James had promised he’d tell Taylor more about Stella's situation in person, but Taylor had had a surprise gig pop up last week and hadn’t been able to get back to the city. In just a few days, she was headed out on another tour, which meant they had a brief window of time. James’s heart already felt bruised. He was going to miss her.
“Tell me about you first,” James ordered as he popped the cork from the bottle of wine. “How were the gigs?”
Taylor waved her hand. “Who cares? They’re all the same. I want to talk about Stella.”
James rolled his eyes and poured them two glasses. He wanted to teach Taylor about good wine, which was information he’d acquired long after his twenties, long after he’d beenJ.
Taylor sipped her wine and watched James chop garlic and onions. He’d said he’d cook, and he was grateful she didn’t ask to help. She often got distracted; once, she’d sliced the tip of her finger off.
“Okay. I’m going to start talking aboutThe Athens Affair.You can join in when you feel like it,” Taylor said, whipping her hair behind her shoulders.
“Fine.” James tried to laugh.
“I thought it was a gorgeous portrayal of impossible love,” Taylor began. “Although I thought your character came off like a real a-hole. If you don’t mind me saying.”
James chuckled, even as his heart sank.Does the entire world think I’m an a-hole?
“I guess I know what you mean,” James said after a pause.
“But, like, you were obviously going through so much at the time. You couldn’t let Stella in,” Taylor went on. “Stella knew that, too. Maybe you were doomed from the start.”
James slid onions into a skillet with oil and stirred them with a spatula. He remembered cooking over a stove in the sailboat with Stella a million years ago. He remembered they’d eaten everything that wasn’t nailed down.
“What was it like to see her again?” Taylor asked.
James shifted his weight.
“Was it like no time had passed?” Taylor demanded.
“Not exactly,” James said. “We’ve both gotten a whole lot older. But it made me really nostalgic to think about that time of my life. I could feel myself performing happily wherever we went. In every taverna. On every street. Busking to make enough money for the night.” James pressed his lips together. “It was all really romantic. But you’re right. I think I was usually too heartbroken to understand how magical it all was.”
Taylor took a sip of wine. “She’s still so beautiful. Stella, I mean.”
“She really is,” James agreed. “That won’t ever fade. If I saw her in another twenty years, I’d say the same.”
Taylor scrunched up her face. She was dying from the romance of it.
“Tell me,” Taylor begged. “Was that sailboat the same one you still have? The one I sailed in the Keys?”
James laughed. “Some of it. I’ve fixed it up a lot over the years. But it’s still got the bare bones of the original.”
“Wow,” Taylor said. “It has so much history.”
“I had to sail it across the Atlantic,” James said, “which was a terrifying feat. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it.”
“When was that?”
“You must have been eight or nine,” James said. “Your mother sent you to a music camp of some kind, and I took a month off work to go get the boat from a warehouse in London, fix it up again, and bring it over here.” He paused as memories returned. “Your mother was really angry with me that year.”
“It wasn’t that long after the divorce,” Taylor reminded him.
James thought back to a phone call he’d had with Nancy. He’d been in London, getting the boat, and she’d been in New York, hating him. “You were never in love with me,” she said. “I never should have married you. I was a fool.” The words had cut James open.
He wouldn’t tell Taylor about that.
“But she’s crazy happy now,” Taylor went on of her mother. “She always wanted the life she has now. She doesn’t get Bad Habit at all, and sometimes I think she looks at Aiden with hatred in her eyes.”
“She likes Aiden.”