Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) Read Free Page A

were coming back. This is exciting news.” She scooted her body closer to Eric’s as if she were trying hop up on his lap. The remnants of cigarette smoke curled around his nose. “Tell old Abby, how’s my favorite pupil doing?”
     
    His face flushed. “I’m glad to be back. I love what Virgil has done to the place,” he said, anxious to turn the subject away from talking about their history together.
     
    Abby still wore the same trademark outfit: a tight red skirt, a black v-neck tee shirt, and a scarf with both colors swirled together in a box pattern. She always had a thing for putting those two colors together. She’d told him after the first time they made out in high school that red and black mixed together were her spiritual colors. And when she wore them no one could make her feel like she wasn’t worth anything.
     
    Virgil tended the bar. He’d wiped the same glass at least fifty times, his eyes glued to the woman reading the poetry. As if he heard the silent pleas in Eric’s head, he scanned the area until his gaze rested on Abby sitting beside him.
     
    “Don’t look now but more attention is headed your way, baby. My brother with the chubby belly and the I’m-a-man-on-lockdown grin just spotted you.” A wide smile spread across his friend’s face. Placing his glass down gently, Virgil approached Eric and Abby’s table.
     
    “What am I paying ya for, gal? My customers need drinks, hospitality. Hell, they might even need food. What they don’t need is dick waxings,” he added. “Now get outta my way so I can greet my friend.”
     
    Abby rolled her eyes upward and slid away from Eric, but not before she ran her hand over his crotch, lingering over it a moment. And then, she gave Eric the smile that won him over back in his youthful days.
     
    Virgil shook his head, rolled his eyes upward, and said, “Get outta here.”
     
    Snapping her head around to face her older brother, she said, “You’re just mad because you got the old hag for a wife.” She turned back to Eric and said, “So glad you’re back. You know where to find me, Sweet Cheeks.” She winked and shuffled off to the bar. Her next victim, a man about six years younger than Eric, sat on one of the stools lined up along the counter.
     
    “That damn gal, I’m telling ya. She hasn’t been right since you two had a go at it all those years ago. That Italian feller she was married to didn’t stand a chance. You know why?  Because he wasn’t an Eric Fontalvo.” Virgil pulled Eric up into a bear embrace and then plopped his husky body down in the seat across from him.
     
    He signaled to another waitress, a blonde. Dressed in a white tee shirt and red shorts, she appeared sweet and innocent next to Abby.
     
    Eric craved a conversation with his old friend that would move him in another direction. He had no interest in bringing up any of his old flames. “What’s this talk about a wife? You didn’t send an email or anything. Did you go soft on me?” Eric said, a slight ache hitting his chest.
     
    Virgil glanced at the woman reading poetry to a somewhat bigger crowd now. Eric recognized the way his face lit up. At one time, he looked at his own fiancée that same way.   ”That’s my Shania. And that handsome fella at the piano, the one wearing the Harry Potter glasses, that’s our friend, Gus, aka the bartender. As for your soft statement, I’ll just tell ya right now. She sets me up with something soft every single night and it rocks, my man.” They both shared a good, hearty laugh and it felt good.
     
    No one in his family back home laughed much. With his older brother, Javier, being recently diagnosed with cancer at age 40, Eric didn’t expect the situation to improve much.
     
    “Her nickname’s Shay. That’s short for Shania. I think she spells it the wrong way. I pick on her about it, and she gets so mad at me. The make-up sex takes care of it, though. For a guy that spent most of his life doing