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Gemma Romano can see the changes happening daily in her Brooklyn neighborhood. Older couples are retiring and closing down their businesses, old friends are moving away and her family bar, Romano’s, needs a rapid influx of cash to upgrade and repair part of their building if they’re going to survive. Opened in 1934 and handed down to her father, Gemma sees it as her inheritance and responsibility, even if her sisters have taken their lives in new directions.

When Brendan Flaherty shows up in the bar one day, it’s a blast from the past, and not a pleasant one. High school promises turned into heartache when he walked away from her and their (now admittedly) fanciful dreams of the future. Brendan never told her why he’d left and she’d had to assume that he hadn’t felt the same way she did. Worse, he’s a property developer now, the kind who is swooping in to take advantage of the stores ready to close with easy cash and plans to gentrify the neighborhood. She’s determined not to give him the time of day, even if some of the better memories of their time together start to surface.