to hustle Adrian for the meeting.” She grinned so he knew she was just kidding.

  “You’ve got some sauce right there.” He pointed at her cheek, then gave up and swiped at it with one of the wet wipes on the table. “There.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, you surprise me.”

  “Because I eat real food?”

  Bryan laughed. “No. I just didn’t think this was really your speed.”

  She cocked her head. “Sounds like you’re calling me a snob.”

  “Not a snob. Not exactly.”

  “Then what?”

  A smile played at the corner of Bryan’s lips. “High-maintenance maybe?”

  “Oh, thanks. That’s so much better.”

  He chuckled. “You already admitted that you drive the Benz because it’s intimidating. I guess I don’t understand why you work so hard to be unapproachable.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be approached.” Ana cleaned her hands with another wet wipe and shoved her plate away. “I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t particularly like most of my clients. So yeah, I cultivate an image. It keeps people at a respectful distance. They only see what I want them to see.”

  “What about people you don’t want to keep at arm’s length?”

  Ana took a sip of her tea. “There are very few of those. Rachel and Melody know the real me. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I don’t know.” He gave her a searching look. “Is it?”

  She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Of all the people she would have expected to penetrate her facade, Bryan was the last. “That’s funny, coming from you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She leveled a look on him now. “Life of the party. Total flirt. Never met a woman he wanted to see twice? Maybe I’m unapproachable, but you rarely let anyone close enough to see the real you either.”

  He sat there for a long moment, like he was considering. “You’re right.”

  “I’m . . . what?”

  “You’re right. You want to know why I quit climbing? Because the guy who did that is a guy I don’t like very much. I don’t want that life.”

  The way he was looking at her—open, serious, maybe even a little bit vulnerable—made her insides shudder in a peculiar way. The last thing she wanted was to feel something right now. Attraction she could brush off. But a true connection? Way harder to disregard. She knew she should change the subject, but instead she found herself asking, “Then who do you want to be?”

  Another laugh, and the moment was broken. “Beats me. I’ve spent so long proving I’m not my father that I haven’t given much thought to who I wanted to become myself.”

  “What’s wrong with your father?”

  “Absolutely nothing. And that’s the problem.”

  Ana still didn’t understand, but the way he was looking away told her that he wasn’t going to say any more. And yet for some reason, Ana still found herself talking.

  “Trust me, I get that.”

  Now he was focused back on her, and she didn’t like how that light of curiosity in his eyes made her heart leap. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Firstborn comes with a certain responsibility, and I haven’t exactly lived up to that.”

  “You mean your parents didn’t want you to be wildly successful?”

  Ana rolled her eyes at the comment. “Not when it means cleaning up for people who probably deserve what’s coming to them. They tell our overseas relatives that I work in marketing. Which I suppose is close enough.”

  He studied her for a long moment, and she toyed with her fork so she wouldn’t analyze his expression. “Tell me about your siblings then. Surely there’s a mime or an encyclopedia salesman in there to take the heat off you.”

  Ana laughed, grateful for Bryan’s trademark humor. “Sadly, no. My next youngest sister is a nurse. Then pharmaceutical sales rep, web designer, and physical therapy student. My brother, the youngest, is still in high school, but he’s leaning engineering.”

  “And just when you thought you could count on the lone brother to run away with his rock band and make crisis publicity look respectable.”

  The tone was teasing, but Ana flushed hot and then cold. He couldn’t have known the joke would hit home. She piled her used napkins on her plate and stood abruptly. “Shall we go?”

  Bryan had to have picked up on something amiss, but he didn’t press. Instead, he took bot
h of their trays to the trash, where he scraped the leftovers and piled them into the bus tub. “What do you want to do now?”

  Ana thought for a moment. “Well, we’re in St. Louis. We can’t leave without seeing the Arch, right?”

  “Let’s do it. We’re here; might as well take in all the sights.”

  Ana held up her phone. “Already called an Uber.”

  “Of course you did.” But he nudged her with his shoulder. “Time to go play tourist.”

