Matt smiled bitterly.
“Or a weird cousin,” Santi added, with a nervous lick to his bottom lip.
“Loser distant relation?” Matt suggested.
“Friend, Matt.” Santi didn’t quite snap, but it was close. “I thought you knew that. I think of you as many things, but mostly a friend—as much as you allow anyone to be. Ah.” Matt’s expression must have been frozen, or broken, to make Santi blanch like that. “Holy Mother. I am stone-cold sober right now. And yet it seems I’m feeling sincere this evening. Must be the grenadine going to my head.” He leaned in, a concerned frown disappearing behind his curls. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Now, or earlier. I’m sorry.”
He twisted around at the noise of a few people trickling into the room and Matt looked up, avoiding his eye.
“Fuck this,” Matt whispered. “I want to go outside.”
Santi stood up immediately. “Then let’s go.”
Part Two
The peace Matt wanted wasn’t to be found on the patio, but it was something like peace, sitting side by side in the near dark with this one person for company.
A funny thought, since Matt was still angry with Santi. But maybe that was what it was like to have a best friend. Before tonight, Matt would never have described Santi in those terms and wasn’t sure even now that he wanted to.
He’d noticed it before, this feeling. It would have been impossible not to. But noticing it and dealing with it were different.
“It’s much easier,” Matt said after a while, hoping Santi wasn’t cold. “Not being around other people.” People would keep pressuring Matt to put a name to this when there was no point in doing so. It was what it was. He tipped his head back. “You can see why they compared the sky to the heavens when you look up at that. Although it’s got nothing on the views up in the mountains.”
“Itisbeautiful here.” He wondered if Santi was looking up at the sky. Santi did have an eye for beauty.
“Vineyards as far as you can see,” Matt went on. The stink of fertilizer and grape vines—or fermenting grapes at the right time of year. “A growing town, full of investors. What a future this place has.”
“You hate it here, Matty,” Santi countered simply, as if this was an argument. Possibly it was; Matt wasn’t used to having them.
Matt took a deep breath. “Most people would say there isn’t much of me to know. You keep… you keep insisting I havelayers.”
Santi snorted. “I don’t mind if you want to keep yourself secret, but don’t pretend that isn’t what you do. Not with me, anyway. I know better than to believe it.”
“Sincerity all around tonight,” Matt commented when he could breathe again. He curled a hand around the cold metal of his chair and wished Miss Cathy would come out with more cookies and tea and kisses for the top of his head. “Is that the reason for your resolution to not drink on nights like these? What makes these nights so special?” He glanced over. Santi turned away. “Oh God.” Matt must have hit a nerve. “Are you feeling old? You’re younger than me! You’ve still got time to do things. Anything you want. You’ve already made a name in the art world. Now you can settle down if you want.” Be part of a couple standing in front of their families, raising glasses of champagne. “Meet someone, laugh over coffee, have dinner…” Matt needed to stop talking, or at least make the mood lighter “…kiss kiss fall in love.”
There was no sign Santi appreciated his humor. “I don’t run from love. That’s half the problem.Shit.” Santi sounded like he was also wishing for cookies and tea. “I might actually be worse when I’m sober. First, I’m maudlin. Then it’s self-pity and sadness.”
Matt had noticed, but he held his tongue. “Want me to get you something?” He offered it easily. He must have forgiven Santi already.
“No. Thank you.” Santi was very sure. “Not just because I’m not drinking tonight. I hate red wine and they will push red wine. Can I tell you something, in the spirit of self-destructive honesty? I want a middle-aged-mom-in-the-early-evening glass of chardonnay. That’s what I sit with at the end of a long day. Sometimes I don’t even finish a glass. And I like to put sparkling water in it, even in the pricey bottles they hand out around here like tips. It’s basic and whatever insult you want. But I am so very tired of pretension, especially over wine.”
Matt absorbed that without any real sense of shock. “I always suspected you hated it here too. Those vineyard paintings of yours are close to mockery, even if a lot of people don’t see that.”
He could feel Santi’s stare. “It somehow doesn’t surprise me that you do.” Santi gestured vaguely around them. “You see what all this is. Corporate nonsense passed off as family farms with their romantic old vines. Actual family farms and small vineyards bought out and made part of one giant label—not that they tell the consumers that. And for what? Something to get people drunk. And yet I have to listen every rich prick in this town go on and on aboutnotesandlegsandvolcanic soilsas if they aren’t all quoting whatever the last salesperson said to them. As if their wine choices are superior. As iftheyare.”
A speech like that made Matt wonder why Santi had ever left the city. “You stay here for family too?”
Santi burst out laughing, then cut himself off and shut his mouth hard. His eyes were shadows. “Iamworse when I’m sober,” Santi murmured, probably not for Matt to hear. “I might get bitter when I drink, but I still manage to be sensible.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Matt said, as someone who had once poured Santi into a cab while assuring him that his nose was perfect. “But, yeah. Alcohol dulls things. That’s the real point of it, even with wine tourists looking for an acceptable reason to get smashed at noon. Of course you can avoid dealing with whatever is bothering you while you are under the influence. It might loosen your inhibitions, but it dials back your feelings. Sober” –which they both were, and fuck, what had Matt been thinking? ”—there it all is. Right with you. Unavoidable.”
“And here you are, right with me for every moment of it all,” Santi finished in a tone that almost managed to be carefree. Which was a warning sign.
But Matt’s phone vibrated in his pocket.
He didn’t check it. Didn’t need to. “It’s probably time for champagne and speeches. I’m sure they’re wondering where we are.”
“We’re avoiding them. Like men,” Santi joked wearily. “All right. I’ll go back. But only for cake and to keep you company.”
