Love On Tap (Love By Design 8)

ld transport me far away from this place. Other times, I would think about the boy at the pub where grandpa and I went to drop off the crates of wine. The sweet boy with light brown hair and kind eyes that promised he wasn’t anything like my hulking dark-haired cousins or mean aunt and uncle. His face centered in my dreams and chased the bad ones far away. He didn’t know it, but thoughts of him saved me on the darkest of nights.

When the terrors came and stole my breath away, he gave me a purpose to keep going. Seeing him one more time, even fleeting from the backseat of a rusted pickup truck.

6

Andy

Sierra was like the greatest recorded music single. I could have listened to her over and over again never getting tired of her melody. The problem was that the rest of her album scared the shit out of me. One pop song followed by a rash of dark edgy slasher rock indie shit was not how I planned on spending the rest of my life. Since she had skipped town and left me high and dry at the altar, I busied the years in between trying to fill my life with the good stuff, upbeat, and yet I always seemed to come back to her in the dark. Her siren call kept me captive in a prison of my own making. A part of me would always love Sierra without a doubt, but it also meant I had to leave her wild and to keep my sanity walk away while I was still sane.

I was fucked up if I thought she was good for me. David would kick my ass and our parents… well I can’t imagine how they would feel after welcoming her into our house when she had nowhere to go. I was partly glad they were enjoying retirement at their bungalow in Florida. She had slapped us all in the face with her deception and lies, but the bigger question I had to answer was why I had already forgiven her? If I spoke the words, I knew my parents would trust my judgment. Oh, they would have their reservations, a decade full of them, but I also knew their love for me would temper their vocalization.

Part of me was devising ways to make this all right, but I wasn’t confident I could pull it off. Sierra would be the biggest coup this town had ever seen and maybe it was because I now had controlling interest in her grandparents’ vineyard and she had absolutely no idea. Buying it from them cemented my connection to her because I had the one thing she wanted. The one thing she thought she deserved to have and wouldn’t that be a shock to her system. I had ways I could bend Sierra to my will, but would she want to bend? The last time I tried something like this she ditched me, skipping town, and crushed my heart. What everyone didn’t know was that I knew where she had been the entire time after I confronted her grandparents, I had been foolishly holding on to hope that she would come back to me.

Nothing like unfiled annulment papers and a will to make the trip down memory lane one rocky road.

Vegas could be just as small town as New Paltz if you knew the right people. One of the reasons I kept my apartment above the bar was that it let me save enough money to hire a private investigator to find her and keep her on his radar. Seems weird given how mad I was with her, but I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t abandon her the way everyone else had. She expected that. I also expected my scared little wife to come home, but hey, here we are playing out the rest of this movie that was slated to end in a fiery crash and burn of disappointment.

Although I hadn’t seen Sierra in years, only keeping infrequent tabs on her from afar when the mood struck me and my skin itched with anxiety knowing she was out there all alone, the scars on her skin told a story I wanted desperately to know. To see her visceral pain up close washed away the hurt of being shut out from her choices for a decade. I wanted the free access I once had to caress her, kiss her, love her like a good book with the freedom to turn her pages. It seemed the folly of youth would forever haunt our decisions about things we could never take back. That saying about never being able to go home, well it made my chest ache thinking that this was how our story ended, right here, right now on a humid night in July so thick the glow bugs laid low and the sky rumbled threatening to say all the things our mouths wouldn’t. Truth be told, I was perfectly fine staying stuck here in this moment because it meant that nothing could hurt us if we just kept our damned secrets to ourselves.

Today was the day we’d meet with Francesca, my lawyer who was handling the all the legal documents. I already knew what they said because Francesca and I had read through them all at the reading of her grandparents’ will. A will, her grandmother petitioned to change once she realized nothing was going to bring Sierra home.

I could have given her the current address I had for her in Las Vegas but I doubted the woman who was so strict with her granddaughter wanted to be reminded of all the ways she had failed her. The ways I had failed her because I hadn’t known about her past until it had been too late.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do, Andy?” Francesca leaned against her desk. Her arms crossed over her chest, wearing a much more relaxed version of her power suit. She looked at me sympathetically. She had come to New Paltz by way of her fancy NYU law degree and a need to keep her hair highlighted by the best colorist our town had to offer. She and Tommy were a romance that transcended all the stereotypes I knew. I’d never call her a cougar, but she did have a solid number of years on her guy and salary that easily tripled his with her private law practice. I’d never known this but as a student, she’d clerked for a summer with my friend Chase’s mother who was a local judge. It was definitely a small world feeling with six degrees of separation.

“I feel good about doing this. She should have the cottage. The workers still live in the main house but the cottage and a stipend would give her some security while I figure out if I can keep the business going overall or hire someone to manage it.”

Francesca sighed and I knew she was firmly wearing her lawyer hat.

“And the other issue?”

I gulped back my unease.

“I don’t know if I want to file them, yet.”

“Andrew.” She chided.

“I know, but before her grandmother’s passing, I had annulment papers drawn up because it seemed easier, and then I couldn’t do it.” I’d sat on them for years because I had hoped she’d come back.

“It’s more complicated now because you waited. I’d recommend a simple divorce and since you’re giving her significant assets, I could argue in a way she won’t be able to say no.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m not ready.”

Francesca moved to her filing cabinet pulling out a drawer and dropping a folder on the table in front of me.

“Read it. Sign it when you’re ready and move on.”

I opened the file and found that Francesca had done all the hard work for me and all it required was my signature. Nope. My stomach churned and shut the file.

“I’ll review it later.”

“See that you do.”

The phone buzzed and she answered it.

“Ms. Occho is here.” The receptionist said.

“Thanks, send her in, Molly.” She looked at me and sighed. “Molly is single.”