Chapter 34 #2
Dude’s normally pretty chill.
“Cricket wrote it,” Ginny tells me. “She interviewed me, and she made me feel safe in a way that I usually don’t when I’m talking about all of those things, and then she wrote the article in a way that my mother never would’ve known I was ratting her out, which was both good and bad, but exactly what I asked her to do.
So when Mabel mentioned that Cricket was going viral—like the worst, biggest, most awful kind of viral—I convinced everyone else that we needed to invite her. ”
“Good decision?”
“The best decision. Poor thing was an absolute wreck when she got here, but she’s found herself again, and she’s always so happy and positive and we can do it.
We wouldn’t be making our own wine this year if it wasn’t for her coming when she did.
She’s the reason Winona’s letting us keep the grapes and giving us so much help. That was all Cricket’s doing.”
I make a mental note to find out Cricket’s favorite everything and send her a box of all of them.
If they weren’t making wine, I wouldn’t be here.
And even with all of the complications—I wouldn’t trade this time with Ginny for anything.
“You decide if you want to claim a wine?” I ask Ginny.
“Wedding Wrecker Rosé has a nice ring,” she grumbles.
“That your idea?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“I—I want to. Watching Cricket talk about Cheeky Beaver Chardonnay, watching her completely own it like the trolls don’t matter—she’s been so inspiring.
Empowering too. But I also know if I do, with the documentary and the notoriety all of us already have—it’ll pull Alex back into the spotlight too, and I don’t want to do that to him. ”
Ah, fuck.
I swallow hard.
“He knows you live here,” I say.
She’s pursing her lips and staring straight ahead.
“And he suspects I’m here,” I add. “NDA. I can’t confirm or deny it. All that fun stuff.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this.”
I rub my neck and stifle a sigh of my own. “Our pasts make us who we are. And we get to choose how we let that influence us.”
Her hands rest in her lap, balled in fists so tight that her knuckles are turning white. “It’s not just my past.”
“Then maybe it’s time you talk to him.”
Out of my peripheral vision, I see her jerk her head in my direction. “He wouldn’t want to talk to me.”
“Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be good for both of you.”
“And again, stop sounding like my therapist.” She huffs. “I liked you better when you were the other kind of dick.”
Can’t help but smile at that. “No, you didn’t.”
“Fine, I didn’t,” she grumbles.
“What’s the worst thing that happens? He knows that wedding was a mistake. You ask me, he did do it to punish you.”
“Would you say that to his face?” she asks.
“I have.”
“Just like that? Hey, dude, serves you right. Having your wedding spectacled all over the internet’s what you get for having a spite wedding?”
Huh.
Almost nailed it.
“Pretty close,” I tell her. “Wish I’d thought of spite wedding though. That’s a good one.”
“And you’re still friends?”
“We’re still friends.”
Though maybe not for much longer.
And I’m starting to realize that if he and I can’t talk this out—then maybe we’ve never been as good of friends as I thought we were.
I’d have this conversation for Ginny too, but I’m starting to think she needs it for herself.
Like I need to talk to Alex for myself.
Not just for him.
“Mabel would be that blunt with me for me,” she murmurs.
“What’s it like being friends with someone so terrifying?”
The tension breaks in the car, and she laughs softly. “She’s not terrifying.”
“I check my tires every morning to make sure I didn’t offend her and get them slashed.”
She makes a funny urp noise, and then she’s doubled over, wheezing.
My shoulders relax and my worries fade away behind the sound of her joy.
“So she has slashed a lot of tires,” I say.
“She—threatened to—slash yours,” Ginny says through peals of laughter. “Never—heard her—except for Ten.”
“So…it’s an honor?”
She cracks up all over again.
“What’s with Mabel and your brother?” I ask. “I heard him call her Fun Mabel the day after the wedding, but it was pretty clear he doesn’t think she’s fun.”
“Honestly? I have no idea what started it, but he takes every opportunity to get under her skin when he’s here.”
I slant a quick glance at her.
“It’s not Ten leaving the money,” she says. “Don’t even start. My brother is perpetually broke.”
“Is he?”
“He won his car in a poker game that he entered when he got an unexpected windfall from some old lady he never met but who left him something in her will because she loved him in On the Rhodes. He couch-surfs because he can’t afford rent most of the time.
Whatever he made doing…movies that I refuse to talk about…
right after college, he’s blown through.
He takes pride in being broke because it drives our mother crazy that he flaunts what makes him look like a failure.
Trust me, he’s not leaving twenty thousand dollars in cash at the wiii—aaaahah! ”
I jerk the steering wheel as something furry brushes my arm, then overcorrect and send dirt flying beneath my tires as I run on the shoulder. “What? What?”
“Cat!” she shrieks. “It’s a—goddammit, Fluffy, what are you doing?”
There’s a cat in her lap.
A massive white, black, and orange calico cat.
My breath comes in short gasps as I slow the car and signal that we’re getting off the highway.
Ginny’s panting too. “Bad kitty. Bad kitty. We have to take you home now, and we’re going to miss dinner, you little asshole.”
Fluffy rolls in Ginny’s lap until she’s showing her belly, yawns, and—
Oh, fuck.
That’s not a yawn.
That’s—
A series of gagging noises come from the cat.
I flounder, slamming to a stop faster than I should and throwing the SUV in park so that I can look for tissues, because I know what that sound means.
“Off!” Ginny cries. “Out! Out! Why can’t I open my door? Where’s the handle? Where’s the handle?”
I’m out of my seat in an instant, racing around the car.
I slip on the grass, get my bearings, slip again, but still manage to grasp the handle and fling open Ginny’s door, just in time to see her trying to lift the cat as Fluffy coughs up a massive, glittery hairball.
All over Ginny’s pretty dress.
I gape at Ginny.
She makes a noise like she’s about to cough up her own hairball.
“Oh, fuck fuck fuck,” I whisper.
I know what that means.
I know exactly what that means.
I grab the cat and drop it on the ground, then reach across Ginny, unbuckle her seat belt, and yank her out of the car a split second before she goes full exorcist over both of our shoes too.