I made my way to the bar. The bartender grinned at me and said, “Merry Christmas.” He added, “The usual?” Although it wasn’t a question. I grinned back. My heart had never been immune to Griffin Hardwick.

If Griffin and I were a married couple, we may have kissed each other when he handed me the cocktail. We weren’t married. We weren’t even a couple. Were we?

“I would’ve picked you up at the airport,” Griffin said.

“And deprive these patrons of ‘Atlanta’s most underrated … ’” I started quoting Atlanta’s magazine profile piece on Griffin and my brother, Henry.

“Bartender,” Griffin said humbly.

“Mixologist,” I corrected.

As I rolled my suitcase into the office, I took another look around. Nope. The green looked faded and washed out. The fixtures and hardware looked downright decrepit. I still disagreed with the vibe of VERT, the boys’ first restaurant. They had hired Julian Palmer to create the design. He was the best restaurant designer in the business. I should know. I worked for him in New York. He was a good boss. He believed in “brands” and did an extraordinary job of branding his restaurants. My brother, Henry, and Griffin may have come up with the name VERT, but the next restaurant Julian named BLANC. After that, he came up with their nickname, the Color-Wheel Boys, and it stuck. They were famous not only in Atlanta but around the country as well.

I closed the door to the office and relaxed on the sofa. I took a satisfying sip of my drink, a sidecar. Griffin had first made it for me when I was just eighteen, before anyone else, and it had become my signature cocktail. I fished around in my purse and fingered the piece of paper a little longer than I should have. I couldn’t get Griffin’s signature drink in New York, but I wanted to be the next Julian Palmer and I couldn’t do that in Atlanta, and I wanted it more.

But there was Griffin. My heart had a stubborn gravitational pull toward him. Not only had Griffin made my signature cocktail before anyone else, he was the epicenter of all my important “firsts.” My first driving lesson. My first crush. My first kiss. The first person to recognize that I had design talent. The first man I had ever been with—the same night he concocted the sidecar for me. I allowed the memory to keep me company. As it always had. Comfort food.

The boys were home from Cornell for the summer. It was the eve of my eighteenth birthday, and Griffin let me be his taster for a few of his concoctions. My brother was out on a date. Cooking, drinking, and women: my brother had a talent for each. Griffin and I were at my house experimenting with things like Maker’s Mark and honey-dew and mint sorbet. It was a much better way to spend the evening than being at some lame prom.