Before he met Winona? He hardly remembers life after Harlan and before he met her. There were women, to be sure, girls, really, no more than girls. She was a woman. He knew that the minute they met. She was sure of herself and where she was going, and more importantly, where she wasn't. That's what impressed him, among other things.
"I'm not going back to Kentucky." She said. "Not ever."
"Me, either." He'd said, knocking back the bourbon.
She'd laughed then. "Maybe we should not go back together."
"Maybe we should."
Before he left Glynco things were good between them. They fought, sure. All married couples fight. But they were silly, stupid fights about transient stuff like something she'd forgotten to enter in the checkbook or whose turn it was to do the laundry. They always made up and that was always good. In fact, more than once he picked a fight so they'd have to make up. He suspected she'd done the same thing.
Before she left him, the fights became something else. They weren't about simple things anymore.
"You don't talk to me." She'd said one night. They'd both had too much to drink and so he answered honestly.
"I don't know what to say. Everything I say just upsets you. You hate my job and sometimes I think you aren't too far from hating me."
"Sometimes I think you're right."
They hadn't made up, at least not like they used to.
Before they signed the divorce papers he'd gone to see her in her hotel room. He stood looking out at the gorgeous ocean view and she made them drinks from the mini-bar.
"You look good." She'd said. "Miami agrees with you."
"It's too damn sunny all the time."
She'd smiled.
"I love you." He'd said.
"I know." She finished her drink. "I love you, too."
But she'd signed the papers anyway.
Before she asked him to help Gary, he hadn't given much thought to what he still felt for her. Whether it was love or regret or an inseparable mix of the two…it just was. It was despite whatever he had with Ava, and it would always be there, no matter who he was with.
Before she came to his motel room that night, he never let himself imagine being with her again. He'd felt the heat between them flare more than once, but he managed to drown it out with whiskey or smack it away at the batting cages or get himself beat up enough to forget anything but the pain for a day or two.
Before she kissed him he would've said he could resist. The fact that it only took one kiss proves how wrong he was. The taste of her. The feel of her skin under his hands. The way their bodies fit together perfectly. It was like coming home.
Before Winona? He can't remember a time before Winona.