Chapter 8 #3
They meandered their way through booth after booth of different vendors all selling assortments and collections of various vintage wares.
They chatted here and there, pointing out items they found interesting to the other.
Annie, she learned, loved furniture, chairs specifically.
According to her, they just don’t make them like they used to.
Max was surprised by Annie’s perceptiveness, especially how easily she picked up on Max’s preferences for nearly everything.
By the fifth booth, she was pointing items out to her before Max even had the chance to express interest.
“Oh! This is neat.” Annie’s excited voice grabbed Max’s attention from the rack of vintage band T-shirts she had been looking at. She turned to see a metal and glass pitcher in the shape of a duck in her hands. “It’s a decanter,” Annie said as if it were obvious.
Max held out her hands, taking the item from Annie, enjoying the barest touch of their fingers.
She inspected the pitcher closely. Now that she was examining it, the decanter was pretty cool and something she had never seen.
She liked the uniqueness, and even more so that Annie had picked it out for her.
“Excellent find,” she said, holding on to the decanter as they continued to work their way through the mill.
They made their way to the second floor of the building, which consisted of several interconnected rooms with meandering narrow hallways and nonsensical turns.
They laughed after the third time Annie led them in the wrong direction in search of the stairs as they attempted to make their way towards the check out counter, items in hand.
“I’m so glad you ended up being free today,” Annie said as they carefully made their way down creaking wooden steps.
“Me too. I was kind of surprised you weren’t working today. Did you take a mental health day?”
Annie went quiet as the mood in the space between them shifted slightly.
Her voice was shy when she spoke, a stark contradiction to the confidence Max was growing accustomed to.
“Not exactly.” She sighed. “I was only approved for remote work through the end of the year. I ended up handing in my resignation yesterday. I think I hit the career portion of my proverbial junk drawer exploration. Time to sort through it and see what’s left.
” She smiled at the man behind the counter as she laid her items on the glass surface, looking back at Max with those deep blue eyes. “Add your stuff. This one’s on me.”
“You just told me you’re unemployed.”
“I have a good amount of savings. I promise. This is the retail therapy part of my healing timeline.”
Max rolled her eyes, uncomfortable with the idea of Annie covering this expense for her, but she had to trust that if Annie was offering, it meant she really wanted to do it.
“Who am I to stand in the way of your healing?”
Annie went back and forth with the cashier, managing to haggle an extra five dollars off the price of the decanter because of a microscopic nick in one of the sterling silver stamped feathers that would have gone unnoticed by anyone else.
As they climbed back into Annie’s car, Max found herself excited to see where the rest of the day would take them.
They ended up stopping at a few more antique malls and a roadside farm stand selling maple syrup. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon when they arrived back onto Max’s street, and Max was hit with the feeling of not quite being ready for the afternoon with Annie to end.
“Want to come in and take this for a test run with me?” she said, holding up the duck-shaped vessel.
Annie glanced at her as she parked the car along the curb in front of the old Queen Anne Victorian house Max called home.
“I’d like that.” She smiled, and for a moment, neither of them moved.
“Cool,” Max breathed. Swiftly following up with, “I mean, great, yeah, park here. It’s easier than dealing with the death trap driveway.” She grinned sheepishly, unbuckling her seatbelt and hopping around the car, awkwardly navigating the piles of melting slush on the curb.
She led Annie up the cleared flagstone steps, pausing to make a joke as they reached the bottom of another staircase. “I hope you prepared adequately for the elevation gain.” God, that was dumb. What was she doing?
But Annie laughed. “I was not, but I think I’ll manage,” she said, reaching out to place her hand gently on Max’s forearm. She wanted to melt into that touch, but they had stairs to climb.
When they reached the top, Max fumbled with her keys before unlocking the door, letting Annie into her apartment.
“Welcome,” she said, stepping inside and sliding off her shoes to place them on the boot tray next to the door, Annie following her lead. “Want the tour? It’s pretty short, I’m afraid.”
“I’d love it.” Annie’s voice was sweet as she slid her coat off her shoulders; Max reached out for it instinctively, placing it on a hook.
