6. Wine and Whine
6
WINE AND WHINE
MAISY
I jolted when the driver cleared his throat.
“Uh, Miss? Did you hear me? We’re here,” he said.
“Right. Sorry.” I exited the car completely flushed from the trip down memory lane of the hot week I’d spent with Brooks over Spring Break so long ago.
With every step I took up to the fourth-floor walkup apartment I shared with my best friend, Sophie, new images hit me like a scrapbook of my life.
Oh, look! There was Brooks winking at me over the blender as he made me a perfect margarita.
There was a selfie, commemorating a sweet moment between us as we read side by side in a swaying hammock under the palm trees, the breeze blowing us to and fro. My legs crossed over his and his hand gently caressed my knee. And it was bliss, this quiet time between the two of us with our books, in our own little world.
And yet another memory teased me, where we were kissing in the sand on our last moonlit night on the island far enough up the beach, the waves crawled up and gently lapped our toes.
“Take me tonight, Brooks. I want this with you,” I’d said.
“Fuck, Maisy, you know I want it, too. But I don’t only want tonight. I think I want the rest of your life. We’ll be so good together, baby. I’ll make you so happy.” His mouth covered mine, and passion swirled through my veins.
I wanted him and everything he promised. But…
“Brooks,” I breathlessly panted, gulping air, trying to remain grounded. “There’s something you should know. I’m leaving for a year. I’ve signed on for a research voyage, and I leave right after graduation.”
“A year away? From me? When were you going to tell me?”
The memory of the devastation in his eyes and voice upon hearing the news hit me all over again by the time I reached the top step to our floor. By the time I unlocked our door and entered, tears threatened to spill down my cheeks.
Sophie glanced up from her latest obsession, reading the biographies of successful female businesswomen which she claimed fed her mind and soul. Ad nauseam, she’d used her knowledge to help me navigate my professional relationship with Julian, pushing me to assert myself. As my bestie since college, she almost knew me better than Chelsea. She could tell something was up.
“Uh-oh. Was the Orion event a bust? Don’t tell me Julian put the moves on you? Or were the hors d’oeuvres bland and lacking imagination?” she inquired, launching off the couch and coming to my aid as I slid my coat off and kicked my heels to the side.
I took a deep and shaky breath. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet. I saw Brooks again. Twice now, actually.”
“What? Where? Tonight?” Her eyes bulged from their sockets.
“At Orion, in a tux.”
“Was it good? ”
That was Sophie-speak for the emotions of the moment. The marketing whiz inside of her constantly gauged how one tiny moment in a person’s life solved a problem or created more joy or made their day easier.
“He looked…” I sighed. Perfect? Handsome? Dreamy?
“Like the reason God invented tailored suits, smoldering stares, and muscles?” She provided.
“Yeah. Exactly. He was every bit the man I remembered, but so much more—intense.” By now we were in the kitchen and I fell back against the counter, staring off. “The past few years have definitely added even more maturity with a subtle dark side, which I found alluring—But, er, I mean nothing will come of it, of course.”
“Jesus, Mary, and all the good grapes,” she exclaimed and crossed herself, even though she was far from overtly religious. “Is it Wine and Whine time?”
A tear escaped the corner of my eye, and I nodded.
“I got you, sister.” She pulled a wine bottle and a charcuterie board from the fridge, her latest fetish. She loved placing various varieties of meat and cheese and other ingredients on a board in random ways, as if it were art. Her Pinterest board of charcuterie images should be the envy of women everywhere.
I quickly changed into leggings and a baggy sweatshirt. The logo of our research team from the ship was faded by now from so many washings. We sat cross-legged on the couch, facing each other, and I dished about the first time seeing him again at Orion, about how he’d worn the scarf—of all things.
“The scarf? Wow. It’s like your talisman; it brought you two back together. Oh, you know what you should do? Knit him another,” she suggested.
I ignored that and gave all the details about tonight as we demolished the food on the board, and I included how Brooks talked about fate. “He said, ‘We meet, things happen, then we walk away. So it has me curious. What will happen this time?’”
“He said that? Oh, my God. Swoon.” In dramatic fashion, she clutched her heart and fell onto her back on the cushion. A moment later, she popped up again. “And you came home? Why are you not climbing him like a tree right now at his million dollar loft?”
“You have always been pro-Brooks.” I tossed a mini cracker at her. “Could you, for once, be pro-Maisy?”
“Hey, I’m always pro-you, okay? I just also believe in my heart that Brooks was the right man at the wrong time. You have never had the perfect moment to explore what could be. He’s right about fate. Maybe this is finally meant to be—right now?”
“I don’t know. I-I can’t. Not when I have so much to prove at Orion. I’m just getting a start in my career. The timing couldn’t be worse.”
