1VinceOne of these days, my brothers and I were going to come up with a different way to celebrate winning races. Or console ourselves for losing races. Or celebrate birthdays. Or engagements. Or… pretty much anything in life. We were going to find something else to do rather than gather up at the same old bar and sit around the same old table drinking beer and eating massive piles of heart-clogging food.
I pulled into the parking lot, and before I even opened my door, I heard my other brothers whooping and hollering as they headed across the gravel toward the bar. So, maybe chances of us finding a different way to celebrate were pretty slim. Quentin performed an enthusiastic jump into the air and nearly crashed into the ground at landing. I laughed. I guess it wasn’t so bad to have this tradition.
It all started with our father, years ago, when he was still young. Then he passed the torch over to Quentin, who spent time at the bar socializing. When he took over the racing company for our parents, celebrations for winning races traveled to the well-worn barstools and cozy booths. As the oldest brother of the four of us, that put him in the position of introducing each of us to the bar in turn. As soon as we turned twenty-one, he ushered us in and we became a part of the tradition. Now, with the baby of the family, Darren, integrated into the fold, this was a place where all four of us could spend time together.
Dad didn’t find his way in as much as he used to. He liked to say the bar went with Freeman Racing. It was a package deal. And now that he was all gray hair and grandbabies, he didn’t need to be out carousing with the younger folk. Of course, he was far more salt-and-pepper than he was gray, and most people would be hard-pressed to find people anywhere near his age who had half the energy he did. Besides, he and Mom never really left the company. They might have said they were handing it over to Quentin and retiring, but that didn’t actually happen.
Mom was up at the compound every day, and Dad was there most of the time as well. When he wasn’t, he was most likely still doing something having to do with racing, whether it was working with customers for the custom-bike business he ran on the side or working with Quentin’s wife, Merry, on the next big marketing idea. Merry was a force of nature. She’d blown into the company and instantly made her mark. She’d transformed the company’s image, our popularity, and my brother’s heart.
And sometimes she even managed to lure my father to the bar with us. Good old Gus had a soft spot in his heart for Merry. She surprised him, and he was hard to surprise.
That night he was tagging along as we celebrated a massive victory and our buddy Greg finally being on his way to recovery after a horrific accident crumpled him like a tin can. His description, not mine. It took a long time, but he was finally on the mend, and we could see better days ahead. Both of those deserved plenty of celebration
And for all my waxing poetic about branching out and finding something new, there was nowhere I’d actually rather be.
It felt almost like home here. We knew the place as well as it knew us, and that included Lindsey Trewes behind the bar. Much like us, she was the new generation of a long-standing business. She’d taken it over from her daddy, who’d taken it over from his. She had always kind of been around. My family’d known hers ever since I could remember, and she showed up in the background of a lot of my memories from when I was younger.
That’s the way it was with a place like Charlotte. It was like a big city with the heart of a small town. Too big to really be one of those little bitty places where everybody knew everybody. Too small to be isolated and not run into the same people over and over.
But when it came to Lindsey, it was in a more distant way. I remembered her as being a perfectly nice girl, but she was closer to Nick’s age. They had the same circle of friends when they were younger but weren’t particularly close. That changed when she took over the bar. When she worked there with her father, he kept her mostly to the kitchen and bussing tables. But when she took over the whole thing, she ended up front and center behind the bar. With all our time spent there and the two of them reminiscing about old times, she and Nick ended up thick as thieves pretty quickly.