Tasting Notes (3 page)

“Did you have a good day?” Sebastian asked.

“I spent all day planting seedlings, and my back is sore as fuck. I think I’m getting old.” The last sentence was uttered with growly undertones. Rush didn’t like to think about how many years had passed since he left home or how long it was since he left the service. In the grand scheme of things, the two years he’d been out were nothing, but as the days stretched out it felt much longer. There were times when he was bored with his quiet life, moments when he missed the adrenaline and passion of battle. But then he remembered the blood and the loss, and he knew that quiet life was what he wanted.

“You’re not old,” Sebastian insisted.

“Older than you.”

“Yeah, but thirty-two isn’t exactly ancient.”

“Old enough to feel the burn after a few hours stooped over. And I’m not even halfway done. I got more to do tomorrow and probably the next day as well.”

“You should have called me. I could have come to help you. It would have been better than how I ended up spending my day.”

The weird tone was back in Sebastian’s voice. Rush didn’t like it.

“Everything okay with you? This new guy isn’t giving you shit, is he? Because if anyone is messing with you, I’ll bust them the fuck open.”

Sebastian gave him a weak smile and shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I have the next few days off, though. I’d be more than happy to help you.”

Rush seriously considered it for about half a second. Sebastian worked a lot. And he was undervalued and underpaid at the realty firm where he worked. He knew Roger, Sebastian’s boss, who had been a couple of years ahead of Rush in high school. The guy was a dick, even back then. Rush always thought he was greasy and underhanded. He didn’t much like that Sebastian was working for him, but he never said anything. Most days Sebastian seemed happy enough.

“Naw, I got it. Shouldn’t take me too long. I want to get all the planting done before the roots dry out. Besides, doing a little physical labor is probably just what I needed. I’m starting to go soft.” He patted his belly beneath his T-shirt. Sebastian smirked at him, a flash of something in his eyes Rush couldn’t identify, but before he could wonder about it too long, it was gone again.

Cherie appeared a moment later with their meals, and the two men tucked into their food, Rush shoveling stew into his mouth like a man who had spent a year on the grapefruit diet. He was not a small guy, and being perpetually hungry came with the territory. When he missed a meal, he got grouchy and surly, but missing two? Cherie was lucky he didn’t rampage his way through the kitchen, devouring everything in his path like a ravenous Tasmanian devil. He was in a constant state of cantankerousness while deployed, and meals made for guys his size were harder to come by.

He moaned around a mouthful of beef dip, the au jus perfectly salty and rich. He could feel the emptiness in his gut filling as he ate, and he was suddenly more grateful than ever for Sebastian inviting him out for dinner. They’d been getting together a lot more in the last few months than in the past. Sure, they were sleeping together when Rush first met Sebastian, but it wasn’t until after they stopped fucking that they really became good friends.

Rush didn’t have a lot of friends and even fewer he’d had sex with. Maintaining a platonic relationship after you’d been inside another person was not always the easiest thing for Rush to manage. Hell, friendships at all were difficult for Rush to manage. But Sebastian was persistent, and Rush was happy he was. He was one of the few people Rush could stand spending more than an hour at a time with.

They finished their meals, keeping the conversation light. Rush was tired but reluctant to leave. It was nice being out in the world, spending time with someone other than his dog and his trees. He ordered another beer and sat back, listening to Sebastian tell him a story about him and his brother when they were kids.

WEST’S GPS
thought he was nuts. And the woman with the fake-sounding British accent wasn’t the only one either. He had called Scarlet from the car, her voice sounding hollow over his Bluetooth, to confirm she had booked him off work.

She answered the phone in the same courteous manner she always did, and her voice warmed when she realized it was him calling. They were always completely professional with each other—she still called him Mr. Weston despite years of protest on his part—but she was the first person he hired when he started the company. She held a special place in his heart, and he was reasonably certain she knew it.

“I figured out where I’m going, if you could please book me a hotel,” West said, steering his car onto the open freeway. It only took a few minutes, toying around with Google Maps, before he decided on a location.

