I paused. “You bought the vineyard?”
“We put in an offer at least, yeah. We went to look at it this morning and agreed that we were all in. I know it’ll take time for the wine business to take off, but we want to use the available space for events. You know, Hollin’s sister, Nora, interns with an event planner. She graduates this semester, and we were thinking of bringing her on full-time.”
“Wow! That’s amazing,” I gushed. “I’m excited for y’all.”
“Thanks,” he said as if he’d been expecting another response from me. “But as you can tell, I’m also busy.”
I watched the way the shadows played along his features and imagined us trying this out. The way we’d fall head over heels and, within months, completely disintegrate, hurting each other beyond repair and ruining this sort of truce we were living in where we could now occupy the same space. I didn’t want that.
“I’m leaving,” I blurted.
His eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m leaving. I’m getting out of Lubbock. I’ve been interviewing for residencies all over the country the last few months. I have one in Dallas in a few weeks and my last one in Seattle in February. Then I have to rank choice my top residency programs, and Texas Tech is at the bottom of my list.”
“Oh,” he said softly.
“Residency is three years,” I pushed on, showing him all the dire consequences of being interested in someone who wanted to become a doctor. If he was actually interested. “I want to live somewhere else. Experience somewhere else. Relationships don’t survive medical school. It would never survive a three-year residency out of state. And honestly, I just don’t know…”
He set his hand on my shoulder, and I trailed off.
“It’s fine, Annie. I’m not expecting anything from you.”
“Good,” I said quickly. “Because it’s not happening anyway.”
“Okay, but we can be friends.”
I eyed him skeptically. “Can we?”
“We were friends last night.”
I laughed derisively. “Friends who fuck?”
He paused before saying, “Friends…with benefits?”
My first thought was to disagree with him. There was no way we could be that. But…what was stopping that from happening? He understood that neither of us was in a position to date right now. Would it be the worst thing to have someone like Jordan Wright around when I needed some relief, too?
No, no, it would not. It would be fucking amazing. Because the sex was beyond amazing. And I wanted more sex with him…even when I couldn’t ask for more.
“Does that actually work?” I asked.
“We could make it work.”
I chewed on my lip and twirled the claddagh ring on my finger that my parents had given me for my high school graduation. I never took it off even though it was a beat-up, old thing, so worn through that the band was almost cracked. But I loved it, and it was a constant source of comfort.
“Well, do friends like to eat pizza?”
“Is that a euphemism?” he asked with that indelible smirk.
“Maybe it is.”
“Then I would love to eat pizza.” He stepped close enough that I could smell his aftershave and had to stop myself from breathing him in. “If you’d like me to go with you to eat pizza.”
We were actually doing this.
I nodded. “Yes,” I breathed, sealing our fate in the winter breeze.
Jordan Wright was my friend…with benefits.
11
Annie
Capital Pizza was The Tacos’ after-game celebration locale. Mostly because it was the only place still open this late at night. Consequently, the place was packed, and it took a solid thirty-minute wait to get a table big enough to seat nine.
I took a seat next to Jordan and Blaire and across from Julian, Hollin, and Ashleigh. Blaire’s roommate, Piper, sat on her other side with her twin brother, Peter, and Peter’s boyfriend, Jeremy, taking the end of the table. I’d never been as close to Piper as Blaire because of the soccer team, but I admired that she was a strong woman, running Sinclair Cellars. While it used to run in the Sinclair family, their grandfather had left it to the Medinas, but they’d kept the reputable name. And that was as much as I knew about the wine business in this town.
Once we were seated, we agreed to order a half-dozen pizzas to sate the giant dudes at our table. While everyone else was arguing over what toppings to put on, my gaze drifted to Jordan. He was dressed down in jeans and a button-up with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“What do you prefer?” I asked him.
“Honestly shouldn’t eat any,” he said with a shrug. “I have five miles to run in the morning.”
“Oh, come on. I feel like I just ran five miles, and I’m having some.”
“Pepperoni,” he said with a shrug. “Do you still run? Outside of soccer?”
I frowned. Maverick running next to me at our Fourth of July marathon. Him collapsing. The screams that had ripped out of my mouth when I realized he wasn’t moving. The fastest final three miles I’d run in my life as I rushed to get Sutton once the paramedics took him away.
I shivered.
“Sometimes,” I said softly. “It’s hard to find time.”
“I know. I’m usually up at five or six a.m., and if I have to be in the office early, then I’m running in the middle of the night.”
“I used to have a schedule like that,” I said. I missed it, if I was honest. But then the memory of Maverick falling down hit me hard again, and I remembered why I’d never taken it back up with such vigor.
“You’re opening a winery?” a voice asked at the other end of the table.
Both Jordan and I turned to see Piper’s look of disbelief and Hollin’s shit-eating grin.
“Yeah, baby, I’m opening a winery,” Hollin said.
Piper narrowed her dark eyes. “What do you know about running a winery?”
“Everything,” he spat back. “I worked at West Texas Winery for years.”
Piper snorted. “You managed a bar. That’s not the same thing.”
“If you’re so afraid of the competition, just say so, Pipes,” Hollin said, leaning forward.
“Don’t call me Pipes,” she growled.
Blaire sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. “I did ask you both to try to be nice to each other.”
This was normal behavior for Piper and Hollin. I had no idea what had transpired to make them hate each other so much, besides Hollin’s smug face, but it was constantly like a bomb had gone off in each other’s presence. Right this minute, they looked ready to reach across the table and rip out each other’s throats.
“You know my fondness for Sinclair Cellars,” Ashleigh said conversationally, her voice nasally and grating. “But Julian is going to be investing and working at Wright Vineyard, too.” She patted her boyfriend on the arm. “It’s going to be great.”
Piper looked over at Julian. “You let him con you into this?”
Julian laughed with that soft charism that he had to defuse a situation. “There was no conning. Wright Vineyard is going to be a new winery on the market.”