Chapter 2

I didn’t like Miller the way he liked me. I thought him handsome, intelligent, and talkative, but not alluring. When he asked me out on dates, I always told him no. When he professed his undying love for me, I laughed his comments off. Although he joked about being my boyfriend and loving me until the end of time, his romantic idealism would never happen. I would never fall in love with him and get hitched to the man. We wouldn’t honeymoon together on a private island in Mexico. Our lives in Pittsburgh would forever be separated, whether he wanted them to be or not.

Gloria and Miller knew what I did for a living: high-end realtor in downtown Pittsburgh for an elite company called Breeze Realty. I steered wealthy women and men to high-priced properties, mostly residences.

“My boss personally emailed me and asked if I had made a very bad decision in recommending one of my clients to purchase Chantilly.”

Gloria waved a hand at me over her drink, huffed, and rolled her green eyes. “Emails don’t count when it comes to bitching someone out. Have some balls, pick up the phone, and tell your boss Chantilly is a lovely house next a sleepy lake. Hell, if I divorce Leonard, which I inevitably will, maybe I’ll buy and move into the place. Chantilly and I can have a grand love affair. Shame on your boss for thinking the place a hole.”

Miller laughed, filling our waters. Then he scuttled away.

Gloria and I ate lunch at The Rudder almost every day. Gloria bitched about her twenty-year-old marriage and a cheating husband who had recently become obsessed with two of his female students, both of which had blonde hair, plump lips, and curves in places Gloria didn’t anymore.

I usually bitched about my job, how I hated selling high-end property for Breeze Realty. I needed a new career and maybe a new life. It exhausted me to read articles about beautiful houses like Chantilly.

Gloria got to the point of my life in four short words, “Find a new job. Start selling skyscrapers. Work for a different company. You’re bitchy, angry, and not yourself these days. Breeze Realty isn’t for you anymore. Plus, you need to get laid. You haven’t had a man in how long?”

“Eight months.”

“That was Regan, wasn’t it?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, happily drunk.

“The wide receiver for Pittsburgh Iron.”

“A certain wide receiver who decided to fuck the Cleveland Claws’ quarterback, right?”

Both of us knew the hardcore and bitter facts of my past relationship with Regan Field. The tall, dark, and handsome stud was the cheating cliché I thought he would be when first going on a date with him. I should have known not to socialize with the jock, particularly without my clothes on in his condominium overlooking Pittsburgh’s skyline. The guy turned out to be a total jerk and left me single, brokenhearted, and an emotional wreck because I had fallen in love with him.

Gloria leaned over the table and semi-whispered in a slurred tone, “We both know you’re down on your luck regarding men and you need some dick.”

“Down on my luck,” I repeated, nodded. How right she was.

Lunching patrons heard her comment. Miller did, too. He chuckled as he filled more water glasses, shuffling from one table to the next.

“Gloria, please keep this conversation G-rated,” I begged her, blushing.

Miller stepped up to my side and whispered in my ear, “We’re all adults here. Plus, she’s being honest. We all need some dick sometime.” He winked at me and ruffled my hair.

I laughed, shooed him away, and told Gloria, “Eat your salad. We’re done making a spectacle here.”

* * * *

Before leaving The Rudder without Gloria at my side—she wanted to stay behind and have a few more drinks by herself, contemplating hiring a divorce lawyer and suing the balls off Leonard—Miller moved up to me, shook my hand, thanked me for coming to his uncle’s luncheonette again.

“May I be blunt, Victor?”

When wasn’t Miller blunt? I wanted to roll my eyes but didn’t, keeping my composure. Instead, I checked the thirty-eight-year-old from toes to eyes: not bad to look at because of his coconut-colored hair and matching eyes, thin eyebrows, five-elven frame, and muscular chest. I knew he worked out at least four times a week at my gym, Dude Pushes, and he didn’t put any junk food inside his body, minus alcoholic sweet cocktails. I also knew, throughout our waiter/patron relationship for the last decade, that he enjoyed running, rowing on the Monongahela River, and biked some.

Then he checked me out, knowing my stats as if I were a wide receiver on the Pittsburgh Iron: two hundred pounds, six-one, blond crewcut, baby blue eyes, thin stomach, and sort of on the lanky side with no extra hair in weird places. He studied my forty-four-year-old frame, maybe concentrating on my khakis and Kenneth Cole shirt, the stainless-steel belt buckle at my center, and my narrow chin.