Chapter 17
brOMAGEDDON
Declan
Not going after Ginny is hell.
I want to follow her and ask if she’s okay and let her pet Flow until she feels better.
Something’s clearly wrong, but I have a job to do, so I stay at the sorter, pretending everything’s fine.
Everything isn’t fine though.
There’s something wrong with Ginny, and I have even bigger issues if that’s my top worry and not the text from Alex.
So when I take a break from sorting, instead of searching her out, I call him.
“What the hell?” is the first thing he says.
“Right? Shoresy’s goal last night was filthy.”
“Not what we’re talking about, asshole,” he replies.
Flow whimper-whines and plops down on my feet. She’s covered in grape juice after a bit of fun gone wrong, and she’s staring at me like she’d take this phone call for me if she could speak English instead of dog.
I glance out at the fields as I sigh, glad that I sat against the shady side of the building for this.
“It’s not—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“You went to her sister’s wedding? What the actual fuck?”
Knew this would happen eventually. I’ve been ignoring it, but after the news picked up on the story that Michael Morgan Stone married Caro Rhodes in a surprise ceremony here, someone finally put two and two together with the emergency calls from that night.
And they named me as the guy who saved the barn.
“Not what it looked like,” I say.
“Fucking looked like you’re still friends with the fucking family.”
“It was for a job.”
“Foxy goes to his best friend’s ex’s sister’s wedding? Foxy goes there?”
I rub my hand over my face.
“Can’t talk about it.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Oh, like you didn’t tell me you signed an endorsement deal with Quickie Lickie until the commercials were airing?” Never thought I’d know anyone doing commercials for a horribly named convenience store chain, but the commercial was fucking hilarious.
He grunts. “Where are you?”
“Undisclosed location.”
“Motherfucker. Are you—are you with her right now?”
“Dude.”
“If you’re putting her back on camera—”
“Wouldn’t do that.”
“Good. Because I don’t want that bitch getting any more publicity from me.”
“Don’t call her names.”
Silence lingers on the other end of the phone while Flow creeps impossibly closer to me, whimpering so softly I can feel it more than I can hear it.
“You’re happy now,” I add. “Really worth it to keep dwelling on the past?”
“It is when my best fucking friend is hanging out with the person who’s made the most embarrassing moment of my life go fucking viral again.”
“I’m not hanging out with anyone.” Lies lies lies.
But I have an NDA.
Can’t tell him.
Never been more grateful for that.
“Then what are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m doing a job. It’s this thing you have to get after you’re done playing hockey.”
He snorts. “You didn’t spend a dime of your salary the entire time you played. You don’t need a fucking job.”
“Still need a purpose.”
“And it’s doing reality TV like my shitty ex-girlfriend?”
It’s not often I want to punch my best friend, but today—yeah, today, I’d fuck up his face. “Documenting my life. For more followers than you have, asshole.”
He grunts.
Flow whines.
“So you’re back in the limelight,” I say, justifying keeping my secret with the rationalization that the wedding news would’ve leaked whether or not I was there. And I’m ignoring the panic that tells me he’ll be even more mad when the documentary airs.
That this truly could cost me the best friend I’ve ever had in my life.
Fuck.
I press a palm into my eye socket. “People being dicks?” I ask him.
“Got three endorsement offers in the last three days,” he mutters. “Irreverent greeting cards, tissues, and an anonymous glitter bomb company. They said I looked like a guy who’d want to know how to get revenge.”
I should laugh at that, but I’m annoyed on Ginny’s behalf.
And a little on Alex’s.
He’ll do it, and then he’ll play it up, but he’ll keep bitching about her to me.
“Think maybe it’s time you moved on?” I say quietly.
“I fucking moved on.”
“But you’re still mad about it.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“Ever ask her why she did it?”
“Are you for real right now?”
“Might help.”
“Did you ask her why she did it?”
“No.”
Technically.
I didn’t ask.
She volunteered the information.
Didn’t hug her the way I wanted to while she was talking either.
“Good. Because the way I remember it, you weren’t her biggest fan.”
I don’t correct him.
By all appearances, he’d be right.
“It’s baggage you don’t need to keep carrying,” I reply. “All I’m saying.”
“Tell that to the internet.”
“Tell that to the millions about to join your bank account when you take those endorsement deals.”
Flow whimper-whines again and crawls into my lap.
“Is that your dog?” Alex asks.
“She doesn’t like it when people are mean to me.”
He huffs. “Fuck.”
“Yeah. You’re being a fuck.”
More silence lingers while light stripes of clouds drift across the blue sky over the fields. I have a clear view of the stone house that I’m staying in, more rolling fields across the way, and the path up into the mountains separating Sonoma from Napa.
Been a lot of places this year, since I finally retired when my agent couldn’t find me a new team.
They’re all special in their own ways, but here—here’s gorgeous.
The vineyards.
The mountains.
The architecture.
The weather.
“You doing okay?” Alex asks after a long pause.
“Eh. Been better, been worse.”
