Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Our army of Brett-killers storms the winery like it’s Satan’s toilet. I’ve never seen so many people viciously scrubbing at the same time in all my life. Cleaning, relocating anything salvageable, then cleaning some more. This goes on at a fearsome pace all morning, with waves of people coming and going, until a delivery car shows up with a trunkful of pizza, and Marisol announces it’s lunchtime.
I’m about to have my third slice when my phone buzzes.
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
Can you meet me in 10 min at Fort Queens?
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
I heard about what happened.
The words hit me like bombs, setting off bursts of anger and hurt that electrify my blood. I shove the half-eaten slice of pizza in my mouth and leave it dangling there so I can type back.
Zoe
about what happened? Don’t you mean what you DID?!
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
Just give me a chance to explain.
Zoe
No, thank you. Unless you’re going to tell me you’ll fix everything so that my family’s vineyard won’t be driven to financial ruin, I’m not interested.
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
I’m going to fix everything so that your family’s vineyard won’t be driven to financial ruin.
I blink at my phone’s screen, trying to process the words, then give up and thumbs-up her message instead.
“If I don’t come back in twenty minutes, call the cops,” I say to the feasting people camped on our patio. A few grunt in acknowledgment, which is good enough for me.
This time of day, the October sunlight hits the woods at an angle, illuminating the autumn foliage like it’s lit from within. I follow the old trail through the burning orange, until I find the remains of our wooden playhouse, Fort Queens. Its planks are gray and splintered from rain, and I run my finger across the fine rind of lichen coating its door.
“Hey.”
I nearly jump out of my skin. “ Jesus , Rachel!” I spin to find her, sitting in her vineyard’s old golf cart where it’s parked/crashed ten feet behind me off the trail, its fender in full contact with a tree.
Rachel takes a deep breath. “First of all, it was an accident. I didn’t even piece together what happened until Mom and Dad got your text this morning. I know it looks bad—”
“You’re on camera frantically stirring the infested wine like a witch at her cauldron.” I cross my arms. “It looks real bad.”
“Just listen!” She groans. “Earlier that day, when Chance, Mom, and Dad voted Charlaine back into the family business, they also promised her the money set aside for my expansion project.”
“The brewery?”
“Yes. Well, a microbrewery,” Rachel amends. “It’d be a restaurant, too, with a board game menu where folks could order beer and what games they’d like to play at their table. We’d even have a sommelier, but for games, where you’d tell them what you’re in the mood for, and they’d bring you the perfect game.” Rachel’s eyes have gone a bit starry talking about it, and my gut twinges for her on reflex. It’s a good idea. A great idea, even. And kudos to her because for once, it wasn’t my idea .
“After the meeting, I stopped by my brewer Ethan’s workshop to tell him everything was off. We were upset, and we started drinking all the beers he’d been working on for our microbrewery, and you saw the—the aftermath.”
“When you were shit-faced.”
“Well. Yes.” Rachel clears her throat. “I got a ride back to Into the Woods, thinking I’d beg Mom and Dad to change their minds, but then I remembered how Charlaine kissed you that morning at the soccer game, and I realized—you must not know about her plans to leave. You’d never endanger your vineyard by having a fling with your vintner, which meant you must’ve gone and fallen in love with her, not knowing all the while she was planning to leave you! I couldn’t believe she was screwing you over like that.” Rachel grips the cart’s steering wheel so hard her knuckles turn white. Her eyes flicker to mine. “You weren’t listening to my warnings, so I decided to tell you myself.”
That’s why Rachel came over, to warn me out of concern for my heart? My throat tightens.
“I had no clue Ethan had been experimenting with Brettanomyces in his workshop. If I’d gone looking for Chance or Mom and Dad like I’d planned, I would’ve infested our own winery instead. I just—happened to go to yours.”
“Then why the stirring? What were you doing to our wine, Rachel?”
Rachel covers her face with her hands. “I lost my keys, remember? When I dropped my purse?”
“In our wine ?”
Rachel nods. “At least, I thought so. I’d stumbled into that tote and knocked the cover off by accident, and when I went to put it back on, my keys slipped out of my purse into the wine. I was trying to find them with the stirring rod when y’all showed up.” She gestures at the parked golf cart she’s sitting in. “Carterella is stranded here until I do.”
I stare at her, trying to parse out the emotions on her face. Is that guilt or a convincing replica, meant to fool me into not suing her ass?
“Oh, come on , Zoe,” Rachel says, exasperated. “If I truly wanted to sabotage you, don’t you think I’d have done a better job at it? I’m not sloppy .”
