Chapter 5
BOY STORY
Ginny
“I need to stop coming here,” Ten says to me as we lounge together on the main house porch before dinner. We’ve been looking at the early preview wedding photos that Caro sent from the official—and only—photographer.
The photos from before our mother tried to burn down the barn.
Before Declan Fox became a hero at my house by locating a fire extinguisher and putting out my mother’s flaming hat and the smoldering remains of the skirt he ripped off of me.
“Can’t handle that Mabel’s immune to your charm?” I tease my brother. Neither one of them will tell me why they have issues, but it’s been obvious since the first time he visited me here that they do.
And my brother’s the kind of dick who’ll poke and prod, while Mabel’s the kind of friend who loves me despite my brother being a dick.
“Fuck Mabel. I’m getting too old to keep getting this drunk.”
I snort in amusement, then grab at my head.
I’m not fully recovered myself.
“How do you do it?” he asks me. “How do you live here and not get completely plastered every day?”
“Are you serious? Do you get plastered every day?”
“No, but if I lived where there are barrels and barrels of fucking good wine, I would.”
“If you lived where there’s a Pip, you would, you mean.”
My brother adores Pip.
They’re cut from the same cloth. Both love making trouble in public but are secretly hiding the biggest, softest hearts you’ll ever find.
He grins at me. “Somebody’s gotta make sure the old ladies keep having fun.”
“Who you calling old?” Pip herself says as she steps out onto the porch.
She’s wearing short shorts that leave nothing to the imagination and very little else.
She prefers to let the girls hang out.
It’s how she lost a nipple in a chicken-frying accident several years ago, shortly before her eightieth birthday.
“That dude out there in the field’s old,” Ten says, making me twitch. It’s harder to ignore Declan when he’s in plain sight.
“Who’s a moo and why’s he selling souls?” Pip asks.
“That dude in the field is old, Pip,” I say. I don’t point out that he’s younger than I am, and I’m hardly old.
I swear her hearing’s fine and she does this on purpose.
“Oh,” she says. “That dude who’s staying to take video of us? I told him he can record me, and he told me social media has screw-me clauses, and I told him I was up for that too if he was.”
Nudity clauses.
Declan probably said nudity clauses.
Not screw-me clauses.
“Though I thought about screwing Santa Claus once,” she continues.
“Epic,” Ten says. “You could’ve been Mrs. Claus.”
“No, Mista Paws was my cat when I was a girl.”
If it weren’t for her twinkling eyes, I’d wonder if she was still feeling the effects of the joint she shared with my mom last night.
Despite Mabel’s insistence that Pip and pot don’t get along, our honorary matriarch here has seemed absolutely fine since she got up.
“You have big plans tonight, Pipster?” Ten asks.
She grins at him. “Gonna make you pee your pants watching my new favorite horror movie.”
“Sweet.”
They do one of their complicated handshakes, then Pip wanders down the stairs and toward the gardens that Cricket recently completely overhauled between the main house and the mother-in-law house.
Some of the early wedding pictures are in the garden. Cricket’s going to die when she sees.
She has a celebrity crush on Mike.
Not as big as Mabel’s, but Cricket’s enthusiasm makes it feel bigger.
Ten watches Pip, fidgeting with his can of sparkling water, pushing the pull tab up and down, until his gaze shifts farther out to the vineyard.
The vineyard where Declan’s wandering between rows of grapevines.
Phone up.
Recording himself.
Camera crews and equipment will start arriving this week, but he’s made a name for himself with raw phone footage, so he’ll likely be filming this way often as long as he’s here.
Which is at least several weeks.
“That gonna be a problem?” Ten asks me quietly.
I shake my head, then grab it again.
The cameras are a problem.
I hate cameras.
My mother made me do six seasons of On the Rhodes, our reality show about growing up in a travel trailer and being homeschooled while traveling the country. Her mommy influencer website and videos landed us a real show on the Family Adventures channel.
From when I was twelve until I turned eighteen.
I finished my high school curriculum when I was sixteen and a half, but I had to keep doing homework for the cameras, since I was the youngest Rhodes kid left and the show would’ve had to—and did—end when my mom no longer had kids living with her.
Caro and Ten are three years older than me. They both left the minute they were legal adults—Caro to go to college, Ten to try his luck in Hollywood.
So it was just me and Mom and whoever she convinced to play various parts in our “reality” for half the seasons.
My second least favorite memories of my life.
Right behind the reason I would’ve been drunk the entire wedding yesterday if I hadn’t had to keep tabs on my mother.
Not that I did a good job.
Should’ve seen the joint coming.
Should’ve known she’d make a scene.
If she’s not the center of attention, she’s not happy.
And it made her mad that I was the center of attention for having had my flaming dress ripped off by my ex’s best friend, when she was the one who almost died because Ginny stole my joint and lit my hat on fire.
And that’s why I’m still hungover.
