Page 56 of Legs

“You join a biker gang?” he asked as we sat.

“I heard membership came with health insurance.” We shared a grin, and I gestured to his business attire. “What about you? Did a millionaire mug you and swap out your second-hand clothes?”

His straight posture relaxed. “I had a meeting, hence the clothes. And if my friends in D.C. saw my teenage self, I’d have gotten laughed out of the city.”

A bead of moisture dripped down my bottle. I spread it around with my thumb. “Heard you were living there. Married. Working some fancy finance gig. Why’d you guys move back?”

He swirled his drink as low murmurs rose from the half-filled room. Blues tunes strummed from the speakers. Owen tapped his finger against his glass. “I moved back on my own. Left everything behind. The wife. Job. All of it. Consider me starting fresh.”

“Jesus. Anything you want to talk about?”

“Yeah, actually. Would probably do me some good, but it’s a messy divorce, and the judge assigned to the case has a thing about us airing our dirty laundry. My lawyer advised me to keep my mouth shut. My soon-to-be ex-wife is an attorney herself, and she can be”—he took a healthy pull of his drink, then crunched on an ice cube—“aggressive.”

“Well, I’m around if you want to unload. My life took a header off a cliff a couple years back. You’d be preaching to the choir.”

“That header have something to do with why you don’t talk to your folks?”

I gripped my beer so tightly my rings bit into my skin. Last thing I needed was more family talk. “Not something, everything. And how’d you know we were on the outs?”

“I called them to get your number. Your mother jumped all over me, demanding I talk some sense into you, convince you to call them.” He shook his head. “That woman always scared the crap out of me.”

I huffed out a laugh. “She has a way with words. Remember when she picked us up from that soccer tournament in San Diego and caught us sharing a beer under the bleachers with the Ellis twins?”

He coughed around his next swallow, pounding his chest and clearing his throat. “What did she say again? ‘If you’re not in the car in two minutes, you’ll never need a protective cup again.’ My nuts crawled into my stomach.”

“The Ellis twins were worth it.”

The memory settled, the first positive one I’d had of my mother in ages. Others surfaced too: her singing me to sleep when I was sick, her tears of pride when I’d earned my Master Sommelier. The moments tugged at the frayed edges of my heart, guilt surfacing the way it did at times. A pang that didn’t last.

Her interference with Rachel had singed all residual fondness. As did the memory of our last argument. When it mattered, when my future hung in the balance, she’d turned a blind eye.

Owen nudged my foot under the table. “There something you need to get off your chest? I may be under a gag order, but I can listen.”

We hadn’t seen each other in twelve years. No phone calls. No Facebook chats. I didn’t know the first thing about his work or the woman he was set to divorce. In school, we’d picked up girls together and drank beers underage, sweating it out on the field with our teammates. We’d since grown into men, but underneath we were still the same boys, finding our way through life one fuck-up at a time. “There was this girl,” I said.

“Isn’t there always?”

“Pretty much.” I ran my tongue over my teeth. Rachel’s taste still lingered. As did the feel of her lips, her skin. Always a girl. But this mess had started before her. “Her name was Sophia, and I met her after college. Her family bought the property next to ours. That winery on the hill?”

He nodded, and I went on, ready to purge the story. Get it out. Eviscerate the guts of it. “Her father and mine didn’t get along, something about pesticide usage seeping onto our grapes. My folks were pissed when I asked Sophia out. Not that my father giving me a hard time was new, but it wasn’t cool. Then Sophia’s dad found out our property division line wasn’t accurate. He sued my father for a section of his vines, and the bastard won.”

Owen let out a low whistle. “That must have burned.”

“More like set off an explosion. By then I’d been with Sophia two years and planned to propose. But I was given an ultimatum. End things with her or lose the winery. Lose everything I’d worked toward. So I chose the girl, assuming he was full of shit. The man had always been stubborn, but I was his son, right?”

“Wrong?”

I clenched my fists. “The fight we had could’ve been heard for miles. The whole business landed in my brother’s lap and I was disowned. But the best, the fucking kicker, was when Sophia found out, she turned down my proposal. I lost Offshoot Winery for her, and she dropped me like a rock.”

Two years later, I could still barely choke out the words.

Owen winced. “Man, that’s harsh. Your dad was always stubborn, though. Maybe it’s his age. Some old-fashioned views on family.”

My father was twenty years older than my mother. So focused on the winery, he’d married late, and my brother had often joked she’d end up as his nurse. A joke that had lost its humor.

I mulled over Rachel’s words today, that he might be unwell. It was likely a ruse. A trick to get me on the phone. If it were serious, Alena Giannopoulos would have shown up at my place and dragged me out by the ear. Still, I couldn’t tell if the possibility made me sad or worried or protective. It was hard to feel much under the ache of losing Rachel.

I lifted my beer in salute. “To the women who ruin us.”