The Tasting Room Reunion

Bo saw her before she saw him, which was a small miracle, because Tegan had always been easy to spot in any room. Thirty-four years old now, same dark hair cut short at the jaw, same smirk she'd worn since he met her, when she was twenty-six. She stood at the far end of the tasting room with a glass in one hand, saying something that made two strangers laugh. Oak barrels lined the walls behind her. The mahogany bar ran the length of the room like it was built for exactly this kind of trouble.

His stomach did the old familiar drop.

"Well, hell," he muttered into his bourbon.

Two years. Two years since she'd sat him down in her kitchen, taken both his hands, and told him she wasn't ready for what he deserved. He'd agreed with her, mostly. Parted friends. Unresolved, though, was the word their friend Nan kept using, and Nan was the one getting married tomorrow, so here they both were at her rehearsal weekend, drinking whiskey at the same distillery event like it was an ordinary occurrence.

Tegan turned. Caught him looking. The smirk sharpened.

So much for a quiet weekend.

She crossed the room without hurrying. That was always her way. Never hurried, never seemed to need to. Bo set his glass down and made himself stand still.

"Bo Maddox," she said. "They still let you into nice buildings?"

"Occasionally. When somebody vouches." He gestured at the room. "Nan vouched."

"She did." Tegan looked him over, plain and unhurried, the way she used to look over a scene before starting it. "You look good. The garage agrees with you."

"Shop agrees with me. Garage just puts up with me." He was talking too fast. He made himself stop. "You look good too. Still traveling?"

"Every week. Polls don't run themselves." She took a sip of bourbon and studied him over the rim. "Thirty-six suits you, Bo."

"You keep track of my birthdays?"

"I keep track of everything. You know that."

And there it was. The old pull, low in his chest, the one that used to feel like a hand on the back of his neck. He hated that it still worked. He hated more that part of him didn't hate it at all.

A server came by with a tray of small pours. Tegan took two and handed him one, easy as breathing, and Bo almost laughed at how natural it looked.

"So," she said, leaning a hip against the barrel stave wall. "Nan tells me you co-own the shop now. Half owner."

"Quarter owner, actually. Ray and Luis each have more. I do the old engines. That's my whole job, finding cars everyone else gave up on and making them run."

"That sounds exactly like you." Her eyes glinted. "Still like fixing things other people quit on?"

"That was low."

"That was an observation." She swirled her glass. "You always did take things personally."

"You always did enjoy poking."

"Guilty." She smiled, and for a second it was just warm, no edge on it, and that was somehow worse. "I missed this. I missed talking to you. I want you to know that."

"Did you."

"Yes." She said it plainly, no game in her voice. "I know how I left things. I know it sat wrong with you for a while. It sat wrong with me too."

Bo took a drink and let that sit between them. Around them the tasting room hummed, wedding guests and distillery tourists, somebody's laugh too loud near the bar. He'd rehearsed a dozen versions of this conversation in the truck on the drive over. None of them had sounded like this.

"Well," he said finally. "You're here. I'm here. Nan's getting married."

"Nan's getting married," Tegan agreed. "And since we're both here, and since I refuse to spend the whole weekend doing awkward small talk with you, I have a proposal."

"There it is."

"There what is?"

"The proposal. You always have a proposal. You've had one since the day I met you." He lifted his glass toward her. "Go ahead."

"A tasting competition." She nodded at the bar, where a row of small-batch bourbons sat on display with numbered cards. "Six pours, blind, on the bar mats. We taste, we guess the age statements and the mash bills. Whoever gets more right buys the other's drinks the rest of the weekend."

Bo blinked. Then he laughed before he could stop himself. "You're serious."

"Deadly serious."

"You want to bet me on whiskey. Me. The man who lives forty minutes from four different distilleries."

"I want to beat you at something, and whiskey is the field we both know." Her smirk came back full strength. "Unless you're scared."

"I'm not scared."

"Then say yes."

He looked at her for a moment. He knew exactly what this was. She was trying to get the upper hand, trying to establish some kind of score, some kind of frame where she was still ahead of him. Two years ago he would have bristled at that. Tonight he just felt tired in a comfortable way, the way you feel looking at an engine you know you can rebuild.

