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“Okay, thanks. Tell him I’ll be out in a minute.” Cris does a double-take when he looks up from the papers he is studying. I’m standing behind Mateo in the threshold. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he mutters, his eyes wide as saucers.
“I’m telling mom you swore.” The idle threat Mateo makes accompanies a daring smile.
Cris lifts a finger, his grin as white. “Get back outside and play. Stay out of your mother’s way. She’s got patients at the clinic today… And keep out of the trellis before you kids do any more damage to this year’s crop!” he yells after his son, who is scampering away.
“They pluck the grapes and chuck them at one another.” Cris rises from his seat.
“You don’t say?” I tilt my chin.
“You watched them?” He shakes his head back and forth.
I flatten my lips, not giving away a thing.
Unsure of how Cris would receive my visit, I relax when he gives me a bro-hug.
“You look good, man.” His greeting ignores that I’ve driven through four states in less than three days. I slept in my passenger seat after leaving North Carolina. I’m wearing rumpled clothes I bought on the road.
“You look… Different.” The port wine birthmark that covered most of Cris’s face is gone.
Cris steps back to take an identical gander at me, joking in a fond way. “Were you always this tall?”
I sputter something incomprehensible and we laugh.
“So you’re a winemaker now?”
“It’s a family business. My father-in-law and I put in a lot of hours getting it up and running. I’m here most of the time, but we’ve got a decent staff nowadays that takes the pressure off. He’s finally settled into retirement and I can pursue other interests.”
My lip quirks.
The decision to head west was involuntary. I drove all night after leaving Paisley’s. Stopping at Dusty’s mountain home in Boone, I used the hidden spare key to let myself in. After crashing on his sofa, the next morning, I wound further into the Appalachian Mountains. By the time I hit the border, and crossed over into Tennessee, I figured what the hell, why not keep going? I’d driven almost five hundred miles already. Nashville was only a few hundred more.
In music city, the sugar-laden gas station candy bars and salty chips I’d sustained myself on had gotten stale. I wandered into a restaurant for lunch. Framed pictures of celebrities adorned every inch of the walls. Wouldn’t you know, the booth the waitress sat me at had a black and white of songwriter Cris Sanchez along with the singer of his last hit.
Knew the song from the radio. Never knew they were Cris’s lyrics.
Maybe it was that I wasn’t starving after a good meal. Or the miles I’d put between me and Brighton. I was already halfway to Texas. So, perhaps I needed to see for myself that the Cris in the picture wasn’t the devastated widower who threw the success we’d striven for out the window.
When we got the news of Liz’s car accident, Cris was a basket case. Her death upended the band’s whole lives, not only his. Now, he’s someone else entirely.
So why am I the same pissed-off drummer whose dreams of stardom were crushed in that collision?
An uncomfortable silence passes between us.
“It’s been eleven years, and I’m pretty sure the last thing you said to me was ‘go fuck yourself’. So, why are you here, Jake?”
“I was hoping you could help me figure that out.”
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“I hate to say I told you so, sweetheart.”
“Then don’t,” I retort in a ragged huff and flop onto the sofa. My elbow rests on the arm and my chin catches on my fist. I bend my knee and set my bare foot on the cushion.
My mother is bustling around my living room fluffing pillows. She’s not a fan of the new furniture arrangement. I’m not sure she was ever going to be a fan of Jake’s.
