Chapter Five Memphis
Chapter Five
Memphis
The crowd outside the restaurant makes me smile, and I slip through the couples and families waiting to be seated. Saturday nights have been our busiest nights since we opened, but I can feel the difference as we begin to creep into harvest season.
Every year as we begin to pluck the grapes—first the whites, then the reds—the vineyard gets an influx of visitors. More tours are scheduled. We do a handful of those foot-crushing sessions, catering to those wanting to recreate that old I Love Lucy episode. We sell more bottles during September and October than we do during the entire rest of the year.
Even though I hoped for that business to translate to the restaurant, I wasn’t sure what would happen. So it’s encouraging to see that the wave of guests wanting to visit the property are interested in spending time dining with us as well.
When I walk through the front door, everything looks clean and organized. The hosts are seating new guests, and the servers are bustling around with trays of food. Not wanting to get in anyone’s way, I only poke my head into the kitchen for a second. The hustle and bustle looks like the controlled chaos I’ve come to expect as several chefs move about with efficiency. I spot Wes in the corner, arranging plates on a tray, then giving directions to a server as she hoists it on her shoulder.
All in all, it seems like a smooth operation tonight, and I slip back into the dining room, tucking my hands in my pockets, just watching.
Until my eyes lock on the redhead at the wine bar.
I huff out an irritated breath as she smiles and says something to Mira.
Does she really plan to be here every day? Because two nights in a row is too much.
Too much of her little smiles and her sass and her distracting laugh.
Before I can think better of it, I stride toward the bar without a clue as to what I intend to do once I get there.
It’s evident when Vivian sees me. Her eyes flash and her chin tilts up in obstinance, bringing my attention to her long, graceful neck.
The same neck that I placed a long, wet kiss on less than twenty-four hours ago.
She’s sexy as fuck, and it’s infuriating.
“I’m surprised to see you back here,” I say, coming to a stop next to where she sits at the end.
“I don’t know why,” she replies, a smile on her face that is nowhere near as genuine as the one she was giving Mira seconds ago. “I told you I was in town for a couple of weeks.”
“Yes, you did say that. But I didn’t think that ‘in town’ meant you’d be setting up a tent in our restaurant. Surely there are other places far more interesting for you to spend your time.”
My eyes briefly connect with Mira’s. She’s standing completely still, frozen in the act of uncorking a bottle, watching us with curiosity.
“Mira, I think the gentleman in the green jacket needs a top-up.”
She blinks, then gives me a sheepish grin before stepping away toward the other end of the bar and giving us at least the false impression of privacy.
“That was rude.”
“It was rude of me to point out that my bartender was neglecting her job? I disagree.”
“She was hardly neglecting her job, though it’s unsurprising that you disagree with me, since that seems to be all you’re capable of.”
My eyes narrow as she swirls her glass of wine against the oak wood of the bar top, one of her eyebrows higher than the other as she stares right back, her lips tilted up at one side.
“Instead of gracing us with your presence every evening, I’d be happy to have a crate of wine delivered to wherever you’re staying,” I say, redirecting us entirely. “If you’ll let me know where, I can have it dropped off with you tomorrow.”
Her smirk grows, and I want to kick myself when I realize how long I’ve been watching her mouth.
“You know, I could do that. But what fun would that be when I could be here instead. Gracing you with my presence, as you so kindly referred to it.”
I take a step closer to her, dipping my voice low to make sure the woman two seats over can’t hear me. “You really plan to blow hundreds of dollars a night sitting at this bar just in an attempt to rattle my cage?” I ask. “Because I’m sure there are better ways to waste your money.”
“Oh, honey. I have bottomless pockets and a tendency to provoke. You have no idea the lengths I’m willing to go to rattle your cage .” Then she reaches out and adjusts the collar of my shirt, her finger gently tracing along the skin of my neck. “Nothing about flustering you the way I so obviously do could ever be a waste.”
The touch of her skin on mine sends a shiver down my spine, and my nostrils flare. And when her eyes flick to my lips for barely a second, almost faster than I can even record that it’s happened, the back of my neck grows hot.
God, she’s exasperating.
I want to kiss that fucking smirk right off her face.
“You end up at the Firehouse?”
The sound of my sister’s voice is like nails on a chalkboard, and I take a step back, belatedly realizing how close I was hovering to Vivian.
As much as I hate being interrupted, my family’s ability to intrude on every single interaction I’ve had with Vivian is actually appreciated.