Honestly, that’s occurred to me, too. From a childhood playing board games together, I know Rachel is cunning and ruthless, but that night, she literally knocked on all my doors before she let herself into the winery. The work of an amateur. Not Rachel.
I slide onto Carterella’s bench seat beside her and hold my head in my hands. “Goddammit. I believe you.”
“I’m really sorry, Zoe,” she says softly. “And I’m even sorrier that I’ve given you so many reasons to believe I’d do such a thing. I’ve talked it over with my family, and we all agree it’s only right that Into the Woods replaces all the base wine lost by the Brett infestation with our own. I know the terroir is different, but we had a great year, and Chance assures me that it’ll work for y’all’s purposes.”
I whip my head up. “Really?”
“I told you I had a plan to keep you from financial ruin.”
“Why?” The word falls in the forest like a dead tree, loaded and heavy. It’s all the why s wrapped into one, not just why she’s saving our asses now after being so resentful for doing that in the past, and Rachel knows it. Why did she abandon me?
“I could ask you the same thing.”
When I look at her, I feel such an amalgamation of feelings, of times long gone and worse, times never had. “What do you mean?”
Rachel sighs. “Why Charlaine, Zoe?” she says, meeting my gaze. “Why not me?”
My head rears back so hard it’s a good thing it’s attached to my neck. “Um,” I sputter, dumbfounded at the direction this has taken, “first of all, you’re not gay, Rachel, and second, you’re not gay , Rachel .” I wouldn’t speak so surely about someone’s sexuality if I didn’t know it with every fiber of my being, but Rachel is deeply straight. Her first crush was on Burt Reynolds. Burt Reynolds! He was probably sixty, and she was twelve, but she printed out pictures of that mustachioed alpha and plastered them all over her bedroom.
But … could I be wrong? Is there some connection between Burt Reynolds’s chest hair and eventually realizing you’re a lesbian?
“I know I’m straight!” Rachel’s eyes tear up. “You two have rubbed it in my face every chance you got!”
“You’ll have to explain yourself because I sincerely don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“When we were kids, it was me and you, always . I had nobody else, but it was okay because you liked me. Even though I had zero hand-eye coordination and played sports for shit, and I wasn’t pretty, and I was a huge nerd who chewed up her pencils and played board games and had a crush on Alex Trebek—”
“And Burt Reynolds,” I add, because now I can’t get those hairy chests striped with low toner lines out of my head.
“Do you know how hard it was, being in Charlaine Woods’s shadow? You were her fan, but I was her wannabe, the little sister who couldn’t compare. She was great at everything, and it all came so easily to her—she just was , and the way she was, was right .” Rachel swallows. “But I was all wrong. I thought that one day, I’d get to be just like her. I’d magically run faster, make the soccer team, look hot in shapeless Umbros, too.” She lets out a bitter laugh. “But I never did, and you saw all of that, knew I’d never be Charlaine, and you still loved me, Zoe. We were a united front on everything, even her. Especially her. She was perfect, and we were in awe of her together. Intimidated by her, together . But then she was outed, and I thought, wow, Laine’s finally gonna have to pay for being who she is. But even being a lesbian didn’t change a thing! Gilmer County in the aughts? Was she invincible or something, I mean, come on! ” Rachel clenches her fingers, then releases them one by one. “Laine has never, not once, experienced any repercussions for being who she truly is. She’s not stuck in a prison of her own unacceptable, unlikable, unpopular personality. She gets away with everything, and no matter what, everyone will always love her more than me.” Rachel’s eyes well up again. “Even my best friend.”
“I didn’t love her more than you, Rachel,” I say quietly. “Just overnight, you made hating Laine your number one priority, and all that hate squeezed out the best parts of you. You never wanted to play Settlers of Catan anymore or lay in the fields reading mysteries together. And I think”—my throat tightens—“I think you knew I was gay before I did. And when it started to show, you hated me for it.”
“I did,” Rachel admits, “but not because I hate gay people. I hated it because it felt like Charlaine was stealing you from my team and putting you on hers, because you’re right, I’m straight as hell! And I felt so incredibly”—she throws her hands in the air, searching for the right words—“ uncool . So dumb. So basic.” She looks down at her lap. “So left out.”
“You do know you’re in the majority, right? White, cis, heterosexual?”
“In the world of people I cared about, I wasn’t. I even tried it once.”
“Being gay?” My brow furrows. “You did not. With who?”
Rachel shrugs. “Some girl on my hall freshman year at UGA, but her mouth felt … I don’t know. Too small.”
