Roll of a Lifetime

by Melanie Greene

  The brewer turned from his whiteboard, lifting his chin in affirmation. “What’s up?”

  Theo stepped into the walled off section beside the fermenting tanks, sliding to the left of the door to catch a bit of the breeze from the floor fan. Despite the buildup of heat on the brewery floor, Ron refused to set up a desk in the brewpub’s front offices. It gave Theo more room to spread his work out, but doomed him to hunting across yet another area for the packing lists that Ron shoved on a clipboard and Sergei stacked in a cardboard box under the bar.

  Such was the life of the CFO. “Hey, did Javi check the delivery of the 2-row and red wheat this time?”

  Ron gestured at the clipboard hanging on a nail by the door. “Told him to.”

  Pulling the wedge of receipts free, Theo said, “Thanks. Listen, I need to see if we can move up the monthly meeting. I’m heading to Fort Worth early. Annalisa wants to take him on this schools-end campout Saturday, so I’m going Thursday-Friday this week and extending Father’s Day to the whole weekend.” He straightened the paperwork, shuffling the pink half-sheets from their malt vendor to the top so he could verify that the dockhand had counted the sacks before storing them on the pallet rack.

  Ron, who’d been consulting his calendar, said, “I wanted to bring the summer ale to the meeting. Won’t be ready before Thursday. Can we do it the next week?”

  “I’ll check with Sergei.”

  Ron grunted. “He’ll care?”

  Straightening, Theo rapped his knuckles against the doorframe. “Monday after lunch, then. I’ll let Sergei know.”

  He passed through the swinging doors beside the back bar, and just about smacked into Rachel. She was settling Hannah’s overnight bag onto a stool, eyes trained on where her daughter danced in Depy’s lap.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  She spun to face him, backing up a hasty step and increasing their personal space more than Theo thought was strictly necessary. She looked grim, brackets alongside her mouth and shoulders slumped like they still bore the weight of the duffel. “Theo.”

  He waited, but that seemed to be the extent of her comment on his presence. Not that there was anything remarkable about his being in his own business. “You doing okay?”

  She shrugged, turning back to watch Hannah. There was something coiled about her, Theo thought. A spring ready to bounce, a catapult ready to fling. He skirted around her, watching Sergei’s interactions with his mother and daughter. The man was scrolling through his phone, which come to think of it he was doing a good quarter of the time Theo saw him. He’d condensed as much of his job as possible to fit on his phone—another reason Theo was able to spread out in the brewery’s office. Hannah reached over for a fistful of Sergei’s shirt, and Depy unhooked her fingers before sweeping the girl up for a series of kisses.

  Rachel wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Do you...?” He trailed off, relieved she hadn’t seemed to hear him. Her tension wasn’t any of his business. And none of his ideas for how to help her relax were, he had to remind himself, wise ones.

  But then Sergei stepped away from the family tableau, lifting his phone to make a call. He plugged his other ear with his free hand, squinting down at his squealing child.

  Rachel’s indrawn breath was sharper than the well-honed blades on the industrial blender. She turned back to him. “Do I what?”

  He was stammering for an answer that would be nothing but kindness and banality, but maybe his cheeks had flared or his Adam’s apple had bobbed or somehow else she saw that he hadn’t started the question with pure intentions. She stared. He closed his mouth. She nodded.

  “I do.”

  Chapter Six

  He cleared his throat. She watched it bob and contract. “Sorry. What?”

  “You were about to ask me if I wanted to get out of here. I do. Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t but a moment before he glanced away, but hellfire if she wasn’t scorched by the blaze. He waved the sheaf of mismatched paper in his hands, a flimsy fan against the flames between them. He focused on the receipts and said, “I need to....”

  She looked at him. At his creased brow, his parted lips. At his body.

  He met her eyes and hushed. Then: “Give me a minute and I can follow you.”

  “Good plan. I’ll be in the parking lot.” She rolled her shoulders back and pasted on her Mama smile before returning to Hannah for a final hug. “See you tomorrow, Hannah Banana. Have good giggle times with Daddy.”

