“Oh, Piper.” Matthew was looking at her, his disappointment in her so apparent, she wanted to hide from it. “What did you do?”
Piper swallowed hard. “I fired her.” The pit of guilt and shame that formed deep in her gut was almost too much to bear, but she couldn’t fight it back. All she could do was shake her head and watch as the redheaded kid and Mark walked in the other direction, the kid using his hands animatedly, causing Piper to wonder if he was sharing yet another of Lindsay’s ideas for increasing business.
* * *
There wasn’t much more Matthew could do for her besides look at her with disenchantment—and Piper wasn’t sure how much more of that she could take, deserved or not—so they said their goodbyes in the parking lot. He did hug her, and he told her he loved her, which he meant, Piper knew. But for now, she needed to get away from him. She couldn’t stand being around somebody who knew what she’d done, how cruel she’d been. Even the rearview mirror taunted her as she sat in the driver’s seat of her SUV. She couldn’t bear to look at herself.
Her cell rang and her heart soared with hope, so she snatched it up and answered without checking the screen. “Hello?”
“Piper?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“It’s Bridget. From Vineyard.”
“Oh.” Piper tried not to sound as disappointed as she felt. “Hey, Bridget.”
“I just drove past and realized there are no lights on.” No preamble. No small talk. Bridget obviously didn’t like her any more. Unsurprisingly.
“Okay,” Piper said, drawing the word out, not sure what was wanted of her.
“We open at two on Saturdays. I left your keys under the big flowerpot on the patio.”
All at once, a memory crashed through her skull and sat down heavily. I can take over running this place. That’s what she’d told Lindsay last night. Leave your keys with Bridget. She was responsible for opening now. Shit. “Oh, right. Yes,” she finally said to Bridget. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”
Bridget hung up without saying goodbye.
Piper pressed the End button on her phone and slumped down in her seat. Like a powerful storm over the ocean, everything that had happened to her over the past week suddenly crashed over her, a tidal wave of feelings, of wrong decisions, of grief. And for the first time since her father’s funeral, a sob tore its way up from her chest and burst out of her like a small explosion. She cried for her lost job. She cried because she missed her mother. She cried because Matthew was right: she had feelings for Lindsay, and instead of embracing them, she’d lashed out, been unspeakably cruel to her, and had most likely ruined anything good they might have had. She cried because she missed her father so badly, it made her chest ache. And she cried because she had no goddamn idea what she was supposed to do now. But everything had spiraled out of her control, and she felt utterly useless. Helpless. She wanted to fix things. Badly.
Instead, she cried some more because she had no idea how.
* * *
Why did Saturday at the wine bar have to be so damn busy?
And when had that happened?
That question ping-ponged its way around Piper’s head for nearly seven hours as she ran around like a chicken with its head cut off (a favorite euphemism of her father’s that never failed to make her stomach clench in a little bit of horror at the thought of a headless chicken running around), trying to keep a handle on things. And failing.
Sharon was the only employee working aside from Piper herself, and though they could’ve used another staff member, Piper was glad she didn’t have to get into detailed explanations about the situation. Sharon was an old friend of her mother’s, so when she asked where Lindsay was, and Piper said that she’d be running things herself tonight (not the whole truth, but not a lie either), Sharon simply nodded and got to work.
Piper’d had to wing it when it came to opening Vineyard for the day, as she had no idea what the procedure was. She did her best, used common sense, which got her to turn on the lights and the music. Thank God Lindsay had a list tacked to the office wall of the week’s specials, so she copied Saturday’s to the chalkboard behind the bar. Sharon had arrived at six, and Piper did her best not to ask a bunch of questions about how things were normally done. The last thing she wanted was her employees thinking she was utterly incompetent. Which she absolutely was.
The one good thing about having so much to do and so much to figure out was that it kept Piper from dwelling on the biggest issue of her life currently: Lindsay. And that had stopped her in her tracks, because how could the biggest current issue not be the fact that she was unemployed? Not just unemployed, but fired. How had Lindsay taken over first position that way?
Those questions would pop up here and there throughout the night. And then, inevitably, something regarding the wine bar would need tending and she was able to shove the Lindsay thing aside for a while. But over and over, she was faced with what she’d done, what she needed to fix, and how. She had lots of questions and very few answers.
“I’d like to sample the Chilean Malbec,” the man at the bar stated, yanking Piper out of her reverie.
She turned her focus to him, recognized him as—what had Lindsay called him?—Mr. Can I Taste That. She gave him a nod, turned and then scanned the wine rack for a full minute before finding the right bottle. It took her another two minutes to pull the cork. She finally poured him what she decided was a sip and slid it across to him.
“That’s it?” he asked, gray eyebrows raised.
With a quiet sigh, she splashed a bit more into his glass.
He sipped, made slight grimace. “Hmm. I don’t know. It’s a bit on the sweet side for me.”
Piper reached for his glass, but he pulled it toward him. “So…not that sweet, though, huh?”
He squinted at her for a beat, then finished the wine. A quick glance down at the menu, then back up, and he said, “How about the Chianti?”
