small apartment. Dallas followed, the heavy weight of continued rejection slowed his step and had his mood plunging. A pent-up sigh escaped. Dallas poked a finger in the tight knot of his one and only silk necktie, heading into the living room, staring at the back of Ducky’s earphone-covered head.
“He didn’t hear you,” Dallas drawled, looking back over his shoulder to see Donny throwing open the refrigerator door with more force than necessary. The few condiment bottles in the side trays of the door clacked together. His older brother grabbed a coconut water with the same aggression.
“What the hell’s wrong with this country? We have a great product. It could turn the fucking physical fitness industry on its ass. We need cash and can’t get it because we don’t have any cash. It’s an absurd process.” Donny only took a break from his rant to gulp down several swallows of the water as he leaned his ass against the edge of the counter, his shoulders slumped in clear defeat.
Dallas agreed and had agreed with each of the twelve times they’d had this same conversation after being turned down for a loan. Every refusal incited this same aggravation, making it harder and harder to remain positive and stay the course.
Dallas tugged his tie free and absently tossed it on the coffee table, heading for the old thrift-store sofa that had seen better days long before he got it. God, he sure could use some extra cash right now. They all could. This little venture desperately needed to get off the ground. He barely got the small irritating button at his neck free before dropping down on the soft cushion, his own dejection showing in his landing.
“American dream my ass,” Donny muttered loudly.
Dallas and Ducky’s two-bedroom apartment was so small Donny only had to turn to the side to be seen from every angle of the living room.
“What the fuck are we gonna do? This is costing more money than we have. Cari and I are gonna have to move in here if we keep going like we are.”
Finances. Fuck, they stressed Dallas the hell out. Donny had no idea the debt he had hanging over his head. He had tens of thousands of dollars in school loans for an education he didn’t use and half a dozen maxed-out credit cards. Dallas’s stomach churned as he leaned forward, dropping his elbows to his knees, hanging his head. He stared down at the ugly woven rug, a prized dumpster-dive find, at his feet. Between his debt, his job at the gym, and being the main trainer to their nine-hundred strong user-base, Dallas was growing frazzled and exhausted.
The BikeBro social platform had really taken off among their daily users. Ducky maintained an enormous workload as the sole webmaster of the site. The local buzz about their company had already increased membership even before Ducky had the bright idea of taking all this to YouTube. Dallas and their second trainer, Skye, had started doing cycling videos to help drum up new sales and give them a much-needed revenue source from YouTube’s advertising. They were selling about fifteen BikeBro boxes a day. Why didn’t any of the financial institutions see their value?
On top of everything else, Dallas had no idea how the hell they were going to manage the newly arriving inventory of a thousand boxes being stored inside this tiny apartment, waiting to be shipped out. How would it all fit?
“We’re making a little money off YouTube,” Ducky said absently, his fingers never leaving the game controls on the keyboard. “Did you tell the bank that?”
“Apparently, we’re not making enough to make a difference,” Dallas explained patiently, watching the frustration build on Donny’s face. His hot-headed brother stared at the back of Ducky’s head, raising his eyebrows.
“Then we’ve got to go corporate.” The doom and gloom in Ducky’s voice sounded resigned. Dallas gave a quiet huff, knowing his baby brother resisted the establishment on every level.
Donny gave an irate shake of the head, tossing out an affronted sweep of the arm in Ducky’s direction in a serious what the fuck gesture. Donny and Ducky had an almost ten-year age gap between them. Donny was thirty-two to Ducky’s twenty-three. Dallas, at twenty-seven, sat in the middle. He always played the intermediary between his siblings. If he were being truthful, that was getting exhausting too.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to do, Duck,” Dallas said before Donny could say anything else and make this whole day worse by