Page 49 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I’ve been a patient man all day.

It’s the hardest I’ve worked at anything in recent memory.

My phone buzzes. Maddox.

Maddox: Where are you? We’re already at Vine.

I save the document I’m working on, close my laptop, and go.

Asher and Maddox are at the corner table when I arrive, the one that sits back from the main floor enough to have a conversation without the room involved. They’re mid-discussion about something, Asher with his arms on the table and Maddox leaning back in his chair the way he sits when he’s thinking harder than he wants to look. A bottle of the 2021 Pomerol is already open on the table and my glass is poured.

I sit. I lift the glass and swirl it once, watching the legs run slow down the inside, which tells me everything I already knew about the vintage. I hold it to the light briefly, check the color at the rim, dark ruby bleeding to garnet at the edge, the kind of depth that takes years. I bring it to my nose first. Dark fruit, a little earth, something mineral underneath. I take the first sip and let it sit for a moment before I swallow.

Good. Better than good. Asher ordered well.

“How was Harper when we left this morning?” Asher asks.

I set the glass down. “She was gone before I woke up.”

Silence.

Maddox sits forward. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Have you talked to her today?”

“No.” I look at him. “Have you?”

He shakes his head. Asher shakes his.

Asher’s jaw is doing the thing it does when something is bothering him and he hasn’t decided how to say it yet. “Do you think she’s okay?”

“I think she needed some space,” I say.

“Space.” He says it the way he says things he’s turning over. “What kind of space? Everything seemed—” he pauses. “It was going well. Wasn’t it.”

“I believe so.”

Maddox is looking at his glass. “Do you think she regrets it?”

I consider that for a moment. “I don’t think so,” I say. “She’d already been with the two of you before last night. She knew what she was stepping into when she stayed. I just think she woke up and needed to think.”

“That’s fair,” Asher says, though he still looks like it’s costing him something.

“Think about it from her side,” I say. “A threesome is not a common experience for most people. A quad is considerably less so. Most people don’t navigate that once let alone…” I gesture loosely at the table. “This.” I look at Maddox. “Other than this particular individual, who has apparently been practicing.”

Maddox points at me. “The Berlin thing doesn’t count.”

Asher turns to look at him. “How does a twenty-person party not count?”

“Because I didn’t know a single person’s name.”

“Rochelle,” I say.

Maddox opens his mouth. Closes it. “Okay. I knew Rochelle.”

“Twenty people and you knew Rochelle,” Asher says.