Tasting Notes (22 page)

Jim laughed. “I think that might actually make your mother very happy. And me too,” he added.

“You guys are happy here, though?”

“We are,” he said. “There are days we miss the vineyard; I won’t lie, but this was right for us. We would have made the move eventually. West made it possible for us to do sooner. I’ll be forever grateful to him for that.”

Rush simply nodded. He didn’t want to discuss West. “I’m happy you’re happy.”

His mom appeared a moment later carrying a large bowl of pasta and a basket of bread. She placed them on the table and trotted back into the house to make three more trips with dishes of food before retrieving the dishes and cutlery, which she set down in front of Rush.

“Dig in,” she said.

As Rush plated up, she explained what each dish contained, and he could tell from the tone of her voice how proud she was of her culinary exploration.

“Is that all you’re going to take?” she asked, eyeing the mound of food on his plate. She knew him better than anyone and knew he could pack away more food than most. Not wanting to tip her off to their earlier meal, he scooped another heaping spoonful of gnocchi onto his plate.

Rush made good use of his beer, drinking to mask the taste of the meal. From the looks of it, his dad was doing the same. They ran out midway through the meal, and the look he shot Rush from across the table made him burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” his mom asked.

“Nothing. Sorry. I was remembering something weird Casper did,” Rush said. It wasn’t the best lie, but she seemed to buy it.

“How is Casper? Who’s looking after him while you’re here?”

“I’ve left him with Sebastian. He was happy for the company.”

“Oh, how is Sebastian doing?”

“He’s good. Working a lot. I don’t think he’s going to be able to help me out this Christmas. I’m going to have to find someone else to pitch in, I think.”

“I always liked that boy. When you first came back, I thought you two would end up together. He always seemed like he cared about you a great deal,” his mother said.

“We gave it a shot, but we work better as friends. Something didn’t click.”

“The way it clicked with West?”

Rush looked over the table at his mother. He really didn’t want to talk about West.

“Charlotte, would you mind grabbing us another couple of beers?” his dad asked, shattering the awkwardness of the moment.

She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Something wrong with your legs?” she asked but rose anyway and walked to the kitchen.

“Quick,” Jim said, standing and carrying his plate to the fence. He tipped it and let the food slide over the other side.

“Did you just dump your meal into your neighbor’s yard?” Rush asked incredulously.

“Yeah. They have a dog. Don’t worry about it. I do it all the time. Hurry up, before she gets back.”

Rush sprang to action and followed Jim’s instructions, dumping the remnants of his dinner over the fence. He managed to sit back down and look nonchalant before she returned with their drinks.

“Wow, you boys sure were hungry,” his mom said. “Would you like some more?”

“Oh, no thank you,” Rush said. “I’m full.”

“Not too full for dessert, I hope.”

Rush snuck a glance at Jim, who gave him an encouraging look. “Nope, I saved a little room for dessert.”

His mom beamed.

WEST’S CELL
phone vibrated in his pocket. He was mid-conference call with a startup company, a new up-and-coming tech firm, in Iowa of all places. Their ideas were promising, and West hadn’t been this excited about an investment in quite some time.

Nearly an hour later, he finished up the call, assuring the clients things were going to happen quickly for them, then hung up. After digging his cell phone from his pocket, he checked the caller ID and saw it was Rush who phoned. His pulse quickened at the sight of his boyfriend’s name. He smiled to himself and hit the button to return the call.

“Hello?” Rush said once he answered. He sounded like he was laughing.

“Hey, I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time,” West said.

“No, not at all. Just one second.”

West heard scuffling and the sounds of Rush breathing. Then a moment later Rush spoke again. “Sorry about that. I can talk now.”

“How are you?” West asked. The question seemed strained and unfamiliar. As the weeks passed, the closeness they experienced when he lived in California seemed to dissipate. He missed it.

“I’m good. I’m in Palm Springs. Rancho Mirage, actually, with my parents.”

