Chapter 13
I am in no mood to go home to my parents, and I am in mighty need of a drink.
That’s what I tell myself, but really, I just want to see Will.
Nick’s arrival has placed a vague panic in my gut, a sudden sense that something has been lost. I hardly know the guy, but I have this sense that the grand order of things has been tampered with.
I jump in the car and head to the cidery.
I feel suddenly odd pulling up without Theo, as though I am trespassing, as though this place belongs to him.
It’s golden hour, light streaming through the orchard, and the place is pretty empty save for a few couples sitting outside in the big Muskoka chairs.
After the angst and the chaos of the last three hours, the shock of Nick, fighting with my parents, it feels like I have slipped under the covers into a place of total peace.
I see Will before he sees me. He is coming out of the back casking room, hauling a crate of bottles, ball cap low over his forehead, in jeans and a vintage band shirt.
He looks more familiar like this, somehow.
I can’t shake the sense that I know him from somewhere aside from the play, aside from the night here with Theo.
I can’t help but notice how easily he swings the crate down, his lovely lean forearms, how perfectly proportioned the distance between his eyes is.
They are a sort of a dark golden brown. I like his face immensely.
He is the physical opposite of Nick—taller, leaner, dark floppy hair raked back under a ball cap.
Where Nick is polished, Will is rugged. I like it.
I can’t help but note that he is no longer in the play . . .
He looks up and sees me, and I realize that I have been staring. “Mira.”
“Oh! Hi!” I say too brightly. “I, um, I was just . . .”
“Can I get you a drink?” My blood quickens a little before I remember that offering me a drink is his job.
“Well, actually, very much yes, but I also . . . I’m glad to see you. I was hoping to see you.” His face is so unreadable—this gift he has for keeping it pleasant and guarded at the same time.
“Well, let’s start with a drink. What’ll you have?” He leads us inside.
“Oh! Um, I . . . Well, what do you recommend? I had a flight with Theo, but I forgot all the names.” I pick up a menu for something to do with my hands, scanning furiously for any name that sounds familiar.
“I think I prefer the fruitier ones?” His face doesn’t move.
“I mean, it’s all fruit, it’s cider, obviously, I just mean . . .”
“I’ve got one for you.” He gestures to the bar.
“Take a seat.” He leaves, heading into the back room, and I sit there awkwardly, waiting.
I look around the place. It’s cozy. It’s cool, but it also feels warm, rustic, natural, somehow, as though it just sprang up in the middle of the orchard, which, I guess it did.
Something about this place quiets my insides, and I haven’t even had a drink yet.
Will returns with an unmarked bottle. “My secret stash.” He smiles.
“Is it poison?” I ask. “I wouldn’t blame you. Will, I am so sorry about my parents, I . . .”
He stops me by holding out a tasting glass. “Try this. Tell me what you think.”
I take a tentative sniff. He is watching me carefully with that microsmile. I take a sip. It’s heaven. It’s fruity but also herbal and effervescent but also smoky somehow.
“What is this?” I breathe. I take another sip. I close my eyes to taste it better. When I open them, he is fully smiling.
“Right?” he says. “It’s new. Well, I was making it for the cast party.” He shrugs. “It’s, well, maybe it’s dumb . . .”
“What?”
“Well, it’s like, I wanted to sort of . . . If you could bottle the play, right? Like, A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a cider.”
“It’s really . . . perfect.” I finish my little glass and hold it out for more. He lights up a bit at that, his guard down. He pulls a larger glass off the shelf, fills it, and hands it to me.
“So, it’s like a strawberry prosecco, with mint and a little lavender, so, trying to get that feeling of summer and magic, and then the kind of grassy herbs, like the forest and also the magical flower Puck uses.
” I’m nodding along. “And then it’s blended with this local wildflower honey, sort of a nod to the honey mead made in Elizabethan times, like to what Shakespeare might have been drinking.
And . . . yeah.” He looks so sweet, so proud. God, he’s attractive.
“I love it,” I say, and I mean it. “It’s the most poetically perfect beverage I’ve ever had.”
He laughs lightly. “I’m glad you like it,” he says. His eyes linger on mine.
“I really do.” I sigh. “And it’s such a beautiful gift for the cast . . . Will. What my parents have done here is . . . shameful.” He shakes his head to stop me. “No, it is, they are being such assholes. I knew they were all about their plays, but this is next level. Nick Nolan . . .”
He holds up a hand. “Hey. It’s fine. I get it. He’s a big name. It’s the summer show . . . It will be good for the show, the company, the town.”
“But they just dumped you.” I don’t get why he’s so calm.
“They were very apologetic.” I wince. I’m so mad at them. “And they owe me. They told me I can do any role I want in the next season. They’ll make it up to me.”
