Chapter Fifteen
Xander woke up to a text message from Miles the next morning, demonstrating very clearly that yes, he and Wyatt definitely talked. Apologize, was all it said, and Xander wished it was just that easy.
There was nothing on his phone from Damon, which was unusual even with how busy they’d gotten with the preview night tomorrow and the real opening the day after that.
Damon still got up early to tend the gardens, though he’d been talking about hiring some gardeners to help him out, and he liked to send something Xander would wake up to.
Sometimes it was silly like, you know, you were drooling all over my chest last night while you were sleeping or sometimes a picture of the sunrise. Lately he’d been sending simple, I love yous.
It was difficult to not read something into the fact that Damon not only hadn’t sent that particular message, but that he hadn’t sent anything at all.
His heart was aching and his stomach was in his shoes, but Xander was still a god damned professional, and he dragged himself into his chef whites, pulling back his hair with one of his favorite chili pepper bandanas and drove to Damon’s.
He didn’t even bother detouring toward the house. Instead, he met with one of his food distributors, set up a delivery schedule, and received orders from his other distributors. After everything was meticulously labeled and put away, his new employees started showing up.
Billy shot him a little smirk, and Xander gave him a cold stare, daring him to ask if he’d brought the wine issue up with Damon.
But Billy must have been smarter than he assumed, because he didn’t say a word.
Maybe the fight was written all over his face.
Xander didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
The morning was devoted to organizing the kitchen, putting all the tools and equipment away and establishing the processes by which Xander expected every single member of his team to do their jobs.
This might not be Terroir, but he’d learned there that organization was next to cleanliness and godliness.
Noon rolled around without Damon showing up at the restaurant, and Xander let everyone take a break. He ran down to the corner store and grabbed two sandwiches and some bottled water, walking into the back door of Damon’s house without even a knock.
Xander set the food on the counter, the quietness of the house unsettling him. He wasn’t even sure Damon was here, and after a thorough check of the rooms, realized that he’d been right. Damon wasn’t even around today, the first full day of training and only a day before the preview night.
The Barrel House was ready: the dining room stood pristine, the furniture arranged, the plates stacked in the kitchen waiting to be filled, the massive refrigerators already beginning to fill up.
The crates of vegetables from the garden had been sitting on one of the stainless steel counters this morning, like Damon had left them early and then departed, not even bothering to wait for Xander.
The concern that a simple apology might not be enough began to swell inside of him. He pulled his phone out and sat down heavily at one of the barstools, staring at the screen. But instead of dialing Damon’s number, he called Miles.
“When are you guys going to be here?” he asked before Miles could even ask if he’d apologized.
He would have—he wanted to—but Damon wasn’t here to apologize to. And Xander couldn’t help the bad feeling lingering that Damon had arranged it that way on purpose.
“Soon,” Miles promised. “We’re about two hours away.” He paused, and Xander gave him full brownie points for waiting more than twenty seconds before asking. “Did you apologize?”
“I haven’t been able to,” Xander said. “I wanted to. I came to his house, with lunch as a peace offering, and he’s not even here.”
It was obvious from the whispered consultation that Wyatt and Miles were having in the car that neither of them believed this boded well for Xander. The knowledge he’d really, truly, epically fucked this up, continued to gnaw at him.
“Did you call him?” Miles asked.
“Yeah,” Wyatt chimed in, Miles clearly having put him on speakerphone, “you should call him. It’s only two days until opening. He’s probably running a thousand errands.”
Except Xander had seen Damon’s ever-evolving to-do list for the opening, and he’d whittled it down to just a few items. They’d worked it together, crossing off item after item, and that had helped make it a lot more doable.
Not for the first time, Xander regretted forgetting, even for a split second, that they were always better together, working as a united front.
“Okay, I’ll call him,” Xander said, and not really because Miles and Wyatt thought he should. He knew he should.
“Okay, we’ll see you tonight,” Miles said, and Wyatt chimed in, adding his goodbye.
Xander hung up and stared at the screen, working up the courage to dial Damon’s number. It probably should have been tougher, but then Xander imagined life without him, a life where they were professional partners and nothing else, and his fingers flew across the screen.
