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“Of course.” He directed his order to the host. “One bottle of your finest Chardonnay for now please.”
The lady left with our order and Sam’s coat.
I looked around, admiring the restaurant. No wonder Zimmerman instantly accepted Sam’s invite right after hearing the restaurant’s name. It was a fancy place with gilded décor on every wall and crystal chandeliers shimmering off a rainbow of colours. No need to look at the menu to know that the final bill would be a hefty sum.
“You ever been here?” Sam asked me.
“I don’t go to a lot of restaurants.”
“Your boyfriend doesn’t take you?”
Boyfriend…? Oh, right. He meant Joe. Sam thought that Joe, my best friend, was my boyfriend. I never corrected him on that.Wenever correctedanyone. Letting everyone think we were a couple was easier than explaining how we were not. And that was the only way not to awkwardly spill how there were times when our libido was off the chart and we helped each other get off.
Joe had been my best friend for years. Until that forsaken night. The night of his mother’s wedding. Her invite in the mailbox had been a complete shock for Joe. They’ve been estranged since his teenage years. Then out of the blue, she was getting married and wanted her firstborn present in the front row. He wasn’t particularly ecstatic at the whole thing and I, being the good best friend that I was, promised to tag along. Just like Joe had been the only constant person in my life, I was his. I was his solace. His mum had assumed we were a couple too. Of course she would. The first time I met her, I was her son’s date at her wedding and the next morning, I woke up in his childhood bedroom at her house entangled in the same bed sheet as Joe, both stark naked. Guess the effect of having to endure through the whole wedding made him need something to take off his mind from everything. And when I asked him to unzip my dress after the party and his hand grabbed my breast, I was too horny to turn him down.
We should have corrected his mum. We should have halted our plans of me moving in with him after my apartment’s lease expired. We should have agreed our sex was wrong even if it satisfied our individual dry spell. We shouldn’t have done it again and assumed that it wouldn’t get weird between us just because we’d been long-time friends. Because it did become weird. A lot weird. Been for a while now.
“Last time Joe and I had a night out was…” How long had that been? “…last year. Over a year actually.”
“Wow.” Sam’s brows went up in surprise. “How come?”
I picked up the cloth napkin, unfolded it and placed it neatly on my lap. “Joe prefers a quiet dinner at our place rather than to go out. Even if it’s with cheap takeaway food. After all his long hours at work, he doesn’t like to dress up all over again. I understand his reason.”
And I did. Really did. Because I worked long hours too sometimes. Some days I’d finish up at the office, return home and switch on my work laptop again while eating the favourite meal of a workaholic and hopeless cook: cereal. My career was important to me too. But for Joe, his company preceded everything else.
“Good old Joe Parker. Still the mousey one, huh.”
“You know what? Neither you nor Joe ever told me how you two have met.” I propped my elbows on the table, aware of snubbing proper table manners in a posh restaurant like that. I was all ears to hear a story instead of telling any.
“Joe didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head. “Never. He steers away from any conversation with your name in it.”
“You must understand the reason for that too. I’m your boyfriend’s business rival.” He grinned. As if happy to announce his rivalry.
“And his former friend too?”
Joe never went into much detail other than that. He always gave me the impression that it was a do-not-approach subject for him. So I never probed. But something about this mystery enticed my curiosity. And I knew Sam would give me a piece of the story if I asked.
Sam shifted in his seat, just enough to look straight at me. “I’m thirty-five years old. That’s how long I’ve known your Joe.”
My jaw would have dropped to the floor if it wasn’t attached to my head. “See. I didn’t even know that.”
“We were playmates since the day Joe was born three weeks after me. Our mothers were good friends. We learned to walk together, went to school together, learned business together. We did everything together. Some people mistook us for brothers. And if Joe wasn’t much blonder than me, we could have feed that lie to anyone if we wanted. We got along so well, even if we were more opposites than North and South. Joe was the timid one and I was the rowdy one. I was the one getting in a fight and Joe was the referee. Joe gets bullied and I bullied the bullies. Still, we were the definition of best buddies.” Sam smiled through his explanation. Then he sighed, somewhat sombrely. “That was until we started a company together and fucked each other over. Now, we both got our own separate company and became sworn enemies for life.”
Why was I even surprised that I didn’t know any of that either? Joe wasn’t the most talkative person. He was quite reserved actually. I’d known him for years and I never pried at anything unless he told me at his own free will. But if I had the slightest idea that he and my boss were brothers-from-another-mother for the majority of their lifetime, it was very likely that I might have quizzed him on that one subject.
The lady host appeared with the wine then. “Your wine, sir. 2002 Chardonnay from Sonoma Valley, California.”
“Perfect.” Sam gave his go-ahead to open the wine just as his phone rang with an incoming call.
Sam pulled the phone from his pocket and answered at once. “Hello?” As he listened to the call, his smile began to fade. “Oh, that’s too bad.”
I didn’t need to listen to the other end of the call to guess who it was.
When Sam hung up, he sighed. “Looks like our guests won’t be making it. He isn’t feeling very well.”
The lady host paused from nipping the corkscrew into the bottle’s cork. “Shall I?’
