by Tawna Fenske
Reese turned her back to the sofa so her cousin and friend wouldn’t see her face. “Good. That’s good. Reconnecting with old friends is always, um—”
“Reese?”
“Yes?”
There was a long pause, and Reese pictured him running his fingers through his hair, his frown making little creases between his eyebrows. She waited, wondering why the hell her heart felt like someone was cinching a piece of twine around it.
“It was good to see you again today.”
“Right,” she said. “Good to see you, too.”
There was a long pause, and Reese could hear Clay’s breathing, low and shallow and almost warm in her ear.
“I missed you,” he said.
Reese bit her lip, not sure what to say to that. There were a lot of things she’d missed about him—the easy conversation, the wicked sense of humor, the smile that made her stomach flutter no matter how hard she tried to pretend it didn’t.
There were a lot of things she hadn’t missed—the constant worry, the calls from jail, the promises that this time, this time, he’d stay sober.
But had she missed him?
She took a breath, started to speak, then stopped. On the other end of the line, Clay cleared his throat.
“Look, about that night at Finnigan’s five years ago—”
“You’ve already apologized, Clay.”
“I know. I know I apologized that you got hurt, but—”
“You weren’t the one who threw the punch.”
“No, but if you hadn’t been trying to pull me out of a bar fight, you wouldn’t have gotten hit at all. Look, I just wanted to say I’m sorry I didn’t come see you in the hospital.”
Reese bit her lip. “You were in jail. And I was only there a few hours. It was just a broken nose.” She hesitated, wondering why he’d brought it up at all. “You kinda disappeared after that. Just left without telling any of us where you were going.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that, too. And I’m sorry you guys couldn’t visit. I had to get my life together, and I needed to distance myself to do that.”
“I understand. I appreciated the call from rehab so at least I didn’t worry.”
“Step nine,” he said softly. “That’s the one about making amends. I owed you a lot more of those than I could fit into one phone call.”
Reese nodded, remembering the call. Remembering the stupid, traitorous way her heart had leapt into her throat, fluttering like a drunken butterfly. She and Eric had been divorced for a few years by then, but they’d still been best friends. She’d never asked him if he heard from Clay, too. If he got the same sort of phone call late on a winter evening with Clay’s voice echoing down the line like it came from another planet. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe she’d wanted to believe the call was something special, something only she and Clay shared.
Reese bit her lip. “You never told me what the fight at Finnigan’s was about.”
It wasn’t exactly a question, but she held her breath anyway as she waited for a response. On the other end of the line, Clay was quiet. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded a few octaves lower.
“Just another drunken bar fight. You know how it was. How I was.”
“That one seemed different.”
“It’s what finally landed me in rehab, if that’s what you meant.”
That wasn’t what she’d meant, but she wasn’t sure what she did mean. All she knew was that the night at Finnigan’s had been the final straw. The only time she hadn’t tried to bail him out of jail. The moment she’d really, truly given up on him.
She cleared her throat. “It’s okay, Clay. My nose healed up just fine. It’s not even crooked.”
“I noticed,” he said. “You’re still beautiful. Maybe more now than you were then.”
Reese felt tears sting the back of her eyes, and she balled her hand into a fist, willing herself not to cry. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice came out so quiet she wasn’t sure he heard her.
On the other end of the line, she could hear his breath in her ear, the scrape of his chin against the phone’s receiver. At last, he sighed.
“Goodnight, Reese.”
“Goodnight, Clay,” she repeated, and closed her eyes as fifteen years’ worth of stupid longing came surging back.
A few hours later, Clay stared at the glowing green numbers on the hotel clock radio and wondered how hard he’d have to squint to rearrange them in an order that would let him get more than a few hours of sleep.
Midnight.
Back in his drinking days, the party would just be getting started, even if there was no party. Even if it was just him sitting alone in his kitchen with a half rack of beer vanishing before it had a chance to grow warm and bitter on the table.
Not that he was bitter now. About anything. He’d made bad choices, and he was making better ones now.
If only you’d done that fifteen years ago, Reese might not have married Eric, and you might have—
“No.”
He startled himself by saying the word aloud, but it felt right, so he said it again. “No!”
He didn’t turn to drinking because he lost out on the girl of his dreams, though maybe he lost out on the girl of his dreams because of the drinking. He’d been aimed down that path long before college. Long before Reese came into his life.
Once upon a time, he might have had a shot at her. Back when he was young and hopeful and just a guy who liked to knock back a few beers after class. There was that tiny window of time when he’d first met her, a fleeting instant of new friendship and blossoming attraction. A week or two?
He hadn’t done anything to win her over. He didn’t blame Eric for making a move.
He blamed himself for not making one.
He rolled over again and closed his eyes, willing himself to go to sleep.
The sun wasn’t even up at five a.m. the next morning, but Reese had been out in the vineyard working on the tractor for thirty minutes already. She jumped down and nodded at one of the field hands.