  * * *

  Bryan was having a hard time not thinking about this trip like a date. A really long, odd date that involved buying industrial equipment, but a date nonetheless. Good food, sightseeing in an unfamiliar city, and the unmistakable urge to kiss his companion.

  So maybe the last one had been a regular thought since he’d known Ana, but the more he got to know her, the more he began to think he’d had her all wrong. In his less . . . self-aware . . . days, she’d been a challenge. She returned his flirtation but brushed off his advances; any attempt he’d made to get closer to her had been neatly sidestepped. And after a while, he’d settled into the push-and-pull of their relationship, friends solely because of mutual friends.

  Once he’d come back, he’d realized what it would actually do to their close-knit group if they were to date and break up and vowed that wasn’t even on the radar, although he still wanted to kiss her. Then he’d seen her with Adrian and the thought of her with another man had made it pretty clear that he was failing badly at the friend-zone thing.

  And now she pressed against him, peering through one of the windows in the cramped top of the Gateway Arch. Strong winds put a distinct sway into the building where they stood, over six hundred feet in the air, the city spread out beneath them. From here, it was surprisingly green, even this early in the year. Bryan tended to forget that spring existed everywhere else in the country, while the grass didn’t even start growing in Denver until May.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Ana breathed. “I didn’t know Missouri was so pretty.”

  “Never been?”

  She shook her head. “No. You?”

  “Nope. No reason to until now. Would you ever move here?”

  “Now that I know I could live on barbecue? It’s a possibility.”

  “Seriously?”

  She looked up at him and brushed a stray lock of black hair from her eyes. “Honestly? No. Denver is my home. Rachel and Melody are as much my family as my actual family. I can’t imagine leaving them behind.”

  “I can understand that.”

  She must have sensed something in his tone, because she shifted around so her back was against the window niche and she could look directly up into his face. “Why didn’t you go into real estate? It sounds like your dad has always held a place open for you at one of his companies.”

  “He has.” He looked out over the city as he chose his words. “If he’d had the choice, it would have been Alex he mentored. But Alex had his own family traditions to push back against.”

  Ana frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “You know Alex lived with us when we were seniors in high school, right? While his parents were in Russia?”

  Ana nodded.

  “Well, Alex and my dad got close. And have stayed close. They’re much more alike than he and I are. Alex is . . . well, you know Alex. Principled. Steady. Not sure he’s done a single wrong thing in his life.”

  “Hard to be compared to that, I bet.”

  He looked down at her. “When you’re young, or not that young, it’s better to not play the game than to lose at it.”

  “So that’s why you became a climber? So you wouldn’t fail at being your dad’s successor?”

  “Oh, nothing that intentional. I loved climbing. I was good at it. It got me attention for things that neither my dad nor Alex was any good at.” He threw her a faint smile. “It got me the attention of girls.”

  “Pretty sure it’s the muscles that did that, but okay.”

  Bryan threw back his head and laughed. “It was a good motivation to keep going. And then I realized I could make money out of it without having to sit in an office all day, without being responsible. Without being accountable. But the problem with lacking accountability is that it’s all too easy to take advantage of it.”

  He shrugged. “Anyway. I’m not cut out for real estate development. As much as I know my dad is trying to preserve Denver’s character, growth is out of control. It’s nothing like the city I knew and loved as a child. So it would be hypocritical for me to work for a developer, even my dad, when I oppose development.”

  “But you’re okay with living off them while you get your own business started?”

  “What can I say? I’m hypocritical about hypocrisy.”

  They were getting called back onto the tram, so they moved with the group of people down the stairs and onto the pod-shaped car and took their seats again.

  Ana nudged his shoulder with hers. “For the record, I don’t think you’re a hypocrite. And however hard you are on yourself, I also don’t think you’re a bad person.”

  He looked at her in surprise.

  She shrugged. “I think you’re like most people, just getting along the best you can. Trying to own up to your mistakes and make them right. Some are easier to fix than others, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. No matter how long it takes.”

  A touch of sadness had crept into her voice, but she was looking away from him, so he couldn’t see her face. Gripped by something he couldn’t exactly name, he turned his hand palm up on his knee. And was surprised when she placed her hand in it so he could interlace his fingers with hers.

