“Yeah.” He took in the man’s changes the same way he suspected James was surveying him. He’d grown in the years since they’d last laid eyes on each other, his blond hair now hitting his shoulders and a close-cropped beard covering his jaw. James looked closer to a biker than a businessman, but then his father had never put the emphasis on poise and surface manners the way Teague’s had.
“Nice suit.”
He looked down at the Armani clothing and shrugged. “It works.”
“Sit your ass down and let’s talk.”
He followed James to a booth tucked in the back of the bar and slid in. “I—”
“Hold on.” He raised his voice. “Tommy?” A few seconds later, the bartender set two beers down and lumbered away. James picked his up, his eyes never leaving Teague’s face. “Didn’t your piece-of-shit father teach you any manners? First you make small talk. Then you go in with your pitch.”
Teague grabbed his own beer, and grinned despite the clock ticking away in the back of his mind. As much as he’d like to spend time with the man under different circumstances, keeping the people he cared about safe was his only priority right now.
And James was one of the few people who could help make that happen.
But the man was right—there was a way to do these things, even if the custom annoyed the shit out of him. He sat back and motioned with his bottle. “How about them Red Sox?”
James grinned. “Hell of a year they’re having.”
“Think they have any chance at the play-offs?” With all the shit going on, he’d missed the game last week—and would probably be missing more in the future. The thought was too damn depressing.
“Who knows? I sure as fuck hope so.” He glanced away. “It’d be a nice distraction.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Anything that was a distraction from the shit show they were currently running was welcome. Sadly, it would be months before the play-offs, and he had a feeling this thing would be done and over with by then—or they’d be so busy killing each other that they wouldn’t have time for baseball.
Teague sat back. “How the hell are you?”
“My brother’s dead and my old man’s gone and lost his goddamn mind.” James shrugged. “I’m doing exactly how you’d expect.”
A fair point. None of them was doing great these days, but James certainly had the shit end of the stick. He took a long pull of his beer. “I thought we were making small talk.”
“I got nothing after the Sox.”
“Um, a scorcher of a summer we’re having.” He laughed when James shot him a look. Needling the man shouldn’t be so damn delightful, but he’d take his silver lining where he could find it. It was all harmless—or as close to harmless as possible.
“Heard you’re getting married. Never thought you’d be one to be the dancing monkey for your old man.”
He hadn’t, either. James was one of the few people he’d talked to about his pipe dreams—to get out of this life and put as much distance between himself and the O’Malley legacy as he could. He examined the rough wood grain of the table, and then forced himself to look up and meet his former friend’s gaze. “Life never quite works out like we want it to.”
“Isn’t that the damn truth?”
The world had seemed different when they first met, when their respective responsibilities hadn’t been so suffocating. They’d had countless conversations about what they’d be doing if they weren’t part of families like theirs. That time of hope had passed right along with their friendship.
The silence stretched out between them as they drank, filled with all the broken dreams of the past. They were dead and gone, buried beneath a cold reality neither of them could avoid.
They weren’t the same men they’d been years ago. James was now heir to the Halloran family. And, Teague…Well, Teague was marrying Callie at his father’s command. It might not be the end of the world like he’d originally thought, but it didn’t change the fact that Seamus had told him to jump and he’d asked how high.
He noted the circles under James’s eyes—just one of the indications of how exhausted he had to be. “How are you doing, though? Seriously.”
“Christ, what do you expect me to say? We’re not friends anymore. I’m not going to cry on your shoulder about how shitty my life is, and I’m sure as fuck not down for a sleepover where we tell secrets and braid each other’s hair.”
“Good, because that’d be some one-sided shit.”