  “Depy,” her girl said, reminding Rachel that Sergei hadn’t yet kissed their daughter hello.

  “And with Depy, yes. Bye-bye.” She caught the kisses, blew some in return, and on the way out resisted body checking the squid slime whose one good service to the world was fathering her amazing daughter.

  She was getting out of here. And, odd and bubbly and unexpected as it was, she wasn’t getting out of here alone.

  Theo’s neck was a marble column, immobile, not about to twist, twitch, turn toward Sergei. Rachel glanced back—to Hannah, to her ex; Theo wouldn’t speculate. He kept his gaze forward, his senses stuck on the woman who’d just walked away from him. The firm quiet thock of her shoes on the painted concrete floor. The bounce of her curls. Something a touch antiseptic in her scent, a whiff of hand sanitizer. It smashed a crisp image of Andres through him, showing off his kindergarten classroom the Friday Theo drove up early to attend the Parent’s Picnic. His son’s gap-toothed chatter boxing and the downy hair on the nape of his neck and the heart-shaped birthmark on his wrist.

  He shook his head to clear it, and found himself watching Rachel walk out the door.

  Damn if there wasn’t a swing in her hips as she strode away. He succumbed to temptation, glanced at her family. The Matsouka family. They weren’t paying her the slightest whit of attention.

  Sliding into the office, he dropped the receipts in his basket, double clicked on the company’s calendar, switched the date for the meeting, hit the sync button. Normally he’d have mentioned the change to Sergei, but normally he hadn’t just been pierced by the summer blue eyes of Sergei’s wife. Ex-wife.

  He managed to not slam the office door as he left. Lifted a hand in farewell as he passed the bar. Did not sprint from the front door to his car. She was standing a couple of spaces over, next to her rusty sedan. Standing didn’t quite cover it. She rocked a bit, her head bobbed, her jaw shifted, she glared.

  He grinned.

  Do not, Theo told himself, draw this woman into the shadows between cars to explore the meaning of that look. But every muscle in his torso strained to move. He held himself all the stiller. Found his voice. “Dancing?”

  Her chin tilted further back. “You want to go dancing? It’s not even lunchtime.”

  “Or grab tacos? A movie? Kayak along the bayou?”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Kayaking?”

  He resisted stepping closer. The pulse on her neck shimmered, and he bit his cheek. Exhaled. “Only a suggestion. I’m open to all possibilities. You looked in there like you needed to blow off some steam, but could be my way isn’t your way. So whatever you want. I’ll follow your lead. No expectations, no demands.”

  Her killer blue eyes caught a splash of sun as she straightened off the bumper. He made out shades and variations in her iris. A muddy greenish color around the contracted pupils, a dark marine band at the rim. Disconcerting, that, to a man who pretty much only looked deep into brown eyes all his life. The blue hues drew him in, though, instead of shutting him out. He matched her chin tilt.

  “Serious?”

  He did not lean her way. His feet were planted firm to the asphalt. He nodded. “Serious.”

  Her surface tension broke like an oval stone had skipped across the lake of her emotions. The ripples were quiet and entrancing and made him proud he’d found the right words.

  She wriggled her shoulders, feeling suddenly disarmed. “You know what? I’d love to kayak.”

  Not going to ask herself what she was doing
. Who she was doing it with. It wasn’t like she was taking her life into her hands, spending a sultry summer hour or so with paddle in hand. Even if the guy she navigated with kept her brain buzzing with questions.

  One thing Rachel was good at—was forced by history to be good at—was recognizing bad gut feelings. She couldn’t deny that interacting with Theo set her up with some feelings. But they weren’t bad ones.

  They might even, if she were a tad less cautious, count as being good.

  He gave her directions to the part of Buffalo Bayou Park where they could rent a hull. He nodded when she said she had errands to run before she could meet him. He said everything that was chivalrous, and never quite lost the intent look she interpreted to mean ... well, all kinds of interesting things.

