Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
A rcher
“What’s your issue with her anyway?” Carson spits the words out between bench presses. I stand over him with my hands lightly grazing the bar, which has one-hundred-pound weights on each end. We both like to lift until failure, which means we need a spotter to stand by and make sure the bar doesn’t hit us in the chest when our muscles give way. I’m betting Carson has about three more presses in him until that happens.
I shrug.
There’s only one other guy in the gym, probably because it’s seven in the evening on a weeknight. All the regular guys with wives and families are probably eating a home-cooked meal and taking their shoes off for the day. I’ve learned to keep myself busy at that hour, either cooking for myself at home or scheduling a workout with a friend who has just as little going on in his social life as I do. Carson had just pulled up to his house when I called and asked if he felt like a workout. He hesitated for a second—the call of a warm house is hard to turn down in favor of sweating at the gym—but then he said, “Sure. I’ll meet you in thirty.” He’s good that way.
I like working out at this hour because we have our pick of weights and machines, plus we can talk and there’s little chance of people overhearing. Gossip spreads like a brush fire around here and I don’t need anyone telling tales out of school about me.
Carson eyes me as he grimaces and pushes the bar up again. “I think that’s all I’ve got,” he grunts, a vein in his neck bulging purple.
I help him put the bar on the rack, and he swings his legs around to get off the bench. While he wipes down his sweat with a gym towel, I add two more weights to the bar. It’s forty pounds more than I usually bench, but that blond pixie has my blood racing in my veins. I need to put my energy somewhere.
While I get into position beneath the bar, Carson stands over me and glares down. “Conversation isn’t over.”
“It felt over,” I say, hefting the bar away. Shit, it’s heavy.
“What did she do, turn you down when you asked her out? Ignore you at a party?”
Carson wasn’t in Los Angeles with me during the year when I thought I could make a go of things in the big city of shining lights. I had an MBA from Stanford and the arrogance to think I’d take LA by storm. I planned to take my business degree and flair for entrepreneurship down to Lalaland and start something big. What could possibly stop me?
It turned out a lot of things stopped me. “I’m not getting into it, okay?”
“Not okay. Explain. From the way you were talking about her, I thought the bad blood went back a decade or something. I figured she ran over your dog and refused to date you all in the same day.”
“No. ”
I shove the bar away from my chest with a grunt. Hopefully, that signals I’m done talking so we can get back to the workout. Carson stands over me, hands lightly touching the bar, and counts my reps. When I get past ten, my arms start to burn. This is more weight than I usually press. Felt like a good day to push my limits since my testosterone is pumping at high volume and I have nowhere else to put it.
Pushing the bar away again, I feel my arms start to shake. I shoot Carson a look, warning him that he’d better get ready to hold the bar if I can’t get through one more rep. He nods. I bring the bar down slowly, watching it wobble as my muscles start to give out.
“One more,” Carson says. I push hard and get the bar up, but there’s no way I’m bringing it back to my chest without it landing on top of me. “Spot!” I grit out. Carson grabs the bar and lifts it onto the rack.
Sliding out from under the weights, I’m winded but no less agitated. Carson hands me a towel. “You have one more set in you?”
I shrug. “You?”
“I’m good if we stop. Good either way.” He wanders over to the free weights and hefts two twenty-pound dumbbells to do a quick set of bicep curls. I walk to the water station and fill up a cup. I’m off my game today, and it doesn’t make sense. A million women have walked through Buttercup Hill and none of them have affected me one way or the other. But this woman…I can’t get her out of my head.
“Yeah, let’s call it.” It smells like sweat and mildew in here and I’m just not in the mood.
Carson catches my eye in the mirror and his eyebrows shoot up. “Guess there’s a first for everything. You must really be bent outta shape.” He comes over to the water station and pours himself a cup. “Let’s go to the Dark Horse. First beer’s on me.”
I want to say no. Carson’s like a dog with a juicy rib bone and he’s not going to let the Ella thing go. But he did drag his ass down here to keep me company when he didn’t have to, so if he wants to go to the bar, I’ll go to the bar. Saving grace about the Dark Horse is it’s usually full of locals playing pool and watching sports, so it’s bound to be loud. Too loud to have a conversation about a girl.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, swiveling on my barstool to see if someone—anyone—has come in the door. The place feels dead and hollow like someone called a fire drill and no one’s made it back inside yet.