Because no matter what I do or don’t do, I’m always the villain in my mother’s stories.
Thank the stars Declan found that fire extinguisher after Ten pulled me out of the barn.
Firefighters said he saved the whole building.
Figures he’d be the one who saved it.
But I could’ve done without him defending me to my mother.
I get enough of the mind games from her.
I don’t need them from him too.
But it’s exactly what I’m getting while he’s filming here.
“I can stay,” Ten adds, even softer. “Won’t even get into the barrels in the cellar this time.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
“What’s that? He’s swine?” my brother says.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fucking fine, Ginny.”
“Mom’s gone. You don’t have to keep dropping all the fucks. She can’t hear you anymore.”
He grunts. “Don’t change the subject. Why’s he staying?”
“Declan?”
“Yes.”
“He got a TV deal for his web series, and the production company is paying us to let him record a few videos for his social channels.”
“You don’t need him. You have all that shit in the cellar that you’re going to sell.”
It’s my turn to grunt. “No, we don’t.”
“What?”
“Pip drained most of it not long after Dean died.”
“What?”
“She missed some, mostly chardonnay that went bad.”
“But—but—the barrel we tapped when I was here—”
“Like I said, she missed some.”
“Shit, Ginny.”
“We have a dozen barrels. A few merlots, one chardonnay that’s miraculously fine, some Syrah, and a Riesling.”
“Limited edition. You can charge a mint for that.”
If only. “I’ve been in touch with auction houses, and it turns out Dean was a shitty winemaker. There’s no demand for old bottles of Makepeace wine.”
“That shit I had the last time I was here wasn’t shitty.”
“Shit wasn’t shitty?”
“Nobody called the grammar police, Ginny.”
I snort in amusement, then clutch at my head again.
After I swallow hard, I look at Ten. “It doesn’t actually matter if it’s good or bad.
Pip won’t let us sell it with Makepeace’s labels on it anyway.
Once we’re up and running, we can sell it under new labels, but we need to be up and running and some level of successful before it’ll have an impact.
So hosting private events and taking payment for providing a filming location is what we’ll do. ”
Ten looks out at Declan again. “I don’t like it.”
Neither do I. “Have a better idea for massive publicity that we’re actually getting paid for, rather than the other way around?”
He grunts.
“Could be worse,” I say. “Mom could be here.”
That earns me a side-eye and a sigh. “Sure. Let’s make lemonade. And it’s not like he’s the real guy from your past that we don’t talk about. He’s more…ancillary.”
“Ancillary?”
“You like it? Pip’s teaching me bigger words.”
“Eh? I’m sneaking you bigger worms?” Pip calls. “I saw that horno you made. I know you don’t need a bigger worm.”
“Horno?” I mutter to Ten. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“Mom’s favorite movie. My one and only horror porno.”
“I said don’t tell me.”
“You could’ve made a killing doing it too,” Ten says. “Like, there’s a whole market for chicks like you.”
“Stop talking.”
“I meant chicks who went viral as adults. For the record. Not child reality TV stars.”
“Hey, Pip, Ten wants to try the chardonnay,” I call.
“He wants a harlot named May?”
“The chardonnay. The wine. The old stuff we found in the cellar. The stuff that Winona and Dori both said is so bad it would take a miracle to turn it into vinegar.”
Ten grins at me. “You try so hard to be mean, and you fall so short every time.”
I look out at the vineyard again.
Declan’s closer to the house now.
And he’s looking at us.
Watching.
We make eye contact, and I break it instantly as a shiver races up my spine.
There’s something different about him.
I don’t like it.
“You coming to dinner, young man?” Pip calls to Declan. “Cricket’s cooking spaghetti. And she hasn’t dropped a single egg or thrown any milk or anything.”
“Does she usually do that?” Ten asks me.
“She had a moment when she first got here, but it’s passed.”
“She still dating that handyman guy you all keep around?”
“Heath? Your buddy? The one whose basement you’ve been staying in this week? The one you hang out with at every opportunity anytime you’re here? The one who’s gotten your drunk ass to bed so many times I’ve lost count? That handyman guy?”
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
My brother is somehow the most annoying and also the funniest person on the planet. “The one who kept sneaking kisses from Cricket all day yesterday? Which you commented on?”
“Lot can change in a day. Maybe they broke up last night.”
“Go inside and help set the table. You’re annoying me.”
“Who’s boingy-boingying you?” Pip calls to me.
I laugh.
I can’t help it.
When Mabel invited me to come here after the stupidest decision of my life went the kind of viral my mom always dreamed of for On the Rhodes, I thought I’d stay a couple days.
Maybe a week.
But now, this is my home.
And I love it.
Once the wedding is fully cleaned up and Declan’s gone, I’ll still be here.
Part of a family.
Doing things that are bigger than me.
And happy.
Just have to get through a few weeks.
And then all will be normal again.
Hopefully for the rest of my life.