20. Maddox
MADDOX
Here’s the thing about me and distance: I invented it.
Not literally. But practically. Emotionally.
Geographically. I have maintained comfortable, functional, drama-free distance from every woman I’ve been involved with for the better part of fifteen years and I have done it with charm and good humor and absolutely zero casualties.
I know how to be the best version of a man who’s not staying.
I’ve refined it. I am, by any reasonable measure, extremely good at not getting attached.
So this. This thing I’m currently doing. Is embarrassing.
There was a woman named Céleste at the tasting on Tuesday.
French, naturally, which felt appropriate given the setting, beautiful in that specific Bordeaux way that makes you think of old paintings and very good wine.
She came in with a hospitality group and she laughed at something I said about the estate’s pressing technique and touched my arm twice and I felt nothing.
Not nothing bad. Just nothing. Like trying to tune into a frequency that wasn’t broadcasting.
I talked to her for twenty minutes anyway because I was there and she was charming and I kept thinking: this is the thing I know how to do.
This is easy. This is my entire skillset distilled into a single social interaction.
And the whole time some portion of my brain was elsewhere, specifically at the east side of the property where Harper was running a walk-through with Mallory, which I knew because I’d seen them heading that direction when I came down from my suite and I had not been tracking it. I’d just noticed. In passing.
Céleste gave me her card. I put it in my jacket pocket. I have not looked at it since.
Wednesday there was a woman at the bar in Vine who had strong opinions about the Pomerol selection and wanted to discuss them, which is normally the kind of conversation that holds my attention because wine is genuinely interesting and so are women who know things about it.
Her name was something that started with a V.
Valentina? Vivienne? Starts with V. Lovely.
Absolutely lovely. We talked for thirty-five minutes and I remember approximately eight of them because the rest of the time I was thinking about the way Harper’s face goes when she’s trying not to laugh at something she thinks she shouldn’t laugh at, the way she bites the inside of her cheek and her eyes do this thing, and by the time V-name finished her very informed point about the estate’s late-harvest Merlot I had been thinking about someone else for the better part of half an hour and I felt like a complete asshole about it.
I ordered her a glass of the Merlot and excused myself with as much grace as I could manage.
Thursday I didn’t try.
Thursday I sat on my terrace with my laptop open and talked myself into believing I was working when what I was actually doing was watching the south courtyard from my vantage point one floor up in the specific desperate way of a man who would like to catch a glimpse of someone and is not going to admit that out loud even to himself.
I caught the glimpse. Harper and Raph coming back from wherever they’d been, her talking and him listening in that easy way he has, and even from a floor up I could see her face and the way she was into whatever she was saying, completely herself, no armor.
I closed the laptop.
I opened it again.
I closed it again.
This is what I’ve been reduced to.
The thing is, I understand what I’m feeling.
That’s almost the most annoying part. I’m not someone who doesn’t know what’s happening inside his own head.
I’ve been running from permanence long enough to recognize the moment when permanence stops looking like a trap and starts looking like the only thing worth staying for. I know what this is.
What I want is to walk across whatever room she’s in and bury my face in the curve of her neck and just breathe her in for a minute. Not even anything beyond that. Just that. The specific gravity of her, the warmth of her, the way she smells like something that makes the rest of the noise go quiet.
I want that more than I want the Célestes and the Vivienne-Valentinas and every other uncomplicated option that has presented itself in the last two weeks and I cannot do a single thing about it because we agreed. Space. Don’t crowd her. Let her breathe.
She’s breathing.
Raphael is keeping her excellent company while she does it.
And I’m on my terrace watching the south courtyard like a man with genuinely no dignity left.
I catch myself doing it again this afternoon.
There’s a group of investors out on the south terrace for a private tasting, people Killian has cultivated for years, the kind of meeting that runs itself if you’ve done the relationship-building right and Killian always has.
I’m not technically required to be present but I’m here because being useful is better than sitting in my suite thinking about a woman I’m supposed to be giving room to.
Harper comes through the courtyard below with Raphael.
They’ve got coffees and they’re clearly in the middle of something, her talking, him walking beside her with his head angled toward her in the attentive way he has.
She says something and he laughs and she does too and she puts her hand on his arm briefly, not romantic, just the easy physical punctuation of two people who have gotten comfortable with each other.
I watch them cross the courtyard.
I know how I look right now. I know exactly how I look because I’ve been on the other side of this before, I’ve been Raphael in this scenario, the one who’s there and present and getting the version of someone that someone else is missing, and it’s not a good feeling to be the one watching from the balcony.
I look like a man who fell for something he told himself he was too smart to fall for.
I look like every person I’ve ever privately felt sorry for.
I pick up my drink and go back inside.
My laptop is open on the table in my suite and I sit down in front of it with the specific, determined energy of a man who has decided to do something productive about his situation even if the something productive is deeply avoidant in nature.
I have emails. Actual emails. From actual people about actual investments that require my actual attention.
Kyle has been forwarding things for two weeks with an increasing level of increasingly-professionally-worded concern that I can tell he’s rewriting several times before sending and I have been opening them, reading the first two sentences, and closing them.
This is not how I run my business. I’ve made more money by thirty-five than most people see in three generations and I did it by paying attention to things and right now I am paying attention to one thing exclusively and it’s not working.
So.
I’m going to respond to the emails.
I’m going to respond to the emails and schedule the calls I’ve been rescheduling and read through the portfolio update Kyle sent me on Thursday that I bookmarked and did not read.
I’m going to do my job, which I’m actually good at and which actually requires no emotional processing whatsoever, and I’m going to do it for the rest of the afternoon like a functioning adult professional person.
I open Kyle’s email.
I read it. Actually read it, all the way through, and there’s a Milan meeting I’d pushed twice that needs to happen before the end of the month or the window closes on a deal I’ve been building toward for eighteen months.
There’s a portfolio review for the hospitality fund that three of my investors have been patient about.
There’s a property acquisition in the seventh arrondissement that needs eyes on the ground.
I have actual work.
Real work. Work that matters and that I’ve been neglecting because I’ve been haunting a vineyard in Bordeaux like a man who doesn’t know how to be in the same building as someone and not go to her.
I start responding to emails.
It takes me forty minutes to get through Kyle’s backlog and I don’t think about the courtyard once, which feels like a genuine personal achievement at this point.
When I finish I sit back and look at the screen.
Milan is a real reason to be somewhere else for a week.
A legitimate, professional, non-pathetic reason.
It would give Harper actual space instead of this performance of giving her space while internally counting the hours since I’ve seen her.
It would give me something to do with my brain that isn’t this.
I look at the Milan calendar block on my screen.
I look at the courtyard through the window. Empty now. Just the afternoon light across the stone.
I look back at the screen and book the flight.
Then I close the laptop and sit in silence and feel, for the first time in two weeks, something that isn’t quite peace, but is at least less like torture.