Before Anyone Else
before anyone else
By Leslie Hooton
TURNER PUBLISHING COMPANY
Turner Publishing Company
Nashville, Tennessee
www.turnerpublishing.com
Before Anyone Else
Copyright © 2019 Leslie Hooton. All rights reserved.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Emily Mahon
Book design: Tim Holtz
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hooton, Leslie, author.
Title: Before anyone else / Leslie Hooton.
Description: Nashville : Turner Publishing Company, 2020. | Summary: “As a designer of upscale restaurants, 30-year-old Bailey Ann Edgeworth can go into an empty space and immediately see what it would take to create a beautiful and memorable environment. Unfortunately, she’s not nearly as good at designing her own life”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019025024 (print) | LCCN 2019025025 (ebook) | ISBN 9781684424009 (paperback) | ISBN 9781684424016 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781684424023 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women interior decorators--Fiction. | First loves--Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3608.O5985 B44 2020 (print) | LCC PS3608.O5985 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025024
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025025
Printed in the United States of America
17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
—Virginia Woolf
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
—Ecclesiastes 4:12
For the woman who taught me to read and love books
Before anyone else,
For my first editor who uttered the phrase “red ink is love”
before anyone else,
and for doing my brand of crazy with me
before anyone else,
Mama, Sarge, and the CEO of me,
Elizabeth Hooton
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
As I walked into VERT, memories washed over me. They filled me with unmitigated delight. But if I’m being perfectly honest, they also filled me with just a little disgust. Two-thirds standing water. One part full-blown tsunami.
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.
“Are you sorry you didn’t go to prom?” Griffin asked loudly over the blender, where he was crushing ice for a new drink for me to try. Sometimes I think my men felt guilty that they had not exposed me to the “normal” highlights of childhood.
I considered Griffin’s question as I watched him concoct his drink. He took his shaker and combined Maker’s Mark and other ingredients. If my brother favored scotch, I tended to prefer good bourbon. I had learned to be picky about my whiskey. I could tell the difference even on this side of eighteen. Griffin placed a martini glass in front of his shaker. I was intrigued. I noticed Griffin rimmed the glass in sugar. I had never seen this before. His question about the prom lingered in the air between us.
“Are you kidding? I’m doing exactly what they’re doing, only better. They’re drinking cheap beer, cheap wine, or cheap liquor and getting drunk and then heading to the back seat of somebody’s car. Not my idea of a good time. Rum and Coke? Where’s the imagination in that?”
He handed me the apricot-colored drink. I hoped it tasted as good as it looked.
“A sidecar,” Griffin announced. It looked prettier than the pomegranate martini he’d fixed me last week. He placed it in front of me next to the honeydew and mint sorbet. I surveyed the drink before picking it up.
“Cheers!” I brought the glass to my lips. Talk about potent potable. It would become my signature drink for the rest of my life. Griffin Hardwick had made it for me before anyone else.
He walked around the island and over to me. “Go easy, girl,” he said and picked up the spoon to finish my sorbet. I wanted to know what the combination of the drink and the sorbet tasted like together, so I leaned in and kissed him. To my astonishment, he kissed me back.
The taste of his mouth and his proximity to me were more potent than any drink he could have fixed me. He pulled back.
“Why can’t you be older? Why are no other girls like you?” He was looking at me for an answer, but I’m not sure it was to a question he had posed yet.
“Because, Griffin, I am an original,” I said confidently. More confidently than I felt as my feelings churned inside.
He threw his head back and laughed and then resumed kissing me gently. We went on like this for a while. He pulled away. “What are we doing?”
“Exactly what everyone else my age is doing except I hope we’ll be doing it in a nice bed.” I could tell he was wrestling with himself. Wrestling with his feelings.
“I’m just not sure you know the ramifications.”
“You said it needed to be my choice. You said the person shouldn’t be drunk. You said—”
“I’m stupid. You shouldn’t be listening to me or Henry.” He paused. I could see he was pondering what to say next. “You are special. Nobody is like you. Nobody.”
“Do you have a condom?” I asked. In that moment, I knew he would be the one before anyone else for me.
We went upstairs to my bedroom where we each removed our own clothes. Griffin only stopped to say, “You have a beautiful body, Bailey. Where have you been hiding it?” I led him to my bed. Our kissing became elevated and urgent.
“Are you sure you haven’t done this before?” he asked. I certainly couldn’t tell him that from the time I was a young girl I had dreamed about this. As dreams go, this was vintage. Old but precious.
