by Mae Wood
“Ah, crap. Now I feel like shit for bringing out that bottle.”
“Naw. No way you could have known. She’s a cool girl. She’ll brighten up, especially if you’ve still got your closet stocked.”
“And you know Marisa will let her have anything in there she wants without thinking twice. Hell, Marisa got out a vintage bottle to go with some Lean Cuisines.”
“You two ate at home?”
“Microwave. Sucks about her mom.”
“Yeah.” The room was heavy as I let Trip have another quiet moment.
“So—” he spoke, his thoughts returning to the present.
“Yeah, she’s really moving back to California at the end of November when the wine distributor’s fiscal year closes and I’m really staying here.”
“Just checking. Hey, in early December Frank is having a bike weekend thing at his farm. You want to go? One of the guys who usually goes can’t. IPO or some other lame excuse. So there’s a space open.”
“Frank from Brown who bikes?”
“Scheidegger and yes. He’s saying it’s going to be Animal House. Even if the weather is crap and we can’t ride. Big blow out before we hit forty. No kids. No wives. No girlfriends. No whatever that is,” he said, his hands waiving toward the door the women had walked through.
“Hell, I don’t know,” I said, frustrated with his second inquiry into Drennan’s status. “A good time definitely, but girlfriend—” He nodded behind him, to signal the girls’ return, cutting me off. I didn’t get a chance to finish the thought out loud. To share with him, even in our shorthand way, that Drennan was definitely a good time to me, and it was out of my comfort zone to define it more.
“Find anything good?” he called to them, fishing out a wine key from a drawer.
“Well, let’s find out,” said Marisa with a smile, handing Trip a couple bottles.
“Nice choices. Now let me get these steaks on the grill.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Drennan
I stashed the empty bottle from dinner with the Brannons in my carry-on. Well, the empty bottle of counterfeit wine. Lord only knows where the others ended up. After waking up naked with a pounding headache in one of their guest bedrooms, I hadn’t exactly paid attention to the house as I forced Bert to make sure the coast was clear as we did the walk of shame through his best friend’s house.
Dinner had been more fun than I’d anticipated. His friends were genuinely nice and funny people. What they thought of me now, I didn’t even want to think about. The only two times I’d met them, I was clearly a girl who liked to fuck their friend. And I don’t know why that irked me some. I have no problem with consensual sex. Had my heart broken more than a time or two. But even if this were casual sex with Bert, we had also become friends and that was important to me.
Wandering through LaGuardia, I hefted my carry on to my shoulder and scrolled through the slew of texts that filled my phone in the few short hours I’d been airborne, ignoring the business ones, I read the fun ones: Kenzie, my dad, a college roommate, and of course, Bert.
Lickable: You on the ground?
Lickable: Let me know when you’ve landed.
Lickable: And gotten to your hotel.
Lickable: And please don’t Uber.
Drennan: Uber is no more dangerous than a cab or black car service.
Lickable: The jury’s out.
Lickable: On the ground?
Drennan: Yes.
Lickable: Great. Be safe.
Drennan: Scared of me in the Big Apple?
Drennan: I used to live here, you know. And you don’t have to parent me.
Lickable: Yeah.
Drennan: And I’ve still got my place here, so no hotel is involved.
Lickable: You have an apartment in NYC?
Drennan: Technically Brooklyn. Fort Greene.
Lickable: Why doesn’t any of this surprise me, Duchess von Eck?
Drennan: It’s McCutcheon and I’m a woman of mystery. You should have come with me.
Lickable: That’s what she said. But ladies first. Always.
And there it was, as much grief as he gave me about my alleged innuendos, which I denied making, telling him it was his dirty mind that turned my words naughty, he loved innuendo that was so obvious, it only questionably counted as innuendo. I’d coined a new term for it. “Overendo.” Bert said it wasn’t, and the term wasn’t going to catch on, but I was going to make it happen. I’d already started tweeting some of his best-worst lines with that hashtag. Most favorited—Q: What do you want to do for dinner? A: You. #overendo. I hadn’t told Bert about his budding Twitterverse fame, but Kenzie knew. A girl has to keep some of her secrets.
