He looks at me and I motion with my hand for him to keep going. “Don’t make me put socks on a rooster.”
He gives a slight shrug. “Positions were open to crew from thirteen to eighteen, but you had to weigh at least a hundred pounds and you didn’t qualify.” He takes a drink, and I watch his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “You blamed me for your not leveling up. I probably could have put in a word for you, but I don’t know if that would have made a difference and, the truth is, Sunshine, I wasn’t about to replace a solid trimmer for a temperamental string bean.” He points the bottle in my
direction. “You pushed me in the lake and stomped off. We never got along after that.”
I don’t get why Edie got worked up over a sailboat, but I imagine she’s not the only person who’s felt an urge to push him in the water. “What’s next?”
“Stupid shit that made you mad.” He shuts up like he’s done talking for the day.
“If you’re not goin’ to tell me everythin’ right now, I’m goin’ back to watchin’ Real Housewives.”
He turns to open several high cupboards. “Do you have Maker’s Mark around here?”
“That bad, huh? There’s a bar down the hall.” He follows me through the combined space, down a short hall, and into a room set up for entertaining. “I don’t really hang out in here.”
Oliver moves behind a stainless-steel-and-epoxy bar with multicolored veins running through it. It’s cool to the touch and has a weird glowing pulse that lights one color and then another. It reminds me of an art installation, which is probably why it appealed to Edie. There are some contemporary paintings, too, the kind that look like someone threw buckets of paint on a canvas.
“I’m surprised this room isn’t blue and white like the rest of the penthouse.” Oliver disappears behind the bar and sets Maker’s Mark and two square tumblers on top before popping back up again.
“Me too. I don’t really like all the white and blue. It’s cold.”
“Hire a decorator and get rid of it.” He dumps two balls of ice in each glass and fills them a quarter full of whiskey.
No point in redecorating since I’m not going to be here past the first of the year. Maybe mid-January at the latest. “I don’t like whiskey.” I’ll have to come back for appointments with Dr. Barb. I’m not sure how I’ll work out the details, but I’ll have to be careful. I don’t want her to find out I’m back in Texas. The last thing I want is to get tossed back into Livingston because someone thinks I’m returning to finish the job Edie started in El Paso.
Oliver adds a splash of water to one glass before he comes from behind the bar and hands it to me. “If you weren’t born in a barn, you’d know that a hostess never lets a guest drink alone.”
“Do you remember everything I say?”
“Not everything.” He lifts a finger from his tumbler and points to his head. “It’s not the size of your storage locker, but your recall.” He takes a sip and doesn’t grimace.
I take a sip and do. “Like Arnold Schwarzenegger?” Lida and I used to argue over which Total Recall was better. She liked the remake, but the original was my favorite.
“No. Not like that.” Oliver shakes his head, and glowing blue light filters through his hair.
I lean on the bar and try another sip. Ick. “You were sayin’ something about ‘stupid shit’ that made me mad when I was thirteen. What’s next?”
“I really didn’t pay much attention to you until the summer you turned eighteen.” He swirls whiskey in his glass and watches it wash over the ice balls. “I’d just finished my junior year at Yale and was home on summer break, working behind the bar at the yacht club three nights a week.” He pauses to take a drink; then he’s back to swirling. “Margaret Rose was serving drinks that summer, and she looked especially fine in her little shorts. We’d dated off and on for about three years. When either of us was away, it was off. When we were both home, it was definitely on. She was smart and pretty and our families thought we’d get married after we graduated.”
He takes a drink and I ask him, “Did you love her?”
“Yes.” He nods. “I never had to guess with her. I knew she loved me, and it wasn’t complicated.” He lifts his gaze from his glass. “That summer, you and Margaret Rose got very close. I tried to warn her that you didn’t always play well with others, but she said you were like a little sister. I admit, you even had me fooled.”
At UMC El Paso, Edie fooled me for a minute, too. I take a sip and control my grimace.
“At the end of July, I was closing the bar by myself and you slipped into the empty clubhouse. You were barely eighteen but walked in like you owned the place. You had on a little white dress and shoes that made your legs look amazingly long. You’d grown when I wasn’t paying attention and you’d filled out…. You’ve always been beautiful, Edie.
“I knew I should kick you out, but you smiled and laughed like you used to before the Neptune’s Revenge Regatta, so I let you keep me company while I sat at the bar adding receipts.” He drains what’s left in the glass and says, “Then one thing led to another.”
He sets his glass on the bar like he’s done talking, but he’s left out the whole middle of the story. I feel like I’ve read the first and last page of a book. “Well? Did we kiss?”
“Yes.”
He has my attention now more than ever. “How long?”
“Long enough.”
“Five minutes? Ten minutes? Did we have sex?”