“Let me tell you something I firmly believe. Time is simply a construct we humans made up. And you are smart, you know that. The heart has no idea if today is yesterday or ten days from now, it just knows what it wants. And you’re getting in its way. This must be a sign. You two are meant to try again.”
“No, Sophie, it means nothing other than we happened to run into each other. Again. ” I took up my wine goblet and guzzled it, the entire time worried she might be right.
“Then why are you ready for your second glass of wine?” She observed, cocking her head at me.
“I couldn’t handle it.” Ugh. Every time my eyes locked with his intense steel-blue gaze, too much played there. “There are too many things to be said.”
“So talk to him about it. You and he used to talk for hours, believe me, I know. Remember, we lived together our senior year? I recall the lengthy conversations you two had.”
How could one explain the connection I’d always held with him? I was a neuroscientist and I couldn’t. Something about his manly, tall, muscular frame shut down the logic part of my brain completely. Leaving me trapped in the creative part of my mind, desiring only to drag him to bed to please me in every position possible.
Not that I would know about such positions first hand, but Sophie loved sending me links to articles about sex, as if she considered herself my mentor in this particular area.
“We didn’t have much chance to talk at Orion. It was one of those things tonight where our eyes kept meeting across the way, like we couldn’t avoid each other if we tried. And you should have seen the look on his face when I was speaking with Julian?—”
Her face twisted. “Your boss? Still doing the ‘accidentally brushed your hand’ vibe? You can complain to HR, you know?”
I winced. “He’s been friendly, hinting at wanting things more than professionally. I like the guy, really. We became such good friends on the ship; I couldn’t have spent that entire year and a half with him if we weren’t. But that’s as far as it can go—colleagues and friends, and I try to make that clear to him, giving him no room to feel otherwise. Sometimes I wonder if there had never been Brooks, there might have been room for Julian.”
Sophie whistled. “So you’ve got a broody architect and a morally questionable professor slash boss. Such a triangle. This is almost better than my favorite reality TV show, Brewed for Love. I’m glued, and I need the next episode.”
“But I don’t want either of them,” I muttered.
She arched her brow.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I do want one of them. Still.”
She softened. “Maisy. It’s okay to still want Brooks. Desire doesn’t make you weak.”
“It makes me distracted,” I said, rubbing my temples. “I came back to the city to focus on my career before deciding about getting a doctorate. My job is fulfilling. I’m not living on a boat in the middle of the ocean. I actually have health insurance now. Like I’m really adulting?—”
“Wow. Sexy.”
“—but one look at Brooks and it’s like I’m back on that island with him, falling so hard,seeing him again after so much time. Knees weak, voice cracking, heart doing that stupid skippy thing.”
Sophie set her wine down and leaned in. “Do you think he still wants you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He looked at me like he did. But then his assistant was there and rather familiar with him, giving me that ‘hands off him, he’s mine’ look. And he stopped talking, so I walked away.”
She smirked. “Men. They definitely don’t know how to handle women who scare them.”
I raised a brow. “I scare him?”
“You terrify him. You’re gorgeous. Brilliant. Ambitious. You’re a virgin and almost let him take your V-card. He asked you to marry him, and you once said no?—”
“In my defense, that was only because I was leaving on the ship and it was a desperate move on his part. Not a romantic, put-a-lot-of-thought-into-it, type of proposal.”
“Well, that kind of emotional bruise never really fades.”
I swirled the wine. “Or maybe he moved on. He might have a girlfriend for all I know. Maybe he’s been screwing Lacey after hours.”
“Nope. I’ve kept tabs on his social media.”
“What? All this time?”
She shrugged. “I keep tabs on a lot of people. Not a single photo of him with a woman. Not many photos posted, period.” Sophie reached over and plucked the glass from my hand, pouring more wine into it.
“I cannot believe you spy on him.”
“This isn’t about me. This is a night for good cheese, bad TV, and reminding yourself that any man who’s not actively fighting to win you is not the hero of your story.”
I smiled. “Did you just quote yourself?”
“Damn right I did. It’s going in my future book. Wine our eyes frequently met across the crowded ballroom.
After the wedding, I found him leaning against my hotel room door, waiting for me…
“Oh, Brooks,” I moaned, and I set my phone back on the stand, then turned on my side. Hugging a body pillow hardly replaced the heat of his body next to mine.
Every second of that sexy night played out like a movie in my head. All the dirty things he’d whispered into my ear, so sexy and smooth.But all the angst in our words over my leaving again the next day, back to the ship, put another crack in my heart.
Brooks and I could have had something great once, but we kept pushing it away. Now we were both back in the same city, older, wiser… If we continued running into each other, I doubted I could deny this thing between us much longer.