“Weird how?” Avery asked.
Weird to drive back into that parking lot; weird to have that complicated interview, which tested him on nothing important; weird to have to say hi to people he’d thought he’d escaped forever.
“I just . . . didn’t expect to be back there, I guess. But they seem excited about me for the job. It’s a big deal: lots of money and a big title, and I’ll be able to—”
“What does all of that matter if you hate it?” she asked him.
That question threw him.
“Why are you assuming that I’ll hate it?” he asked.
“Um, maybe because you hated working there before?” she asked.
“I didn’t hate working there before. I just . . .”
He stopped.
“Yeah, you did,” she said.
Yeah. He had, he supposed. But so what if he did?
“Whatever, it’s fine. I liked it at the beginning, didn’t I? I can like it again. All of those other people are there, they don’t hate it, they can handle it. I just need to—”
“Need to what?” Avery asked. “Work harder? Get a thicker skin? Show them how good you are, how smart you are? And then what? What’s that going to get you? It’s not going to make you happy. I know you liked it at the beginning, but that was forever ago. You haven’t liked it for a long time.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’ll be fine, and I’ll—”
“Yes, it does matter!” Avery yelled. “What’s wrong with you, Luke? I thought you were coming to your senses.”
Now Avery was going to be mad at him, too?
“Coming to my senses, how? Nothing is wrong with me! I need a job, don’t I? Something more than working at a winery, or the inn! And going back there will be good for my career.”
Why was everyone being shitty to him about this?
“Oh, Luke.” Avery sighed. “I get it, I do. I get why you think you need this job. But we can’t spend our whole lives chasing someone else’s approval. Your mom’s, your mentor’s, people you don’t even like.”
“That’s not what I’m doing! I’m trying to make a success of my life, why can’t anyone understand that?”
This was the most frustrating conversation he’d had since . . . Sunday.
“You don’t have to be unhappy in order to be successful in life!” Now she was yelling again. “You liked your job at the winery a lot! And yes, some of that was because you had the hots for your boss, but it wasn’t all Margot—I saw you at the party, you like all of those people. You even like your job working for your mom—at least, you like it better than your old job, which, again, you hated!”
He shouldn’t have picked up the fucking phone when she’d called.
“Avery, I’m really not in the mood for this right now. Can we just—”
She ignored him.
“Do you remember when you told me you always hated Derek, after we broke up, and I started crying?”
Fuck, she had to bring that up now, didn’t she?
“Yeah, of course. I’m really sorry that I—”
“I know you’re sorry. The thing is, I was miserable with him. I hadn’t been in a real relationship for so long when he and I started dating, and when he wanted me, it felt like okay, great, I have to hold on to this one, what if I don’t have another chance? But I wasn’t happy with him. I was so unhappy with him. You saw it, you knew.”
“Yeah. I knew,” he said.
“And I knew you hated him, of course I knew that. But I thought it didn’t matter. I thought it was fine. But my confidence was shot, I felt like a different person, I didn’t feel like me.”
He saw where she was going with this.
“Avery. It’s not the same.”
She kept talking.
“And I’ve been so happy since we broke up! Yes, it’s been really hard, and I’ve felt scared, a lot. But I’ve also been so much happier, Luke. I’ve felt guilty for how happy I’ve been. And I know you’ve been so much happier since you quit that job, don’t even try to pretend you haven’t been.”
He had been. But that had mostly been about Margot.
But . . . not all about Margot.
“Wait,” Avery said. “Did Margot want you to take this job? What did she say about the interview?”
He’d always fucking known Avery was a mind reader.
“Do we have to talk about that now?”
“Oh no,” she said.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“What did you do?” she asked.
“Why is that the question?” he asked. “Why is it what did I do? Couldn’t she have done something? Why aren’t you asking me, your best friend, what she did?”
“Luke. What did you do?”
He cut over into a faster lane.
“Nothing! She got pissed at me, just because I hadn’t mentioned the job interview to her until last Sunday morning.” He sighed. “And I sort of hadn’t told her that I led my mom to believe you and I were dating.”
“WHAT?” He was surprised no one in the cars around him turned at Avery’s yell. “You didn’t tell her about that!?”
He should have known she would react like this.
“You don’t have to say it like that. I meant to tell her, I just . . . forgot.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell her that,” Avery said. “I can’t believe I was out there pretending to be your girlfriend and your real girlfriend didn’t even know! I was a fake other woman?”
He laughed, despite himself.
“You were not a fake other woman. She didn’t think we were actually together. But . . .”
Avery sighed.
“Okay.” Her voice was brisk. “Come straight here.”
He didn’t want to be an asshole, but there was no way he could go over to Avery’s place and have a heart-to-heart about all of this right now.
“Thanks, really, but . . .”
She cut him off.
“I’m leaving now to get the fried chicken. Think about what movie you want to watch. See you soon.”
Oh, thank goodness.
“Spicy please, dark meat only, and so many biscuits my stomach will hurt tomorrow.”
“Do you think you have to tell me any of that?” She hung up.
He rolled down his windows and turned up the music. He hoped Avery got them potato salad, too. Maybe that would solve all of his problems.
Twenty-Five
THE TASTING ROOM WAS booked solid with appointments on Thursday, and with Taylor gone, Margot didn’t sit down all day. She chatted and laughed and smiled with guests, encouraged them to have another sip, buy one more bottle, relax with a glass of wine on the new Adirondack chairs out on the grounds. It was a relief, to be around people all day, to be busy from when she walked in the door, to not have to be alone with her thoughts. She was successful, she was thriving; there was no need to think about Luke, why she hadn’t heard from him, how lonely she’d been all week, how she’d almost texted him that morning about his interview and had chickened out.
At six that evening, when everyone was gone, she locked up the building and turned off the lights in the tasting room. But instead of getting in her car to go home, she went back to her office. She might as well get more work done, since she was here, and she’d been terrible this week about getting work done at home. At home there were reminders of him everywhere, all of the places she normally worked: her couch, her kitchen, her bedroom.
She looked at her phone, which she’d planned to ignore all day. She hadn’t, exactly, but at least she hadn’t checked it as obsessively as she had all week. Nothing from Luke. Sydney had texted, though.
SYDNEY
Come by tonight? Charlie has a new menu item you’ll love. Or I could bring something by after work?
She’d told Sydney everything on Monday night, over an enormous amount of pasta, and Sydney had very reassuringly been out for Luke’s blood. That had been great, to feel angry at Luke, instead of sad. But tonight, Margot couldn’t handle Sydney’s concern for her and urge to destroy Luke. She loved her for it, very much, but right now, she needed to just be.
MARGOT
Working late tonight, maybe tomorrow
Tell Charlie I said thank you.
She worked for a while before she got up to go to the bathroom. Oh, and wait, had she gone through the whole closing checklist before she’d locked up the tasting room? She hadn’t closed up in a while.
She went back in the tasting room and looked around. The bar was cleaned up, the wine was all put away, the dishwasher was loaded, but—oops—she’d forgotten to turn it on. She did that, and then had a sudden vision of Luke, his sleeves rolled up, fixing the dishwasher.
“Fuck!” she yelled to the empty room. Did he have to be everywhere in her whole fucking life? She’d known this man for only two fucking months!
She took a glass down and pulled out one of the bottles they’d opened that day at random. What was the fucking point of owning a winery if you didn’t get to drown your sorrows in wine at least once?