want you to know more about me. Will you listen?" I nodded, somehow scared by his serious tone
of voice.
"Winter nights for me are too long. Giving time
for too many dreams to be born. I try and hold back
sleep until just before dawn, sometimes I succeed. If I
don't, I grow so restless I have to get up and dress.
Then I walk outside and let the fresh cold air wash my
dreary thoughts away. I walk the trails between the
pines, and when my brain is cleared, only then do I
come back here. And in work I can forget the coming
night and the nightmares that haunt me."
I could only stare at him. "No wonder you kept
shadows beneath your eyes last winter," I said, distressed that he could now be so melancholy. He had
me now. "I used to think you were a workaholic." Troy rolled on his side, facing the fire, reaching
a long arm for a bottle of champagne he'd put in a
silver bucket to chill. He poured the bubbling vintage
into two crystal goblets. "The last bottle of the best of
the wine," he said, turning again toward me, and
lifting his glass so it brushed lightly against mine. I had grown used to champagne during the past
winter, since it appeared so often on Jillian's party
tables, but I was still child enough to feel giddy after
one glass. Uneasily I sipped my champagne, wondering why his eyes kept avoiding mine, "What do you
mean, the last of the wine? You've got a wine cellar
beneath this house with enough champagne for the
next half-century."
"So literal," he said. "I spoke poetically. Trying
to tell you that winter and cold bring out the morbid
side I try to hide most of the time. I care too much
about you to let you become too entangled in our
relationship, without understanding just who and what