  History and habit meant she didn’t often run into these slivers of being intrigued. And Theo came with more than anyone’s fair share of marks against him: Sergei trusted him, they worked together, they looked like they could be brothers. But up against all that was this sliver of interest. It was a green light, faint but true. She decided to take it. To run with it. At some point—not today—she might even take it out and let it glow long enough to shed some illumination on what on earth she was thinking.

  “So, have you done this before?”

  “I grew up in Colorado.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes?” He smiled at her smug expression.

  She nodded. “Until I moved before high school, I had my own boat. We all did.”

  “Where did you move to?”

  “Up by the panhandle. Plainview. My sister was headed off to college, and my parents took the opportunity to downsize. So I moved in with my aunt and uncle to finish school.” She rattled off the information as if she’s said it a thousand times, and there was nothing questionable about it.

  Well, the point of the excursion was to give her an escape. Digging into her family dynamics was no way to accomplish that. He gestured to the rental building they were approaching. “Want to double up?”

  And damn if she didn’t glint up at him like he’d made a double entendre.

  And damn if he didn’t glint right back.

  “On the kayak? Or should we get singles?” He’d intended the double, else he’d have brought along his own boat. But again: it was Rachel’s escape. She called the shots.

  “I’m fine with doubling.”

  He slid a waiver form her way and handed his card to the kayak guy.

  “Let me...”

  “No.” He stopped her, mid-reach, from dipping into her handbag.

  Warm skin. Soft.

  He cleared his throat. “Sweet of you, but no. My idea, my treat. I’m overdue for some time on the water, and glad for some company.”

  As she moved to retrieve the pen she’d dropped to the counter, her forearm slid under his fingers. Very soft skin, and extracting himself before he tangled their fingers together was an effort.

  Forms, signatures, storage bag, vests, paddles, and finally, zigging down the path to the water, separated by the precise length between the stern and bow grab handles.

  At the launch spot, they slid the bow into the bayou. “You want to sit in front?” he asked, one hand on the rear cockpit and the other balancing his paddle on his shoulder.

  She waggled her eyebrows, but without much heat. They both were tracking a group of canoes floating a few dozen yards away. Each held three or four teens or young adults, laughing and calling and delighted with every aspect of themselves. “You’re fast, right?” she asked, turning back to him.

  “Like Hermes himself.”

  For a moment, all she gave him was a blank face. He didn’t know if he should explain or apologize. She shook her head. “Trying to remember if he ever got himself in trouble with any of the Oceanids. Best to hope not.”

  With that, she laid her paddle across the back of her cockpit and hopped into the kayak. He shoved it another foot into the water before taking his own seat, and together they pushed off. Within two minutes, they’d passed the canoes and the only sounds were the wind, the call of birds from the tree-lined banks, and their paddles stirring up water as they dipped, in unison, to propel themselves through the cool, mud-brown water.

  Hadn’t pegged her for a knower of Greek mythology, had he? Never mind her scatter-shot education and preference for movement over books. She’d lived with either Sergei or his mother for six years. Depy stocked her shelves with Rick Riordan well before Rachel scraped together the funds to move to their own apartment. When they moved, Hannah’s pile of storybooks about the pantheon came along. Rachel knew her Olympians.

  “Hey.” Theo sounded determined, like he’d noticed his assumptions about her and wasn’t into letting them float along on this journey.

  Theo. God. Ha. “What’s your full name?” she asked without turning around. Let him squirm.

  “Theo Melis.”

  “No, I mean, is Theo short for something?”

  “Oh, don’t ask that. Look, there’s sometimes a heron or two in that inlet up ahead.”

  She glanced back at him then. “Nice try. Spill.”

  “Or what? You’ll spill the boat over? You’d get yourself soaked, too.”

