“This gives you a chance to pick one you like.” He opens one of the bottles and fills my glass.
“I’m not going to waste wine,” I say, lifting my glass. “This one will be fine.” I take a sip and the woodsy, bitter taste takes me off guard and I grimace.
Shane laughs, downs my wine, and then opens another bottle. It’s bottle number three that my taste buds finally enjoy, along with the meal, which we eat while watching the news and just enjoying our time together. And for once, we talk about politics and current events, finding we are in sync in all the ways that ensure we won’t later want to kill each other. It’s this normal kind of couple’s thing that is not forced, but amazingly natural.
Once the food is gone, and we’ve cleaned up, Shane turns off the television and sits on the edge of the couch right in front of me, those gray eyes studying me. “What?” I ask.
“I don’t remember the last time I just talked with anyone,” he says, and it’s clear in the way he says it that he’s a little taken off guard.
“Well, since I live with you,” I say, “I think you’d better get used to a lot more talking.”
“The unexplainable thing is that I’m already used to it.”
“You are?” I ask, sipping my wine.
“Yes. I am. I told you. I’ve never lived with a woman, because frankly, I didn’t want a relationship.”
“Me either,” I confess. “I haven’t lived with anyone.”
“Did you ever come close?”
“No,” I say. “My relationships have been—” I laugh again but this time without humor and amend, “My train wrecks are kind of embarrassing.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Experiences make us who we are, and sometimes the bad ones are the best at making us grow.”
“Experiences,” I repeat. “Yes well, I’ve certainly had those.”
“Tell me,” he presses softly, those two words becoming his familiar way to push me to expose some part of me I never thought to show anyone, and yet, I’m about to now.
“Train wreck number one,” I say. “That affair I mentioned with a professor before, was actually a much older law professor. Not my law professor because I wasn’t in law school. I was a freshman and still living at home to protect my brother.”
“How much older?”
“Twenty years and one of my father’s friends. Obviously he was some kind of screwed-up daddy issue I was working through. Feel free to judge now.”
“I’m not judging you, sweetheart.”
“I do and the worst part … When my mother died—”
“How did she die?”
“A car accident, so it was a real shock. We’d fought over my stepfather the night before as well. It was misery, guilt, and pain.” I am reminded of his father’s coughing attack. “Things I promise you are coming with your father, despite how you feel about him. Are you ready for that?”
“No. I am not ready for that and right now, I’d rather talk about you. You were telling me what happened when your mother died, in relation to this professor.”
“Right,” I say, because he knows I’m here for him, and he has to deal with this his way. “I went to the funeral with my brother, and that led to us fighting over him and his Gemini connections. I was a mess afterwards. I showed up at the professor’s house, and that’s when I found out he was still married. I lost it and made a scene and so did she.” I shake my head. “Why would I make a scene over a man that was clearly an asshole? That is not even the person I know myself to be.”
“You were in pain and it sounds like I was right. That moment helped define who you are.”
“You’d think, but I wasn’t done self-destructing. I barely dated for the rest of my undergraduate years and then I started law school. It was some kind of trigger, and I went off the ledge, like a really late rebound with the complete opposite type of man. A tattoo artist who was into hard rock, hard sex, and not a lot of anything else. I guess the appeal with him was that I knew what I was getting and I didn’t want more. There could be no heartache to come because there was no emotional attachment for either of us.”
“How long ago was that?”
“We dated for six months and it ended about a year ago.”
“And since then?”
“School took over and I lost myself in my studies.”
“Which explains your LSAT score Seth mentioned.”
“I’m very competitive,” I say, “which fed an obsession with winning every challenge presented and snagged me an internship at a top firm.”
“Which firm?”
“Norton, Mash, and Company.”
He whistles. “That is not a spot that’s easy to come by, but I can see why they chose you. And speaking of challenges: Let’s talk about my proposition.” He reaches under the table and produces a stack of files I didn’t know were there and sets them on the coffee table before reclaiming a spot on the couch.
“What is all of that?” I ask.
“Potential acquisitions,” he explains. “I want a clean slate for Brandon Enterprises, free of the often questionable ethics of my father. The acquisition of Brandon Pharmaceuticals was meant to produce large sums of money, thus allowing the painless shedding of those other divisions.”