By the time he asked for his fourth sample—the Amarone, which Piper knew was expensive—she had been clenching her jaw so tightly, she was sure she’d cracked a molar. And just when she thought she’d reached the end of her rope with this man, Lindsay’s voice echoed through her head.
“He’s a pain, but I suspect he also has lots of money and possibly some influence. So I’m always careful to take good care of him, no matter how ridiculous he gets. I don’t ever want him to be able to trash Vineyard…”
Damn her and her business logic. Piper turned her back to him, located the Amarone, and forced herself to take in three deep, quiet breaths. Then she poured and smiled at him as she gave him the wine. It occurred to her how proud of her Lindsay would be, at the same time Piper realized she was really not fond of dealing with customers.
By 10:45, there were three patrons left in Vineyard and Piper was beyond exhausted. She was sure part of her fatigue came from the vestiges of her hangover and the fact that being passed out wasn’t the same as sleeping. But the rest of it was from her day of working. She’d had no idea how hard it was to be running around, waiting on customers, and not only arranging cheese boards, but cleaning them up as well. She hadn’t even touched on any of the paperwork to be dealt with. She couldn’t begin to comprehend ordering and distributors and such. Oh, she could figure it all out in time; none of this was beyond her. The truth was, she didn’t want to. Because it was Lindsay’s job. And Lindsay was good at it.
Yeah…
Piper blew out a breath as the last three folks stood and gathered their things. They waved and thanked her and she waved back. “Come see us again,” she said as she followed them to the door and locked it behind them. Then she hit the main lights, turned off the music, and went into the office in the back where she dropped into what used to be her mother’s chair, but now what she thought of as Lindsay’s. Interesting.
The office smelled like Lindsay as well. Some blend of scents. Coconut. Maybe a little citrus. A bit of musk. Piper wondered if it was a combination of
things. Shampoo, lotion, perfume? She had no idea, but she inhaled deeply anyway, taking it in.
Lindsay…
Piper’s head fell back against the chair and she felt her eyes well up. God, when had she become such a waterworks?
She needed to talk to Lindsay.
Without giving herself time to talk her way out of it, she picked up her phone.
Can we talk?
She clicked Send.
The clock on the wall ticked loudly, as if rubbing in how much time was passing with no response. Not that Piper was surprised. What would surprise her? Was if Lindsay ever talked to her again. God, she’d been horrible. Piper could be a lot of things—and she knew it—cold, hard, precise, unemotional. But she’d never considered herself to be a terrible human being.
Until today.
Gina had suggested more than once that she go see a therapist. A grief counselor to help her deal with the loss of her father. And Piper had waved it off. Dismissed it easily, saying she didn’t need help. Yet here she was, more than two years after her father’s passing, and she still had times when she felt simply buried by his loss. Literally buried. She’d woken up in the middle of the night struggling for breath more than once after dreaming about him, feeling like some enormous weight sat on her chest, constricting her lungs, as if she’d been buried alive.
He would be so disappointed in her right now.
With a shake of her head, she glanced at her phone, which still taunted her with no response from Lindsay. She typed out, Please? and clicked Send.
By the time she’d shut everything down and locked the door behind her, it was 11:30 and there was still no response from Lindsay. Yet again, Piper’s eyes filled with tears and she fought hard, but managed to keep them from spilling over and running down her cheeks. She needed sleep. She needed to put this day out of her mind and fall into oblivion.
At home, she gave Edgar some love—more than he wanted, judging from his halfhearted struggle in her arms—and then located a bottle of Tylenol PM in her medicine cabinet. Sleep was not going to elude her tonight.
She tried not to think about how all of her concerns and issues would still be here in the morning.
Chapter Twenty
Piper had survived Sunday—barely—but getting out of bed on Monday proved to be difficult. She knew exactly why. It was the first official workday at her old company since she’d been fired, and she was having trouble accepting that she was no longer part of that team, that she no longer occupied that managerial role she’d worked so hard to achieve. The combination of that, the situation with Lindsay (who hadn’t responded to any of her texts, including the four she’d sent yesterday), and not being able to talk to her father about any of it whirred inside her gut like some sadistic blender and kept her from moving. At all. She was reasonably sure a mild depression was setting in, and she lay there in her bed with no energy whatsoever to do anything, until well after nine.
It took Edgar’s not-so-gentle kneading of her chest with his claws, along with his pathetic—and surprisingly loud—yowls to finally get her to groan in annoyance and actually shift a limb or two.
“Fine,” she said to him. “Fine. I’m glad it’s all about you, Eddie.” She tossed off the covers, sat up, and rubbed at her eyes. She felt groggy. She’d used the Tylenol PM again last night, and this was the price she had to pay for a somewhat decent night’s sleep.
In the kitchen, she popped a pod into the Keurig, then fed Edgar while her coffee brewed. Not even the scent of that first cup, which usually got her going in the morning, could lift her spirits. She felt flattened. It wasn’t a feeling she was used to. She didn’t like it.
Bridget had practically thrown her out of Vineyard last night.
Okay, maybe that was harsh.
