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Junie's pour stops mid-stream. She knows the file. Junie has heard the full ten-year saga of Brady Callahan across approximately two hundred wine nights: the ghost, the Thanksgiving story that killed and died in silence, the wedding where he held up a tent pole all night rather than dance with anyone, the running bit where my brother's best friend would rather inventory a hardware store than be in a room with me.

"The one who hates you," she says.

"The very one. Except." I turn my glass by the stem, because I'm about to say something out loud and once I say it, it's real. "Junie, I don't think he hates me. I spent two days fighting with him about fire codes and it was — he made me a counter-sketch. He knew the coffee I handed him was wrong and drank it anyway. He told my cat he was sitting on the egress."

"He talked to Wick?"

"He cited Wick."

Junie sits down slowly, the way you do when the gossip turns out to be structural. "Back up. Start at the binder."

So I tell her — the binder, the aisle fight, Orchard Bonfire and the train of thought I watched leave his body through his ears, and, because I have no self-preservation instincts left, the tailgate. The arson stories. The way he looked at my barn and said good things burn like he was reading it off the inside of his own ribs.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Junie stops drinking and starts watching me with her eyebrows at cruising altitude.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing. Continue. You were describing his forearms."

"I was describing his SKETCH."

"You were describing his forearms as context for the sketch. This is minute fifteen of the Brady portion of the evening. I've been timing it since the binder." She leans back, insufferable, delighted. "For reference, when you dated that ceramicist from New Paltz for four months, your all-time record was six minutes."

"He's an interesting professional adversary."

"Mm-hm."

"There's a lot of material."

"Mm-hm."

"You know what — pour the wine and shut up," I say, and she does the first one and has never once done the second in her life.

She makes me walk her through the fire-table sketch on my phone twice, zooming in with the focus she usually reserves for other people's engagement photos. "He drew your light poles," she says. "From memory. Sloane. I've dated men for six months who couldn't remember I'm allergic to shellfish. One of them PROPOSED."

"It's his job. He's spatial."

"He's spatial," she repeats, in a voice that files the phrase away for future mockery, and tops off my glass. "Okay, town business, since you've been in your wax cave all week: the launch is officially the biggest thing to hit Woodbridge Falls since the bear got into the Tap & Barrel. Marlene's doing a window display. The inn is FULL, Sloane — full, in October, that hasn't happened since the leaf-peeper bus broke down in 2019 and they had nowhere to put the Belgians. Georgie's talking about a signature cocktail called the Wax Melter." She counts on her fingers. "You did that. Your weird little candle empire did that."

Something goes warm and tight in my chest, and it must show, because Junie's face gentles.

"They said I couldn't make a living playing with wax," I say. "Direct quote. Multiple relatives."

"And in three weeks, two hundred people are coming to watch you play with wax." She clinks her glass against mine. "Eat it, multiple relatives."

By the time the bottle's dead, she's got her boots up on my coffee table, and her face has gone from delighted to something a shade more careful. "Serious question, then I'll drop it. It's Wes's best friend. The Wes who still refers to you as 'the kid' at age thirty-two. You've thought about that part?"

"There's no part to think about. He's here for two weeks to fail my launch. It's a professional hostage situation with good forearms."

"Uh-huh." She gathers her coat, drains her glass, kisses the top of my head like a blessing and a warning. "For what it's worth? Ten years is a long time to go out of your way to avoid somebody who doesn't matter to you." She pauses at the door. "Also Bev says the trailhead fire made five. People are starting to lock their barns at night. Weird season, Sloanie. Be smart about all of it."

I call Wes while I'm cleaning up, because it's overdue and because some part of me wants to poke the data set.

"Is he passing you?" is how my brother answers his phone.

"Hello to you too. He's failing my fire pits and redesigning my field, it's a whole saga. Wes, why didn't you ever tell me what Brady does?"

A pause, with highway noise in it. "What do you mean? He does risk assessment."