Her expression was five-eighths confusion, a quarter annoyance, and just that last eighth amusement. “Talk.”
He checked the time. “Want to sit outside for a bit?”
She agreed, so he guided her onto Mary’s back patio. It wasn’t open for dining, but she had a couple of tables for employee breaks out among her herbs and vegetables. Both stood empty, and he guided her to a seat.
“I have to tell my friend Serena about this. Of course, she’ll want to trade cuttings with Mary if I do, so maybe not.”
“No, she’d love that. I’ll send you her number.”
She nudged his knee with hers. “Only if we’re still talking later, remember? Tell me about these fancy-ass golf clubs.”
It seemed from her teasing she’d adjusted her ratio of how irritating she found him. Encouraged, he launched in. “Annalisa and I met in grad school. I had a job right after undergrad; they supplemented my MBA after I worked there a year or so, it was a great deal. Or, that’s what I thought. The whole corporate culture of the place was pretty rancid, but of course once they started paying for my degree I didn’t feel like I could leave. Anyway, it came with this, like, expectation about networking, social stuff that you think is optional until your boss pulls you aside to let you know his boss noticed that you never go to the clubs or bars, and is wondering if you’re cut out for the environment. And some of the behavior, it’s stuff you’d like say something about. Except it’s obvious there’s a gross ‘boys will be boys’ rowdiness all those boss’s bosses are okay with, so who would you even say something to?”
“Your MBA is worth putting up with all that?”
He glanced away, not wanting to see any more of the way she closed in on herself a bit as he talked. “No. I mean, I’m glad I have it. But ultimately, the means weren’t sustainable. I took the path of getting out of night outings by claiming schoolwork, and, well, curried favor by falling in with the golf crowd instead. A couple drinks at the clubhouse after nine or eighteen holes wasn’t always going to lead to some kind of encounter with lightly-clad women.”
She made a throat-clearing noise that didn’t speak well of his past. Not that he disagreed. Some kinds of neon-and-spot-lit spaces still made his stomach tighten and set a thrumming tension up the back of his neck. Little too much time in Sunday school, his cousin always said, like the man didn’t spend what spare time he had working against sex trafficking. More power to anyone who chose the lifestyle of their own accord; his wrath was for those who used coercion, blackmail, and addiction to trap the vulnerable.
He shook off his glum. “Right. Yeah, so. Somewhere in there, I met Annalisa. She was also getting her MBA. Worked for a different company. Study groups turned into study dates turned into dates, and a relationship. So. She and I golfed together, and it was almost an in-joke at first, this hobby that is not, I’ll have you know, well suited to Houston for much of the year. At least, to me it wasn’t. It was all about the corporate ladder, the golfing, and I treated it like a more palatable resume-builder than, you know. The other.”
“I’m not going to faint if you mention strip clubs. I know they exist.”
The dim porch lighting acted as a damn welcome disguise for whatever embarrassment he was sure to be showing for going along with the corporate culture. He hoped. “Okay, yes. Point is, Annalisa and I got married, and finished our degrees, and after I felt I’d done enough repayment work for the MBA, I left that place and got a job with a company that did most of its networking in a way lower key. I sold the golf clubs, and got on with my quiet desk job. Give me a cup of coffee and some spreadsheets and I’m a happy man.”
“Sexy.”
“Everyone says so.” Theo’s chest filled with nice clean herb-scented air, and he savored the fact that he wasn’t surrounded by smoke and sweat and spirits. The fug of the strip clubs had lowered on him as he talked, and he blessed Rachel’s snark for helping him escape it.
“I believe it. But I gather Annalisa wasn’t on board?”
“If this were a golf game, you’d have a hole in one. She kept up the golfing, except for a few months of pregnancy, and didn’t care to hear I didn’t like it.”
“You didn’t like her going?”
