Chapter 12
ANNA
One look from Holly and I’m withering in my chair. She can make you feel like you’ve just been busted by your parents with a single do better glare.
A wave of guilt hits me, though I don’t know what I should feel bad about: being on my phone or suggesting she get Jack involved.
Probably both.
Though the way she’s rapid-fire texting, my chips are on Jack. Still, I put my phone away since Holly bristles whenever I’m on it. I watch her fingers fly with quiet envy, wondering what it’s like to have someone who texts you back immediately, who cares where you are and when you’ll be home.
That’s the life I pretend I don’t want. A life with someone caring enough to check in, to worry, to be there for me. But letting someone get close means they can leave, and I learned early that everyone leaves. My parents, Holly. Zoe.
When she fires off another text and drops her phone in her purse, I chance asking, “Everything okay?”
“Everything is fine.” Her tone is clipped. She looks over her shoulder, peering into the tasting room. “How long does it take to bring out a bottle of wine?”
“Maybe they’re pressing the grapes,” I say with a straight face, and she gives me a flat look. Not even a hint of a smile. Zoe would have laughed.
I sigh. Maybe I was out of line earlier, flashing Jack’s name like a hundred-dollar tip.
I haven’t the faintest idea how close his relationship is with Chateau Lavigne.
I heard enough from the various sources I’ve cultivated through business to know Jack’s company is highly regarded, and thanks to Zoe keeping me updated on Holly’s family, I know Chateau Lavigne is Jack’s client. He could have helped us.
I lean toward her, beseeching. “Look, I’m sorry I mentioned Jack—”
“Forget about it.” She dismisses me before I can fully apologize.
Chafing, I say, “At least let me explain why—”
A muffled ding inside my bag alerts I have a social media notification. By the annoyed look on Holly’s face, she knows that sound.
“What have you been posting to social media?” she barks at me.
“Nothing.”
“It’s never just nothing with you.” Holly folds her arms over her chest.
I huff, flustered. “Seriously, it’s no big deal.
It’s for business.” Other than self-preservation, I can’t explain why I downplay what I’ve been doing, because my last few posts have been far from nothing.
But if she really wants to know what, she can go online and look for herself.
I just hope she doesn’t take it the wrong way.
Yes, I have been posting, but while the posts started as proof that I don’t live in a glass bubble on a fancy hill, they’ve morphed into something else entirely.
After we returned to the resort yesterday, I posted two photos to the Luxe Vacations handle.
One was a selfie from atop the rock with wet hair plastered to my face and goggles on my forehead, my smile sad.
The photo weirdly reminded me of the time Zoe brought us frozen yogurts in the dorm room.
It was the day after we’d met her, and she wanted to thank us for being so kind.
So many others had passed her without saying a word.
If it weren’t for Holly and me, Zoe said she would probably be packing up her dorm room rather than hanging out with her two new friends. She’d told us we saved her.
Now that we know what she’d been thinking of doing that night, her words have taken on a whole new meaning. What Holly and I did for her has taken on a whole new meaning. We saved her. Together.
I was on the brink of tears when I took that photo. I’d been missing Zoe, but I was so happy to have reached the tip of Zoe’s penis rock with Holly. To be there with her.
That’s what I wrote about in the post’s caption. I also included another photo of the horizon where I added: You’re where you want to be now, Zoe. One with the water. #grieving #goodbyezoe
I do my best not to feel guilty about anything I shared online, or that among the hundreds of comments from my sea of followers there’s only one notification I’ve been waiting for.
Leo’s. Just a simple heart from him would mean more than the thousands of others combined.
When did his opinion become the only one that matters?
I fold my arms over my chest, mimicking Holly’s defiant posture. “If you’re so curious, go look.”
Before she has a chance to reach for her phone, Henri arrives with our Pinot Noir and charcuterie board.
I’ve never been more relieved at an interruption.
Holly and I both loudly exhale. My eyes fly to hers over Zoe and I have to stifle a smile.
“We bicker like a couple of old farts,” Holly grumbles under her breath, looking seriously displeased.
“You pee as much as one,” I say, fighting a smile.
Her mouth falls open and I brace myself for a verbal onslaught, but she stops herself.
Probably because Henri is here. Her mouth snaps shut and our eyes briefly meet again when he sets a third glass on the table.
