Chapter 12 #3
Tires continued to crunch under gravel as they approached an old white, weathered farmhouse complete with a wrap-around porch. And when they came to a full stop, they each got out of the car, bundling their jackets tightly around themselves.
“This is it,” Max said, eyes sweeping over the landscape, feet planted firmly on the ground. “This is my land.”
“It’s a shame it’s hideous,” Annie joked, hands stuffed into her pockets, bumping her shoulder into Max. “And that view. I’d sell now.”
Max chuckled softly as she took it all in, feeling a little overwhelmed by the vastness of it all. On paper, thirty acres was hard to conceptualize. It felt so far away, but standing here—experiencing it for the first time—was something totally different.
“I dunno,” she said quietly. “I thought I’d have more of an immediate light bulb moment of knowing… You know what I mean? I thought I’d get here and feel what my answer should be.”
Annie cocked her head to the side, her blond hair shifting beneath the navy knit beanie pulled over her ears. “What’s standing in your way?”
Max thought for a moment, long and hard.
“My disbelief that my crazy-ass dream could actually become a reality,” she said softly, turning back towards the house, the heels of her boots crunching gravel as she approached.
Old wooden stairs creaked beneath her feet as she ascended the steps, peering into the front window and seeing the piles of furniture covered with sheets inside.
The amount of dust that must be in that house.
A thwacking sound drew her attention, eyes finding Annie a little further down the porch with a broom in hand, swatting down the shredded paper remains of a wasp nest.
“Don’t want those bad boys around come summer. I fucking hate wasps,” she rationalized, her conviction making Max smile.
She braced herself against the railing, leaning forward once again, trying to take it all in—the land, the opportunity, sharing this all with Annie.
It was all so…big. She inhaled deeply, the crisp mid-March air filling her, stinging her cheeks.
But through the melting snow and muddy runoff of winter, Max could see it—the pops of possibility where the earth was coming back to life after a long rest.
“Walk me through the dream,” Annie urged, slipping an arm around her waist, snuggling against her. “In your wildest fantasy—if money or time or resources weren’t an issue, what would you want to do with all of this?” She gestured to the sprawling hills.
Words started falling from her mouth almost instantly as Max gave herself permission to let every excited dream she’d been too afraid to say out loud for nearly five years manifest between them.
“It would take a lot of work, but I want this place to be a fully functional winery. There’s probably like a bajillion legal hurdles and zoning and permits and shit like that, and it’s going to cost a fuck-ton, but that’s what I’d want to do.
Something feels so right about bringing everything back to the roots—family-owned and operated. You know?”
Her words lingered in the air between them.
Roots. It tasted foreign on her tongue. She’d never felt like she’d had those before.
Moving around so much as a child and into her adulthood had given her the gift of unwavering adaptability—an invaluable skill, no doubt—but it had made the idea of ever settling down feel so out of reach when everything in life was in constant motion beneath her.
“We’d need the infrastructure for production,” she continued, heart jumping as the word we slipped between them in her unbridled excitement, but Max found she didn’t hate the idea of this being something she and Annie might do together.
“And of course, we’d need a tasting room and employees.
” She slipped an arm around Annie’s shoulders.
“And this house. I’d love to fix up this house, you know…
Make it a place to run a wine empire from…
” She trailed off, keeping her final thought to herself—with a wife and maybe raise a kid or two.
It was way too soon to be thinking something like that, let alone say it out loud.
She braced herself, turning to face Annie, searching for any sort of reaction.
But there wasn’t one. Instead, Annie was beaming, the muted gray daylight lifting every shade of blue in her gaze, amplifying her delight.
“You ready to run yet?” Max joked feebly. “I told you my life is kind of a mess. I’ve got big dreams and not a single idea of how to make them a reality.”
Annie snaked her arms around Max’s neck as she pushed up on her toes to kiss her again, her tongue slipping between them, tracing along her lower lip as Annie deepened the kiss, her fingers weaving through Max’s thick, dark waves, pulling her impossibly close.
“It’s a good thing I excel at making plans.”
Max let out a low, nervous chuckle. “Keep me honest. Do you think the dream is too big? I can hear it if you think it is. I want to make sure I’m right-sizing things…”
Annie’s hand cupped her cheek, and Max couldn’t help but lean into it.
“I think you could dream even bigger,” Annie replied, smile widening. “And it wouldn’t scare me one bit.”