Cooper pulled a bottle from the shelf. He held it in his hand. “Mango Tornado?”
“Mango Ginger Zip didn’t fit on the label.”
“Because you’re using the wrong fonts.”
Oliver sighed. He didn’t want to rehash this. Didn’t want to talk about the money he’d spent to redesign everything so that it would be his and not theirs.
“What are you doing here?”
Cooper pulled one of the tall chairs from the counter, giving Oliver an arched eyebrow as it wobbled while he settled into it. He popped the top on the bottle and took a sip, then grimaced. “Kinda sweet.”
Oliver sighed hard. “So you’re here to swap recipes?”
“I want to talk.” This dance was exhausting, each of them parrying, trying to find a way in. Oliver should have stepped aside and let Cooper be the victor, but his instincts wouldn’t let him.
“How’s Maurizio?” Oliver asked, at the same time Cooper said, “How’s business?”
“Oh my God!” Oliver dug his fingers into his hair. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He’d lost the contest to crack first, so the only option left was to go on the offensive.
“Ollie. I wanted to—”
“No. No.” He pulled himself up to his full height. “You do not get to show up here, in my house, in my store, and act like you were in the neighborhood. You gave up that right. It’s a big country. You can have any other part of it you want, but this town is mine.”
Cooper gave him a crooked smile. “So things are going well, then? They gave you a key to the city?”
“You have thirty seconds to say whatever it is you came here to say, and then you’re leaving.”
Cooper leaned against his chair, hooking an elbow over the back. The posture said he had no intention of going anywhere, and Oliver was tempted to rip the seat out from under him. “I want back in.”
Oliver laughed. “You’re kidding, right? After what you did?”
Cooper shook his head. “I’m not asking you to take me back. I know I can’t ask for that.”
Fucking right he couldn’t.
“So you want, what? The business?”
“Like we planned.”
“Silent partner? It’s going to be hard to run a juice bar from three time zones away.”
“I was thinking of relocating. San Francisco’s nice, but it rains a lot.”
Oh fuck no. That could not happen. Oliver was finally starting to develop some separation.
“What does Maurizio think about small-town living?” Oliver hadn’t seen Cooper’s new man after everything had all gone down, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know who he was. Their circles were small, and if Cooper looked like a GQ model on his day off, then everything about Maurizio screamed Italian runway model.
“Maurizio is... “ Cooper turned the bottle in his hands. “He took a job in Rome. He’s gone.”
“Gone? Gone as in—”
Cooper glanced away uncomfortably. Oliver should have been thrilled, but instead, he felt sad for what was about to come. “He got a better offer.”
Shit.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
