“Tell me what kind of person I am.”
Roxanne coughs again, and we both look toward her, startled. I almost forgot she was here.
“Well, I feel like the biggest third wheel in the world right now,” she announces, “so I’m going to take this fruity beer over to the bar and keep Zach company while you two continue...whatever this is.”
“Roxy, wait!” Monroe protests as she starts to get up.
“Please, don’t feel you like you need to leave,” I add. “En fait, I probably have to leave myself.”
I pull my phone out and find what I’m expecting: close to a dozen text messages and missed calls. Owning four businesses and counting is like trying to raise a family of exceptionally needy children; everyone always wants something, and no one ever knows how to find anything.
“Duty calls.” I gesture at the phone before tucking it back into my coat pocket. I get up from the table as Roxanne sits back down.
“You aren’t going to finish your wine?” she asks me.
“Wine isn’t meant to be chugged—even that wine.” I open my wallet and lay a few bills down on the table. “Mercifor the invitation to drink with you. I hope I didn’t wear out my welcome.”
“Not mine.” Roxanne turns to Monroe. “Is your welcome for him worn?”
“I haven’t decided.”
She says it like a joke, but I doubt I should take it as one.
“Maybe you’ll have figured it out next time I see you. I’ll be next door a lot dealing with the renovations. If you’re here as much as you seem to be, we might bump into each other again.”
Am I really trying to flirt with her?
At best, it’s a futile cause. At worst, it might make her actually hate me. I’ve just met her, and yet neither of those outcomes are things I want to think about facing.
She answers as I’m about to leave the bar, tipping her beer at me like a challenge.
“We just might.”
Four
Monroe
COMPLEX:A wine that exhibits multiple flavours and nuances
“He ordered wine,DeeDee! Wine! At Taverne Toulouse!”
“Is he,” DeeDee puffs as we carry a keg in from the back entrance together, “stupid?”
“The opposite, I think.” I stop moving, and we carefully set the metal container down on the ground beside the walk-in fridge. “I think he’s too smart for his own good—for anyone’s good. He’s this uppity prick who sits there drinking pinot noir in his fancy shirts. He talked about Taverne Toulouse like he already owned it, like he’s used to just waltzing into a room and taking whatever he wants. He didn’t even stop and think about what that might mean for other people. He was an asshole about it!”
DeeDee crosses her arms over the crop top she’s wearing, not even bothering to hide her surprise as she stares me down.
I know why her eyes have gone wide; I’m not a ranter. I’m not somebody who sits around calling other people names. If there’s a problem, I force whoever’s involved to take a seat at the bar. I pour them a beer, and we talk it out like rational adult humans with a sense of decency and respect for one another. I don’t take the low road, and I definitely don’t decide to write someone off as an asshole after spending less than an hour in their company. It’s been a few days since Roxanne and I’s reconnaissance mission, and yet absence has not made my heart grow fonder as far as Julien Valois is concerned.
“Maybe I’m projecting,” I admit, “but I just...I just didn’t like him, okay?”
Bullshit, sing-songs my brain—or more accurately, my hormones.
There were a lot of things about Julien Ididlike. I liked the way his accent made his English words come out soft and slow, like he was savouring the sound of them the way he savoured his wine. I liked the way his fingers curled around the wine glass. He didn’t have delicate hands. He had strong hands, thick and capable—hands for breaking and building, and yet the way he lifted his glass was almost a caress, a tender sort of restraint and awareness of the fragility pinched between his fingers.
I push the hair back off my sweaty forehead.
“He’s going to ruin everything,” I remind DeeDee, trying to ignore the fact that I’m probably more in need of a reminder than her. “Fucking Félix Fournier is already talking about selling, and now bar next door guy wants to buy. If we could just get our sales up, I know I could convince Fournier to give me more time to prove that Taverne Toulouse is worth keeping. Things will pick up in the summer. They have to. They always do, and Fournier will forget all about selling, just like he always does.”
