Beautiful Accountant: Not possible. Me: but he’s probably not as hot.Beautiful Accountant: No one is as hot. Doesn’t matter though. I’m done.Despite the fact I was now grinning at her assessment of me, two things occurred to me. One, Chad would not be as excited about her descriptions of me as I was. And two, she was still planning to leave, which dulled my happiness considerably.Me: Maybe there’s one person who is almost as ‘hot’? Like, for instance… me?Beautiful Accountant: Gah. I’m the only person who can put a foot in her mouth via text. Of course you are. Sorry.Me: Thank you.What kind of weird world was I in? I needed to make sure Chad’s feelings weren’t forgotten even though he didn’t care in the least about hers.I needed to come clean.I’d tell her at eleven. When she gave notice.***But at eleven, I was in the midst of a crisis. One of our most sought- after wineries had just called to tell us they’d had a storage issue in their wine cave, and half of last year’s bottl
Crap on a cracker. Please tell me this wasn’t happening.Inside I was cackling like Mom, complete with a coughing fit and some chest thumps to keep the ol’ ticker going, absolutely hysterical with the ironic turn of events. Outwardly, I was dying a slow death, frozen on the spot while all the realizations came tumbling through my brain to slap me in the face. Boston, my soon to be ex-boss, was the son of my new boss. And I’d told my new boss straight to her face that her son was an ass. I’d be fired before I even got the first day of training under my belt. And I couldn’t go back to West Wines once Pam told Boston why I’d been fired. Why couldn’t my life ever be smooth and graceful?My eyeballs dared to move, eyeing the black polo shirt Pam had in her hands that was to have been mine. I saw the cute pig logo, the one I would have proudly worn as I poured wines and schmoozed my way to higher and higher commissions. The Cunning Ham. Boston Cunningham. It was all coming together now. Wha
I guessed it also made me inhale sharply because the next thing I knew, one of the buttons on my polo decided enough was enough and shot straight toward Boston, pinging him on the chest before falling to the floor.“Oh!” I gasped, one hand going to the gaping hole on my shirt, the other covering my gaping mouth.Boston made a noise that sounded an awful lot like he was being strangled. He bent down and picked up the button, putting it on the counter and looking away. “Maybe you should just unbutton it and put that last button out of its misery.”My face flamed a thousand degrees. I looked down to see the remaining button sweating bullets. I took pity on it and unbuttoned it, which saved the button from popping off, but gave a wider expanse of cleavage than I preferred in a work setting. In a stroke of genius, I remembered a tool that would save the day. Spinning around, I took the clip off the cute bulletin board behind me that housed all the laminated wine menus, clamping it onto my
Despite having lost a favorite shirt over the course of the evening, I went to bed feeling oddly happy. It had been a rollercoaster of a day. I’d resigned myself to saying goodbye to El—not that she would actually want me (or allow me) to actually say goodbye to her when she left West Wines. But in my mind, I’d begun to try to get used to the idea of not having her around.It was strange. Up until the wine festival, I’d seen her at work now and then. I’d always thought she was attractive. But it was the texting, I decided, that had pushed that moderate attraction over the edge into something new, something different. The texts she sent me—well, okay, the texts she sent Chad—were honest and open, and I felt like I got an insight into the real El. The Isabel Watson she kept hidden most of the time, or covered up with too many words and a moderate amount of flailing around. They let me see the real her, and even though she didn’t know it was me, the ones I sent back allowed me the freedo
Me: I’m confident this time things will work out.Beautiful Accountant: I hope so. I’m really just not qualified to sell wine. I realized that late last night. I had to eat some ice cream to calm down.Me: All you need for sales is a great personality. You have that. And then some.Beautiful Accountant: If that were true, my boss would suck at sales.Ouch.Me: Being stunningly good looking helps too.Beautiful Accountant: I guess he’s got that one covered. Me: So do you.Beautiful Accountant: Thanks.A warm comfort filled my chest at having made El feel good about herself. She deserved that. Probably as much as I deserved the dig on my personality. It was just that most of the time, I was too busy to think much about being kind. Or having fun. Or anything, really. I didn’t want to let my family down, and they were all depending on me now.It was shaping into a good day, despite the quilter’s paradise I’d found myself in this morning. Until El’s next text arrived.Beautiful Accountant:
“She said she’s on the corner of Sutter and Vine.”This day just kept getting weirder and weirder. Boston—which was how I now referred to him in my head, not Mr. Cunningham—was currently driving me to meet my mom where she had a flat tire. A week ago I would have said something like this would happen over my dead body, but based on the way my heartbeat wildly fluttered in my neck, I was very much alive. It was seeing him without a shirt yesterday. That was it. The sheer number of muscles had confused my brain into thinking Boston was some kind of available specimen for obsessing over.“There she is!” I pointed to my beat-up blue Camry on the side of the road. Mom was currently rolling the spare tire toward the front of the car where the tire was indeed flat, making a grab for it with her splinted wrists when it looked like it would roll straight down the sloping road.Boston made an illegal U-turn and parked behind my car with his flashers going. We both hopped out and went to rescue
“I think she’s ready,” I told my mother as I swapped the Cunning Ham polo for my work shirt in the back on Thursday evening after El had left for the night. “She might be the most overpaid tasting room host in all of Napa, but at least she’s well trained.”Mom turned from where she was finishing up some paperwork on the standing desk in the corner of the back office. “She’s not overpaid,” she said, her chin lifting. “As soon as we have enough inventory, she’s going to be out selling. And you know she’ll be great at that. This gives her time to get to know the wine first, and the family behind it.”I crossed to where Mom stood and dropped a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not arguing. I’m glad we’re paying her well.” And Mom was right, llllqwe were investing in the winery’s future. Though this year we had only small inventories of each wine, made from grapes we’d sourced from nearby vineyards with surplus, Lincoln—who had studied viticulture—said the vines were in better shape than we’d tho
“I’ve been telling you that for years.” An amused male voice floated through what I’d thought was the empty tasting room. I looked up to find my brother Lincoln grinning at me. “What the heck, bro?”For a moment, I considered telling him my actual problem. But I wasn’t really close with my brothers that way. I handled things. Just like Dad had. I didn’t bother them with the details.“Everything is fine,” I said, tidying the counter and preparing to leave.“Looks like it,” he said, shaking his head. It occurred to me then that Lincoln, at twenty-six, probably knew as well as I did the roles we’d each taken on since Dad died. I carried the burdens of the business, he checked in on Mom. The streams didn’t often cross. “Well, I just came to say hi to Mom, brought her some dinner. I didn’t know you’d be here.”“I’m on my way out,” I told him.“See you later,” he called, pushing through the door to the back rooms, carrying takeout bags.***El texted me as I was sliding into bed that night.