I pushed open the front door to my apartment, thankful that I’d had cleaners come in once a month so that I could collapse on clean sheets and not stir up a hurricane of dust motes. Home. I guessed. Even though it didn’t feel like it, despite my back issues of foodie magazines catalogued neatly on the built in bookcase that surrounded my desk in the dining area. It’s New York and I was in the food industry, so I don’t think I cooked more than an occasional bag of microwave popcorn during the four years I’d lived here. What, eight months away, and it didn’t feel like me anymore? California here I come?
I dumped out the contents of my carry-on onto my bed, looking at the brightly colored embroidered bedding my mom helped me pick out. I ran my fingers over the silky threads and a pang shot through my chest.
Three years and I missed her. I thought back to her finding this bedding in Park Slope. Holding it up with glee and pride, like a forager with an impossibly rare grapefruit-sized white truffle. A teal background with a menagerie of animals and fruits. It was perfectly more-is-more and perfectly me.
Letting a deep breath out to postpone the tears, I realized how dry I was from the flight. Digging in my bag for lip balm, my hand scraped across the small purple stone I’d bought at the magic shop. I placed it on my dresser, next to trinkets and mementos and preciously framed photos.
My eyes ran over the pictures, resting on the one of me barely visible in a bundle of blankets in Mom’s arms with Dad’s hands clutching her shoulders. Front steps of our house, bringing baby home. It has always been a favorite of mine. My parents looking the happiest I’d ever seen them.
What was Dad doing right now? I imagined him having a late lunch in the kitchen, eating a sandwich over the sink so as not to make a crumby mess, with our basset hound Bubba at his feet, begging for a treat.
Do I move in back to my childhood home? Do I move into my grandparent’s house on the estate and live between my cousin and my dad for the rest of my life? Do I live in Yountville with all of its crowds of happily buzzed tourists?
Too exhausted from my swirling thoughts to even crack open a bottle of wine or scrounge for random stale crackers in the pantry, much less try to remember my logon to Seamless, I snuggled in the smooth cool blankets and awoke to the cacophony that is New York. When did this place get so loud? And in that moment, I knew my time pretending to be a New Yorker was over. I needed to put this place on the market and move on to whatever was next.
Our attorney Gaspard appropriately clucked at the fake bottle and said he’d get in contact with the FBI. When he asked why I was in town, since Memphis was the home to FedEx and I could have just shipped it to him, I didn’t have a good explanation.
That I wanted to breathe? That I wanted to come home? Visit some friends? As I walked downtown to Condé Nast’s headquarters, on crowded streets with tall gray buildings looming over my head, I still didn’t have an explanation. To say good-bye to the city? To say good-bye to the part of my life I’d clung to after the accident?
Waiting in the lobby for a few of my Food & Wine friends who were now with Bon Appétit, I felt his arms around me before I saw him. Not Bert. Lancaster.
“Drennan! How great to see you. Back from your grand adventure to the American South?”
I pulled myself away, careful to monitor m
y face from pulling a frown from his touch. “Hey, good to see you. Just in town for a few days, taking care of some business,” I answered.
“Do you have dinner plans tonight?” He completely caught me off guard because I had been scrolling through my Instagram feed before he assaulted me. “Éric Chavot is doing a soft open of his first North American . . .”
As tempted as I was by the food, the company was decidedly not. He was a blowhard and kept introducing me as “Drennan, whose family owns von Eck.” He always made me feel second place to grape juice. I begged off, thanking God when Matteo, my former co-worker, and Marnie, my former boss, crossed the security turnstiles to join me for lunch.