“Okay, I just recalibrated the sprayer,” she said as she tucked the wrench in her back pocket. “You should get a little better coverage now.”
The field hand—a new guy she’d just hired from a vineyard in Washington—gave her a dubious look. “This organic stuff kills powdery mildew?”
Reese nodded and pulled off her work gloves. “Sonata and Serenade are both bacterial fermentations, plus a couple of potassium bicarbonates and a little pine resin extract to help it stick—”
She stopped talking when she saw the man’s eyes glaze over. “Just spray,” she said. “Nice job so far.”
She headed back to the winery barn with her gloves tucked in her pocket and a peaceful feeling in her soul. She wasn’t a morning person, but she loved mornings like this. The soothing hum of tractors vibrated the low-slung clouds in the still and cool air, with the chirp of the birds rising above the background noise.
She pushed open the door to the winery barn and made a beeline for the coffeemaker.
She didn’t see Clay until she tripped over his legs.
“Clay?” she gasped, recovering her balance as she looked down to see him sprawled on the floor. “What are you doing?”
He looked up from where he was lying on the floor beside a wine barrel and gave her a funny smile. His eyes were too bright for so early in the morning and, oh, God—what was he drinking?
“Morning, Reese,” he said. He swayed a little as he sat up and grabbed an orange sippy cup. Reese watched his Adam’s apple move as he drank. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was still there, looking scruffy and wild in the same shirt he’d been wearing the day before.
He’s fallen off the wagon.
Again.
He smiled at her then, and Reese wante
d to kick her traitorous libido for responding when he was obviously so—so—
“Clay.” She stared at the sippy cup.
Seeing her eyes on it, he lifted it in a mock toast to her. “Couldn’t find any mugs, but I made coffee. You still like it black?”
“Coffee,” she repeated like a very dense toddler learning to talk. He was drinking coffee? On the floor? From a sippy cup? She tried to regroup. “What are you—Why are you—”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, standing up slowly. He braced himself on the edge of the wine barrel and lifted himself to his full height—which, frankly, was pretty impressive. Reese took a step back, trying not to stare at his hands.
“There wasn’t anything good on TV,” Clay said. “I figured I might as well come here and take care of your wine bar before someone breaks an arm and sues you.”
He sipped from the cup again. He hadn’t shaved yet, and a faint sheen of sawdust and sweat clung to his arms.
Reese swallowed. When she finally found her voice, her words came out in a croak. “You fixed my wine bar?”
“Built a new one, actually,” he said, thumping a fist on the large wooden shape Reese had somehow failed to notice in her panic over finding him drunk on the floor. “I hope you don’t mind—I found some scrap wood out behind the barn, and I had my toolbox in the truck and—”
“You built me a new wine bar?” Her voice came out shriller than she intended, but she suddenly had very little control over her vocal cords. Or any other parts, judging from the way her body was responding to the sight of his arms in that snug T-shirt.
“Thank you,” she finally stammered. “I can’t believe you did this. How long did it take?”
Clay shrugged and set his cup down on the rough-hewn plywood. “Couple hours, give or take.”
“You’ve been here since three a.m.?”
“More like two a.m., I guess. Took me awhile to find the wood in the dark.”
The old Clay would have made a joke about finding wood in the dark, but this Clay just pulled out a wrench and began tightening bolts. Then he gripped the edges of the bar and gave it a firm shake. Everything held steady, a vast improvement on the old bar.
He looked back up at her and smiled. “It’s a little rough, but it’s sturdy. You can throw that tablecloth thing over it like you did the other one.”
“I can’t believe you did this,” Reese stammered. “Let me get my checkbook—What do I owe you?”
Clay frowned. “Reese, cut it out. We’re still friends, right? You don’t have to pay me for work you didn’t ask me to do.”
“But—”
“I did it because I wanted to. And because I didn’t want you to maim anyone with that other bar.”
Reese pressed her lips together, unsure how to handle this. “At least let me give you something. Can I make you breakfast?”
“That depends. Do you still make scrambled eggs that taste like mortar paste?”
She smiled a little, not sure if it was the joke or the fact that she finally had evidence that she had changed at least a little in the past few years. “For your information, I took a bunch of continuing ed classes last year—mostly on wine pairings, but I did a cooking one, too. I’m now a perfectly adequate cook.”
“In that case, I’d love breakfast.”
“Good,” she said, moving toward the door. “My house is the little place right next door.”
“That tiny building? I didn’t know that was a house.”
“What did you think it was?”
He shrugged. “I saw all the signs that said it was private property and not open to the public. Figured it was Axl’s bomb shelter or something.”
Reese laughed. “No, this company called Idea Box makes these superefficient prefab homes that are really environmentally friendly. Perfect for someone living alone.”
“Huh,” he said. “That’s not what I pictured you in.”