“Of course.”

“Eureka, California. The nav system says it’s going to take about forty hours give or take to drive there, so if you could, I’ll need a couple of rooms along the way as well.”

“Eureka? Forty hours?” Scarlet repeated.

“Yes.” West knew she thought he’d gone off the rails. Getting to the ocean would be a lot simpler if he went to the east coast, but he was tired of the cold that settled into his bones. He couldn’t seem to get warm, the shadow of his shirked duty to his grandfather keeping him in perpetual darkness. California was warm, it was far from home, and Eureka sounded like the type of place his grandfather would have liked to visit. It sounded quirky and happy, like he had been. When West’s gaze fell on that tiny dot on the map, he knew it was the perfect place to lay his grandfather to rest.

“Of course. I’ll text you with the details as soon as I’ve made the arrangements.”

“Thanks, Scarlet.”

“Of course, Mr. Weston.” Silence fell then, and just as West was about to say good-bye, she spoke up once more. “Is everything okay?”

Her concern for him was sweet. “Yes, everything is fine. I just need to take care of a few things, so I need a few days off to get to California and back.”

“Okay. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

“Anything, Mr. Weston,” she said with extra emphasis. West smiled. He knew she cared about him. She was probably fifteen years older than his thirty-five, and she always had a maternal quality about her that West found endearing. It was one of the reasons he hired her in the first place. Her motherly nature, paired with her quick wit and sass, made her an enjoyable person to have around the office, and her qualifications made her perfect for the position. West didn’t know if he could do his job without her.

He said good-bye and hung up, then fiddled with the dial until he found the station he was looking for on his satellite radio. There were hundreds of stations, but West usually switched between two—the financial news and national news. Today he skipped through until he found a station that played music he liked. A road trip needed music.

He didn’t make it much farther than the outskirts of the city when his phone beeped, alerting him to the text Scarlet sent. She made reservations at four different hotels along his route, the first one in Des Moines, Iowa. He’d be there around supper time. He was grateful for her foresight. He’d gotten a late start, and driving all night wasn’t something he wanted to do. He’d get a good night’s sleep and hit the road early the next morning.

He punched the waypoint into his navigation, and he was on his way. His fingers tingled around the soft leather of the steering wheel. He felt like he was a little kid again, when he and his grandfather used to play knights and dragons in the backyard. His grandfather always let him be the knight, going on a quest to slay the dragon. The same excitement lit his soul now, the exhilaration of the unknown—the great adventure.

HE DROVE
almost two thousand miles over three days, and the exhilaration of the unknown wore off somewhere around Omaha. He was tired, sore, and if he had to take a piss in one more gas station bathroom, he was going to lose his ever-loving mind. One state morphed into another, until if it weren’t for his navigation system, he’d have no idea where he was. He couldn’t tell the difference between Illinois and Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming, or Utah and Nevada, but as he neared California, he began to feel that spark of excitement again. He was almost there.

He crossed the state line and drove through the mountains, in awe of how beautiful the landscape became. The lion’s share of his drive had consisted of open road along flat, barren land. The only change of scenery was the cities dotted along the way. There were some low hills in the distance as he drove through Nevada, but nothing like this. His mood rose steadily with the elevation of the highway as he wound his way back and forth along the mountain road.

He reached what appeared to be the summit, the sides of the highway decorated with thick forests of evergreens, some draped in snow. It was beautiful, and as much as West wanted to go to California to escape the cold, here it seemed less icy and more ethereal. Unlike the city, where minutes after snow fell it became a dull shade of brownish gray, here the snow was pure white. He wanted to get out of the car to take a picture, but he still had a few hours’ drive ahead of him, and stopping now would only delay him further. His eyes were beginning to scratch with each blink, and he knew the longer he dawdled, the longer it would take until he could collapse into his pillow-top mattress at the hotel Scarlet booked for him.

