Page 6 of Rhett & Moses
I took a small sip, letting the spirit roll across my tongue. “Like your first love,” I mused. “The one all others are compared to, for better or worse.”
Moses paused, bottle suspended mid-pour, before recovering. “Exactly. The benchmark.”
He continued through the tasting, each gin more complex than the last, a Japanese gin with yuzu and cherry blossom, a Scottish one with heather and thistles, an American craft gin with lavender and rosemary. With each pour, the tension between us eased slightly, replaced by a familiar rhythm of conversation that felt both nostalgic and dangerously current.
By the fifth gin, a limited edition aged in whiskey barrels, we’d fallen into an easy banter that belied the two decades of silence between us.
“This one has attitude,” I commented, savoring the amber liquid. “Complex, challenging, maybe a little stubborn.”
“Reminds me of someone I know,” Moses replied with a pointed look.
I laughed, the sound echoing in the empty bar. “If this gin is supposed to be me, I’m flattered. Expensive, refined, and gets you drunk quickly?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of intense, occasionally overwhelming, and leaves a burning sensation in your chest,” he retorted, but his smile softened the words.
“Ouch.” I pressed a hand to my heart in mock offense. “And here I thought we were having a moment.”
Something flickered in his eyes, vulnerability, perhaps, or regret, before he masked it with a chuckle. “We’re having a tasting, Rhett. Don’t confuse the two.”
The warning was clear, but it came too late. The beginning of what I’d thought would be forever, before it all came crashing down.
“You never answered my question yesterday,” I said, swirling the remaining gin in my glass. “Why come back now, after all this time?”
Moses sighed, running a hand through his curls, a gesture so familiar it made my heart ache. “I told you, business obligations. The reunion. Bronwyn needed me here.”
“Bullshit,” I said mildly. “You’ve been co-owner for what, ten years? I heard that you’d been debating missing the first reunion of Gomillion High?”
“Maybe I’ve been busy,” he countered, eyes narrowing slightly. “I’ve had a lot…”
“Maybe you’ve been avoiding me,” I suggested. “Or perhaps something else in this town you’d rather not face.”
His hand stilled on the bottle he’d been reaching for. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything,” I said, holding his gaze. “I’m saying it outright. You never explained why you destroyed the statue, why you suddenly turned on everything and everyone—" I swallowed hard. “—including me.”
The air between us grew charged, heavy with unspoken words and buried emotions. Moses stared at me for a long moment, his expression a complex tangle of emotions I couldn’t begin to unravel.
“It wasn’t what you think,” he finally said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Then what was it?” I pressed. “Because from where I was standing, it looked a lot like you chose public disgrace and exile over... over whatever was happening between us.”
Moses broke eye contact, his gaze drifting to a shelf behind the bar. I followed his line of sight and noticed an odd collectionof items displayed there, a rusted zippo lighter, a cracked snow globe, an antique key in a lock, and a school pin with the familiar Gomillion's logo and milliped mascot.
“Is that...?" I started, recognition sparking.
“It’s nothing,” Moses interrupted quickly. “Just some old junk Bronwyn thought looked rustic.”
But I was already off my stool, circling the bar to get a closer look despite Moses’s protest. The silver pin gleamed under the bar lights, the Blue Mountains in the background a stark contrast to the milliped emblem. I reached out, stopping just short of touching it.
“This is Soren Hayes’s pin,” I said slowly, memories clicking into place. “The prototype they made before deciding pins weren’t the direction they wanted to go for the school branding. He got the only one.”
I turned to find Moses watching me, his face carefully blank. “Why do you have this? It was missing after the statue incident; everyone assumed it had been lost in the chaos.”
“Like I said, Bronwyn collects oddities,” he replied, but there was a strain in his voice that told me there was more to the story.
“Moses..—"
“I should get ready for the bar opening,” he interrupted, checking his watch. “People will start arriving soon.”
