“Darling, how are you, I haven’t seen you in weeks,” she says to Delilah, somehow enveloping her in a hug even though Delilah’s several inches taller.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy,” Delilah.
“I can tell, and I want to hear all about it,” Vera says, glancing at me and then giving Delilah a huge wink. “Seth, welcome back! My goodness, that’s a beautiful pie.”
She takes it and also gives me a hug, and already I feel bad for making jokes about butlers and gold leaf. For all their faults and their enormous flower budget, the Radcliffes are warm, loving people.
“Can we help with anything?” I offer, once she’s relinquished me, and Vera’s eyebrows fly up.
“No, no, it’s completely under control,” she says, putting one hand on my arm. “But aren’t you the sweetest thing for asking?”
“Huh, a 2015,” Harold is saying, mostly to himself, as he examines the wine bottle that Delilah brought. “That was supposed to be an unusual year for Californians. Guess we’ll find out tonight, won’t we?”
“Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes,” Vera says tells him. “Why don’t you go select some wine for tonight so we can open it and let it breathe before we eat?”
“Sure thing,” he says, setting the bottle down on the table. “Seth, mind giving me a hand?”
“Of course,” I say, the only possible answer to that question.
Delilah stands up straighter, looks slightly alarmed.
“Do you need any —"
“Bree was just looking for you,” Vera cuts in smoothly, somehow making an interruption sound like the height of etiquette. “I do believe she’s tired of playing pterodactyls by herself.”
Delilah and I share a so this is happening look, and I give her a smile.
“We won’t be a minute,” Harold calls, and we leave the kitchen, wind back through the house until he opens a door under the main staircase, revealing the basement stairs.
“Seems as if the brewery’s doing well,” he says, flipping a switch and descending. “What’s the market for small-batch beers like these days?”
“Booming,” I say. “There’s been a huge uptick in craft beer sales across the board the past fifteen years or so. People are more and more interested in drinking well-made and local, and once you’ve had a really great beer it can be hard to go back to Bud Light.”
“Never could drink the stuff myself,” he admits as he flips on another light, leads me through the basement. “Tell me, if I were to become interested in becoming a beer connoisseur, where would I start?”
The questions keep up as we walk through the basement, which has been finished into a lounge of sorts: a large television, leather furniture, wood-paneled walls. At the far end is another door that leads into the temperature-controlled room that stores several hundred bottles of wine.
It’s strange, walking through here again: the room is the same, though the furniture is slightly different. The television is different, too, the pool table the same, the wood paneling the same.
We had sex on the pool table. We also had sex in the wine cellar, on the couch that used to be down here, and on an armchair.
And her bedroom, the library, the study, the upstairs bathroom that she shared with her sisters, the downstairs bathroom, the pool house, the tack room in the stable, and I’m certain there are several places I’m forgetting. We were reckless, stupid, and nearly got caught a dozen times because we were horny teenagers and had more hormones than common sense.
As Harold opens the door asks me another job-interview-type question, I glance over at the new couch. It looks comfortable.
I’d fuck Delilah on it, given half the chance, though this time I’d make sure the doors were locked first.
“I had no idea beers were collectible like that,” Harold is saying, leading me into the cellar. “Perhaps I ought to dedicate a corner down here. Now, what did Vera say was for dinner? Pork?”
The door swings shut behind us. The wine cellar is almost exactly as I remember: four walls lined with bottles in specialized shelving, corks out, bottles backlit. A barrel in the center that’s great for bending your girlfriend over.
“We’ll probably need a few,” Harold is saying to himself. “There’s what, eight of us? No, ten, though obviously Olivia won’t be drinking.”
I wander to the wall, hands in my pockets, and start scanning the labels, pretending as if I might possibly have an opinion.
Harold pulls a bottle out, reads the label carefully, blowing dust from it.
“Son,” he suddenly says without looking up. “I don’t need to tell you to treat her right, do I? You seem as if you’ve become an adult.”
There it is, the reason he wanted my help.
“Of course, sir,” I say.
“Harold,” he corrects me, finally looking up from the bottle for a moment. “That’ll work just fine on my wife, but not on me.”