The crowded subway was overwhelming as we made our way to a Pho place in Morningside Heights. God, I missed this—not the crowds and congestion and noise, but the chatter. The joyous dissection of food, its textures, smells, tastes, origins, the skill involved in preparation, the hard work put into the creation. And then reducing it to mere words. Our “quick” lunch ran two hours. And I had the itch to write again.
“So, you know that you could run a blog from anywhere,” said Matteo.
“Yeah, but I’ve got a winery to run.”
“What about guest posting, like once a week?”
I raised my eyebrow at him.
“Yes, this is a job offer,” Marnie confirmed.
“But the winery . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, we thought you might not want to have your name linked, so we’re okay with a pseudonym. Anonymous blogging is fine. Maybe Nan Nerd. Your name backwards-ish. That sounds like an Indian cuisine fanatic. Never mind. We’ll work that out. We want your content and will handle the technical side. You’d just have to email your words, tell us what snaps you want a photog to take, et voilá! Simple as that. I’m in charge of the whole Bon Appétit web presence and we need some west coast love,” said Matteo.
“Nice promotion! When did that happen? That’s awesome.” But my efforts to redirect the conversation failed miserably.
“Thanks, about six months ago, and now back to convincing you to work for me again,” he said with a huge smile.
“Expense account included. Free reign to find the west coast’s up and comers. Travel expenses covered, too” said Marnie, dangling her chopsticks in front of me like a tasty lure. And it was.
“Thanks. That’s amazing. Truly, thanks,” I said, dipping my head slightly in an acknowledgment of their offer. An offer I would have jumped at three years ago, but now, now I didn’t know. The weight of my life settled on me and while I knew well enough not to complain about my cushy existence, in my heart I knew I was following someone else’s dream and not my own.
Not living the life I chose, but living the life that chose me. And one I couldn’t leave.
“Don’t answer me now. You’ll just say no. At least think about it. How’s the Southland? You saying y’all yet?”
“No. Plus, y’all is like the gateway drug. It’s a slippery slope from there to saying ‘all y’all’ and only drinking sweet iced tea.” I turn my face into an over exaggerated cringe. “It’s like tea-flavored Kool-Aid. So awful.”
“Come on, can’t be that bad?”
“No, it isn’t. The food scene is surprisingly awesome,” and with that I prattled on for several minutes about my favorite foodie haunts in the Memphis area, always returning to Pig and Barley.
“Wanna turn that into words?” Matteo interrupted me.
“You know you’re going to write this blog column for him,” said Marnie, glancing at her phone. “Who else would spend twenty minutes talking about different styles of grits without comparing it to polenta? Guys, I hate to break this up, but I’ve got to get back for a meeting.”
On the way to the subway, Matteo gave me the hard sell on the blog, ending with a surprise for me. “So, will you at least put together a list of your favorites in Memphis that I can pass to the editorial team for a feature? I’m thinking Memphis: Beyond Barbecue or something like that.”
My step faltered. “Is this a sneaky way to try to suck me back in to the magazine world?”
“Is it working?” he asked.
I gave him an over exaggerated stink eye. “You know it,” I said.
“Good. Start with helping one of our writers get oriented and then let me know when you’re ready to write yourself again.”
Back at my apartment, I repacked my carry on and looked around, saying good-bye to it with a hint of the bittersweet lingering in the air, and texted Bert.
Me: How you feel about Bon Appétit?
Lickable: How you feel about getting your ass back here?
Me: Headed to LGA tomorrow.
Lickable: No Uber.
Me: Called a car service. You happy? And we can fight about Uber later.
Lickable: Big dinner plans tonight?
Me: I ate an entire bowl of Pho and extra noodles for a late lunch, so no.
Me: But Bon Appétit? Yes? I accidentally pitched an editorial feature about Memphis and Pig and Barley. Good?
Lickable: Accidentally?
Me: Yes. Pick me up tomorrow at the airport and I’ll consider us even.
