“You’re in for a treat,” Brianna says. “Garrett brought me here when we were dating and, honestly, it’s the only reason I married him.”
Garrett turns to her abruptly. “What?”
“Kidding.” Brianna mouths not kidding behind her hand afterward.
“We’ve got the Valencias”—vuh-len-shuhz, Grandpa says, and I catch sight of Harmony’s lips pursing as she fights a smile—“covering most of the property, which is fifty acres, and then about ten acres of Eureka and Lisbon lemons. If you buy a lot of oranges, those’ll usually be navels, which are sweeter for eating. Valencias are best for juice, so we make a lot of juice around here. Probably drink it more than water.” He chuckles to himself like he does every time he makes that joke to a newcomer. “And I guarantee it’s better than the orange juice you’ve had from the grocery store. My kids and grandkids don’t like anything that’s not fresh squeezed—isn’t that right?”
My whole family nods, including me.
“It’s not that they’re snobs,” I clarify. “It’s just that everything the processors do to make the juice shelf stable kind of kills the flavor. Oranges themselves are fine though; storebought navelstend to be less than a week off the tree by the time they hit the produce aisle.”
My grandpa nods along, apparently satisfied with my addendum. He’s coached me well.
“Well,” my mom says, “we’re glad you came today, Harmony. We have plans to go pick some oranges together and juice them right after, if you’re up for it. It’s a perfect day for—”
“Can we stop acting like this isn’t weird?” Rachel interjects.
We all stare at her.
“Rachel …” my dad warns.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel says in a tone that suggests she’s not the least bit sorry, “but I can’t stand here and pretend I don’t know everything she’s said about Griffin.”
“What did she say?” Ari asks.
I’ve begged Rachel not to influence Ari’s opinion of Harmony, but I guess she thinks it’s fine now that Harmony is present to defend herself. Not that any defense would be good enough.
Lily shrugs. “All she really said was he’s a fake cowboy. But it was supposed to be funny, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, like the Mic Drop rap battles,” says Jackson, age nine, who inherited Brianna’s brown curls.
He’s referring to a segment of Cal Moreda’s late show where Cal invites celebrities to join him in a mutual roast—set to a beat. Mostly it’s him saying actors are has-beens and them saying he’s old and that nobody really knows who he is.
“It was a little more than that,” Rachel argues. “She said he’s not a stand-up guy.”
“Didn’t he call her a demon, though?” Garrett asks.
“Only because she wrote ‘Friction,’” says Rachel.
Brianna adds, “But he said she has no sense of humor.”
“Because she said all his words ‘come off as comedy.’” My sister huffs. “The point is, she attacked him first and then kept itgoing. She couldn’t let him have the last word; she had to keep dragging his name through the mud.”
My pulse is throbbing in my head now. Harmony is holding my hand so tight it’s starting to go numb.
“Rach, can you please not?” I say. “Harmony and I both made mistakes. We’ve both apologized.”
Taking a deep breath, Harmony releases my hand and steps forward. “I was wrong. I’m not going to try to justify myself, and I don’t blame you for not liking me. Just please know that I truly am sorry, for whatever that’s worth.”
“You realize those things will live forever,” Rachel points out. “The whole world has heard them. You can’t take it back.”
Harmony nods. “That’s something I live with always, with everything I write. But my songs are snapshots of what I was feeling in the moment. With your brother, as sorry as I am for the hurt I’ve caused, that’s what I thought and felt when I met him. I’ve had more than one guy in my life turn out to be an actor—including but not limited to the ones who actuallyareactors, professionally—who treated me like an audience to play off of. I’ve dated guys who treated me differently when we were alone than they did when other people were watching them. So when Griffin and I had … a special moment … and I found out later that he was the ‘Grind My Gears’ guy, maybe you can imagine what was going on in my mind.”
Rachel frowns, but seems to consider this.
What would she think of me if she didn’t know me personally? How would she see me if she didn’t know what I was like behind the scenes? I’ve heard her criticize Timber Jack and even Corbin Crawford for misogyny and for “perpetuating tired old tropes.” Were she ever to meet them face to face, she’d probably give them a piece of her mind.
“Oh.” Rachel grimaces. “Oh shit.”
