We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

wouldn’t be partners with me. I meant it when I said I don’t want the bookstore. But Ira does. And you do. So you’d be partners with him.”

“I love your dad,” he says, scratching his chin. “But if we’re partners, what would you be?”

“What I hope I still am,” I reply. “Your friend.”

The next morning, I wake up and get ready for my meeting with Penny. As I head off, Ira stands up.

“What are you doing?”

“Coming with, of course.”

“But we’ll have to close the store. During business hours.”

Ira shrugs and locks the door behind us. “Hardly seems to matter anymore.”

My heart is beating so fast as we walk to the hardware store. I practice what I’ll say. Basically, I have to do the opposite of hand-sell. I have to convince her not to buy something.

Chad is waiting at the corner of Main and Alder.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“No offense, son, but we’re not letting you face Penny Macklemore alone.” He glances at Ira. “Historically, that has not gone well.”

We continue up Alder. Ike’s truck is parked in front of the hardware store. In itself this isn’t so weird, but the sight of Ike, in a suit, is nearly as jarring as hearing him talk about Viagra. He growls at me. “Just so we’re clear, we’re here for your father and Chad, not for you.”

“Understood,” I say.

“We’re not speaking to you,” Richie says as he emerges from the cab, trailed by Garry.

“I can appreciate that. I’ll do whatever I can to make it right.”

“We’ll see about that,” Garry says.

“You guys, I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” Richie says.

“You coulda told us,” Garry adds.

“I know. I was scared.”

“Everyone gets scared, Aaron,” Ike says. “Don’t give you license to act like a mother fudger.” He looks at Ira. “Pardon my language.”

“Seems warranted,” Ira says.

We enter the hardware store. Penny is in the back office with her lawyer. “What’s going on here?” she asks when she sees the crowd. “We only need Aaron and me for the closing.” She looks at me. “Because this is a closing. I didn’t receive any other word from you.”

“You’re receiving it now,” I say. “Penny, I don’t want to sell you the store. Well, actually, I do. But they don’t. They want to run it.” I point to Ira and Chad and Ike too. “And so I’d like to take you up on your offer of thirteen thousand dollars to back out of our deal.”

“Thirteen thousand dollars?” Ike bellows.

“You have a cashier’s check?” Penny asks.

“No cashier’s check, but I have this.” I pull out an envelope full of cash from the record collectors. “One thousand dollars.”

“And here’s a check for six thousand,” Chad says.

“You’re still six thousand dollars short.”

“Six thousand dollars short of what?” Ike asks.

“Thirteen thousand dollars,” Penny replies.

“What’s thirteen thousand dollars?” Ike asks again.

I turn to Ike. “Don’t worry about the money.” Then I turn back to Penny. “I can get the rest of the money by the end of the day.” I haven’t talked to Daryl yet but I suspect he’ll be more than happy to take the collection for the bargain-basement price of eight grand.

“How?” Chad and Ira ask at the same time.

“Will someone tell me what the darn-tootin’ is going on?” Ike asks.

I turn to Ira. “I’m selling Sandy’s records to Daryl. I know they’re worth way more than eight thousand dollars. But if Sandy left them to me, it’s up to me to decide what to do with them. And this is what I choose. This is how I can make it right to all of you.”

“Can someone explain to me what’s costing thirteen thousand dollars?” Ike shouts.

“It’s what I have to pay Penny to get out of our deal,” I explain. “And I can do it. If I sell all the records now.”

“But the records are part of our revenue stream,” Chad says. “I put it in the business plan.”

“Why? I told you we weren’t selling them in the store.”

“Yeah, but you say a lot of stupid shit. And anyway, they’re mad valuable. And I talked to Lou and he says he would become our buyer, so we could keep up our supply and revenue stream and he gets to shop for records for a living.”

“Yeah, but Chad, we need to sell the records to get the money to pay off Penny.”

“And we need to sell records to make the store profitable,” Chad says, shaking his head. “That’s a real catch-22.”

“Chad Santos, did you just make a literary reference?”

“I guess I did.”

“Well, then, you have to run a bookstore now.”

Everyone laughs and the mood in the office is festive and for a moment I think I’ve won. I’ve saved the bookstore and gotten out from it.

But then I see Penny, who is smiling too. And I know Penny well enough to know that she doesn’t smile when she loses. She smiles when she wins.

And Penny Macklemore always wins.

“It’s December first,” she says merrily. “And you don’t have the thirteen thousand dollars, so our deal is closing now.”

“But I’ll have it in a few hours . . . Tomorrow at the latest.”

“Too late. The offer is off the table. The deal is closing now,” she repeats. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll sue you, and trust me, that will get very expensive very fast.”

I look at Penny. How did I not see this before? The curled hair. The upturned nose. The small eyes. She’s Lucy, at age seventy.

“Were you ever going to let me out of the deal?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “If you raised the money, sure. But I knew if you somehow did, you’d only dig yourself in deeper because a bookstore is not a growth market. Then the property would flounder again and I’d get it all fixed up, even cheaper, and be ten thousand dollars the richer for my trouble.” She unclasps her pen. “Either way, I get the store. I’ve wanted it for years. And when I want something that badly, I don’t ever give up.”

“It’s your