"Fine," he said. "But if I win, you buy the drinks AND you admit the shop makes better coffee than any place in Lexington."

"The shop. Your greasy auto shop with the rusted 'sixty-seven Camaro in bay two?"

"That 'greasy auto shop' has a pour-over setup now. Luis is very serious about it."

"Deal." She stuck out her hand, and they shook, and her grip was exactly as firm as he remembered. "But first, one more thing. Sit with me a minute. Before the competition turns us back into rivals."

There were two stools at the end of the bar, away from the crowd. She took one. He took the other. Their shoulders didn't touch but it was close.

"You remember Moe's surgery?" she asked.

Bo went still. He remembered everything about it.

"March, three years ago," he said. "Waited eight hours in that room at UK hospital."

"Eight hours and eleven minutes. You counted. You made me count."

"Because you kept checking your phone like it would make news appear faster." He smiled despite himself. "Moe came through fine, by the way. He sends his regards, and his usual complaint that you never call him back."

"I'm terrible on the phone. Nan knows. Moe knows. Everyone knows." Tegan turned her glass slowly on the bar. "I've thought about that night a lot. That waiting room."

"So have I, honestly."

"It was the night I made you promise to use the safeword for real. You remember what you said?"

Bo remembered. He remembered the fluorescent lights and the bad coffee and the way she'd gone quiet and serious in the middle of all that fear, reminding him of a thing he'd need later, because she was practical like that even when her stomach was in knots over a friend on a table.

"I said it sounded silly," he said. "A word to say when things get to be too much. And you told me it wasn't silly at all. You told me it was the most important word I'd ever say, because it meant everything else I said was real."

"You quoted me back to me." Her voice had gone softer. "You just did it again, verbatim, three years later."

"Good memory. Comes with the job. Have to remember what a customer said about a carburetor in June."

"Sure. The carburetor excuse." She laughed, short and real. "Bo. I've been doing a lot of thinking on airplanes. Pollsters live on airplanes. And I keep coming back to the fact that I ended things for my reasons, which were real reasons, and I've never once checked whether those reasons still exist."

"That's a long way of saying something."

"It is. I'm working up to it." She finished her bourbon and set the glass down with a small click. "The competition first. Then, if you're willing, a conversation. A real one. About whether some things can be rebuilt on new terms."

Bo felt the old pull again, but different this time. Steadier. He was thirty-six years old, a quarter of a shop to his name, a man who'd spent two years learning exactly what he wanted and wasn't.

"I'll hear the conversation," he said. "After I beat you at bourbon."

Tegan grinned and stood up, straightening her jacket like she was stepping back into an old role and finding it still fit.

"Big talk from the quarter owner," she said, and walked toward the bar.

The tasting was close. Closer than Tegan expected.

She got four of six right. Bo got five. He nailed the four-year pour on the nose alone, guessed the high-rye mash bill on the eight, and only missed the barrel-finished twelve because the finish confused everyone.

"Unbelievable," she said. "Fine. You win. Drinks are on me the rest of the weekend, and the shop makes better coffee than any place in Lexington. There. I said it."

"Luis will want that in writing."

"Luis can frame it."

"That's settled, and it has nothing to do with anything after it," she said. "The bet was about bourbon. Whatever you answer next is its own answer."

They stayed at the bar another hour, on water and a plate of bread, because Tegan said neither of them should decide anything with six pours in them. Then she leaned in close, close enough that her shoulder touched his for the first time all night. "Come with me," she said. "The host offered me the private barrel room. For tasting. It's quiet in there."

He knew what she was asking. His stomach did the old thing, the drop-and-lift, like a clutch catching.

"Okay," he said.

The barrel room was small and warm. Oak casks stood in rows, head-high, and the air smelled like wood and char and old whiskey. One lamp. A wide table. Tegan closed the door behind them and didn't lock it, which he noticed and appreciated.

"So," she said. "The conversation."

She took off her jacket. Folded it. Set it on a barrel like she was buying time with every motion, and maybe she was. "Two years ago I walked out of your kitchen because I couldn't do the long version of us. Commitment, weekends, the whole shape of a life together. I told myself it was about the job. Some of it was the job."

"And the rest?"

"The rest was fear, and you deserve that said plainly." She turned to face