Page 14 of Good as Gold
Matteo blinks. “Yeah, okay. I hear what you’re saying. That’s really good advice.”
Lyle laughs suddenly. “Hell, if only my own kids could say that. Even once.” He hands the proposal back to Matteo. “Save this and read it again after your first season of work. I bet you’ll spot ten things that weren’t quite right about this draft.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that.” He rises to leave, feeling much better about the rejection than he’d expected to.
“Oh, and Matteo?” Lyle says before he reaches the door.
“Yes?”
“Find a better business partner than that Werner kid. Don’t hitch your wagon to just anybody, yeah?”
“Uh, hmm,” he says awkwardly. “Thanks again for, uh, reading this.”
“My pleasure.”
Matteo heads outside to where his friends are waiting in the gravel parking lot.
“Well?” Rory demands. “Did you do us proud?”
“Sort of,” he says, collapsing onto the hood of Rory’s beater. “He says we need more experience first.”
“Fuckthat,” Rory sneers. “That’s just a brush-off.”
“Sorry,” Leila says quietly, concern in her eyes.
“No, it’s all good,” Matteo says, sending her a quick smile. “What he said made sense.”
Lots of sense, actually.
All the sense.
CHAPTER6
LEILA
It’s Friday night, and I’m lying on my couch reading a steamy book. That’s what passes for excitement in my life these days.
Suddenly my phone pings with a text, and I put down my paperback to grab it.
As soon as I see the name, my heart deflates.
Rory
What size lightbulb fits above the mirror in the bathroom?
I roll my eyes, not that there’s anyone here to see it. But I get these needy little queries from him all the time, and they make me feel surly.
On the one hand, it doesn’t take much time to answer.
Leila
40 watt, candelabra base.
But Rory’s inability to behave like an adult was the core problem in our marriage. And, apparently, it’s still my cross to bear.
I pick up my book again and try not to think about the other man who was supposed to call me this week. “I’d like to see you again before I go,” Matteo had said after the wedding.
That had been six days ago, though, and there’s been no word from him. As a matter of principle, I haven’t gone into the Gin Mill to check up on him. Okay—I didonce. Last night I ordered a pizza to go, and naturally looked around the place when I went in to pick it up. But Matteo wasn’t there. His brother Damien was behind the bar with another one of the regular bartenders.
