Chapter 12
MILLION DOLLAR CRYBABY
Heath
Cricket’s wearing form-fitting jeans, a light purple Makepeace Cellars T-shirt that hugs her breasts and is short enough that I get an occasional glimpse of a slice of her belly as we work, and a pair of my work gloves since she left the smaller pair she’d been using to garden back at the house.
And she’s trying too hard.
And I’m trying too hard to remember she’s a grown-ass woman who doesn’t need me to tell her she’s trying too hard.
She’s not my responsibility.
Fuck knows I suddenly feel like the rest of this place is.
Going broke.
I knew things were tight, but not broke tight.
We can’t go broke.
This place—it’s home to too many of us who need it.
Which means more events, unless someone else comes up with a better plan that Pip will agree to.
“How big of a trellis do you think the garden needs?” Cricket asks me as she digs through a pile of wooden grapevine posts. Some are broken, discarded from the vineyard when they wore out. Some are brand-new—or, I should say, never used.
They’re pretty old at this point, but it’s cool in the fermentation building here, so they’ve been preserved well.
Apparently Dean never threw anything away if he thought it might have another use, and somewhere along the line, the broken stakes got mixed with the new piles in this storeroom off the main fermentation room, even though I personally would’ve put them in the barn.
Probably Pip’s doing.
By all accounts, their marriage was volatile.
“Depends on what you want to do with it.”
“California plants are a lot different from Illinois plants. I grew up in Chicago. I mean, south of Chicago, but everyone calls it Chicago because they think the whole state is Chicago, which is silly when you consider that St. Louis is also a major city that touches the state, except, of course, it’s a lot smaller. ”
I spot another relatively fresh-looking stake in the haphazard pile and grab it. Light’s not great in here—no windows, and it smells vaguely musty and dead, but Cricket hasn’t complained about that.
“Samantha’s good with plants,” I tell her. “She can help you with a general direction for what should go in near which other thing, and then we’ll get the trellis the right size and position.”
Her deep brown eyes connect with mine for the first time since—honestly, probably since the first day I saw her. “The vines won’t be growing up it in time for the wedding though, will they?”
“Might surprise you.”
“I hope they do. But if they don’t, maybe we do a temporary paint job on it.
Hearts and stuff. Or, you know, whatever the happy couple wants.
” She drops her gaze again, using her forearm to brush aside the flyaways on her forehead that have come out of the ponytail holding her highlighted dark hair back.
I grunt in agreement.
Not usually much of a grunter, but if I have to be here with Cricket, I’m going to do some grunting.
Started realizing that she’s been actively avoiding me.
And that pisses me off.
I might not like the constant vibrating energy that she seems to have, and the way she tries too hard, or the way we’ve both dealt with parents with ridiculous expectations, or the way Lav is clearly attached despite us not knowing how long Cricket will be here, or how she’s bringing up old memories of the chaos that happened when Ava got sick, but I’ve been nice, dammit.
Even when it’s been hard, I’ve been nice.
“Did you have a nice wedding?” she asks.
The question startles me.
Probably shouldn’t, but it does.
“Courthouse wedding,” I tell her.
She tilts her head at me.
“Ava was pregnant. Her parents were—her parents. Mine had travel on the books. Made sense to do it quick and easy.”
Pissed her parents off.
Added bonus, looking back on it.
“Did you wish you had a bigger wedding?” Cricket asks.
“No.”
“My sisters had massive weddings. Like, you would’ve thought they were celebrities.
And I’m not saying that just because I hadn’t been to many weddings.
I was still in high school for both of them.
They’re…older than me. But I’ve been to a lot of weddings since then.
Once, I did a lifestyle piece on a couple who got married at ValuKart, and I got to go to their wedding.
Since they met in the cheese section, a big cheese corporation sponsored everything, and they brought a cow into the store and the justice of the peace wore a cheese costume and all of the guests went home with cheddar and gouda. ”
I’d say that’s weird, but I live at a closed winery with a commune of women who’ve gone viral for everything under the sun.
Nothing will ever be weird to me again.
She bites her lip and looks at me.
“What?” I say.
“I just caught myself about to apologize for talking so much about my job since my parents always said it was unsophisticated. But I—you were right. And I’ve been meaning to say thank you for that. For telling me—for telling me what I needed to hear. About how they should be more supportive.”
I grunt and nod.
And when she doesn’t say anything else, I realize I need to fill the silence. “Did you enjoy your job?” I ask.
