It should be self-evident that his family should’ve at least cooked for him after he travelled for God knows how long and hadn’t been back for three years.
“How have you been, Lewis?” he asked me over his half empty plate.
“Uh, quite okay, yeah. A lot better since I started working for Lone Fox, but yeah. Good.”
“That’s good to hear. What’s your job at the distillery? Ollie said you two worked together, but I have no idea what you’re doing.”
“I’m a brewer at Lone Fox Distillery, or their brewery to be exact,” I told him.
“So you make beer?”
“Yeah, as you can see.” I shrugged at him and patted my stomach. It wasn’t so much a six pack, but the whole damn keg.
“Oh, stop saying that. You’re perfect,” he huffed, then blushed a more vibrant shade of bright pink. He was the cutest thing I had ever seen.
“I mean, that’s so cool. I bet Lone Fox is a great place to work.”
Still pink in the face and shivering, he pulled a cardigan from the back of another chair and bundled it tighter around himself. If I wasn’t mistaken, Noah tried to gloss over the fact that he had called me “perfect” again.
Nobody except for my mum had ever said that about me. I’d always been on the heavier side. Roy was a beefcake, too, but it was all muscle. I had enough blubber to keep me warm on cold winter nights. I could probably survive out in the snow, which had begun to fall a couple of minutes ago, for a few days.
“You should come visit the estate some time. I can take you around. Might make for some cool pictures for your social media account, too.”
“I’d like that, yeah. Thank you.” He gave me one of his handsome smiles that made my stomach flutter.
“By the way, the beer you’re drinking? I made that.”
Noah huffed. “And you’re only mentioning this now?” He inspected the bottle, then giggled, sounding for a moment way younger than he was. “White Tiger, well okay, I should have figured that out. It’s great.” He took another sip. “You’re a beer artisan.”
“I’m glad you like it. It was the first recipe I made for Lone Fox, and it’s our bestseller.”
“So, where did you learn how to brew beer?”
“I got certified in Bavaria, in a small town just outside of Munich. It’s run by monks. They have been brewing beer the exact same way for nearly a thousand years. Then I interned with brewmasters in a few different countries: the US, Japan, Tanzania, the Netherlands, Ireland, you name it. The job before LFD was at a brewery in Manchester.”
“Wow, that’s—”
“Probably super boring for you, sorry.”
“No, I was going to say ‘impressive.’” He smiled kindly at me over his plate. “That’s seriously cool. I had no idea you lived in so many countries. Which one was your favourite?”
“I really loved Bavaria. With the mountains and lakes, it’s like something out of a fairy tale, but every country had its own kind of beauty.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“They all have their downsides, though, right? Like you told me about Bali earlier?”
He nodded, indicating that his mouth was too full to speak.
“It’s sad to see places you love from that perspective,” Noah said when he’d swallowed the spaghetti. “You don’t really notice when you’re just visiting, but stay longer and you’ll get to know them.”
“Is that what happened with you and Bali?” I pushed my empty plate a few inches towards the centre of the table, placed my beer in the cleared space in front of me, and leaned back in my chair.
“Yes, that’s what happened with me and Bali,” Noah admitted, then he got up and heaped a second helping onto his plate. “I used to live in Thailand, and visited a couple of times, for a month or two, and I loved it. It’s not too far away and it wasjust different. People seemed to be happy, the atmosphere was laid back. Then I decided to move there. That was,” he hesitated, “about six years ago.”
“And you didn’t like it?”
“Oh, at first I did. I still do love the people, the food, the culture, surfing, and the fresh produce year round.” He sat back down, took a bite and chewed slowly. “But there are things I don’t like at all, too. But I think that happens wherever you live, right?”
