Page 11 of Break My Heart
‘How’s my student doing?’ he kids.
‘Good. The place was packed last night.’
‘That’s great! I know you’re taking a loss this week with the $2 beer, but it’ll pay off in the long run.’
Ryder’s my ex, and the guy who taught me everything I knowabout brewing beer. He owns two brewpubs in Green Bay and just opened a taproom. We dated for two years and lived together for six months. We broke up because we were becoming more like roommates than a couple. His sole focus was on building his business, leaving little time for a relationship. I started out as his bartender, which was how we met. A few months later, he promoted me to manager. He always had me taste test his new beers, which is what got me interested in trying to brew my own. I asked Ryder to teach me how and soon our relationship became all about brewing beer and nothing else. It’s all we talked about, and all our dates became visits to brewpubs to check out the competition.
‘What are you selling the most of?’ Ryder asks, skipping any questions about how I’m doing personally and going straight to the business. That’s how it was when we were dating. I wasn’t his girlfriend. I was a coworker, someone to talk business with.
‘It varies by the night. Last night we sold a lot of the Dirty Blonde.’
‘It’s probably the name more than the beer. Places can sell a lot of shitty beer if they give it the right name.’
‘Are you saying my beer is shitty?’ I ask, feeling my defenses rise. Ryder thinks I’m too new at this to make good beer, telling me I’ll get better the longer I do it. He likes to forget that the beer I created for him last year was, and still is, one of his top-selling beers. He’s six years older than me so maybe he just can’t admit someone younger and less experienced can be as good as him at making beer, or maybe he doesn’t want to admit a woman made a better beer than him.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he says. ‘I’m just saying, in general, a name can sell a shitty beer.’
‘Well, this one isn’t shitty. I’ve had a lot of people tell me how much they like it.’
‘Okay, but you have to remember it’s a small town. They don’t have a lot to choose from.’
‘You did it again.’
‘Did what?’
‘Said my beer isn’t good enough.’
‘Gina, that’s not what I said. I’m trying to be supportive here and you’re taking it the wrong way.’
‘You’re being supportive by telling me the people here don’t know what good beer is, which is why they think mine is good?’
He sighs. ‘Just forget I said it, okay? That’s not what I meant.’
‘Then why did you say it?’
‘Because I don’t want you getting comfortable. You don’t get better from being complacent. You need to always be trying to improve, trying to make each beer better than the last. You said you want to enter competitions, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then you need to push yourself to be better than anyone else. You won’t win a competition by making a beer that’s popular with a few people in a small town. You need to make one that rivals the beers of the bigger breweries. You do that and you might have a chance at winning a competition. That’s what you need to get your name out there and have people making the drive to go there. Then you can start making merchandise and selling it online, which will create even more buzz.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I tell him, not needing a lecture. He’s already told me this many times, and while I appreciate his help, I want to run my business my way, not his.
Ryder’s a good guy, but he can be intense sometimes. I admire his work ethic and commitment to growing his business, but I don’t want to end up like him, my whole life focused on work and nothing else. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t see myself marrying him, not that I’m interested in that. I’m not sure I ever want to getmarried, or maybe I just haven’t met the right guy. Ryder and I got along okay, but we just didn’t have that spark. I felt like we were more friends than anything else.
My grandfather used to tell me that when I meet the right guy, I’ll know it. I’ll feel a fire inside me, a spark that ignites a passion in me that I don’t feel with anyone else. He said for him, that spark came through as anger. He met my grandma when he was 22 and renting a house with another guy. The guy got a job out of town and found someone else to rent out his room. Grandpa was told his new roommate was Lou, which he assumed was a man, but it turned out Lou was short for Louise, a woman.
She moved in, redecorated the place, made him keep his room clean, and insisted they eat dinner together every night. She disrupted his life and made him so angry he almost moved out. He went on a fishing trip one weekend to get away from her and that’s when he realized he missed her, and missed the nice home she’d created and the dinners they shared. All those feelings he thought were anger and annoyance were just him trying to deny how much he liked her. He wasn’t ready to settle down and didn’t want some girl marching into his life and changing that. But she did, and he married her three months later.
My grandma’s gone now, but I still remember her. She was always cooking or cleaning or working in her garden. She rarely sat down. She was in great shape, someone you’d think would live forever, and she probably would’ve if a car hadn’t hit her. Grandpa was never the same after she died. I tried to take her place, keeping the house clean and helping him with meals, but I was his grandkid, not his wife. I could never take her place.
Before my grandpa died, he told me he was going to give me this building. He’d won it in a poker game years ago. He’d never done anything with it and said it was probably worthless, but that it was mine if I wanted it. I’d only been to Haydon Falls once,when I was seven and went to camp here. I remembered liking the area, with all the trees and the falls, and I liked the silly boy I met at camp, the one who couldn’t stand losing to a girl. I never forgot him and never forgot this town, so when Grandpa died and the building was mine, I decided it was my chance for a fresh start, a new life in a new town.
‘How’s the hard cider coming?’ Ryder asks.
‘I’m working on it now. I’ve made ten so far, but none of them seem right. They’re too sharp, but when I add more sugar, it’s too sweet.’
‘Vary the fermentation time.’