He kept going, enjoying the drive as much as he could as the road wound down the mountain toward the sea. He still had a little over three hours to go before he reached his destination, and the sun was already beginning to dip behind the trees. Although twilight cast a warm glow over everything, it made his already tired eyes more fatigued as he concentrated on the winding of the lines down the road.

West reached the bottom of the mountain and drove through the little valley. His back ached from cramming all six feet two inches of himself into a small sports car for nearly forty hours in four days. Ferraris were beautiful machines, but they weren’t necessarily meant for large men to be driving on long trips.

He checked his fuel levels, noting he had a little less than half a tank left. He’d need to find somewhere to refuel before continuing to Eureka. As he drove, he kept an eye out for signs, and sure enough, a few miles down the road he found one. The next town was only six miles ahead. West rubbed his gritty eyes. He’d need to get something to eat too. He hadn’t eaten since he left the hotel that morning, and his stomach was rumbling. For a moment he contemplated grabbing something at the next gas station, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat a reheated hot dog or a soggy sandwich.

Canyon Creek came into sight as he made up his mind about stopping for dinner. It was a small town, nestled at the base of the Trinity Alps. As he drove through, looking for food and gas, he felt like he’d been transported back to the time of the gold rush. The buildings were historic looking, made primarily of brick, ornamented with crisp white details. The houses looked to be from the same era as well, and many had patriotic red, white, and blue swags hung from the railings of their neatly kept porches.

It didn’t take him long to locate a gas station, but this wasn’t his typical Chevron or Shell. There was a quaint corner store attached to the awnings that covered the shiny red pumps. West was waiting for the Apple Dumpling Gang to come sauntering out of the store. He parked and went inside to pay—no pay at the pump here.

Sitting at the counter was a young woman, her hair in a high blond ponytail, popping bubbles in her gum. Her name tag read Beth and she smiled at him when he walked in the door.

“Could I get fifty bucks on that pump there?” he asked, pointing through the window toward his little black car.

“Sure thing,” she said.

“Hey, what would you recommend around here for dinner?” His body was screaming at him, fatigue and hunger battling for dominance, but the starvation won, his stomach grumbling unhappily at not having been filled in so long.

“We don’t have a lot of restaurants, but the few we have are pretty good. The Golden Dragon, Miller’s Drive-In, and La Casa are all on Main Street at this end of town, and farther up the road is the Pour House and Johnny’s.”

“Which is the best one?”

“They’re all good. Depends on what you’re in the mood for.”

“What’s Johnny’s?”

“They do pizza. Honestly the best pizza you’ve ever had.”

West deliberated. It sounded good, but he didn’t know if he was in the mood for pizza. “What about the Pour House?”

“It’s a bar and grill type place that does mostly home-style cooked meals.”

“Thank you.” He took Beth’s suggestions into consideration. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a home-cooked meal. Even if it wasn’t really home cooked and was only home style, it sounded perfect. “Is the Pour House on this road?” he asked.

“Yep. If you’re heading west, it’ll be on your left side as you’re nearing the end of downtown,” she said.

West thanked her once more and then headed out to his car, filled the tank and climbed in, then pulled back out onto the main road.

The downtown of Canyon Creek was as adorable as the east end of town was. A neat row of antique buildings lined each side of the road. West drove slowly, observing the drop in speed limit, and took in the sights. Quaint was the best word he could think of to describe it. He drove past the Golden Dragon, La Casa, and Miller’s Drive-In. He saw the post office, the library, the hardware store, and the courthouse.

On his left there was a movie theater, the Cameo, which still boasted the old marquee-style façade. West felt a strange sort of pull toward the town, like he wanted to stop and settle in for a few days. The place seemed familiar somehow, even though he had never been there before.

THE POUR
House was easy to spot, the restaurant a warm and welcoming Irish pub. He pulled open the heavy wooden doors and entered, noticing right away how busy it was. A chalkboard propped up near the entrance instructed him to seat himself, so West ventured in, finding a small table off to the side near the window.