“All right,” he says slowly. “You asked how I’ve been. I’ve been conflicted.”
“Oh man,” I say, lifting my champagne flute in a toast. “I hear that.”
Sebastian apparently changes his mind about sitting, because he moves around the counter and pulls out the second stool after all. He drags it across the hardwood floor until it’s across from me. He sits. Takes the gyro out of my hand.
“What are you conflicted about?” he asks.
“Nope. You started it. You go first.”
He takes his time chewing and swallowing, his expression guarded when he meets my eyes again. “It’s about a woman.”
My stomach tightens in unmistakable jealously, which I remind myself is unfair.
I smile and shrug. “Mine is about a man. Maybe we can help each other.”
His eyes flash for a minute before he exhales and nods. “I care about her. I think about her more than I should. In fact, I find I’m thinking about her almost always. And yet, recently when I’ve thought about taking the next step, moving forward, something stops me. As though the moment isn’t right. Does that make sense?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say ruefully, thinking of Sir’s most recent message. “But you want my thoughts on the right moments in life?”
“You’ve got kind of an Amazonian warrior gleam in your eye, so I’m not really sure,” he admits skeptically.
“Here’s what I think,” I proceed anyway, balling up my napkin and tossing it into the plastic bag. “I think relationships are a lot like champagne. This bottle here”—I lift it and pour us each a little more—“it’s crazy expensive. My dad got all of us Cooper kids a vintage from the year we were born for our twenty-first birthdays and told us to save it for the right time. We always interpreted that as save it for a special occasion. Engagements. Weddings. Celebrations. Baseball, if you’re my brother.” I hold the neck of the bottle, study the label. “But my dad didn’t say save it for a special occasion. He said save it for the right time. It’s a crucial difference, I’m realizing.”
“And this is your right time? Here? With me?” he asks, his voice rough.
“Apparently. And that’s sort of my point.” I set the bottle down and look at him. “I don’t think you can plan for the right time. Or the right woman. As far as timing’s concerned, maybe sometimes you’ve got to make it the right time and simply trust that it’s the right woman.”
He sets the gyro aside—it’s a mangled mess now, and neither of us reaches for it again. “What if pursuing one path costs you another?”
“That, my dear sir, is what you call life.”
I stiffen a little in shock at what I’ve just said. My dear sir.
I feel both instant remorse, as though I’ve betrayed everything that is most dear to me, and something else I can’t explain—a fleeting sense that I’ve just uncovered everything that is most dear to me.
The sentiment disappears before I have a chance to fully decipher it, but most puzzling of all is the look on Sebastian’s face, a near exact mirror of my own shock and discomfort, which makes no sense. He can’t possibly know what that phrase means to me, unless…
My stunned brain runs through everything I know of Sir, everything I know of Sebastian. Both men in Manhattan, which means nothing—there are millions of those. But there are other things. The fact that both were in relationships when we first met, but no longer are. That he’d ordered lemon sorbet that night in the park, the quick wit, the unexpected kindness. Most telling of all, my own reaction to both men…
My fleeting sense of wondrous hope evaporates almost immediately as I recall one crucial detail: I’ve met Sebastian Andrews’s parents—Sir’s father passed away.
Not the same man then. The disappointment at the realization is severe. It would have explained so much. How I could feel pulled to both of these men in the same urgent, inexplicable way. How I always feel guilty thinking about one while talking to the other. But most especially, it would have solved the biggest problem of all:
Choosing one would mean losing the other—a thought that feels nearly unbearable.
To cover my disappointment that they can’t possibly be the same man, I force a smile and resume conversation as though nothing’s happened.
“Anyway,” I say lightly. “I could be wrong. But I’ve got to wonder if relationships, especially the complicated ones, the ones worth getting right… I wonder if they’re not like fine wine. Maybe you’re just supposed to drink the damn thing.”
Sebastian smiles—a real smile that softens his hard features. “An interesting approach for a wine expert.”
“Former wine expert. I’m out of that game, thanks to you.” But there’s no heat to it, and I bat my eyelashes a bit.
“Out of the game?” he says in surprise. “I assumed you’d stay in the business in some way.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. It was always my dad’s dream. Not mine.”
“So what’s next?”
“Well, I’ve got a few months to figure it out, also thanks to you. Which is a good thing, because I don’t have a clue,” I admit.
He studies me over the flute. “What about those dreams of being an artist.”
I smile. “I think that ship has sailed in the same direction as your jockey ambitions.”
“I disagree,” he says. “I haven’t so much as been near a horse in close to ten years. You’re actively creating excellent art pieces.”
I blink in surprise. “You knew?”
“That the paintings in the shop are yours? I had a hunch.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
“Well, not because of your signature. What is it, a shoe?”
I smile a little and take another sip of champagne. “Yes. Cinderella’s glass slipper. It was one of the first things I learned to draw. I was big into all things fairy tales. I started using it as my signature, which, when I was nine, felt extremely sneaky and clever. It sort of stuck.”
I tilt my head curiously. “But really, how’d you know they were mine? I don’t tell many people.”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ve suspected, I think, for a while. The look on your face when I called them cutesy. It was more than professional pride. It was personal. Then, when you mentioned that night at the park that you wanted to be an artist, it sort of confirmed it.”
I lift my fingers in a little salute. “Hats off, Sherlock.”
He shifts a bit on the stool and waits until I look back at him. Which I do, warily.
“They’re good,” he says. “The paintings.”
I roll my eyes. “He says, after realizing he put his foot in his mouth earlier with the Cutesy Tinker Bell comments.”
“They’re good.” His voice is firm. Warm. Confident.
I want to accuse him of groveling, of trying to save face or digging himself out of the hole he dug, but he doesn’t speak like a man trying to gain ground or backpedal. He sounds like a man speaking the truth.
And it means a lot. To have someone who’s not related, who’s not a friend, compliment my work.