I sank down on my sofa, surrounded by my shopping bags. I wasn’t a fashionista by New York standards, but loved the tiny boutiques and resale stores that littered my neighborhood. Fort Greene hadn’t quite been gentrified like Williamsburg and wasn’t full of Gaps and other mall stores. A vintage burgundy Halston cocktail dress had simply been made for me. Its low neckline skimming between my breasts and shiny draped fabric setting off the curve of my hips. Complete sex bomb.
I couldn’t wait to wear it, preferably in front of Bert. Not sure when in Memphis it would be appropriate, but I’d make it work.
My phone rang. Knowing it was Kenzie, I picked it up without really looking at the screen. A beat too late my eyes saw Lancaster NYT. Fuck. Dude needed to get better at reading signals.
“Hey, Lancaster.”
“Drennan! You ready for tonight? We’ve got a table at eight thirty and Pamela Steinkamp and her wife are joining us.”
Fuckity fuck fuck. Pamela owned one of the biggest chain wine shops in the tristate area. Lancaster was strong-arming me into this dinner. He knew I couldn’t say no to the combo of him and Pamela. And I resented him for that. For using business to get time with me.
“Great. Text me the address.”
“I’ll do you one better and pick you up.”
“That’s silly. I’m across the bridge. Even if you’re at the Times building, that’s a haul. I’ll just meet you there. Bye!”
I put my foot down with him. Harder than I ever had before. No negotiating. Dinner was fine, but I didn’t want Lancaster picking me up at my apartment because that would mean Lancaster would insist on bringing me home and that would lead to a very awkward front stoop convo of me telling him no. I think Bert would even prefer me riding with a stranger from Uber than Lancaster.
And I smiled to myself. What would Bert think of this? Should I let him know? I mean, we hadn’t had the exclusivity talk, but I wasn’t seeing anyone else and even if I were, it sure as hell wouldn’t be Lancaster. But it still felt like cheating for some reason.
A glance at my phone told me I had an hour to get ready if I was going to make it to the restaurant in time. Even as I hastily blew out my hair and tried my best at creating big beach waves, and tried to make sure my winged eyeliner was even on both sides, my thoughts wandered to Bert. What he was doing. Where he was. If he was thinking about me or happily chatting up some other woman as he served her a white wine spritzer.
I didn’t like the thought of a spritzer, but I really didn’t like the thought of Bert with his sleeves rolled up, leaning across the lacquered bar to slide over a stemmed glass with a half-smile on his lips and naughty twinkle in his eye.
As I waited for my Uber, the images continued to gnaw at me. To make me anxious and unsteady, even though I kept reminding myself I had no right to be jealous. That we were jus
t having a good time. That I was going home soon. Home to California, not Tennessee.
Finally, I broke. He wasn’t a phone talker. Texter, yes. Talker, no, so I half thought he’d screen my call.
“Hey,” he answered on the second ring. “How are you? Still coming home?”
Home. Was it home? No. But it was home for him.
“Yes, and still tomorrow night. Going out to dinner tonight. With some wine people.”
“Oh, someplace good, I assume.”
“It’s a soft opening for Éric Chavot’s new place.”
“Damn. Take notes. Wish I could be there.”
“I wish you could be my plus one for this, too.”
“And not just for the food, Drennan. Even though I’m sure it will be gorgeous.”
“It will definitely outshine the company. It’s a wine retailer, her wife, and a wine critic,” I supplied, soft pedaling Lancaster’s role in the dinner, even though Lancaster was the reason I’d called Bert in the first place. I didn’t want to piss Bert off.
“So, a date?” I heard him say, some of the happiness falling from his voice.
“No. Definitely not a date. If you’re not here, it can’t be a date.”
“Good. Now, go, have a great time. And come home tomorrow to tell me all about it and Bon Appétit.”
“Yes, chef. Still going to pick me up?”
“See. That’s innuendo.”
“No. It isn’t. It’s me asking if you’re going to get me tomorrow night.”