Sleeping with the Enemy

Mae

I dumped an ungodly amount of sugar into the strong black coffee that tasted and smelled like jet fuel. The restaurant my dear brother had picked for us to eat breakfast served the worst coffee on the planet. I should have remembered that fact before I took that first sip that nearly sent me into convulsions.

“Do you want some coffee with your sugar?” Patrick asked with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

“This is not coffee. This shit is nasty.”

“You’re uppity with your coffee,” he replied, taking a sip of the muddy water. “It tastes fine.”

Once I had doctored my coffee with enough cream and sugar to turn it a milky brown, I got down to business. “We need to up the game,” I said.

He acted as if he didn’t hear me. I stared into his green eyes, which were just a shade darker than my own. He was my big brother and a lot of people commented on how much we looked alike. I supposed we did but he was painted with a darker hue. My fair blond hair compared to his darker shade. My fair skin and his olive tone. But we had the same high cheekbones, which I loved as a woman, but he wasn’t quite as thrilled.

“I don’t want to up anything,” he replied before taking a bite of crispy bacon. “We’re doing fine.”

“But we could be doing better. If we could get a bigger storefront in a better part of town, we could really be raking in the cash. We have some great pieces in our inventory, but no one knows because no one knows us.”

He shrugged. “Mae, we make enough money selling the pieces we do get. I don’t like the idea of an antiques store. That is so old fashioned. I don’t want to be the guy wearing an ugly sweater vest and roaming around piles of old dusty things.”

I rolled my eyes. “That is so dumb. And so stereotypical.”

“And so true. The majority of antique shops we visit have a guy exactly like that.”

“That’s the problem,” I said, glad he had brought it up. “We need to quit shopping around at other shops and find some actual dealers.”

“We’re doing fine,” he argued.

“Well, yes, but we could do better. Let me put my marketing degree to use. Let me market the business and make some real money.”

He didn’t look like he cared. That was because he didn’t. “We’re fine,” he insisted.

“Yes, we are fine, but I would like to be better than fine.”

“Look, we make enough to pay our bills. Neither of us is living hand to mouth. We don’t have to report to some corporate asshole. We get to do our thing and live without anyone breathing down our necks. If we get bigger, then we deal with bigger clients. We will have to have investors that bitch and moan about every little thing. I like our business just the way it is.”

“But it could be so much more,” I insisted.