“So,” he said, breaking the silence between them as he tore his gaze back to her eyes. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
He hated that they were talking like any other man and woman without a history, but he sensed she was something of a wary animal around him, who needed to be coaxed out of the corner.
She nodded. “Thank you. It’s been quite rewarding building the business.”
“It’s very impressive what you’ve done with your company.” He had half a mind to kick himself as soon as he said it. What he wouldn’t give to turn this conversation around to something that mattered. But he was going in cold, navigating without a road map and hoping he wouldn’t crash.
“Can I get you something?”
The waitress had materialized at their side, giving him some breathing room. “We have some fantastic cocktails,” she said, then waxed on about several concoctions. Shannon opted for the house martini and he ordered a whiskey. As the waitress walked away, Shannon folded her hands across her lap, shooting him another closed-mouth smile. “And you’re doing great, too. I’m so pleased that Edge is faring so well.”
Shit. This was not how he’d wanted to spend time with her. It was so fucking formal. So immensely fake. So not them.
“It is,” he said, but he didn’t know how to steer the conversation out of this pothole.
“How did you decide to switch to a whole new business?” she asked, and she sounded curious, so naturally interested that he was about to give her the full truth. The answer was he hadn’t wanted to wear out his welcome with comedy. He wanted to walk away when he was on top. So he had.
But he sensed that could be read wrong. Like, as a character assassination of how he’d left her since it might show he had a pattern of walking away. There was another reason too – it showed the work he gave her up for was no longer the center of his world.
“I was ready for a new challenge. I still moonlight, though. I do standup once or twice a month at some local clubs,” he said.
“How interesting,” she said, but she didn’t sound enthused. “And does that satisfy your comedic thirst?”
“Yes. That’s where I did the King Schmuck bit. I don’t know if you saw that one online,” he said, because it was better to get that out in the open.
“Hmm.” She looked up at the ceiling as if she were trying to recall, then shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. I must have missed it. But I’ve been pretty busy, too, and I don’t spend much time on the Internet.”
Soon, the waitress returned with their drinks, and Shannon raised her glass in a toast. “To business.”
“To reunions.”
He knocked back half his drink, letting the burn fuel him.
Screw this small talk. He didn’t want to be polite with her. He wanted to know her. To understand why she’d never picked up the phone when he called in those first few weeks, why she’d been so hard to find, and why she’d changed her name. He scooted closer. “Shan, what’s going on? How is your family? How is your grandmother? Your grandfather? Are you really okay?”
She closed her eyes briefly, her fingers clutching her martini glass. When she opened them that hard veneer was gone, and she was the girl he’d spent his nights with in college, the one who’d relied on him for everything. “They’re great. They’ve always been great,” she whispered. She waved a hand in front of her face, as if it were a magic wand, erasing all her woes. “Enough about me. Tell me something happy. Your family was always the happy one. Mom and dad together, they actually liked each other, and still do, I presume. How’s your brother?”
He caught her up to speed with Clay, who’d been married for a few years, and had a baby daughter now.
“I can’t believe you’re an uncle,” Shannon said, shaking her head in wonder. It was crazy how she’d softened as soon as he addressed the issue of her family, the one thing she didn’t like to discuss. Except, she always had talked about them with him. Maybe all this time she’d been looking for someone to talk to, and he’d filled that gap.
“My niece is adorable.” He took out his phone, clicked open his galleries, and showed Shannon a photo of Carly Nichols, Clay and Julia’s little girl.
Shannon moved even closer, and a wide smile spread across her face. “She’s so cute.”
“She really is. Here are the three of them.”
“She’s beautiful, your brother’s wife.”
“They’re kind of insanely perfect for each other. They even have the world’s coolest dog. Here’s Ace.” He flipped to another picture and pointed to the Border Collie mix they’d adopted a few years ago.
“My brother Ryan has a dog like that. Named him Johnny Cash. Because he’s mostly black. The Man in Black and all.”
“Great name.”
“Ryan treats him like a king. I think he even cooks him steak on Sundays.”
“Lucky dog,” Brent said with a smile.
“Have you been back in Vegas for long?” she asked, as she ran her fingertip absently along the rim of her martini glass.
“A little over a year. I moved here for stand-up after Late Night Antics, then back to L.A. again for a few years when I got my own show, then I returned again last year to start the clubs,” he said, tilting his head back and forth. His life post-college had swung like a pendulum between the two cities. “I live over near downtown. Want to see?” he asked, gesturing to the window.