Page 43 of On the Rocks

“Sure you don’t.” I focused on the road again. Probably best I didn’t start thinking about what she used to say about my physique anyway. “You know who would like your subpar snacks? Dominic. When we used to go drinking in college, he’d fill his pockets with pretzels. And licorice sticks.”

“I see nothing wrong with this,” Cora said.

“Of course you don’t.”

“So, you met Dominic in college, and now you two work together?”

“We’ve been working togethersincecollege. There was a whole group of us that started a cosmetics company together as a class project.”

“Wait, you started a whole company? As college students?” Her eyebrows climbed up her forehead.

“Yeah, I was partnered up with Dominic and our other buddies Vincent and Trent with the assignment to come up with a concept for a new brand. We developed this multifunction cosmetics tool.” I saw her confused expression. “Think a Swiss army knife but for make-up.”

“Wait!” she said, her eyebrows lifting. “You invented the BeautiTool?”

“Invented, patented, trademarked.”

“Wow.” She sneakily plucked a donut from the container between us and started nibbling, humming to herself. I could tell she was taken aback by the information. I supposed the jump from make-up to liquor wasn’t exactly an expected career move. “I can’t believe that was your company.”

“Anyway,” I said, grinning, “after the class was over—which we aced, by the way—me, Dominic, and Trent sort of ran with the idea, figuring out how to grow it into a working business. By the time we graduated, it was a full-time job for the three of us. Vincent was already committed to his family’s business, but he came on as an investor.”

“Okay, that’s ridiculously impressive,” she admitted. “Most college students can barely figure out how to do their own laundry. Meanwhile, you and your friends are taking over the make-up industry.”

Warmth surged through me at her words. I didn’t know why one little compliment had me feeling like that. It’s not as ifIdidn’t already know how amazing it was. Maybe I’d just forgotten what it was like to talk to her. Toreallyshare things with her. She’d always been super supportive—even of my dumb high school dreams of wanting to win the state championship my senior year. And maybe a small part of me sort of wanted her to be impressed. I wanted to be deserving of her praise. She’d always encouraged me to chase my dreams. And she was so damn beautiful—even when she was getting powdered sugar from the donut all over her nose and shirt.

“So what happened to the cosmetics company?” Cora wondered.

“We sold it when I was about twenty-three.” The group of us had split the one hundred-million-dollar profit. “I took my share of the proceeds and used it as seed money for Elixir. Ten years later, here we are.”

“It’s nice that you and Dominic stayed close.”

“Oh, the whole group is still close. I was actually just at Trent’s birthday the other weekend. And Vincent and his fiancée just had a baby, so we were all at the hospital for that. I’ve been really lucky to have the guys in my life. And Trent’s grandmother. She kinda adopted the group of us in college. Calls us her Lost Boys.”

“She sounds sweet,” Cora said.

I laughed. “She can be sassy as anything. And she likes to meddle in our love lives. But she opened her home to me while my parents were going through their divorce, and I’ll always be grateful to her for that.”

“Sounds like she’s really important to you,” Cora said softly.

“She is,” I said, my voice tight, almost harsh. Cora looked startled and leaned back, as if she was worried she’d offended me. “Sorry, I just…I’m kind of worried about her right now. She’s been having some dizzy spells.”

“What have the doctors said?” Cora asked gently.

“That’s the problem—she’s been fighting against going to get checked out.” I shrugged helplessly. “All of us have been trying to talk her around, but it’s a work in progress.” I cleared my throat, struggling to force down my anxiety. “So, how’d you get into the Masked Mixer thing anyway?”

Cora took a beat before answering my question.

“I guess I stumbled into bartending sort of by accident,” she said. “Or maybe that’s not the right word. More like out of necessity. You heard about what happened to my dad, yeah?”

Yeah, I’d heard. I’d been a sophomore at Cornell, so I hadn’t been around, but in a small town, everyone knows everyone’s business. I’d gotten the story from a couple of high school friends I still kept in touch with back then. Mr. Newport’s car wreck had been a mess, but what had made it worse was that it hadn’t been immediately fatal. He had a couple of surgeries right afterward to try to save him…but all they really did was load Cora and her mom with a mountain of medical debt on top of the funeral costs.

My hands tightened around the wheel. It was all so unfair. I hadn’t known Mr. Newport well—he’d tried so hard not to be some “overbearing dad intimidates his daughter’s boyfriend” cliché that he never knew what to say to me. I couldn’t remember much beyond a handful of awkward conversations between us in the stretch of time when Cora and I dated. But even just knowing him in passing, I could still tell that he loved his wife and his daughter deeply, and the last thing he would have wanted was to make life harder on them. But—through no fault of his own—that was exactly what he’d done, leaving them in a financial hole that couldn’t have been easy to climb out from.

“I’m sorry I didn’t reach out directly,” I said, feeling the need to apologize.

“It’s okay,” she said, trying to brush off the apology. “It was a long time ago, Aiden.”

“I just didn’t know the right thing to say.” Truthfully, I hadn’t felt comfortable calling after the way things had ended between us. I’d figured I was probably the last person she wanted to have todeal with when she had so much else on her plate. “I sent flowers though. I never did put my name on the card, so it’s not like you would have known they were from me anyway.”

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