Her words put his back up, but her tone showed her own ire was brimming over its banks. Theo reminded himself of his dad’s relatives back East, and the way Depy enshrined every facet of Sergei, and did not ask what hobbies Rachel’s husband had set constraints on during their marriage. “Her golfing is not a problem for me. Never was. She’s good, she enjoys it, and it serves a professional purpose for her. And before you ask, I never played with her. We never formed the habit, and if I was in her foursome it made her impatient all game, knowing there was someone else, some coworker or boss or connection, who wasn’t on the fairway to bond with her.”
“She sounds a little cut-throat. I like it.”
He laughed. He could imagine them bonding over not letting some man hold them back, which amused him even if the man in question was him. “Right, well. Point is, our styles were so different. For work, for networking, for planning our futures. And she never would hear that her way wasn’t my way.”
He was sure he came off as whining in a not-at-all-sexy way. Poor Theo, forced to endure a slightly unpleasant thing in order to progress in his job. Like everyone else in every workforce.
Rachel didn’t look horrified. So he explained a little more—the country club, the pressure to apply at another company, the day Annalisa said, “It’s like I don’t even know you.” Matter of fact and condemning all at once. Then coldness and comments about this and that person who fit her expectations of success. She never needed to be snide, his ex-wife. She got her point across with calm but cutting words. And actions. Case in point: the birthday gift of Callaways in a sleek silver-accented bag.
“And you were hit over the head with the realization that she was always going to ask you to be her idealized version of yourself, instead of who you really are.” Rachel didn’t sound like she was asking; she understood.
“Yeah.” His voice was wry; his throat was dry. He cleared it. “Pretty much.”
She wrapped a hand around his forearm. “Okay, I get it. And I’m sorry. Sounds tough, even if she had some reason to think you had that version in you somewhere.”
Either the breeze shifted, or he was breathing more deeply and could savor the woody tang of rosemary in the air. “Thanks. I mean, it’s not a horror story, I get that. I’m not trying to make it out to be....” He trailed off.
“Like my marriage?” Now she was the wry one. He closed his eyes.
“Sorry.”
“No need. You’re right, it was a horror story. But I don’t want to talk about it. Or anything, maybe. How about let’s skip the worst thing you did, and go to the movie?”
“Still willing to sit beside me for a whole two hours?”
“Well. You’ll have to take a gamble on that, won’t you?” But she slipped her hand down past his wrist until their fingers intertwined. Rachel, he thought, would never go for cold and condemning if they disagreed. Her nature was too warm. She might cry or get snarky or even shut him out, but whatever she did, she would do it with passion.
He hoped she would stick with him long enough to find out for sure.
She was letting him off the hook left, right, and plumb up the center. Utter nonsense. But something in the fidgeting about golf, in the joking about the movie, in the warmth of his shoulder against hers in the darkness melted away her spine.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.
“About how bad that movie was?”
“No, that’s an established fact. I mean about your worst thing.”
He sighed long and hung his head. “Okay. So I’m not hard to read when I’m avoiding something. That’s good info for you to have, anyway. Right?”
“Stop playing. Let’s go back to mine and you talk on the way and I’ll determine if you earn an invite up.”
“No pressure.”
She thought about the intimate particulars of how he used pressure, and smiled. “Don’t knock it yet.”
He slid an arm around her back, resting his hand on her hip. “You are a savvy negotiator, Rachel. I capitulate to every one of your demands.”
He’d driven clear of the parking lot before he blurted, “I told her if she took a job offer in Dallas, we were through.”
She took time to play over his words, making sure she understood each and every one. “Y’all lived in Houston?”
He nodded, eyes fixed on a red light. After a beat he started in again. They’d been drifting, with Theo digging in deeper to his resistance every time she attempted another makeover of his personality. Their mutual admiration society of Andres wasn’t enough to gloss over the cracks.
“And you and Ron already owned Elixir?” She’d done the math, one of those times she was thinking about him. Reconstructing his history based on a few of his comments and the ‘About Us’ section of his company’s website. Not admitting that her actions proved she was invested.
He shrugged, and looked away, maybe like he was checking the intersection was clear, maybe like he was intent on not meeting her eye.