  She didn’t look at him all the way down, the only connection the warmth of their palms pressed together. And then the tram arrived at the bottom and she jumped out of her seat, breaking the contact. “Let’s walk a bit,” she said, nothing of their moment showing in her voice. “I feel like exploring.”

  They walked across the wide expanse of grass at the bottom of the arch and then through the city. Just like Denver, downtown was compact. They started with the Old Courthouse and admired the Federal architecture that made it look like a mini Capitol building, White House, and Jefferson Memorial all in one. Then they meandered farther south into Ballpark Village, the shopping-mall-like complex just outside of Busch Stadium. By the time they’d finished exploring, the sun was dipping toward the horizon. They chatted about the business, the city, about Denver, but Ana stayed carefully away from serious topics as they walked. That was fine by him. He didn’t particularly feel like mining his own neurosis and insecurity. But curiosity still nibbled at the edge of every interaction. Ana spoke like someone who knew something about regret. What could she possibly have to regret?

  When their last Uber of the night dropped them at their hotel and they stepped onto the elevator, Ana turned to him. “That was fun. I’m glad I came.”

  “I’m glad you came too. Ana—”

  Two men stepped onto the elevator just before the doors closed, their bulk and their roller bags separating Ana from him before he could get out whatever he’d been about to say. Which maybe wasn’t a bad thing considering he had no idea what he was about to say.

  The elevator slid up silently, but the businessmen were on a higher floor, so it arrived at Ana’s before Bryan had a chance to say anything. He held the Door Open button while she slipped around the businessmen and stepped out.

  “Meet you in the lobby at eight tomorrow to get the truck?”

  Ana nodded. “Sounds good. Good night.”

  Bryan punched the Door Close button and leaned back against the side of the elevator with a sigh. One of the businessmen threw a surreptitious look his way, but he pretended not to notice. Just like he pretended not to think about Ana for the rest of the night, alone in his hotel room.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ANA DIDN’T SLEEP WELL, and she blamed the hotel mattress, even though it was perfectly comfortable. Whatever discomfort she fel
t stemmed from the way things had gone with Bryan yesterday.

  She’d held his hand. Voluntarily.

  Not that that meant anything to him, not in any real sense. He had obviously picked up on the things she didn’t want to say and sought to comfort her. She wasn’t surprised. Whatever he might think about himself, he was an essentially kind person. Even in his wilder days, he hadn’t been predatory or untruthful; no doubt every single one of the women had known what she was getting into with him. Bryan never pretended he was something he wasn’t.

  But he might be pretending not to be something he was.

  Enough, she told herself. She was spending a lot of time thinking about a guy who was unsuitable for her in every way, not the least of which being their web of interconnected friendships and the fact she was investing her time in his company. A company that was going to need their full attention to avoid meeting the same fate as Fourth City Roasters.

  Getting the cashier’s check and picking up the truck went seamlessly, even though there was a brief question as to the weight capacity when they signed the paperwork and found out they’d been given a smaller truck than Bryan had rented. They’d assured him it was capable of hauling a thousand-pound machine with no problem, assuming it would fit in the back. So they’d busted out a tape measure and checked against the crate dimensions listed on the roaster manufacturer’s website.

  “Let’s hope Louis managed to get it in the crate,” Bryan said when they settled onto the ugly patterned-fabric bench seat. Yes, the truck seemed to be from 1990. But the diesel engine started with a reassuring rumble, so Ana hoped it would get them the eight hundred miles back home.

  By some miracle, when they arrived at Fourth City Roasters, Louis was waiting for them, the machine disassembled and crated, all components shrink-wrapped so they wouldn’t move during hauling. Just to make sure, Bryan looped tie-downs around the crate and secured them to the anchors in the floor of the truck bed. This thing wasn’t going anywhere.

  Bryan handed over the check, Louis handed over the bill of sale, and Ana and Bryan were on their way west with a nearly twenty-thousand-dollar piece of roasting equipment in the back of a rental truck. The truck, which had felt so light and powerful moments before, now felt sluggish and heavy.