The thought that Clay had pictured her at all over the last few years was enough to make her pulse kick up a notch, and she wondered what he’d imagined, exactly. “I’m reducing my carbon footprint. It’s eight hundred and fifty square feet, has bamboo flooring, energy-efficient appliances, contemporary cabinets, a built-in wine cooler, the whole package. Why? Are you going to pick on the construction?”
“Not at all. I might pick on you for putting your home forty feet from your job.”
Reese shrugged. “I like it. It’s a beautiful place, and it’s convenient.”
“That it is,” he agreed as she opened the door and led the way inside.
The home was designed to be tiny, but it looked even smaller with Clay planted in the center of her living room. Even her furniture looked miniscule.
Reese stepped away from him, moving toward the kitchen. “The bathroom is over there if you want to wash up. I’ve got pesto and tomatoes—how about an omelet?”
“Perfect.”
“Do you like chicken apple sausage?”
He grinned. “Remind me to build things for you more often.”
He brushed past her as he headed for the bathroom, and Reese shivered at the heat radiating from his bare arms.
She retreated toward the kitchen and began pulling things out of the refrigerator—cheese, eggs, orange juice. She opened the little container of pesto and frowned. Did pesto have alcohol in it? She couldn’t remember if this one had white wine as an ingredient, but did that make it unsafe to serve an alcoholic? She studied the product information on the back of the container. No mention of wine. She sniffed it.
“Why does it seem like a bad sign that you’re sniffing the food?” Clay asked as he returned to the kitchen and leaned against the counter.
Reese jumped and set the pesto down. “It’s fine,” she stammered. “I was just checking—just making sure it’s okay to serve you.”
He gave her a funny look but didn’t comment. Reese opened the egg carton and reached for her skillet.
“Let me dice the tomatoes,” he said, moving around her to grab the cutting board from beside the fridge. “Where’s your knife?”
“I’ve got it—You don’t have to do that.”
“You can trust me with sharp objects, Reese. This drawer?”
“No, that one over there.” She reached past him, her arm brushing his chest as she moved to hand it to him. She almost dropped it on the floor. She turned and reached into the cupboard above the stove, pulling out a plate.
“Here, you can put them on this,” she said.
“Thank you.”
He was quiet as he began dicing, the knife making squishy noises as it sliced through the tomato flesh. “I don’t remember you being this jumpy,” he said finally.
“I’m just a little off, I guess. Mornings aren’t really my thing, you know.”
The second the words were out of her mouth, she felt her cheeks heat up. She opened her mouth to stammer an apology, then shut it.
He’s probably not even thinking about that. And even if he is, you were gone before morning came—
“Is this a good size?”
Reese whirled and looked at him, half expecting a penis joke. He was standing with the knife in one hand and a pile of perfectly diced Roma tomatoes in front of him.
“That’s great. Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Want me to shred cheese?”
“I’ve got it. Really, just sit down. Please.”
He grinned. “I’m making you nervous?”
She sighed. “Look, this is just—it’s a little weird for me, okay? Having you here, having you sober, having you suddenly turn up this totally changed person with impeccable manners and this constant urge to be helpful.”
He nodded and set the knife down, moving toward the table without another word. He pulled out a chair and sat. “Got it.”
Reese bit her li
p as she picked up the container of pesto, trying to gauge his mood. Had she offended him? He didn’t look angry, but she really couldn’t tell. The old Clay had been simpler, with emotions amplified by alcohol and a missing social filter. But this Clay—
“I want us to be friends, Reese,” he said at last. “I know it’s a little odd—a former drunk and a vineyard manager. I ruined a lot of friendships when I was a drunk, so the ones I have left—” He swallowed. “You and Eric are really important to me.”
She waited to see if he’d say anything else. If he’d mention what had been flitting at the edge of her memory since he’d appeared in her doorway the day before.
“Friends,” she repeated. “I think I can do that.”
“Good. I just don’t want—” He stopped, seeming to consider his words. “I don’t want things to be awkward between us. You know?”
Reese nodded, not sure she did know but certain she didn’t want to have this conversation right now when she hadn’t finished sorting through her own feelings.
“Right,” she said. “I don’t want things to be awkward, either.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
Reese looked down at the omelet, her hands shaking as she nudged it with her spatula. “So we’re friends. I can do this.”
He stood up again, unfolding his long legs from underneath the table. Reese gripped the handle of her omelet pan hard as Clay closed the distance between them in three slow strides.
He stopped in front of her, so close—closer than he’d been in years. She could feel his breath ruffling her hair. She stared straight at the center of his chest, afraid that if she looked up she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from—what?
“Reese?”
“Yes?”
She looked up and met his eyes. Something hot and dizzying knifed through her belly. He didn’t blink. She didn’t breathe. They were frozen in the moment, locked in each other’s gazes.
She lifted her hand to touch him. She stopped herself, bit her lip, lowered her hand.
Clay closed his eyes, his expression somewhere between pain and the dizzy euphoria he’d always glowed with after twelve too many beers. Was he holding his breath?