Page 11 of Bitter Rival

I choose a vinyl from Robert Heyward’s collection and guide the needle to the first song on the LP. Last night I listened to Leonard Cohen on repeat. The man was a fucking poet. This morning Nina Simone serenades me while I brew a pot of coffee and peel an orange.

I’m drinking my coffee at the chopping-block island when I hear the front door closing and footsteps echoing on the limestone tiles.

A few seconds later, Beckett appears in the arched doorway dressed in a faded maroon Stanford sweatshirt and denim. His hair is disheveled like he’s been running his fingers through it for hours, and he looks younger, almost boyish.

More like the boy I vaguely remember from all those years ago.

In my scattered memories of that time, I remember his smile. His laughter. How once upon a time he was kind to me.

That boy was happy, but the man before me is not.

He sets a paper bag on the counter, pours himself a cup of coffee and sits across from me. I study his face over the rim of my mug. He looks like he hasn’t slept all night, which leads me to wonder if he was with someone.

Does he have a girlfriend? Did he hit up a bar and pick up a random girl for the night?

“What’s in the bag?” I ask instead.

“I don’t know. Someone left it on the doorstep.” He pulls the bag toward him and opens it, then shuts it quickly and shoves it away like it’s filled with venomous snakes.

Curiosity prevails so I peek inside and suppress a smile.

Beckett has jokes.

I pull out a cinnamon roll the size of a baby’s head and moan when I take the first bite. “So good,” I say, taking another huge bite of gooey deliciousness. “Is this a peace offering? A bag of cinnamon rolls?”

He snatches the bag away and moves it out of my reach. “The only reason you got one at all was because you tore into it like a rabid junkyard dog. I didn’t want to risk losing a finger if I tried to snatch it out of your jaws.”

“That’s smart,” I say with a nod. “I’ve killed for less.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

I finish the cinnamon roll and lick my fingers clean then jump up from my seat and wash my coffee mug at the farmhouse sink.

When I turn, he’s watching me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve.

If he wants to figure out who I am, he’s going to have to gain my trust first. But I have a feeling he doesn’t see it that way. I think he’s already decided who I am, and now he’s just looking for confirmation that he was right.

I’m smart enough to know that a bag of cinnamon rolls isn’t the equivalent of waving the white flag and shouting, I surrender, but this whole situation would be a lot easier if we called a truce.

Whether he likes it or not, we’re stuck with each other for the next three months, and it will be tedious and tiresome if we’re constantly in combat mode.

So I extend an olive branch by responding to the question he asked last night. “I drove to the coast.” He gives me a blank stare. “That’s where I went last evening,” I clarify. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to watch the sun setting over the Pacific and I didn’t want to miss it.”

His eyes narrow on me like he’s trying to catch me in a lie.

But why would I lie about that?

I was lucky to run into a group of teens at the beach who were more than happy to be in my photos. My work has evolved over the years, but I still love capturing those fleeting moments of youth on the cusp of adulthood when the future is so uncertain but filled with possibility.

“Now it’s your turn. Where did you go last night?”

He’s busy on his phone, probably checking his bank account balance or the stock market or something equally dull and uninspiring, so when he doesn’t bother responding, I walk out the door and go in search of Pete. Today he’s going to teach me the fundamentals of canopy management.

Unlike Beckett, who can probably work anywhere there’s Wi-Fi, my job isn’t like that, but he never once asked me if the timing would be convenient for me.

I had to rearrange my entire work schedule and even lost out on a big campaign I was commissioned to shoot, just to be here, so I might as well make the most of it and learn whatever I can.

By late morning, the sun has burned through the fog and I’m sweating in my tank top and cargo pants, but it feels good to be working outside and doing something physical. Farming is labor-intensive, and since this vineyard is farmed mostly by hand, there’s a lot of lifting and bending and stretching.

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