“Was she headhunted or something?”
Shaking his head as if he was clearing cobwebs. “No. Not really. I don’t know, the story changed some. And it wasn’t like we’d opened the pub, we only had partnership papers and a few meetings underway. Hadn’t secured the location. She was right we could have opened up there instead.”
She snorted. His grip on the steering wheel relaxed, and she caught the twitch of a curve to his cheek. “Okay, I’ll grant that it wasn’t impossible for you to move. But if that’s the worst thing, I think it’s not as one-sided as you’re trying to make out. Sounds like you got assigned, or maybe you took, the job of follower. Instead of leading or walking in step. Not that leading is better than following, mind you. I can tell you in my experience it’s no good to be either way. Being the leader can twist a person in ugly ways.”
He whipped the car into a fast food parking lot. “Shit.”
“Theo?”
“Sorry. Sorry, sorry. Shit. Give me a sec.”
His breathing hinted at an elevated pulse, and he’d tilted his head against the headrest. She touched his shoulder and he rolled his neck so they were eye to eye. “Theo, hey. Something I said?”
In truth, she was a tad shaken, too. Hadn’t meant to mention a word about her marriage, about the power Sergei’d held over her, about the crap he did, the crap she put up with. That was stuff she discussed in therapy, and a bit with Aunt Johnston, and over the years, through one or two allusions, to her friends. What kind of nonsense impulse set her to revealing her knotted, twitchy inner core, she couldn’t name. With luck, given the way his eyes stared in thought, he was trapped in contemplations about his own life and ignoring the way she signaled her own vulnerability.
“Shit.”
“You said that.”
He laughed, shortest breath of sound that could still be called a laugh. “Bears repeating, I guess. Also: sorry. That bears repeating, too. Guess I wasn’t really expecting...”
“To be hit upside the head by my armchair psychology?”
“Yeah. That. You could set yourself up with a side gig if you get tired of your job.”
“Nah, too much paperwork.”
He relaxed enough to almost tease. “Not a fan?”
She shook her head. “I’m dyslexic. I avoid it much as I can.” Clearly she wasn’t avoiding the baring of her entire soul. Theo took her revelation in stride, not that she was ashamed. Not anymore. Not since Aunt Johnston taught her to accept and adapt. A little too late on the self-esteem building train from a few perspectives, but then again, Aunt Johnston hadn’t gotten her hands on Rachel until her parents had washed her off theirs.
Theo drew a diaphragm-expanding breath and straightened up. “Well, I can’t claim to be upset you’re not about to write a bunch of notes about me. What you said—the leading and following bit—it’s ... not a way I’ve put it to myself before. Lots of times, I wondered how I missed that side of Annalisa until too late, how I let her turn me into someone I disliked. Therapy, fights, talks with my family. Never once did I consider that she and I changed each other over the course of our marriage.”
“Well, people do tend to do that. “
Raking his fingers through his hair, he released another of those wry smiles. “No, you’re right. But somehow I thought of her as unchanging. I knew stuff about me underwent a shift, but somehow failed to realize the same of her. And it hit me, you know? How all these years I’ve had this bitterness about her fooling me, or hiding her true self, or something nebulous and distasteful along those lines. I can’t think of one time I even considered that I changed her the same way she changed me. Our marriage worked on both of us, turned us into extremes of ourselves, locked in some kind of duality. Shit. You don’t need to hear all of this. Let me take you home.”
His breathing and his color were back to normal, and smoothing her hand over his shoulder showed her that his body was no longer overpowered by what was going on in his mind. And his heart. “I’ve got the time, if you want to sit a bit longer.”
“No. Let’s blow this taco stand.”
“No tacos here. Just fried chicken, it looks like. But, Theo? Thanks, actually, for pulling over. Not everyone would.”
She ought to give her tongue a sharp bite to remind it to slow down instead of blurting out all these confessional thoughts of hers. Dismal to hope he was distracted enough by his own shit to not notice every damn thing she was revealing.