“Well, this is obviously the kitchen.” She gestured around the room they were standing in.
“And that’s the dining area.” She pointed to the table and chairs opposite them, then motioned for Annie to follow her down a small hallway that opened into a large room with slanted ceilings and lots of natural light.
“Living room,” she said, steering them back down the hall past two doors.
“Bathroom and laundry—that one I share with Lynn; there’s a door on the other side connecting to her top floor,” she explained as they re-entered the kitchen.
“It’s small, but it works for me.” Max shrugged as she moved towards the wine rack mounted to the wall, fingers trailing over dark green glass bottles, selecting one and sliding it free from the metal confines.
“It’s perfect,” Annie said sweetly, settling into one of the chairs at the table in the dining area. “Suspicious lack of bedroom though.”
Max fumbled mid-twist of the corkscrew as she worked the cork free from the ten-year-old Australian Shiraz she had selected for them.
“There is obviously one of those, smart ass.” She tossed back her playful retort, resuming the twisting movements as she spun around, smirk locked in place.
A pop accompanied the cork’s release from the bottle followed by a splash as she poured the deep red liquid into the decanter to breathe.
“It’s through that door.” She gestured over her shoulder as she set the decanter on the table between them along with two thin-stemmed glasses.
“This needs to breathe for ten minutes.”
Annie raised a delicate blond eyebrow as she smirked. “However will we kill the time?”
Max’s cheeks burned at the way Annie was blatantly turning up the heat of the flirty undertone that had existed between them all day—hell, since the moment they met if she were being honest. Flirting back was something she had wanted to do—badly—but tried to hold off, desperately attempting to respect Annie’s healing process, but this was definitely an invitation to flirt. So she indulged a little bit.
“I have some ideas…” Max murmured, “but you know, working through your junk drawer is…important work, and I wouldn’t want to interfere with that…yet.”
She held her breath, hoping Annie picked up on the double meaning in her words: I want you, but I want you to set the pace.
Annie’s gaze shifted away from her, the slightest hint of pink on her cheeks, her eyes catching sight of the papers that littered the table. Max had sworn she had neatly stacked them, but the clutter before them told her otherwise.
“What are all these for?” Annie said briskly, her voice a little higher than it had been moments ago.
“Nothing, just some information I was putting together. I was supposed to meet with Willis Windsor to give a presentation and discuss making my wine expert position a bit more permanent, but he rescheduled. Again.” She couldn’t help the irritation that crept into her words.
“It’s annoying. I did all this work to prepare for this meeting.
I’m already nervous as hell, and he’s moved it twice on me.
I don’t know, it makes me feel like he doesn’t really value my time and what I’ve put into this already. ”
Max reached for the empty wine glass in front of her with her right hand, grabbing the decanter with her left. She poured the dark liquid into each of the glasses, handing one to Annie, holding the other as she leaned back in her chair, crossing one long leg over the other.
“Want to run through your presentation with me? I make a great test run audience. Plus I’m pretty good with numbers and business. If you want, I’m happy to give you feedback on any tweaks or improvements.”
Max considered her for a moment. “Yeah, that would actually make me feel better.” She rose to her feet and retrieved her laptop from the other room. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I don’t want to bore you—”
“It’s pretty hard to bore an accountant, and besides, I like this kind of stuff.”
“Okay, prepare to be wowed,” Max muttered, opening up the presentation.
She dove in, detailing all the ways over the last year she had improved club member satisfaction and retention with the service as well as building a network of trusted distributors, including relationships between McCallum-Windsor and other local businesses like Norwich Winery.
And to close out the whole thing, she had even collected glowing feedback from some of her favorite club patrons.
Annie listened intently, nodding along as Max worked her way through her slides, holding back her comments until Max finished. “What type of feedback do you want specifically?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Was it good? Did it get my point across? Did I miss anything?”
Annie scooted her chair closer, their shoulders touching gently as she moved the laptop towards her, taking control of the moment. “You did a great job, but I think there are a few areas where you could make this even stronger,” she said, already clicking away on the presentation file.