“Your TV show—that’s really happening?”
“Yep.”
“Good. You deserve it, man.”
“Thanks.”
“But I swear on my great-grandma’s peach cobbler recipe, if you’re with her and you’re giving her another chance at being famous, you’ll wake up with cow shit in your bed every night for the rest of your life.”
I bite my tongue again.
Ginny avoided cameras as much as she could the entire time Alex dated her. They were together for six months before she’d let him take a selfie with her, and even then, she made him swear up and down that he wouldn’t post it to his socials.
She got a little bit of coverage for dating him—impossible to avoid it entirely—but she never sought it out.
And while she should’ve realized people would be recording his wedding, she didn’t ask for people to post their videos of her trying to stop it either.
“Nice game last night,” I say instead of telling him to get therapy like I want to, and we spend the next ten minutes catching up on hockey instead of talking about Ginny.
I don’t feel any better when we hang up.
Maybe it’s that I’m lying to the guy who’s been by my side since I was eighteen.
Or maybe it’s that I don’t like how hung up he is on the past.
He’s a good dude. Leads with his heart most of the time. Works hard. Loyal to a fault until he has reason not to be.
I get why he’ll never like Ginny.
But I dislike it when I think about how long I’ve been lying to him about my own feelings.
About how I don’t feel like I can tell my best friend the truth about his ex.
And that’s on me as much as it’s on him.
Can’t solve it today though, so instead, I open a browser on my phone and search for the nearest pottery place.
The way Ginny ran out of the sorting room earlier today like she was allergic to grapes—it brought out an old memory of the first holiday party after Alex and I went pro.
The wives and girlfriends were giving her a wide berth. I heard one of them whisper to another that she wondered if Ginny was going to turn over the table holding the chocolate fountain, and then I realized Ginny’d heard it too.
She fled the room.
Alex didn’t notice.
I told the two women who’d been whispering to not judge Ginny by stuff she did under orders as a kid, then headed to the bar and had more to drink than I should’ve.
I didn’t check on her.
Not on purpose.
I did leave the party though and accidentally followed in her footsteps, finding her a few blocks away, staring into the window of a pottery gallery with a look of desperate longing on her face.
Like she wanted the mugs and plates and bowls in the window to be her friends.
I’d been just drunk enough to want to hug her and kiss her and tell her she deserved better, but sober enough to stop myself and text Alex instead that his girlfriend was hanging out solo down the street from the party.
Watching out for her the only way I knew how. The only way I could.
Here, she doesn’t need me to watch out for her.
Here, she has her friends. The family kind of friends.
But I’d still like to know that she’s okay.
That she’s not feeling left out.
Left behind.
Maybe she was triggered by the cameras and I’m overthinking this.
Cricket steps out of the fermentation building, and I flag her down.
“All done for the day?” I ask.
She stifles a yawn and nods. “We should be able to finish tomorrow. And then we cross our fingers that the storm coming in isn’t heavy.”
There are still four varieties to pick.
Mabel and Cricket and Winona spent some time today discussing options.
Two of the fields—the Riesling and the Syrah—are close enough that they could be picked this week and still make pretty good wine, but the merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes need more time on the vine.
If the storm’s as big as they think it’ll be, the sugar-to-water ratio in the grapes will be less than ideal, but it’s still apparently better than getting an early harvest.
Wine-making is complicated. I knew I’d learn a lot being here, but the process fascinates me in ways I hadn’t expected.
There’s so much chance and luck with the weather and growing conditions, and then the choices to be made about how to pick and crush and which barrels to use and fermentation time with and without skins and on and on and on.
“Everyone hitting the sack early?” I ask Cricket.
“Most everyone. Dori and Mabel and I will be up late checking the grapes and the forecast every hour.”
Dammit.
Dammit dammit dammit.
Any other winery, any other full-length documentary, I’d be all about what I have to say.
But Ginny’s not at any other winery.
Ginny’s here.
I want to see her.
I do.
Full truth.
But— “I’ll give Shade a few hours of sleep, and then we’ll join you.”
She grins. “They couldn’t send a backup camera guy for poor Shade?”
“I’m a retired hockey player, not Michael Morgan Stone.”
“Ah. All the budget’s going to post-production to make you look good.”
My dog laughs.
As much as she ever laughs, that is. It’s like a snort with a doggy grin.
“You’re an asshole,” I tell Flow affectionately.
She pants happily and nudges my hand until I pet her. “Yes, I know, you’re my asshole.”
She snorts again.
Right in my face.
I’m laughing along with Cricket as I haul Flow fully into my lap and rub all over her sides. “That’s how it’s gonna be? Fine. Then you get tickles.”
And I get to keep feeling the heavy weight of what I want balanced with the fact that what I want could cost me the best friend I’ve ever had in my life.
Even when I know I won’t get what I want.
It’s enough that I’ve ever wanted Ginny.
That’s enough to cost me my friendship with Alex.
So I need to get my focus on the game.
And the game is recording this documentary and getting on with my life.