“Yeah,” Vivian responds, her shoulders relaxing, the smirk on her face morphing back into that smile she had given Mira a few minutes ago. “You were right. Errol is a sweetheart. And I could literally drown in that tub and go out a happy woman. I can’t wait to have a night where I set up candles and soft music and ... soak my body.”
Murphy groans. “We don’t have any tubs in our house, and it is a crying shame. I’m so jealous.”
“Well, you’re welcome to come by any time to use it.” Vivian’s eyes shift back to me. “What about you, Memphis? You a man who loves a good bath? You’re also welcome to come by and ... soak for a little while. You seem kind of tense.”
I roll my eyes. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some things to handle.”
And before Vivian or Murphy can say anything else, I turn and book it through the dining room.
Past the kitchen, the hosts, and the crowd outside.
I don’t stop walking until I’ve made it back to the house.
But then, once I’m there, I’m alone with my thoughts.
What a horrible place to be.
I’ve never met someone who has been able to crawl under my skin the way Vivian does.
Normally that’s meant as an insult, but in this instance, I almost can’t help but acknowledge that it’s a compliment. What did she call it? A tendency to provoke?
The woman is ... fucking stubborn. And maddening. And it makes me hard when she volleys back.
I’m a bossy guy. I know that. And most of my relationships in life revolve around work, so that means that when I tell people to do something, they do it.
And Vivian . . . does not.
She has no intention of giving me what I demand, yet it somehow feels like she’s dangling everything I could ever want just inches away from where I’m standing.
It is a heady duality, and I hate how much I enjoy it.
Refusing to spend any more time tonight thinking about Vivian, I head toward my office. I need to finalize my selections for the temporary hand applications from the ones our HR manager sent my way.
On most nights, I help staff the restaurant. I fill in where it’s needed—like last night at the bar, or last week when the kitchen needed extra hands and I stood at the pass to expedite orders.
Tonight, though, my presence isn’t needed. Things are running smoothly, and I don’t need to spend my night arguing with Vivian at the bar.
Even though that’s exactly what I want to do.
When I stop in the kitchen for a snack before getting back to work, I find Micah, my father, my aunt Sarah, and our two full-time hands, Naomi and Edgar, at the table eating dinner.
“Memphis!” my aunt calls out to me, cheerfully waving me over. “Are you joining us?”
I pause for a second, considering the work waiting for me.
“It’s been months since you’ve had dinner with us. We’re having chicken chili.”
I step all the way into the room, ultimately deciding that the applications can wait.
“It hasn’t been months ,” I tell her, grabbing a bowl off the counter. “Maybe a few weeks.”
Moving quickly, I dish out some food and take a seat at the table next to Edgar, then dive into my meal as conversation at the table swirls around me.
For as long as I can remember, we’ve had family dinner with the employees that work the land and live in the cabins on the other side of the property. The full-time staff has grown over the past twenty or so years, expanding from just the family and vineyard team to include people who do things like marketing, compliance, and customer service. But the vineyard crew has always been like extended family.
When I was a child, there were maybe fifteen people around this dinner table at any given time. My aunt and my grandmother always made enough to feed our family, the full-time crew, and the hands that took on longer stints of work during busier months.
During the two long months of harvest season, trays overflowing with food are laid out on the counter at every meal, and a line of temp hands stretches out the door. People know that they get treated well when they work for us, and it’s a point of pride for our family. One we won’t soon let go of.
“There’s nothing so important that we can’t all take time to be together for a meal at the end of the day.” It was something my grandmother always said, and something my aunt has echoed a few times over the years.
The sentiment was actually what inspired the restaurant, the idea coming to me after a busy day when I was sitting at this very table. I figured that coming together for a meal might actually be something important enough that it could save the vineyard.
Ironic, then, that the very thing inspired by these dinners is also the responsibility that so regularly keeps me away from them.
I don’t really come to family dinner anymore because I’m always at the restaurant in the evenings. I’m up with the sun, sitting at my desk or moving around the property, keeping on top of all the moving parts that keep this place functioning while simultaneously trying to figure out what we can cut or trim back to save extra here and there.
It would be nice if I could take a break and join everyone and revel in some of the camaraderie that makes the burden of this job feel less daunting. Unfortunately, that’s not the reality of where we’re at right now.
It’s exhausting. And lonely.
But it has to be done.
“How’re things going at the restaurant?”
The question jerks me back to the table, and I look to my aunt, finding her gaze on me, soft and open.
“Good,” I answer. “They’re going good. Numbers have been staying up from summer, which is great since most restaurants have a falloff during autumn for a little bit. The harvest is a big draw, so it’s nice to see the impact it’s having. We might actually increase the number of tours we offer each week through Thanksgiving.”