She hesitates, then nods while she pulls another stake out of the pile. “It felt like cheating to enjoy it as much as I did. If I’d been an investigative reporter embedded in a war zone, they would’ve—”
She cuts herself off as I shift a look at her.
“Right,” she says. “Don’t ruin the day talking about people you’ll never satisfy, Cricket.”
“Talk about whatever you want.”
“It’s just—if Lav told you she wanted to be the first goat herder in a colony on Mars, I mean, after she grows up and is supporting herself and doing what she loves, you’d tell her to go for it.
That’s—that’s not something I ever had. I got yelled at for things she does every day, and I live right under your house and I can hear you walking and sometimes talking too—not like loud enough to hear what you say, just like, the sound of voices…
I don’t listen in, I swear. But you never yell or tell her she can’t do things. ”
“Yelling rarely makes situations better.”
“I’m just saying, I didn’t have that. I didn’t even know it was an option.
And that—it makes me want to be a better person.
And it also makes me so mad that my parents were so strict.
I was a good kid. I really was. But I still got told I couldn’t say shit when I was like, seventeen.
Not that you cuss or like she does or anything, but I’d like to think if she did, you’d be like, yep, exploring your words, not like you’re a terrible person for ever letting those letters leave your mouth in that order. ”
I let her go on, nodding and pulling stakes out of the pile, wanting to put a fist through her parents’ faces.
And then getting irritated with myself for violence being my first instinctive answer to solving this for her.
I don’t have to solve this for her.
But I feel like I do.
Like I need to give her a second childhood on top of doing everything in my power to help Mabel pull off this wedding and save the winery from foreclosure, all while still having enough time for the jobs on my calendar and for Lav.
Lav, who actually comes first.
“Sorry. Rambling again. Wait. Not sorry. Thank you for letting me ramble. Anyway. I hope we can do a really nice wedding for Caro and Mike.”
“It’ll be memorable.”
She winces, then eyes me like she wants to ask something, but doesn’t want to say it out loud.
“Mike—he’s Michael Morgan Stone,” I say, taking a guess at what she wants to know, considering I spotted her listening in long before Mabel did.
She makes the tiniest squeak, which I expect is as much as she’s able to stifle the real reaction she wants to have.
“He’s a regular dude. Don’t get too excited.”
“The real Michael Morgan Stone?”
“Yes.”
“The one who’s neck and neck with Simon Luckwood for that annual World’s Sexiest Leading Man award?”
“Won it. Saw the headlines on a magazine at the grocery store.”
She squeaks again, then digs back into the wood pile to grab another stake.
“I’ll be cool. Totally chill. I’ve interviewed celebrities before.
This is more or less the same. Except he’s a little above the D-list celebrities I interviewed.
And clearly without the interviewing. I’m never doing on-camera interviews again.
And I won’t betray anyone’s trust here. I just—he did my very favorite movie ever when I was in college. ”
“Strawberry Lemonade Sunshine?”
“Yes! Do you love it too?”
“Mabel does.”
“Ooh. That makes sense. I’ve seen her watching it at least twice this week.”
“Surprised you haven’t heard her quote it yet.”
“It’s so quotable! Eloise, darling, when a duck clucks and a chicken waddles, it’s time to step away from the coffee.”
If she says so.
Overheard Olivia and Samantha saying the quotes aren’t Mabel’s favorite part though.
The scene where you see Mike’s ass is.
Which I will not be telling the happy couple. Or myself ever again.
“You’ve met him before?” Cricket asks.
“Stayed where you’re staying a time or two when they’ve been out to visit Ginny.”
She makes that squeak again and leaps back from the stake pile.
“I washed the sheets,” I add dryly. “Don’t get too excited.”
“Mouse.”
Shit goddammit fucking hell.
Add that to the list.
Especially if this wedding is the first of many events.
Or even if it’s not.
People come to a winery, they want to see how the wine gets made.
Even if it’s not getting made here at Makepeace anymore.
“Happens in old buildings.” I take another trellis post from the pile, deem it worthy, and set it with the others.
She shudders.
“Why we got Fluffy,” I add. “For all the good that’s done.”
She doesn’t laugh at my joke.
Not a surprise.
Also, it’s not true.
We got Fluffy just after Ava died, when our almost-four-year-old daughter found her behind the tasting room. The cat was the only thing that she’d hug, so the cat stayed to get hugged.