  He squinted into the early afternoon sun—they were paddling upstream so they could turn and laze back after their arms got tired or their rental hour was near up, depending which came first. His face held all kinds of angles and lines picked out in the brightness of the day. His cheekbone and his beard and his lips and the trapezoid of forehead between his hair and his brow. It made him very much himself in a way that felt comforting.

  She brought her elbow up sharp so the paddle kicked a spray towards his chest.

  “Hey!”

  She laughed. “Better tell me your name, then.”

  He flipped his paddle over so the concave side was up and skimmed a scoop of water forwards, but it only sent a few drops onto her arm. “Nice try.”

  “Fine. You win. This time.”

  “And to the victor, I’m told, go the spoils. Which would be your full name.”

  “Never call me this. Especially in front of anyone else. They’ll think it’s funny how I flinch and I’ll have to carry around bottles full of bayou water to squirt at people who laugh at me.”

  She knew the color was more to do with silt and dirt than any pathogens, but the thought still made her shudder. They were passing under some vines dangling in the water and up ahead she spied not only the promised white heron but also a pair of dragonflies playing their own games with the sunlight on their faceted wings.

  “I promise.”

  “Okay. Fine. I’m Theodoros Andreas Melis.”

  She grinned, which he probably could guess at even though he was looking at her spine and her helmeted head. “So that’s gift of God, right? And what else?”

  “What are you, some sort of etymologist?”

  “Ha. I have a client in one of my groups, Teddy, she loves to tell people what their names mean. She’s properly Theodora, so I guessed you’re the same as her.”

  “And I suppose if I don’t tell you, you’ll go ask her?”

  “First thing Monday, yep.”

  He groaned. She flashed him a smile over her shoulder.

  “Okay, fine,” he said. His voice was only playfully reluctant. “Melis has to do with honey.”

  “Because you’re so darn sweet.” Her voice was plenty tart as she teased him.

  “Right. And Andreas is a form of Andrew. That’s where we got my son’s name, Andres.”

  “I know you know its origin. Or do I have to ask Teddy?”

  The hull tilted to the left and on instinct she leaned to the right. The move saved most of her sleeve from the arc of water Theo splashed up at her before straightening and taking hold of his paddle again. “Manly. It means manly, okay? Now, should we turn around here or do you want to go all out to that bridge first, and then float back?”

  It hit Rachel that she hadn’t locked her jaw or ground her t
eeth in the least while thinking about Greek gods. Not spent any time trying to imagine when Hannah was next due for a potty run and if her father or grandmother would be doing a thing to help her stay on track with her toilet learning. She was grounded in the water, everything else floated away.

  “Oh, bridge, definitely,” she said, and as one, they set off towards their goal.

  Chapter Seven

  “So, listen,” Theo began. And then he stopped. What an awkward thing to say. They were the only people within earshot, and he was talking, so what did he think would happen when he spoke up, that she would get up and dash to the other side of the plaza?

  And now he’d officially let the silence draw on too long. To cover, he slurped some of the juice about to drip off the bottom of his popsicle. After returning their kayak and gear, they’d picked them up from a food truck in the parking lot, then retreated to an empty bench in the shade. Glancing up, he caught her watching his mouth, which made him feel less like a flounder. He licked his lips. “I’m heading up to Dallas on Thursday. My ex switched the schedule so she could take Andres on this campout, but she’s giving me an extra couple of days next weekend to make up for it.”

  “Why didn’t you do the camping? You like all this outdoors stuff, right?”

  So, she was paying attention to a few things about him, too. Good. He wanted to give her a great deal to pay attention to. “Annalisa’s the real outdoorsy one. She got me into kayaking, but I pretty much dropped the rest of her whole hiking, camping, tents and campfires thing once we split. Golf. She definitely got golf in the split.”

  Her cocked head and silence were maybe a signal he’d let something slip. She didn’t ask for details, though. He forced nonchalance into his voice. “Besides, she helped organize the trip. She said I could join them, but then we’d have to share a tent or Andres would have to bounce between us, and neither of those is what you’d call an ideal solution.”