Pretty much normal these days.
I just hope I don’t bruise it any more before Heath and I are done looking for wood for the trellis.
12
MILLION DOLLAR CRYBABY
Heath
Cricket’s wearing form-fitting jeans,a light purple Makepeace Cellars T-shirt that hugs her breasts and is short enough that I get an occasional glimpse of a slice of her belly as we work, and a pair of my work gloves since she left the smaller pair she’d been using to garden back at the house.
And she’s trying too hard.
And I’m trying too hard to remember she’s a grown-ass woman who doesn’t need me to tell her she’s trying too hard.
She’s not my responsibility.
Fuck knows I suddenly feel like the rest of this place is.
Going broke.
I knew things were tight, but notbroketight.
We can’t go broke.
This place—it’s home to too many of us who need it.
Which means more events, unless someone else comes up with a better plan that Pip will agree to.
“How big of a trellis do you think the garden needs?” Cricket asks me as she digs through a pile of wooden grapevine posts.Some are broken, discarded from the vineyard when they wore out. Some are brand-new—or, I should say, never used.
They’re pretty old at this point, but it’s cool in the fermentation building here, so they’ve been preserved well.
Apparently Dean never threw anything away if he thought it might have another use, and somewhere along the line, the broken stakes got mixed with the new piles in this storeroom off the main fermentation room, even though I personally would’ve put them in the barn.
Probably Pip’s doing.
By all accounts, their marriage was volatile.
“Depends on what you want to do with it.”
“California plants are a lot different from Illinois plants. I grew up in Chicago. I mean, south of Chicago, but everyone calls it Chicago because they think the whole state is Chicago, which is silly when you consider that St. Louis is also a major city that touches the state, except, of course, it’s a lot smaller.”
I spot another relatively fresh-looking stake in the haphazard pile and grab it. Light’s not great in here—no windows, and it smells vaguely musty and dead, but Cricket hasn’t complained about that.
“Samantha’s good with plants,” I tell her. “She can help you with a general direction for what should go in near which other thing, and then we’ll get the trellis the right size and position.”
Her deep brown eyes connect with mine for the first time since—honestly, probably since the first day I saw her. “The vines won’t be growing up it in time for the wedding though, will they?”
“Might surprise you.”
“I hope they do. But if they don’t, maybe we do a temporary paint job on it. Hearts and stuff. Or, you know, whatever the happy couple wants.” She drops her gaze again, using herforearm to brush aside the flyaways on her forehead that have come out of the ponytail holding her highlighted dark hair back.
I grunt in agreement.
Not usually much of a grunter, but if I have to be here with Cricket, I’m going to do some grunting.
Started realizing that she’s been actively avoiding me.