“Too small?” I laugh, and even the corner of Rachel’s mouth quirks up. I’ve heard many explanations for why women aren’t attracted to other women, but lacking a cavernous mouth is a new one. But the laughter dies in my throat because we’re still sitting here, the mountain of Rachel’s feelings and all the hurt they’ve caused lodged between us. “I still don’t understand how you could just walk out of my life, Rachel.”
Rachel’s head slumps forward against the steering wheel. “If I could’ve stopped talking to my family back then, I probably would’ve. When my parents gave your dad the money they were going to use to buy my new car, I just felt so … unimportant , you know? Like everyone else’s needs mattered more than mine. Even if I followed the rules to a T , I still couldn’t win. My parents would always love everyone else more.” Her voice breaks, and she wipes the tears trickling down her cheeks furiously away.
It all makes sense now. Rachel embedding herself in her family’s business, still chasing her parents’ approval, pitting herself and Into the Woods against our vineyard every chance she got. The way she attacks Laine for leaving their family, for breaking the rules Rachel treats like commandments and still getting away with it. How she must’ve felt to hear that, once again, her family had decided to back someone else’s dreams over hers when they voted to give Laine the money set aside for Rachel’s microbrewery. How badly it must’ve hurt that when Bluebell was picked for the showcase, I refused to share it with her.
“Jesus, Rachel. I’m—I’m so sorry .”
Rachel sits up, her face pink with tears. “You are? Why?”
It’s not that Rachel’s perception is right—Molly and Ezra adore Rachel and her bitchiness and always have. But it’s easy to see how she’d feel wronged. It’s easy to see all the hurt and anger living just under her skin. And after all these years, it’s still easy to see her .
“I just—wish I could’ve been there for you.” I give her a sad smile, full of regret for how we got here.
“I wish you could’ve, too.” Rachel’s face buckles in on itself, her raw sobs undoing something in my own heart. “I’m so sorry I pushed you away, Zoe.”
In a slow-motion undoing of reality, I wrap my arms around her and let her cry against my dirty T-shirt as she spews apology after apology for the Brett infestation, every stolen idea, every mean word, every day we’ve spent apart. She pulls away suddenly, her face streaked with mascara tears. “But one thing I’m not sorry about is warning you off Charlaine! She’s no good, Zoe! She’s selfish, puts her career first, and uses people who love her to get what she wants.”
“That’s not true,” I say quietly.
“She lied to you! She made you fall in love with her, and the whole time she was planning on leaving for Oregon!”
I consider Rachel’s accusations—weren’t they my exact thoughts a week ago? What do I understand now, so clearly, that I didn’t then?
“Sometimes you’ve got to ride the twists and turns before you get to the clear stretch of road.” I squeeze Rachel’s hand in mine. “Thank you for looking out for me, but Rachel, you owe it to Laine and yourself to let go of this story you’ve believed about her all these years. It’s not true, and it’s poisoning how you feel about everyone in your life. Including you .”
Rachel’s sobs have reduced to hiccups, her eyes fixed on mine. I can tell she wants to argue in that way where your heart’s saying one thing, but your mind’s unable to back it up, so you sit there in resistance, wondering what the hell the right answer is.
“Did you know that day at varsity tryouts Laine begged the coach to let you finish?”
“ No. Charlaine was the one who kicked me off the field,” Rachel insists. “She humiliated me in front of everyone!”
“She tried to help you, but the coach overruled her. That’s what I’m talking about. You have this … lens you see Laine through, and it distorts the truth in ugly ways. You’ve got to let it go.”
She stares at me, emotions passing over her face as she battles versions of Laine in her mind, and we’re silent for a few minutes.
I check the sun, then my watch. “I need to get back. We still have a winery to decontaminate if we’re going to make the showcase.”
Rachel nods. Will our conversation today serve as a truce, where we peacefully go our own ways? Or could it be the beginning of something different? I slide out of the semi-crashed golf cart. The impulse to say my goodbyes and keep walking, to let Rachel make the decision of what comes next, presents itself, but the desire to have learned something from all this pain and upheaval is even stronger. Where Rachel falls in my heart is just a big, old ache I’m so tired of feeling. I come around to her side of the cart and offer her my hand. Surprised, she lets me help her up.
“Rachel, Laine and I are in love. Whatever comes next, we’re figuring it out together. Can you get right with that?”
“Guess I have to.” Rachel blows out a breath. Tries again. “Yes.”
Maybe it’d help if she realized that what I love about Laine now was part of what I loved about Rachel back then. The fierce grip on life. The ambition. The great calves.
Maybe if she realized that I see her, too. Then and now, and I’m still standing here.
“Come on. Let’s go find your keys.” I squeeze her hand, then pull her toward the winery.
“Then you’ve got some toilets to clean.”