Carson checks the time. “It’s early. Give it an hour.”
“I’m not giving it anything. In an hour, I’m heading home.”
“Fine. So tell me about the actress. What’s your beef with her?”
“Jesus, this again?” Maybe if I’m irritable enough he’ll leave it alone.
The bartender puts two fresh pints in front of us and only then do I notice I already polished the first one off. He disappears down by the other end of the bar where he starts slicing lemons and limes into wedges.
“This again. Just tell me what happened and get it over with. You know I can’t let a thing go.”
It’s what I love and hate about Carson. He’s a contractor by trade, and when I hired him to build a second story on my house, he attended to every detail himself, even when he could have pushed some tasks off to his subcontractors.
My second story was finished ahead of schedule and under budget, which, according to Beatrix, never happens.
He was married once, something he has no problem talking about. “A disaster from moment one,” is how he describes it. They were the picture-perfect couple in high school, a football player dating a cheerleader. Prom king and queen. “We didn’t know that a marriage needs more to survive than matching high school diplomas.” Once they grew up, they grew apart. Carson was the one who called it quits, and his wife left town with their beagle the next day when he was at work. He came home to an empty house and started a new career in carpentry. That’s how he ended up in Napa.
Of all the people I know, he’s probably the most trustworthy option if I felt like sharing a few details about my time in LA and my initial brush with Ella Fieldstone. It’s not like I need to get stuff off my chest, but for the past week, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.
That’s making me feel like talking about her just so I can keep thinking about her.
“I know you can’t.” Maybe I can’t either. Maybe that’s why we’re such good friends, neither of us letting the other one cut corners.
Carson’s eyes dart between the two flat screen TVs on the wall behind the bar, and I vaguely notice that one has some college basketball game, and the other is showing sports highlights. I can’t focus enough to care about either one, but Carson is a stats guy and he’s taking in the game recap like he’s studying for a test. He’s in a few fantasy leagues, so maybe he stands to make some money on the games.
“It was during that year I spent in LA. I met her.” I’ve never admitted it to anyone, but it feels strangely good to get the information off my chest.
He waggles his eyebrows. “I knew it. Boy meets girl, girl shows no interest in boy, boy hates her until the end of time. Am I close?”
I shake my head. “I’m not that much of a neanderthal. I can handle it if a woman’s disinterested.”
The bartender pushes fresh pints of beer across the bar top to us. I didn’t order them, but Carson nods as though there was some unspoken conversation between them. The cold glass feels good in my palm, and it’s not until I rub my hand over the hot back of my neck that I realize I’m sweating just thinking about Ella.
“So what, then?” Carson asks.
I think about how to articulate it after four years of idly letting the incident fester in my brain. “I’d just gotten to LA with big ideas about how I was going to change the world with the app I’d created and the start-up ideas I had. Even though Silicon Valley was right here in my backyard, I was going bigger and bolder, venturing to Los Angeles to live out some sort of dream.”
“And get out from under your dad’s thumb.” Carson tilts his head, assessing my reaction to his blunt statement. I’ve never admitted as much to him, but maybe in not ever admitting anything, it was as good as laying it out at his feet.
I nod. “What better way to do that than to jet out of town and start my own business?”
“And yet, here you are.”
“Yeah, fucker, here I am. My dad’s health started declining and I came back here, the ever-obedient son, ready to do the job I never wanted.”
“A little dramatic, no?”
I shrug, annoyed. “Just calling it what it is.”
“Spare me the self-pity. You get a lot of juice from being the head of a family wine dynasty, even if you bitch about it.”
A rueful smile creeps across my face, and I use my pint glass to shield it from Carson. He still sees it. The best thing about him is that he doesn’t gloat when he’s right about something.
“Uh-huh, don’t think I won’t call you on your bullshit when it’s warranted,” he says, wagging a finger.
I nod. “Fair enough. I don’t hate it all the time. And I love the vineyards and the art of making good wine. But the less I hate it and the longer I’m here, the more that start-up dream fades away, you know? That’s tough to take. ”
“Yeah, I feel you. My job isn’t glamorous, but it’s all mine and it’s what I’d rather be doing than anything else.”