“How are they?”

“They’re good. They love it here, and with good reason. Their place is amazing. The pool alone is worth moving for.”

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of moving,” West joked.

“Nope, but I’m going to have a tough time leaving here next week.” Rush’s voice got quiet. “Hey, I was thinking, maybe if you didn’t have too much going on, you might want to fly out for a few days. Spend some time in the sun before you turn all pasty white again.”

West’s heart sank. He wanted to. He did. But despite being back in Chicago for nearly two months, he still hadn’t managed to get on top of things. E-mails, conferences, contracts, they were all piled up, and West couldn’t see a way out of them for the foreseeable future.

“I’d love to, really—”

“No, it’s okay. I get it. It was a long shot anyway, but I thought I’d ask.”

“If there were any possible way, I would. It’s a bad time this week. Scarlet has me booked solid with meetings and appointments, and that doesn’t take into account… never mind. It’s boring. I’m not trying to make excuses, but we’ll plan something soon. I promise.” West hoped he wasn’t lying to Rush. This wasn’t the first time they vowed to make plans for a visit. The week West left, he hoped to be back on the weekend and in Rush’s arms, but an emergency meeting delayed his plans. In fact, his plans were delayed indefinitely. He felt like shit for continuing to push it back, but it was all he could do when he was dealing with the ramifications of leaving Chicago in the first place. He could only hope things settled down soon and he could make his way out to California to visit.

“I miss you,” West said.

“I miss you too.”

“I should go, but I’ll call you later.”

“Yeah, that’d be good. I think it’s going to be an early night for everyone here, though. The desert heat zaps your energy like nothing else.”

“Okay, I’ll try to call early.”

“Talk to you soon,” Rush said.

“Bye.” And with that, West hung up. He wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon talking to Rush. Hell, he wanted to call Marshall and be en route to the airport in less time than it would take to book the flights. But he couldn’t do that, and listening to the sadness lacing Rush’s voice broke his heart. He missed him fiercely, but there were things that needed to be taken care of. That afternoon, he had four meetings booked for four potential new investments, and that didn’t take into account the backlog of issues that had cropped up since his return. It was never ending, and West was reluctant to admit he didn’t know if his schedule would ever clear up.

He placed the phone back onto the desk and logged on to his computer, trying to get his head back in the game for the barrage of e-mails he received since he last checked. His eyes drifted over the screen, but halfway down he realized he hadn’t retained any of the information he read. West wasn’t even entirely sure he
had
read it. Shaking his head to clear his mind, he closed the laptop, then stood. The e-mails would still be there in an hour.

He walked from the office and out into the reception area.

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to grab a coffee. Do you want anything?”

A moment of surprise showed on Scarlet’s face before she schooled her expression. “I can do that for you, sir.”

“I know. You’ve been fetching my coffee for years. Time for me to return the favor. Caramel macchiato? Extra whipped cream?”

She smiled. “Sounds perfect.”

“I’ll be back in a few.”

West took the stairs rather than the elevator. The time he spent in California had hardened and molded his body into better shape than he ever managed at the gym. Then two months in Chicago and all that progress began to slip.

As he rounded the corner on the final flight, he could feel the gentle burn of his muscles working. It felt good after weeks of sitting behind a desk. His feet hit the ground, and he was across the lobby of the building in a few seconds.

The traffic out on the street was heavy, and the noise that once faded so easily into the background seemed brash and intolerable. The quiet of a small town somehow became his favorite soundtrack, and now he missed it more than ever.

He waited patiently at the crosswalk for the light to change, then jogged over to the other side where the coffee shop sat, its sleek design and glass décor too slick. As West walked inside, he felt like something was missing. The shop was packed with people, but no one looked up. The woman behind the counter looked frazzled and stressed, and as he stood in line to place his order, he felt invisible. This was nothing like the friendly warmth of Annette’s, and a few minutes later when the grumpy barista handed him his coffee, he took a sip and realized it tasted like shit.

