Summer in Napa

chapter 17

Lexi’s phone rang again, and she let it go to voice mail—again. It was two in the morning. And probably Marc. And she just couldn’t bring herself to answer it.

She didn’t know if he was calling to ask if she was still going to cater the Showdown tomorrow or if he was calling to apologize and beg for her back. Either way, she couldn’t stomach it. If it was the first, she’d cry because he wasn’t calling to apologize and beg for her back. If it was the latter, she was afraid she’d cry because she’d have to tell him where he could shove his apology. And she was tired of crying. She was also drunk.

So when the phone stopped ringing, she waited for a long beat, then decided to pour herself another teacup of Pricilla’s Angelica and grabbed her needle and thread.

Earlier that evening, she had used the seam ripper to take the Morning, Hot Stuff out of her apron, replacing it with Deflated Cream Puff before she finally settled on I Love You, Dumb-ass!

She had just finished putting a black heart in place of the period at the bottom of the exclamation mark when the phone rang again.

Knotting the thread, she set her craft aside and downed her teacup. It was ringing for the third time when she finally looked over at the stack of three-by-five cards resting on her pillows that Abby had given her. They were a series of prompts for her to refer to in case she gave in to the weakness and answered. Most of them were so profane she would be too embarrassed to even say them, which was another reason not to answer.

By the time the call went to voice mail, she’d managed to refill and reempty her glass again. She’d also managed to spill half of said glass down her front.

“Crap.” She hopped up and grabbed a pair of dirty jeans from the floor and scrubbed at the tank top until it had faint denim smudges on the chest.

A soft tap sounded at the window.

Lexi froze. Jeans in hand, breathing nonexistent, she listened. When holding her breath and standing still became not only impossible but dangerous, she tiptoed over to the window and braced herself.

Was Marc down in the alley tossing pebbles at her window? Because if he was, she would tell him just how cheesy his Romeo and Juliet act was—and just where he could shove his apology.

After a quick fluff to the hair, Lexi grabbed the curtain, yanked it back, and screamed.

A face was staring at her through the glass. A face with frizzy hair and pissed-off eyes that was staring. Right. At. Her. It opened its mouth, only Lexi was too afraid to hear what it would say.

One hand over her lips, the other slamming the curtain back in place, she backed up and stumbled onto the bed. The prompt cards scattered to the floor, but thankfully the Angelica was all right.

“Will you open the window!” Abby’s voice hissed though the glass and fabric.

Lexi did, and the sight made her want to cry all over again. It wasn’t Marc. He hadn’t crawled up her trellis, hadn’t come to say he was in love with her, and even worse, she didn’t know if he regretted hurting her. If he had even felt what she had. And if his chest ached to the point of suffocation.

“It’s you,” Lexi sighed, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice. “What are you doing?”

Abby stared. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m breaking you out of this self-imposed hellhole.”

“Oh.” For some reason that made sense. “Why didn’t you come through the door?”

“Because it’s locked.”

“I would have let you in. Plus, there’s a spare key. I hid it under the gnome.” Marc knew it was there. He had used it a few times to wake her up in the morning after his run.

God, she missed him.

“Great to know. Next time I have to knock for over an hour, I’ll remember that.”

“How are you all the way up here?” Lexi leaned out the window, around Abby, and squinted at the bright-yellow ladder wedged up against the side of the building. Then she looked at the window across the alley and wondered if he was in there. She had pulled her blinds so he wouldn’t see her crying, but every few hours she checked for a sign of him. She never found one.

Maybe he had fallen asleep on his desk, waiting for her to open her blinds. She nudged her tank top lower, happy that she had forgone a bra, leaned out the window farther, and asked, really loudly, “Where did you get the ladder?”

Lexi looked at his window. No lights. No movement. Just depressing darkness.

“I borrowed it from Jack,” Abby said, giving her a really weird look.

“So it’s Jack now, huh? What did that cost you?”

“Three extra piano lessons, and—” Abby paused. “Why are you yelling? Are you drunk?”

“No.” Lexi smiled. Then laughed. Then slapped a hand over her mouth.

Abby leaned in and immediately jerked back, her nose wrinkling. Abby had a perfect nose, pert with a few freckles, and it even looked cute when crinkled up in disgust. “Did you fall in a vat?”

“Nope.” Lexi sat back on the bed and snagged the bottle of Angelica off the nightstand, shoving it in Abby’s face and nearly knocking her friend off the ladder.

“Give me that.” Abby snatched at the bottle, but Lexi held on.

“He broke my heart, Abs,” Lexi whispered.

Abby’s eyes went soft with understanding. “I know. He’s an idiot, and the only thing that saved him from having to place his own ‘Where’s My Dick’ ad is that he’s my brother, and I love him.”

“Me too,” Lexi said, and the tears pooled up again.

“I know you do. At the farmers’ market, I knew.” She took Lexi’s hand in her own tiny one and squeezed. “Would it help if I said that Marc knows he messed up and that he didn’t know Jeffery was after your recipes until it was too late and then he was stuck between disappointing you and my other brothers?”

Lexi thought about it and shook her head. He had still kept secrets from her, and good intentions or not, secrets hurt. Sometimes they hurt worse than lies. And Lexi was tired of being hurt.

“Would it help if I said I think he loves you back, but being that he’s a DeLuca with the Y chromosome, he couldn’t help but screw this up?”

“That makes it worse.” Lexi took in a shuddery breath and tried not to cry. Imagining a life without him had been devastating. But what if Abby was telling the truth? What if he did love her? She would be walking away from her only chance of spaghetti-splattered-apron kind of love. “I don’t know what to do. This is different than Jeffery. I’m not embarrassed or angry. God, Abs, it hurts so bad.” She patted the spot above her heart that felt like it was missing, like it would never be whole again. “I can’t even breathe.”

“Which is why you’re going to go grab a towel before we both wind up drunk and crying.”

“I don’t want to go—”

“Grab a towel.” Abby gave Lexi one last look and then started down the ladder.

Lexi wiped her face on the hem of her tank top and gave a little sniffle. When she could take in air without pain shooting through her chest, she leaned over the sill and looked down at Abby, who was on the alley floor. “Where are we going?”

“The lake.” Abby held up a familiar set of keys. “Now hurry up before Pricilla figures out that I stole her car.”

Lexi stumbled to the bathroom and, avoiding a peek in the mirror for fear that she would never leave the house again, brushed her teeth. She was about to leave when she stopped to smell her shirt. Vat was putting it mildly.

Grimacing, she shucked the tear-and-snot-stained tank and headed back to the bedroom, grabbing the towels.

“Why don’t you go out the front door?” Abby suggested when Lexi stuck her legs out the window and nearly tumbled down the ladder.

“This is more fun,” she hollered back, tossing the towels to the ground, hoping they landed on Abby’s head while silently counting each rung of the ladder as she descended.

“Um, Lex?”

“Don’t talk to me. I’m counting!”

“Yeah, well, you might want to count your way back up to your room and get some clothes on.”

Lexi got to the bottom rung, number fifteen to be exact, and hopped off. “No way. Last time we did this I played it half-assed and look where that got me. Married”—she counted off each infringement on her fingers—“divorced, in debt, jobless, and with a broken heart, courtesy of my fake boyfriend.”

The last infringement counted for five on its own, which brought her loser grand total to a whopping 90 percent.

Abby gave her a long look and cracked a smile. “Well, you don’t have to worry about half-assing it this time, because I can see your whole ass.”