He’s never flat out said that about construction, but it heartens me to know he’s doing what he likes.
We sip our beers in silence for a moment and I take the opportunity to look at the TVs over the bar. One of them has an Oakland Otters game on and I watch Trix’s husband, Ren, narrowly miss scoring a goal. He skates behind the goal and gets back into position, moving faster than I ever have in our league games.
“So what does any of this have to do with Ella Fieldstone?” Carson asks, nudging me with an elbow.
I huff a laugh, acknowledging that the guy never loses track of a conversation. “Oh, that.”
“Exactly. That.”
Thinking back to the night I had my one brush with Ella, I let the mortification come rolling back. I’ve done my best to block it, but seeing her again has been a grim reminder of my shortcomings.
“I’d only been in LA for a few months, so the bloom was very much still on the rose.”
“Meaning?” Carson levels me with a no-nonsense stare.
“I loved it there. I’d lucked into a rent-controlled sublet a few blocks from the beach. Every day, I’d walk down to Ocean Avenue and watch the sunset, all the things that could possibly bother me were behind me, literally. I felt free back then, and LA felt like possibilities.”
Carson lets out a long sigh. “Are you going to wax poetic about sunsets or are you gonna get to the good shit? Tell me about Ella.”
“Fine. All that’s to say I thought I was going to get everything I ever wanted in LA. I had meetings set up with venture capital firms and private investors, and they were all clambering to invest in my start-up.” I pause, thinking back to one day in particular and wondering if I’d do things differently if I could rewind the clock. “Until they didn’t.”
Carson sips his beer and waits patiently for me to continue, not seeming at all shocked that the investors lost interest. “From what I read, investors are fickle. They like the flavor of the month and they back ten of them, hoping one will hit it big and pay for all the losers.”
The word loser feels like a sucker punch to the gut. It’s the idea I’ve fought against in the years since I moved back to Napa with my tail between my legs. A failure. A loser.
“I guess I was the last to know how the world really works.” I grab the hem of my hoodie and hoist it over my head, suddenly feeling ten degrees hotter in here. “Anyhow, the day my last funding source fell through, I went to a party at the friend of a friend’s house. Big Hollywood thing with celebs and Maroon 5 playing a private gig in the yard. At least I could enjoy the flashy side of my life in LA, drown my sorrows in expensive vodka next to an infinity pool with a view, hook up with someone beautiful.”
I shake my head. It all feels so silly now—those clichés that I thought were actual dreams.
“Lemme guess, the beautiful people in LA gave you the cold shoulder too.”
“Just one of them.”
“You tried to hit on Ella Fieldstone at a party?” He laughs in disbelief, and I’m tempted to join him. It does seem ludicrous now. After all, who was I? Some nobody who fell out of a grape bin and thought he’d take Los Angeles by storm.
“I had a bit of an ego. Remember, I’d moved to LA after big fancy-pants investors told me I was going to be huge. In college, I’d had my pick of women, so yeah, I figured the women in LA were just waiting for someone like me.”
He leans back in his chair like this is the most amusing story—or like it’s about to be one. “And?”
“So I was at this party, and this woman caught my eye. I didn’t know who she was per se—I’m not exactly a rom-com guy—but I remember thinking she was beautiful in a way I’d never seen before.” I also remember that the band was on a break and Little Wing was playing. The lyrics felt perfect for the moment, but I keep that tidbit to myself.
“Pretty face, nice rack?” he prods, almost sounding bored.
“Not like that. Something different. She exuded warmth,” I say, thinking back. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but something about her drew me in. Like I was supposed to be there talking to her. I felt like it had to be mutual, that’s how strong it was. So I walked up to her and tried to introduce myself. But as soon as I got within three feet, two goons in suits and earpieces came up and ran interference like I was trying to assassinate her or something. I figured they had it wrong and tried to catch her eye, let her call off her bodyguards. So I lingered, moved a little closer, and said hello. Finally, she looked at me, and instead of a smile or even an acknowledgement, she squinted like she wasn’t even sure I was human. The people she was with asked if she knew me, and this was her response: ‘Don’t know. Don’t wanna know.’ Her friends all laughed and one of them tried to tell me off. She said, ‘My girl doesn’t need one more dude trying to sleep with her, use her, and sell his story to the tabloids, thank you very much. Byeeee.’ Then the bodyguards moved between us, and she laughed and turned away like I was some kind of gnat who’d dared to enter her orbit.” Thinking about it now, it still stings, but less so. “Or at least that’s how it felt. Like I had no business presuming for even a second that I belonged in that crowd or that this beautiful woman would have any interest in me.”