He pours ours and when he cocks a brow, the mouth of the bottle tipped over Zoe’s glass, I nod.
After a thirty-second spiel about the wine and the cheese selections on the charcuterie board, Henri leaves us to ourselves.
I stare at Zoe’s glass and I’m transported back to our first visit here.
We sat at a table just like this one. Zoe was radiant, her cheeks flushed from the wine, her laugh echoing across the patio as she demonstrated her “sophisticated” wine-tasting technique which mostly involved making ridiculous gurgling noises.
Holly snorted Pinot out of her nose, and I laughed so hard that my stomach ached.
Now, there’s just a glass nobody will drink from where she should be sitting. Where she should be confiding her secrets in us.
Holly picks up her glass. “We should toast.”
I blink, dragging my eyes from Zoe’s untouched glass to look at Holly. “Have you wondered at all what Zoe didn’t tell us?” I ask, following the trail where my mind reversed course to: Zoe’s letters.
Her glass lowers slightly. “Does it really matter? She said she’d tell us.”
I nod, accepting her nonanswer, not wanting to push her boundaries again. “I feel bad Zoe’s tour was canceled.”
“We’ll just have to do our best to make the rest happen the way she would have wanted.”
“Of course.” I lift my glass, thinking that aside from this bumble, we’ve executed Zoe’s plans well so far. “To Zoe.”
“The best of best friends.”
Her words carry the sting of Greece and the weight of the last five years.
She sips her wine, sips it again. And again. I don’t need to ask if I’m stressing her out. But something else is clearly going on with her. She’s wound tighter than the bun at the nape of her neck. How can I coax her to loosen up around me or even open up to me?
Reality check. For that to happen, it would have to go both ways. I’d have to stop walking on eggshells around her. But I’m an open book. Heck, I’m an oversharer. She knows everything about me. Most things, anyways.
My thoughts drift to my feelings for Leo again. That, she doesn’t know about. Nobody does, because I haven’t the courage to acknowledge them to myself.
“We should read Zoe’s letter,” she says upon finishing her glass and pouring herself another. “They’re about to close. You brought it, right?”
I give her a flat look. Of course I brought the letter. It’s been burning a hole in my bag all day.
I retrieve the sealed envelope and hold the crisp linen rectangle in both hands.
“Go on, open it,” Holly says with impatience.
We’re pressed for time. I know it. She knows it.
But opening Zoe’s letter means we’ll have to open her urn.
It’s one thing to carry around the urn but seeing the ashes—or, dear god, wearing them as we did in Cabo—is unsettling.
Every leg of this trip, every scattering, means there is a little less of Zoe with us.
Holly’s foot starts tapping.
“All right.” I tear open the envelope and carefully unfold Zoe’s stationery. Three pages this time, front and back. On a deep inhale, I settle in to read.
“‘Hello, gals. Are the rolling hills behind Chateau Lavigne still beautiful? Does the Pinot Noir taste as good as I remember? Is the guy giving the tour as cute as the one we had before? I don’t think any of us have forgotten how blue his eyes were.’
“Or how firm his ass was.” I snort a giggle. Byron definitely was hot, the memory of us kissing up against one of the barrels even hotter.
“Anna!” Holly has the gall to act appalled. She was right there ogling him with Zoe and me.
I impatiently flip the paper.
“‘I know you’re on the tour right now, but I’m hoping you’ll do me a solid. When you reach the vineyard and the tour continues on to the barrel room, hang back a second. Are you hanging back? Wait to read the rest when you are.’”
“We can’t. We’re not on the tour,” I complain.
“Pretend we are. Just read it.” Holly gestures for me to keep going.
“‘Okay, you can read on now. I have something else to share about the night we met.’”
My stomach drops, dreading what we’re about to find out, and I sneak a peek at Holly. She’s chewing her bottom lip.
“‘You already know I was thinking about dropping out of school when you found me outside of the gym. You also know now I was a cancer survivor by then. What I didn’t share was why I felt ashamed and guilty. You see, I felt horrible for what I put my parents through. I also felt guilty for going to school. I didn’t believe I deserved to go to college.
But most of all, I felt guilty for surviving.
It should have been me. I should have died. ’”
My gaze lifts to Holly’s. “Why would she say such a thing?”
She shakes her head. “Keep reading. She probably explains.”