This was the same coffee he drank every day for years, the same coffee he’d gone through withdrawal without when he left, the same coffee he craved for weeks once he arrived in Canyon Creek, and now it tasted like someone scooped up the dirty water in the alley behind the store and squirted some canned whipped cream onto it.

Chugging it down as though it were a bottle of cough syrup, he carried Scarlet’s drink back to her. A sick feeling in the pit of his stomach—possibly from the coffee—intensified as he approached his building. Pushing the feeling of trepidation aside, he walked back in and took the elevator up to his office.

There would be time to worry about what it all meant later.

RUSH HUNG
up the phone and set it down next to his towel before cannonballing back into the pool. He tried to set aside thoughts of West, but he couldn’t help but feel let down. He knew there was little chance he’d actually fly out to Palm Springs, but the pang of disappointment when he said no… it still stung.

The joy he found in gliding through the cool water minutes before was now lost as he swam a few more laps from one end of the pool to the other. His parents were sitting in the shade, drinks in hand, watching him splash around like he had when he was a little kid. He missed those days, when everything was straightforward and simple. Now his heart hung heavy in his chest as West’s words hit him again. He sounded sad, just as dejected as Rush felt, but the sentiment didn’t matter when the outcome was the same. Yet another week was going to slip by without them seeing one another, just as the last week had, and the one before that.

He swam to the shallow end and walked up the stairs, not bothering to grab a towel before collapsing on one of the chairs on the pool deck. He would be dry in a matter of minutes.

“DO YOU
want a drink?” his mom asked later that afternoon. He’d been lying in the sun for a while, and his skin was starting to feel a little on the crispy side.

“Sure, whatever you got,” he said, getting up and walking over to the shaded part of the yard. He took a seat next to his father, who was reading the paper.

“Margarita?” his mom asked.

“That sounds great. Could you make it a double?”

She left and returned with a large glass of pink slush adorned with a blue straw and a yellow umbrella. Rush laughed as she handed it to him.

“You don’t do anything halfway, do you?” he asked.

“That seems like a silly way to go through life, half-assing everything. If you’re going to do something, do it with gusto. Either you’re all in, or you might as well go home.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re not talking about bartending?”

She shrugged innocently.

“I’m not buying that for a second,” Rush said. “What are you on about?”

“You’ve been in a mood all afternoon.”

“I have not. I’ve been getting some sun, relaxing.”

“Bullshit,” his mother said. “You’ve had waves of pissiness wafting off you since you got out of the pool. I can only assume it has something to do with the phone call. Was that West?”

Rush nodded. “Yeah. Things have been a little rough lately, I guess. I miss him.”

She nodded understandingly. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing. Wait it out, I guess. His job is bound to slow down eventually.”

“You obviously don’t know him very well. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be after all.”

Rush could hear the sarcasm dripping from his mother’s voice. She was right. He was deluding himself if he thought the work would ever slow for West.

“Maybe we should change the subject.”

“Robert James Coeman. I have never once known you to back down from facing something unpleasant. You’re not a runner. You face your problems head on. I don’t understand what’s gotten into you that you’ve decided sticking your head in the sand is the right course of action here.”

“Because I love him, and I don’t want to think about losing him. But what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t force him to take time off work to come see me,” Rush said. He could feel the familiar pull of desperation that came every time he thought about losing West. Deep in his heart he knew the relationship could only survive so much, but he wasn’t willing to think about that. Stagnancy was one thing, and he could live with that. He didn’t like it, but it was better than the alternative.

“I love you, Rush, but you can be really thick sometimes.”

Rush looked over at his dad, hoping he’d decide to weigh in at some point. He lifted his newspaper higher, blocking himself from the conversation. Rush shook his head and sighed.

“What am I missing, then, Mom?”

“Why is it up to him to come to you? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but don’t you have another week off, with someone taking care of things at home for you?”