Carson clears his throat and nods. I can tell he’s getting ready to say something profound, or at least logical, and it’s going to piss me off. “Is it possible…” He pauses, takes a sip of his beer, and looks at the ceiling as though this conversation requires serious rumination. He’s just taunting me, but glutton for punishment that I am, I hang on every pause and wait to hear all of what he has to say. “Is there a chance that she was with someone that night? Not looking for a hookup? Not interested in meeting random guys at a party? In other words, maybe it had nothing to do with you?”
“That’s not how I took it. All I did was try to say hello and I was judged and kicked to the curb.”
He gets a rueful expression and rubs his beard like a professor. “Can you blame her? Don’t you remember that dudes kept doing that to her? There was a period of time when you couldn’t look at People magazine without some tell-all from a dude she dated and dumped. You might want to be a little less butt hurt and man up.”
“I’m not butt hurt. I just don’t like her very much. And I had no idea you were such a fan of gossip magazines.”
He shrugs.
“Whatever. It was her, the parties, LA, all of it. All making it clear I had no business there. Obviously, LA didn’t want to have anything to do with some kid from a small rural town with a few ideas.”
“Was that really the issue? Do you think LA cares one way or another about anyone’s hopes and dreams?”
He sounds like my sister. I swear, if he starts talking about manifesting shit, I’m leaving this bar. “Why is everyone so fixated on hopes and dreams?”
“Who’s everyone?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
He huffs a laugh and drains his beer. “Sounds like you took it all personally in typical Archer Corbett fashion.”
I shrug, not seeing the point of rewinding the past and seeing it differently. “It just summed up everything that was wrong with LA and me trying to make something of myself there. It was all a pretty facade that looked welcoming and beautiful, but when you got up close, it was just a smoke screen. She symbolized everything I hated there. ”
“Okay, but now, in hindsight, can you sort of see that maybe, possibly, the woman who’s here now planning a wedding at Buttercup Hill isn’t the demon you’ve made her out to be? Maybe it was just circumstances and maybe you shouldn’t blame her for all the ways you think LA did you dirty?”
I hate how rational he is. Shaking my head at my own stubbornness, I admit, “I guess I hold on to shit.”
“Just a little.”
“What difference does it make? One year in LA, and I ended up back here. Only difference is that now she shows up here to get married.”
A gruff sigh sputters out. I have zero time in my schedule for anything other than making wine and finding new ways to create expensive limited-edition vintages to help us turn a profit.
I just need to show Ella a few things and send her on her way so she can do what every other bride does when planning a wedding here—focus on centerpieces and wedding cakes.
I don’t care if she’s a closet science nerd looking to make small talk about wine making. She’s coming to the wrong guy. Like suggesting the Grinch host a Christmas party. Beatrix knows it, and yet everyone is so cowed by the Hollywood royal that they’re bending over backward to grant her every wish.
Problem is I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since she showed up here. It doesn’t help that Carson made me dredge up old grudges, which now seem pretty hollow after airing them out. Then again, that never mattered much to me in the past when I grabbed onto some bit of resentment. Once I got mad, I stayed mad.
I signal the bartender for our check and dig my wallet out of my pocket.
“Yeah, that stings a little bit, for sure. But just remember, now she’s on your home turf. You make the rules, and if you don’t feel like dealing with her, walk away. Let your sisters handle things. And before you know it, the whole thing will be behind you, and she’ll be gone.”
I nod, knowing he’s right. I’m wondering why the idea of Ella being gone doesn’t make me as happy as it should. And I’m realizing a small part of me doesn’t hate the idea of giving her a tour in the morning. I try to ignore that part.