In some ways, it was everything I wanted and needed it to be. In other ways, very surprising. Griffin was kind. And patient. And tender. It was as if he felt the responsibility to make this okay for me.
Around ten o’clock, Griffin was getting dressed when the phone rang. He answered it immediately like he’d gotten caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
“Oh my God. What? Who? Oh no. You did what? Sure. Of course.”
My heart lurched. “What happened?”
“George was chopping onions and apparently sliced the top of his finger off. Your dad came to the rescue and put his finger on ice and took George and the finger to the hospital. George is in surgery now to reattach the finger, and your dad is there with him.” He paused for the rest. “Your dad cannot find your brother.” We both exchanged meaningful glances. Henry could be off doing something neither of us approved of. It worried me.
“What else did Daddy say?”
“He said he’d be home in the morning and for me to stay here and look after you.” A small but telling smile crossed Griffin’s face.
“Well, that’s a little like putting the rooster in charge of the henhouse, isn’t it?” I said. He relaxed again and looked at me.
“Any regrets?” Griffin asked. I knew he wanted an honest answer. One that had been fully considered. I wanted to tell him this had been the easiest decision of my life. And while I had no idea then, it would remain so. In the years to come, my sex life would take many twists and turns before ultimately crashing and burning, along with the rest of my life.
“None. However,” I started inching closer to him. He looked aghast at my forwardness, and yet I could tell he appreciated it.
“Really? Well, there may have been one little fact we left out of our biology lesson. You’re going to have to give me a few minutes. On second thought, maybe one minute will do.”
I just smiled and waited.
The next morning, he put his jeans back on and his customary V-neck T-shirt. It worked for him. It exposed just a few chest hairs to make a girl curious. He looked rugged but also nonchalant. That was quite endearing.
Griffin stood in the threshold of my door as if putting a punctuation mark on the occasion. He just looked at me for a moment and said finally, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I delayed my answer just to keep him standing there. “Yes, I am.”
He stood in the doorway a moment longer trying to assess for himself if I was truly okay. I may have had sex with him before anyone else, but the secrets we kept from each other in the years to come were what would threaten our undoing.
“How about some bananas Foster brioche French toast for breakfast?” he asked. Without waiting for my answer, he had already turned around to go to the kitchen to look for bananas.
It was the best French toast I’d had in a long time. The brioche that Henry had baked was out of this world. Griffin ate only some toasted brioche with peanut butter. Not exactly haute cuisine.
About that time, my brother came blowing in. He looked like a mess. If I had been happy about the events prior to breakfast, seeing my brother hungover and dissipated scared me. This moment would mark the beginning of my worry about the men I loved and their addictions. I could tell from Griffin’s expression, which resembled a nasty scar, that it concerned him too.
“Dude, you were supposed to be looking after my little sister. Did you sneak out after she went to bed?” When Griffin gave him an inquisitive look, my brother responded, “Griff, you’re eating peanut butter … ”
I saw the look pass between them. Something private. It dawned on me. Peanut butter must be what Griffin eats after sex. Henry had no idea that he had come so close to the truth.
“Hey, bro, let’s talk about where you were all night.” He paused, “I didn’t think so. Besides, I’m hungry.”
“Sorry. Somebody is certainly touchy this morning, Griff.”
I went upstairs to my bedroom. Griffin had left his flannel shirt behind, and I picked it up and smelled it. Then I shoved it to the back of my closet like a keepsake, like a memento from a favorite trip. He never asked for it back. I was truly happy Griffin was the one before anyone else.
There was a gentle rap on the door. It pulled me back to the present. Griffin came in, closing the door behind him. He embraced me and we kissed fully, holding nothing back. He said, “I’m glad you’re home for Christmas.”
“I don’t see any mistletoe,” I teased. Griffin fumbled in his pocket and pulled out some dried-up herb.
“That better be a piece of fennel from some fennel soup you made me,” I volleyed back.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Where do you want to stay tonight?”
“I haven’t even seen Daddy, so I’ll just stay with him.” We were about to kiss again when Henry barged through the door.
“Are y’all decent? Put your clothes back on.”
“Stop that, Henry. It’s Christmas,” I said. I looked over at Griffin. He was silent. The long frown that snaked across his face told me more. My heart skipped a beat. Then another. I felt a thread of discord being sewn between my two men.