Page 25 of Love You Too

Ren: Hey. Is it against the rules of “one and done” to say hi?

I almost laugh at the karma of it all. And his incessant need to flirt. That hasn’t changed. He was always a gruff asshole on the ice, but with me, all flirting, all the time.

Me: Nope. Hi

Ren: Truman misses you. His ears are droopy

Me: Aren’t they always droopy?

Ren: You caught me. Yup, they are

Me: It’s okay. I miss him too

Ren: Wanna see him?

I need to think before answering because the real question is whether I want to see Ren. I hate that a part of me wants to see him again, but another part reminds me that what happened ten years ago is ancient history.

Me: Sure. When?

Ren: Next Wednesday night?

Me: (thumbs-up emoji)

I’m pretty sure he’s doing the same thing, using Truman as an excuse to see me, and I’m not sure I mind. I’m an adult. I have a full life. I’m in control. He can come over with his dog next week and it will be fine.

I work hard to convince myself of this as I make coffee. I normally don’t brew a pot when I’m home because I can grab a cup easily enough at Sweet Butter café, conveniently located between my house and my office at Buttercup Hill. But this morning, I’m exhausted, so Julie is coming here for our morning meeting. It’s only a stone’s throw from my office on the other end of the vineyard property, but meeting here means I can stay in sweatpants and take things a bit slower, which I need today.

I feel nauseated, probably from the stress of my contractor pushing back the installation dates of the new flooring in all the guest rooms. It’s not just PJ’s wedding at stake here. Each day that we delay means thousands of dollars in missed revenue, so the pressure is on. We’re booked up for the first six months after we reopen, but if we delay even by one weekend, we’ll need to apologize to guests whose reservations we’ve canceled. We need to offer them free dinners at Butter and Rosemary or a free night at the inn if we push back their reservations.

Ka-ching, ka-ching.Dollars racing down the drain. It makes me even more nauseous thinking about it. So much so that…oh crap. A wave of nausea hits me so hard that I drop my cup on the counter and run for the bathroom. I make it in time to lose the entire contents of my stomach, all of it coffee. I feel slightly better, but not great. Weird.

Julie knocks at my door, ready with spreadsheets from Jax that detail exactly how much he thinks we can charge for each room type at the inn. A second sheet details how much we need to net each month for the inn to be a profit center for Buttercup Hill. “He told me to tell you the inn can’t be a loss leader, so don’teven think it,” she says, holding out a cup of coffee from Sweet Butter.

I wave it away. “Thanks, but I had coffee here. And it didn’t go so well. I guess I’m really nervous about pulling this off.” I point to the pages in her hands. The inn has always been a minor part of our business, the bulk of it being selling wine. But we’ve had some setbacks recently. First, our dad pulled a half a billion dollars from the company coffers and gave it to Graham, our half brother we never knew about until a few months ago. Then we lost some key employees to that same half brother’s winery, so we’re scrambling to find good people. Plus, we need some of his grapes to fill our international orders, so we’re forced to go into business with him if we want to stay afloat.

There’s no way to ask our dad if that was his intention all along because his Alzheimer’s has advanced in recent months, and he gets so confused when we visit him that his nurse has limited the time we spend so he can focus on his health. It’s hard to watch his decline.

I didn’t see him often when I was a kid because he was often working, and our care was dispensed to a parade of nannies, but as I got older, my dad weighed in on my life decisions—he was especially supportive of me staying in college and establishing a career, rather than following a “hockey boyfriend.” It’s strange how life progresses. Crazy that my hockey boyfriend is here now.

I wish I could talk to my dad about the stresses at work and let him be a sounding board, but it seems to set him back when we talk with him about the winery. He just pounds a fist and wags a finger as though we know what we’re supposed to do. But we don’t. We’re all just treading water in jobs most of us never intended to have. Doing the best we can. Trying to keep our finances in line. All of this puts more pressure on the inn when it reopens. It needs to happen sooner rather than later, and everything is behind schedule. Not by days but by weeks. It’s falling onme to pick up the pace and shave days off the schedule, so we don’t lose even more money.

No wonder I’m stressed enough to puke.

“You don’t look so good,” Julie says, walking to my sink and wetting a paper towel. She hands it to me, and I look at her blankly.

“What’s this for?”

“You’re pale and you’re sweating. Wipe your face.”

It’s not until she says it that I realize my skin is clammy. And I feel another wave of nausea hit me, so I race again to the bathroom.

When I emerge a couple minutes later, I feel pretty good, but only because I’m convinced now that there’s nothing left in my stomach. And when I looked at my face in the mirror, the color has returned. “Better. Okay, where were we? The numbers from Jax?”

Julie shakes her head. “Hang on. What just happened? Do you have food poisoning?”

I shrug. “I dunno. Maybe. It hit me hard this morning, but I skipped dinner, so I don’t know what could’ve poisoned me. It’s probably just stress.”

“That, or morning sickness. Any chance your little romp with hockey boy got you knocked up?”

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