I sigh again. “And you believe them?” I take another sip of the magical cider. “This feels like the scene in The Devil Wears Prada.”
“Am I Meryl Streep?” he asks with a wink.
“No, you are Stanley Tucci. My parents are Meryl.” I take another big swig. “And they do not deserve to be Meryl.”
“I haven’t actually seen that movie.”
“It’s tremendous.” My glass is empty.
“Want another?” he asks, and I do. He is leaning casually on his side of the bar, bottle dangling from his hand, and I am feeling the most myself I have since I got home, longer maybe.
“So how long have you been doing theater?” I ask. “You seem . . .” I stop myself.
“What?”
“Never mind.” I look away.
“Nope, you have to say it now!”
“Well. Like, too cool to be a theater person.”
“Whoa!” He laughs. “How do I respond to that?”
“Ugh, I know, sorry, I just mean . . . you just have this sort of like edgy, indie-music, outdoorsy thing going on . . .” He actually blushes, which makes me blush.
“I’m not that cool.” He clears his throat and takes a sip of cider. “I started going to plays with my grandma, and it sort of became our thing.” Well, shit, that’s adorable. He shrugs. “Then I tried out for one and . . . it’s really fun. I love the people. It’s good to get out.” He smiles. “You?”
“I mean . . . yeah, same. It was the most fun thing. And I was raised in it, right, so it’s kind of all I ever knew.”
“It’s so cool you, you know, really went for it. And did it! That’s really rare, right?”
I smile and shrug. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“It never is.” He looks at me with an expression that is somehow both light and intense.
“So how did you get into the cider thing?” I ask as he fills my glass again.
“Well, my family had the land. The orchard was already there, and my brother and I opened it the year we turned thirty.”
“Twins, right?”
He takes a large gulp of his cider. “Uh-huh.”
“So, you run it, and your brother—”
“Died.” He looks up at me, surprised. “I assumed you knew that . . .”
“Oh, God, Will, no, I am so sorry, I had no idea!” This new detail totally throws me.
“I thought Theo might have told you. It’s not a secret. Everyone knows.” His face has gone back to completely neutral. “People who live here.”
I reach my hand out and clasp his without even thinking. “I’m so sorry,” I say. I look at my hand and quickly snatch it away, but he catches it and holds it tight, just for a second, before releasing me. I don’t know what to say next.
“He was hit by a drunk driver.” He reads my mind. “Almost three years ago.”
We sit there for a moment, both staring into our drinks. “What was his name?” I ask finally.
“Jonah. He was the best.” He swallows hard. “The absolute fucking best.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say softly. “I’m sure everyone says this, but it must be so much worse, losing your twin . . .” He nods, that half smile. “Sorry, that was dumb, obviously . . . I never know—”
He stops me. “I appreciate that, Mira. And yeah. There is nothing worse than losing your favorite person.” He leans in.
“But also, and don’t get me wrong, I’d give anything to undo it, to have him back.
But there were two of us, and now there is one, and I don’t know, I feel like I need to live for both of us, you know?
And I’ll be damned if I don’t live fully.
Like . . . wholeheartedly. You know?” He smiles, and my heart clenches, not just at his grief and his courage but also because I don’t know who my favorite person is.
And I couldn’t tell you the last time I did anything wholeheartedly.
Will slaps his hands on the bar. “That’s enough of that!” He smiles. Conversation closed.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say.
“It’s better when people know,” he says. “Promise me one thing?”
Anything. “Yeah?”
“No pity, okay? I don’t want it to change how you see me. You know, the . . . what was it? Sexy emo farm boy?”
“Wow.” I laugh. “Okay, um, you added some adjectives there.” He smiles for real this time and time fizzles. “I don’t know what it is,” I say. “There’s something so familiar about you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Huh,” he says. “That’s very interesting.”
We are interrupted by a large group arriving through the door. Will nods at them in greeting.
“I should go,” I say. I pull out my wallet.
“On the house,” he says.
“Oh! Thank you.” I realize with disappointment that I won’t see him at rehearsal. “I’ll see you . . . ?” I very much need to know when that will be.
“See you around!” he says, already busy with the new customers. “Promise.” I am halfway out the door when I turn back, just for a second, catching his eye as he watches me leave.
I am halfway to my car when I realize that I left my wallet on the bar.
I turn back for it, but he is already jogging toward me, holding it out.
I reach for it and our fingers touch. Without thinking, I reach up and kiss his cheek, too close to his mouth, and then I linger there.
He doesn’t move until I step back. I can’t do this.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Anytime,” he says. “Anytime at all.” He touches the tip of his ball cap ironically, and turns away, leaving the ball firmly in my court.