Piper doctored up her coffee, then took it out onto her small back deck, deciding some fresh air might be good for her. She sat in the wooden Adirondack chair her father had given her as a housewarming gift when she’d moved in and watched two chickadees as they nibbled birdseed from the feeder she’d filled for the first time in months.
Sunday at Vineyard hadn’t been that busy, and that was probably a good thing. It was the first time, though, that Piper realized just how organized and precise Bridget was at her job. The customers loved her. She knew her wine. She was bubbly and energetic, perfect for dealing with the public. Piper knew Vineyard was lucky to have her, but she was also worried about losing her because one thing had been made very clear yesterday: Bridget was not happy with Piper. And anything Piper screwed up annoyed her.
When Piper dropped and shattered a glass, it seemed Bridget had reached her limit.
“You know what?” Bridget had said to her, obviously working hard to keep her voice calm and normal. “Why don’t you just go home? I’ve got this.”
“No, it’s okay,” Piper had protested, even though she wanted nothing more than to simply abandon ship. She’d grabbed the broom and dustpan from the back and was doing her best to clean up the tiny shards of glass.
“Really.” Bridget stopped Piper from sweeping with a hand on the broom. “It’s not that busy tonight. I can handle it no problem. You look exhausted. Just go. I’ve got this.”
Their gazes held, and there was so much in Bridget’s dark brown eyes. Some genuine concern. A lot of irritation. And much to her own surprise, Piper had agreed to go. Honestly, she just needed to get away from that place that was making her feel so utterly incompetent. And she didn’t like being there without Lindsay; it was like there was a huge hole nobody was talking about. A hole she’d caused. She’d nodded to Bridget, uttered a soft “Okay,” and left the wine bar in Bridget’s capable hands.
Then she’d sat in her car in the parking lot and cried for fifteen minutes.
She was a mess.
Piper sipped her coffee, watched the birds flit, and tried not to think about Lindsay. She failed, of course, because as soon as you tell yourself not to think about pink elephants, pink elephants are all you can think about.
Lindsay hadn’t answered a single text. Nor any of Piper’s three phone calls (which was probably good, as Piper had no idea what she’d say if Lindsay picked up). Piper understood. Completely. She was also frustrated as hell and knew she could not let go of the situation and take any steps forward unless she was able to clear the air with Lindsay. She needed to apologize. She needed to beg her to come back to Vineyard. Even if Lindsay laughed in her face, which she would be totally justified in doing, Piper needed to say it.
God, she needed to say so much to Lindsay.
And that was when she realized the true depth of her feelings. Right then, in that moment. She missed Lindsay physically, yes. In a big way. Despite the fact that they’d only been together that one time, it had left an impression. But even more than that, Piper missed talking to Lindsay. Just talking to her. Lindsay had snuck in, that was for sure. Piper hadn’t expected that. She’d dismissed Lindsay right off the bat and Lindsay had surprised her. And now Piper sat on her back deck mentally listing all the things she wished she could talk to Lindsay about right then and there.
What would I say to her if she was right here?
Piper listed it all in her head, one thing at a time. Somehow, it made her feel better.
She watched the birds until she’d finished her coffee. Then she got herself a refill, returned to her seat, and did her best to simply take air in, let air out, hearing her father’s voice once again telling her, Just breathe. Just be. It was so weird how reminding herself to do something her body did automatically actually helped.
* * *
At 1:00, Piper slid her key into the lock and let herself into Vineyard. It smelled clean, and the sun shone brightly through the windows. It felt like the first time she’d really looked at it in ages, which was strange. The first thing that caught her eye was the large, swirly Vineyard sign that was back in its spot on the wall…except it was clean and shiny and…
Piper walked up to it, reached out and
ran her fingertips over it.
It had been repainted.
A lump formed in Piper’s throat and her eyes welled. Lindsay had had it repainted. And sanded, by the looks of it, by the smoothness under Piper’s hand.
She looked up at the ceiling, irritated at the Universe. “You know, I’m getting it. Okay? I know it takes me a while sometimes, but you don’t have to keep hitting me with things. You can ease up for a day or two.” Piper wondered when it had been brought here. Had Bridget called Lindsay to tell her Piper was gone last night?
They probably text all the time about what a disaster I am here.
Piper didn’t like that idea, but knew it was likely.
God, she’d fucked up. Piper didn’t use that word often at all, and she didn’t use it lightly. It was most appropriate here, though. She made mistakes all the time, just like every other human being on the planet. But this wasn’t a mistake. She had royally fucked up. And even though she intended to find a way to try and fix it, she had to accept that fixing it might not be possible, that she most likely damaged things beyond repair. That was a tough one to swallow.
She was just about to dive into the alarmingly full email inbox when her cell rang. A glance told her it was Gina, whom she’d blown off with a variety of “I’ll call you later” texts over the weekend. Piper took a deep breath and answered.
“Hey there.”
“For God’s sake, Piper, when you tell somebody you’re going to call, you have to call. Especially when they’re worried about you and they’ve made it very clear they’re worried about you.” Gina’s voice was a combination of frantic, hurt, and angry. Piper let her go on a bit longer.
“I know. I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“I am.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need more than that.” The warning edge in her sister’s tone was all the clue Piper needed that Gina was going to blow soon.
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