He didn’t like feeling like an entree in a room full of hungry, rich women.
“What are you cooking?”
“Beef bourguignon. I got this great cooking wine from this wine dealer in Winchendon who sells Spanish and Portuguese wine—”
“It’s red. That’s all I need to know about wine.” Those words made Mike turn and give Dylan a look of mock hurt, his hand dropping the spoon and going to his heart, as if he’d been shot.
“Philistine.” A lover of good wines, Mike had dragged Dylan to more vineyards than Dylan could count. Seriously. He couldn’t count them because all that good wine had made him drunk, and once he was sloshed he couldn’t remember much.
“Hipster.”
“Them’s fighting words,” Mike growled, making Dylan laugh with a sound that came out of him before he even thought about it. A sound that made Mike pause.
A genuine laugh.
Hadn’t heard much of that since their partner, Jill, had died more than a year ago.
His eyes caught Mike’s and in the space between them, in that second of connection he knew Mike was thinking the same thing, too. The soft smiles on their faces wore off like sand on a windy day, swept off by a sudden gust of wind, leaving a barren spot.
“Huh,” Dylan grunted, breaking the gaze. He lifted the red bow tie and walked next to Mike, opening the cupboard above the stove. Mike reached first—the guy was more than half a foot taller, after all—and his big hand wrapped around the olive oil bottle.
“Here,” Mike said, back to one word utterances, eyes troubled and dark. Dylan took the bottle with a curt nod and ambled back to his bedroom, wondering how his life had devolved into this.
Half naked, a bottle of oil in his hand, and no woman.
He knew exactly how. That was the problem.
Jill.
His eyes moved slowly, crawling over the dresser, the end table, the big, wide bed. Dylan surveyed his desk and bookcase where pictures of her dotted the landscape like bright bursts of wildflowers, the only true color in the room, vibrant and achingly beautiful.
Reaching for a picture, he grabbed one of her and Mike at the summit of a ski trail in New Hampshire, goggles shoved on top of their heads, hair mussed and crazy, Mike’s eyes wild with fun and love. Jill’s mouth was open in a great, big smile, white teeth flashing, her cheeks ruddy with cold, hand splayed across Mike’s chest, covering the ski lift sticker.
Her face was tipped up to look at him and Mike looked straight at the camera, as if he casually knew she was his—theirs—as if he didn’t need to give her a ten thousandth look of love in that moment, because the first ten thousand would be followed by a second ten thousand. And a third. And a fourth and more.
But no.
Finding Jill in the early years of college had been like living with one lung and not knowing it. She was his second lung, giving him oxygen and hope, deep breaths and contented sighs. Until he met her he hadn’t realized he could breathe deeply, could be himself with more acuity, could be fulfilled and complete.
They’d met in the dorms, Dylan a jock and an arrogant son of a bitch. Mike had met her within days, being Dylan’s roommate. He was so angry. So shy. So quiet it scared Jill, who had confided her feelings for Mike in hushed tones, expecting Dylan to be upset that she was falling for them both.
Both.
In that exact, frozen nanosecond of time something in him had unearthed, like a dormant seed given permission to sprout.
And just like that—in one breathy conversation—his life had come together.
The three of them had come together.
He could just breathe. And had, for more than a decade.
As he admired the photo, his eyes raked over her face, an ache in his chest tugging at each fiber of muscle in his heart. When she’d died last year after fighting the cancer that had won—the evil bastard—he’d gone back to living with one lung.
It made him gasp, breathlessly lurching through life as if someone had performed chest surgery on him, cracking his sternum with a bone saw, without anesthesia, ripping a part of him out, leaving him half alive.
But he had no choice.
His finger traced the lines of her jaw in the picture, his desire rising up through the grief. Dead. She was dead. Ah, God, if only he could look at her one more time, show her with his eyes, his lips, his fingers, his soul, how love wasn’t enough for them all. Oh, how he would give every drop of it to her and walk around hollow for his remaining days to have that one, last look.
