Page 40 of OctoBEARfest

"Seems fair." She paused in the truck door, smiling at him. "Because I think you've changed mine, too." She blew him a kiss, and was gone.

Bill watched where she'd gone for a moment, smiling and shaking his head. Hethoughtshe'd changed his life? No, he knew it. But fated mates was still a lot to drop into a casual conversation, and she was right. That part of the conversationcould wait. She'd accepted him as a bear; the rest of it was working out the details.

He took the route back to the pub that he was going to send the band, and parked in the back lot. His parents' vehicle was there, along with a couple of the cousins' cars and more staff vehicles than he would have expected. He went inside to semi-organized chaos, and his cousin Ashley flagged him down. "Hey, cuz. I knew you had a date this morning, so when people started showing up I thought I'd take the bull by the horns and called in some reinforcements."

"I'm going to have to back-date your starting date and give you a raise and a promotion. How does 'Head Boss Manager of the World' sound as a job title?"

"I'll want business cards with that." Ashley grinned like she didn't believe Bill had meant it, and went off to order his younger brothers around, yelling, "Hey, your parents are in the event room!" to Bill over her shoulder.

"So I take it you don't need me in here right now," Bill said under his breath. He was definitely hiring her with a raise already built in, whether she believed him or not. He grabbed a root beer—the one non-alcoholic drink the brewery also made—and went to the event room, which could be used either for private events or spillover space if the rest of the pub filled up. They'd opened it the night before, and Bill knew they'd be opening it tonight, too.

For the moment, though, his parents were slouched comfortably in a couch in there together, drinking coffee and chatting. They both looked up as he came in, and his mother smiled fondly at him. "Hello, sweetheart. I'm so proud of you."

"Oh good. Thanks. Why?" Bill dropped into the couch across from them and put his root beer on the table, watching bubbles rise.

"For this transition," his mother said in surprise. "We had no idea you were taking the pub this direction."

Bill blinked. "Um. Uh. What?"

"Oh, come on, sweetheart. We really believed it, you know. When you posted to the family chat and said you'd messed up the booking, we thought you were serious. And I'm not going to pretend I didn't panic. You don't make mistakes like that."

"I—"

"But you can't really believe us to expect you put crowds like this together literally overnight," his father went on, oblivious to Bill's faint protests. "I wish you'd felt comfortable letting us know you were going to try something new, but this has been a terrific effort, Bill. I know jazz and the Renaissance Jazz Festival were always your mother's and my thing, but I didn't realize rock was such a passion of yours. That young woman is a real star. How long have you been a fan of hers?"

Bill opened his mouth and shut it again.

"She certainly seems to like you, too." His mom's eyes sparkled. "It might not be fate, baby, but maybe you've found somebody worth your time?"

"It is fate, actually," Bill said with a stupid little grin.

Both his parents jolted upright, his mom visibly suppressing a squeal. "What? Really?Really, Bill?"

"Yeah." His smile grew, almost embarrassed. "I haven't told her yet. I did tell her—I showed her—my bear, which she, well, you know, there was a lot of swearing and staring, but that seems reasonable, right? I was going to tell her the rest of it but we got interrupted." By almost having sex. He was nearly forty, but he didn't feel the need to mention that to his parents.

"Oh my God! It's about time!" His mother clapped her hands together, and his dad gave her a fond, exasperated look.

"Heather. You can't rush fate."

"Yes, yes, I know, but it's still about time! Bill! Sit down and tell us everything!" His mother pointed imperiously at the couch he was already sitting on. Both he and his father laughed, and shehmphed in mock insult.

"I don't know what to tell you, Mom. She blew in like a hurricane on Thursday and I just knew. I've been following her around making moon eyes ever since." He decided not to mention his absolute certainty that Gwen's arrival spelled disaster for the pub, because it seemed he'd been more wrong about that than anything in his entire life. "She played a publicity gig at the Harlequin on Thursday and Mike Piccolo—he says hi, by the way—said her band was on the verge of a breakout. I think he might be right. I think this might be the weekend that changes everything."

His parents were both beaming as they said, "That'swonderful," in chorus. A heartbeat later, though, his mother moved on to all the implications of that, things Bill had barely even let himself think about yet, and her face fell. "Oh. That's…complicated. I mean, what about the pub, Bill?"

"Whataboutthe pub?" his dad asked, baffled, then followed his mother's train of thought. "Oh. Oh, so she's going to be…traveling a lot? What does that mean for you, Bill? For the pub?"

"I literally haven't thought about it. I haven't had time. I…" Bill swallowed. "It might not mean anything. I don't know. I don't know at all."

"We can come back from Tucson for a while," his mom said dubiously. "But with this new direction you're taking things, it'll be a step backward to have us running the place again. This is your business now, Bill."

The impulse to just sayI don't want itrose up in him so strongly Bill bit his tongue. It wasn't exactly true. He loved running the actual brewery. Thepubwas the part he found exhausting. After a long moment, hoping he could trust hisvoice, he managed to say, "Let me think about things a little, Mom. Dad. The past couple days have been a lot. The truth is I think I need someone else to manage the pub anyway."

Confusion filled his parents' eyes. Bill forged ahead, trying to speak clearly but also quickly enough that they couldn't interrupt and start to argue. "I was talking to Ashley earlier and she pointed out that I've been trying to do two jobs for the last five years. You two used to share the work I'm doing alone. I hadn't thought of it like that, and it…" To his horror, his throat tightened with the threat of tears. He cleared it and tried to continue. "It helped me understand some of why I've felt so overwhelmed. I don't want to disappoint either of you, but I can't keep doing two full time jobs."

"Baby," his mother said in astonishment. "I didn't,wedidn't know you were feeling this way. Why didn't you say something?"

His father exhaled heavily. "Because he didn't want to disappoint us, Heather. And to be fair," he said to Bill, "I never quite thought of it that way either. Your mother spent a lot of time raising you kids, but we only had the brewery whenyouwere really little, and you were a big help with your brothers by the time we opened the pub. By the time the pub became a going concern, she was able to do most of the brewery management while I got the pub off the ground. I knew we were a partnership. I didn't think about how handing it over to you meant giving you two jobs to fill by yourself. I'm sorry, son."