She nods, a bright smile on her face. “That sounds wonderful. And how’s it going for Murphy?”
I blink. “What do you mean?”
My aunt laughs. “I mean ... how’s your sister doing, leading the front of house? I ask her all the time, but I don’t head over there too often, so I don’t really know.”
Sitting back in my chair, I cross my arms, thinking it over. “She’s doing great, actually. The servers know the menus and do a great job of upselling the wines. The hosts are friendly and competent.” I shrug. “She’s amazing at things that are forward facing, so ... it’s been going really well.”
Sarah beams. “I love hearing that.” She reaches out and pats my hand lovingly. “Great job, Memphis.” Then she turns and asks Naomi about her mother, the two of them falling into an easy conversation that reflects years of friendship.
One by one, the rest of the table gets up, having already been mostly finished with their meals before I joined them, until it’s just me and Dad and Sarah left.
I glance at my dad briefly, then at my aunt. “Hey, can I get your opinion on something?” I ask her.
She nods. “Sure.”
My father taps the table lightly. “I’ll take that as my cue to head out. Have a good night.”
Irritation floods me at the fact my dad is bowing out at the first sign of work-related talk, but I push it aside.
“What’s up, honey?”
“I’ve been thinking about buying a printer and moving our labeling to an in-house process,” I say, then launch into the details that I tried to share with my father this morning.
Unlike my dad, my aunt gives me her full attention, asking insightful questions and providing her feedback in pros and cons.
“It seems like you’ve already thought of everything,” she says eventually. “My only real concern would be where you plan to actually set up this operation and how it will work in conjunction with the bottling.”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on the table. “Well, the printing could happen anywhere. In the office building conference room. The warehouse. In my office, even. It’s more about having the labels ready when the truck gets here.”
When most people think of a winery, they assume that bottling happens on the property. But equipment for a bottling line is crazy expensive, and our winery isn’t large enough to warrant owning machinery like that, especially when we only bottle a few days out of the year. So we do what a lot of medium-size wineries do since we’re too small to own the equipment and too large to bottle by hand. We hire a mobile bottling line to set up shop.
We provide the wine, the bottles, and the labels, and they provide the machine and a few people to keep it running. The bottles get boxed up as they’re pulled off the line, and the boxes get delivered to our warehouse or loaded straight onto trucks that head out for distribution.
It’s a cost I’ve been trying to figure out how to eliminate, since it cuts so much from our profit right off the top, but until I can find a better option, it is what it is.
The labels, however, are another story. That is a cost I can minimize.
“If you know how it’s all going to work, it sounds like you’re making a great decision.”
Something settles in my chest that I didn’t realize was tight.
“You think so?”
She grins at me and pats my hands, something she did often over the years when I was a child and still does now, even though I’m definitely not a kid anymore. “If you believe it’s the right decision, I’m on board. Because I believe in you .”
When I slip back into my office later that night, I think it all over again. And again, and again. I run the numbers. Again. I make accommodations for things going wrong, for messing up labels, for issues with the printer we buy. I run it until I’ve gotten to a place where there is no doubt behind my decision.
Then I send off my final email to the sales rep I received the quote from, telling him I’m ready to move forward with the purchase.
But my conversation with Sarah is still a little thing flittering around in the back of my mind, even as I move on to the temp hand applications.
My aunt is a special woman, and I often look to her for advice. She’s been around for most of my life, my dad and my siblings and I having moved back to the vineyard when I was seven or so. It was nice to have a mothering figure around during those days, when the world felt so dark and nothing was right.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been looking to her more and more in relation to business things. Unlike my father, who left the vineyard when he was in his late teens, wanting nothing to do with it, my aunt loved everything about the family business. She stayed and worked the land and helped my grandfather run things for years.
Until my mother passed away and my father returned, three children in tow.
Then, he took back his place as the eldest son and started working with my grandfather. My aunt took a back seat, spending a lot of her time, especially during those early days, helping my grandmother with the three of us. I mean, we were so young, and we’d lost our mother. Micah was barely a few weeks old, but Murphy was five and had all these big emotions and wanted constant attention.
They had their work cut out with us.
When I was a teenager, I started working the fields with my dad and grandfather. But it was my aunt who truly understood the business. So it makes sense—at least to me—that I look to her now. As I try everything I can to keep us above water.
Sometimes I wonder if she should have been the one in charge, if that would have made all the difference. Or whether this time of hardship was bound to hit us at some point, no matter what.