Page 5 of Partridge in a Bear Tree

"She's my mate, Ash. If fate is for real, and it sure feels like it is, then I guess if that's what I really wanted, then that's what would work for us."

"Even if it meant not being together all the time?" Ashley hadn't even realized she had any of these questions, but now, talking to her cousin, she was starting to think it wasn't just Disaster Lesbian-ing that had kept her away from Penny the past week. She obviously had deep personal concerns—she wouldn't call themfears, dammit—that had made approaching the redheaded drummer seem genuinely impossible, no matter what fate was telling her.

"We're already not going to be together all the time," Bill pointed out philosophically. "Idohave the brewery to run, and Gwen's going to be running her ass off doing gigs for the nextyear while they hype the new album. She's talking about moving out here to Renaissance, but her bandmates live in Denver. If they want to practice when they're not on the road, either everybody's going to have to move out here or somebody's going to have some insanely long drives for rehearsals, and getting four near-strangers to move two hundred miles so I can be with my girlfriend whenever she's home is a big ask."

"So you don't think you're moving to Denver," Ashley said cautiously.

Bill shrugged, palms up. "Not right now, for sure, and honestly I hate the idea in general. But I've got to believe fate means something, and we'll work it out. How are you doing?" he asked, in less of a subject change than he imagined. "I know you've only been managing the pub for a week, and it's been a crazy, crazy week, so on a scale of one to ten, how overwhelmed are you?"

"Oh, about a seventeen." Ashley laughed shakily, then shrugged. "No, not that bad. Eight, maybe? It's not like you were doing a bad job, Bill. It's just that you were juggling too much. And between Oktoberfest and the Sixty Pix blowing up the airwaves this past week, business has been booming. Now that both of those things are over…well, I guess the real work begins now."

Her cousin leaned forward, arms folded on the table. "We haven't talked much since you took over, and I know that's mostly my fault. I've been with Gwen the whole time. But you said you had a vision for the brewpub, Ash. You want to talk about that?"

"The past week and the band have helped launch us in the direction I want to go in," Ashley admitted. She gestured around the warm, clean pub, which had more people in for lunch than they usually did. "A younger clientele, for one thing. Nodisrespect to your parents, but the jazz evenings and soft rock Muzak weren't exactly calling out to the young and hip."

Bill grinned. "Because the young say 'hip,' just like we Millennials do."

Ashley grinned back. "Yeah, exactly. So there's that, just aiming for a younger clientele, but also, look, what's one thing that this town really lacks, Bill?"

His eyebrows rose. "I feel like the list could go on for quite a while and yours probably doesn't include an excellent adult ball pit, so you tell me."

"A ball pit? Really?" Ashley blinked at her cousin, who ducked his head.

"It was the first thing that leaped to mind. Go on, what are you thinking?"

"I was thinking Renaissance needs a good gay bar, or at least somewhere that's an obviously queer-friendly space!"

"Oh." Bill wheezed laughter. "Yeah, I can see why that might be more useful than a ball pit. That seems like a good idea, Ash," he said more seriously. "It's not something I'd really thought about, but it'd probably be not only popular locally but could get skiers in during the winter, and even faire people in the summer. Although there's already a lot of beer at the faire."

"Tons, but the faire closes at seven and the pub is open until two," Ashley said with a smile. "That's a lot of time to mosey into town and have dinner and some drinks. Same with the ski resorts in the winter. Most of the skiing shuts down by four or five in the afternoon because it gets too dark. Having a queer destination in town could bring in a bigger clientele. I'm not planning to throw the whole cozy log cabin vibe out or anything. I just want to make it clear, visually and in advertising, that this is a safe space for queer people to come enjoy themselves."

Bill spread his hands. "It's your party, cuz. Go for it."

CHAPTER 4

The worst, and possibly best, thing about leaving Renaissance, Colorado behind was that it meant Penny wasn't mooning over Ashley Torben at what was a clearly-defined arm's length distance. She was under the impression that generally speaking, Ashley was in to girls, but given the way the tall brewhouse manager had avoided even looking at her while she was standing around the bathroom half naked, Penny had to assume that Ashley wasn't specifically intoher. And Ashley's smile had been pained when Penny had tried to show off the Thunder Bear Brewery t-shirt she'd been loaned, "So, yeah," Penny breathed to herself. She hadn't thrown away her shot, it just hadn't hit. These things happened. It didn't matter all that much.

Which was why she was still moping about it two weeks later. Penny smirked and did a drum roll that made Gwen look up from tuning her guitar. "Are you still pouting over Ashley blowing you off?"

"No!" Penny smashed the cymbals to emphasize the sincerity of her response, then grabbed them to stop the reverberations and glanced guiltily toward the studio doors. "Maybe."

Gemma, their keyboardist, snorted inelegantly. "Totally. And if you don't stop making noise they're going to throw us off the show before we get to perform."

"They're really not." Myles, on bass, was sprawled on the studio floor like they weren't about to do a live performance on Denver's most popular radio station. "Even if they wanted to throw the rest of us out, they really want Gwen on the show, and she won't be on it without us, so we could set the microphones on fire and they'd still welcome us with open arms."

"Probably not if we set the microphones on fire," Gwen disagreed. "They'd have to call the fire department. It'd be a big mess. And I think one arrest in the band's proximity is enough for the time being."

Penny exchanged glances with Sandy, second guitar and backup singer, who grimaced and said, "Yeah, but it wasn't one ofuswho got arrested."

"There but for the grace of God, though." Gwen flexed her hand and wrist like she was remembering the impact of punching her ne'er-do-well father in the nose. He'd tried to press charges, but the fact that she'd hit him after he showed up back in her life almost twenty years after running off with her childhood fortune had made the judge laugh in his face. The same judge had also refused him bail, on the extremely valid argument that he was obviously a flight risk, having run off once before. Penny hoped he rotted in jail for the rest of his miserable life.

A soft crackling sound alerted the band as the DJ, a woman named Keely, flicked a speaker on between the rooms. Even Myles got up, and Sandy shook herself, taking a deep breath in preparation as Keely spoke. "Ready to rock? Countdown will go from thirty up there on the screen while we introduce you, and then you're live. You have seven minutes of air time before we have to take a commercial break, and while we're doing that we'llmove the whole band from the sound studio in here with me. We good?"

Gwen cast a quick grin around at the band and said, "We're good," with easy confidence. Keely had explained that all to them at least two times before, but Penny imagined people screwed up a lot and the repetition was the DJ's best way of minimizing mistakes. Keely gave them a thumbs-up through the window and a countdown light flicked on above it as Gwen turned her attention to Sandy. "Just like we always do, Sandra Dee. A cappella chorus for our intro."

Sandy wrinkled her nose affectionately at the nickname, but nodded while Penny marveled at Gwen's calm. Performing for live audiences was old hat, but Gwen was the only one in the band with any real experience with performing on air or for a studio audience. The lead singer lifted a hand, counting down with her fingers as the clock reached the last few seconds. Sandy fastened her gaze on Gwen, not the clock itself, and her alto voice, deep enough to be a tenor, soared out effortlessly as Gwen's fist closed on a zero.

They hadn't planned for their songNot Againto begin with a chorus, but after Gwen had debuted it as the encore for a free gig a few weeks ago, their fans had embraced it as their way to call the band on stage. None of the Sixty Pix were dumb enough to look a gift horse in the mouth: if the fans wanted the song that way, then they'd by gum get it. The band had added the chorus-first version of the song, both as a live recording and a new studio recording, to the album when they'd dropped it in the wake of their unexpectedly successful weekend playing at the Thunder Bear Brewpub in Renaissance.

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