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Nick shuddered. “I’ll pass.” He perched on the stool next to mine, his hands loose between his knees. “You’re doing okay? After…you know…”
“You can mention his name. I won’t fall apart.”
He waved me off. “Personally, I’m cool with never saying his name again. I doubt we’ll cross paths.”
“Denver can be a small town like that.”
The last few weeks, every time I’d left the house—which hadn’t been often—I’d been on edge. High alert. Up until very recently, Andy and I had shared all the same haunts. We had the same habits, favorite coffee shop, grocery store. I didn’t know where he was living or if he had a new favorite coffee shop. Thus, the knot in my stomach and feeling exposed whenever I was out.
“Right.” He nodded. “So, things went well at the bar? You sold a lot?”
Releasing a sigh of relief, I nodded. “It was good to be back and doing things around other humans.”
He snickered, and I wondered again why he was here. Nick was Beau’s friend. They’d played in the same soccer league as kids and had remained friends, despite going to different schools. He was four years older, and I couldn’t say we’d ever gotten close. Even when I worked at High Bar, I was always too busy to chat with him. If pressed, I would have called us acquaintances.
We had never been stop-in-and-check-on-you level friends. Nor tender looks and careful questions.
Nick plowed ahead like his presence here made sense. “I heard you met Miles.”
“I did. You forgot to tell him about me.”
He winced slightly. “Yeah, my bad. He told me he almost tossed you out.”
I snorted. “It wasn’t quite that dramatic, but he did eat a lot of my cupcakes.”
“Heard that too.” Nick tried to give me a long, meaningful look. I pretended not to notice and checked the time on my phone.
Shit.
I still had twenty minutes.
“Miles mentioned you exchanged numbers.”
I shrugged. “He wants more cupcakes.”
“Okay, maybe that’s all he wants.” Nick sighed, and it was loaded with sadness, which made no sense. What did he have to be sad about? “Look, Miles and I go way back, but as Beau’s best friend, I feel obligated to tell you the kind of guy he is.”
I started to tell him there was no need, that I probably wouldn’t hear from him again since it had been days and he’d kept quiet, but Nick was on a roll, so I let him have the floor.
“First off, I don’t know if he told you, but he’s an Aldrich.”
My mouth fell open before I could stop myself. Aldrich was a well-known name in this town. First, as the old-money family whose name was all over hospital wings and concert halls, but in the past decade, the oldest son, Weston Aldrich, had become the one everyone talked about. His outdoor apparel company, Andes, employed thousands of people all over the world. The US team wore Andes clothes in the Winter Olympics. Even I had an Andes coat hanging in my closet.
“Miles…is related to Weston Aldrich?” I squeaked.
“Weston is Miles’ older brother. They’re not close, but Miles still has the Aldrich family money at his fingertips. Kid drove a Porsche in high school.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Gross.”
He opened his hands on his knees. “Miles is all right now, but back in high school, he was a mean, angry kid. We were friends, but I didn’t agree with how he treated others.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was a prick and a bully. He picked on anyone he thought was beneath him if he thought it’d make people laugh. And it did, you know? The people who weren’t being picked on thought he was the shit.”
“Of course,” I grumbled. “I bet they thought he was hilarious.”
I was all too familiar with bullies. Just hearing about Miles was bringing back the shit I’d had to put up with in school. That was a long time ago, but those had been formative years. It wasn’t something I’d forget.
