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When he’d left the company, Noah had told Dad to fuck off in exactly that many words—according to him at least. “Be my own man, set my own goals, and keep my own schedule,” he’d told me was his plan at the time.
He ignored my comment and continued to hold the glass up and look through it. “It’s the Frost poem. Not many people get the chance to check out the road not taken.”
“No, thanks. I know the rules.” I made choices, and I always stuck to them—always. Consistency mattered.
“She’s hot,” he said with emphasis. It was a statement not a question.
“You’ve seen her around?”
“A few times,” he admitted.
My fingers tightened on my drink. He’d seen her and I hadn’t, until today. This wasn’t right. Especially given Dad’s rule.
His lips turned up. “I see that look.”
I crinkled my brow. “What look?”
“You think she’s hot too. So, go ahead and ask me.”
I did find the grown-up Alexa good looking, to put it mildly, but it wasn’t something I wanted Noah to spout around town. “I don’t have a question.”
He put his glass down. “The fuck you don’t.” We glared at each other for a moment before he broke. “When business takes me to their neighborhood, I sometimes stop by their deli.” He raised his hands in mock surrender. “That’s all. Of course I don’t use my real name, and so far I haven’t been recognized.”
My fingers relaxed. “This isn’t a game.” I hadn’t dared set foot in the Borelli’s deli since the blowup.
“For you maybe.” He laughed. “I dated this girl, Nancy—a real pretzel between the sheets, if you know what I mean. She could get into positions even you couldn’t dream up.” He looked out the window. “I never did find out if she was double jointed.”
I finished another swig and followed his eyes out the window. “Is this going somewhere?”
“I took her to this Greek restaurant.”
I twirled my finger in the air in an effort to get him to hurry to the punchline, if there was one.
“Which was a dumb-fuck move, because she was allergic to lamb, and the menu was full of lamb.”
I raised my glass to him. “At least we can agree you’re a dumb fuck.”
The insult seemed to roll right off him. “But it turned out she’d been taking these allergy shots to get over it. Anyway, she tried a little bit of lamb, and then a little more, and she didn’t have a problem. So she so she had even more, and guess what happened?”
I sighed. “She had a reaction?”
“No. Guess again.”
This story was lame, even by Noah’s standards. “Pretzel time?”
He shook his head and held out his glass for more scotch. “No. She dumped my ass cuz she’d told me about the allergy, and I forgot. Like I said, a dumb-fuck move on my part.”
“All this to say I shouldn’t forget what a woman tells me?”
“Hell no. Don’t you get it?” His face screwed up in disgust. “The allergy shots got her slowly used to small doses of lamb until she was finally able to tolerate the real thing. The way I figure, me stopping by the deli has been getting Alexa used to seeing me. So when I ask her out, she won’t kill me.”
I coughed, sending a spray of scotch all over him.
He lurched back. “What the fuck, man?”
I got my cough under control. “Are you insane? You know how her dad feels about us.” Her father had made it clear that we took our lives in our hands if we came anywhere near Alexa.
He shrugged. “You just entertained her in your office today, so we’re both getting her in trouble with her dad. You wanna tell him or should I?”