Damon answered on the final ring. “Hey,” he said, sounding distracted. “Everything okay?”
“I’m in your house, eating a sandwich, and you’re not here.” Xander wasn’t going to buy that faux casual tone of his. Everything wasn’t okay, and no matter what Damon pretended, he couldn’t believe otherwise.
“I had stuff to do today,” Damon said. “Besides, I thought you’d have your hands full with training. How’s it going?”
“I do, and it’s going well. But I wanted to talk to you.”
It must have been clear from Xander’s voice what he wanted to talk about because Damon went silent.
“I didn’t want to do it over the phone, but you’re not here.” He knew he was supposed to be apologizing, but frustration still leaked into his tone.
“If this is about the conversation from last night, we’ve both said enough, don’t you think?” Damon asked snidely, and it cut Xander to the bone.
“No . . . yes . . . I mean, I wanted to apologize.”
Damon sighed heavily on the other line, and Xander felt his unease begin to ratchet into a full-blown panic.
“You were being honest, why would you need to apologize?”
Xander didn’t miss that Damon had answered all his questions with questions of his own.
He gritted his teeth. He’d fucked up; he’d not imagined that apologizing and forcing Damon to hear it and accept it would be easy, but this was turning out to be far trickier.
“I was insensitive and tone-deaf. It’s your restaurant, and you told me straight off how you were planning to run it.
It’s not fair that I come tromping in at the last moment and demand you change your mind. ”
“You were right; if I want to be commercially viable, I’m going to have to make some changes.”
Xander didn’t want Damon to accept what he’d said as legitimate. He didn’t want him to be quietly, mildly agreeing to his argument; he wanted him to be pissed as hell. As pissed as Xander was at himself.
“You shouldn’t make any changes, not because of what I said,” Xander argued.
“But you just made the case last night,” Damon said, and he sounded perplexed. “It was a good argument.”
“It was not,” Xander retorted. “It was insensitive and insecure and cruel. Not to mention quite a bit selfish. I love you. We are going to make this work no matter what we serve. That much I’m confident about.”
“Okay,” Damon said, but it was absolutely clear that he wasn’t agreeing with anything.
Xander’s fingers tightened over his phone, and even though he might be grumpy and tactless sometimes, he didn’t generally have a temper.
It was flaring now, and he was struck with a sudden inexplicable desire to demand Damon’s location, storm over to where he was, and express his feelings. Strongly.
The worst part was that he knew he was still attempting to apologize.
“I don’t think you get it,” Xander said, barely hanging onto the reins of his anger, “I fucked up. Badly. I said a lot of shit that I shouldn’t have, and you going and accepting it is not good. It’s not okay. It’s not what I want, at all.”
“It’s what you asked for, Xander,” Damon said quietly. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.”
Later, Xander realized after, he’d said later.
Not tonight, not tomorrow, not the day after.
Not in the kitchen during the preview or during their triumphant opening.
Non-specific, so Xander wouldn’t know if he could depend on him, or wouldn’t know for sure if he turned around one day if he’d see his quiet, steady smile.
The phone left his hand before he could even help himself.
It shattered into about a hundred pieces against Damon’s hardwood floors—reclaimed wood, Damon had told him once—and at the time all Xander had wanted was to reclaim him.
He still wanted that, he’d have to be dead not to want it, but right now, all he wanted was to burst into tears and imagine that after his crying jag ended, everything was going to be okay.
But he couldn’t help but wonder that nothing was going to be okay again.
“You broke your phone,” Wyatt said, edge of his mouth quirking up, like he was really trying to tamp down a smile. It wasn’t funny, but maybe in a thousand years, after this restaurant opened successfully, and Damon had forgiven him, Xander thought he might find it amusing too.
But right now, he wanted to punch Wyatt in his perfect face.
“I broke my phone,” Xander muttered back.
“I’m guessing that apology didn’t go so well,” Miles said gently.
Miles never did anything gently, especially when it came to Xander, and that was another blow to his aching heart and his rapidly fading belief that this might all fix itself.
“He wasn’t even mad!” Xander yelled. It was pretty ironic that the only one mad here was him, when Damon deserved to be really pissed over what he’d said.