Page 31 of Lighting Up Christmas

Playful.

Riley rose up, graceful and smiling.

“I love the barrel and the bucket, but I think it needs more holiday splash.”

“The whole store looks splashed in Christmas,” he replied, looking around, but then he realized he wasn’t correct. The store looked rustic and subtly woven with Christmas elements—greenery and pops of red, silver, and gold.

“It’s pretty. Not overwhelming,” he admitted.

“I can work with that,” Riley said, looking at her smartwatch. “We still have a few minutes before what I hope are festive crowds descend.”

Riley arranged the greenery at the top of his wine barrel and then sparingly wrapped the wine barrel in lights. She also took a bottle of each of the wines and placed them at the front of the wine barrel, and she put a wood box under the galvanized bucket, draped a red filmy scarf over the box, and put the bucket back on top.

Then she took a picture.

“I’ll tag you,” she said as she snapped a picture from another angle after she put one of the absurd knit Santa caps on a late harvest Riesling.

“Ummm”—something else he hadn’t done for the winery yet—“no, thank you.”

“Are you kidding me?” The ball of her Santa hat bounced indignantly over one shoulder. “Aren’t you a tech god? Don’t you have a tech empire? You must have minions social media-ing it twenty-four seven.”

He opened his mouth to reply—defensively, which was something he hadn’t done after the first year his mom had taken him back so he could try to keep the peace—but realized Riley was right.

“I haven’t established a social media presence for the winery, yet. Or a website.”

Because he’d have to, wouldn’t he—if he were going to have a winery, not just a cool wine chandelier in his wine cellar? He wasn’t going to make wine and watch it pile up in storage—a future legacy for a child he’d never have. Maybe for Jackson’s children.

“I know you’re a tech genius,” Riley said, dead serious. “But if you want any help, I’ve built the website for Flanagan & Sons a few times, updating it and making it more interactive, and I’vebuilt and maintained the websites for Lost and Found Objects, Running Fox Bakery, and the Caffeinated Goat, all owned by friends. I’m happy to help you design a website and social media presence for your winery if you are pressed on time or your employees are too busy with other projects to take it on at this point.”

He could do it in his sleep.

He had staff who could do it in an afternoon.

But he’d avoided even thinking about what he was going to do with the wine. He’d been consumed with the process—the science of learning about the clones and grafting, the geology of the site, the planning, the planting, the nurturing, the winemaking chemistry and process. But not launching it into the wider world beyond a few friends and associates he’s known for years—why? Even that was too potentially a personal minefield for him to walk through.

Riley put the finishing touches on the display as a few people drifted into the store. Zhang saw the bass player take another luxurious sip of the coffee Riley had brought her. She caught him looking, and she held up her cup like they were toasting. “Cheers to sales and tips,” she called, her Santa hat at a jaunty angle and at odds with the rather austere, punkish vibe of the rest of her outfit.

The bass player swung into an Amy Winehouse classic, and Sophia, taking a quick sip of her coffee before putting it down on the checkout counter, hurried forward to greet people. Zhang saw two more women, a mother-daughter team also wearing Santa hats, put down their coffees and move to different areas of the shop, clearly ready to work. He made the sixth person. Unexpected, as he’d paid the fee at the last minute.

Riley had given him her coffee. And she hadn’t fussed at him to wear the hat. Instead, one of his wines was wearing it. Andshe’d decorated his barrel so that he looked like he belonged—like he knew what he was doing.

“Do you have a pourer’s license?” he remembered to ask. He didn’t want to get shut down before he’d even opened.

“Absolutely,” Riley said. “I’ve poured wine at a few big events in the valley, otherwise I’d never get to enjoy the scenery and music and the whole beautiful vibe.”

“But you said you don’t drink wine.”

“I haven’t acquired the taste for it yet, and I think my brother, Drew, who brews beer, would boot me from his contact list.”

“Yet.” Zhang caught the word and held on. He could work with that as an inkling of an idea formed.

The idea continued to percolate over the next couple of hours as he poured wine for more people than he would have imagined would come out on a cold Friday night in early December. Riley greeted everyone. She bubbled and seemed familiar with all of the different merchandise by different vendors, and after she listened to him talk about his wines a couple of times, she had his spiel down, only she was more enthusiastic.

He soon had a list of contact information for more than fifty people who wanted to be on his winery e-newsletter list that he hadn’t even thought about creating. Riley had stressed the topography of the site, the drama of how ice wine was rare and had to be harvested at night when the grapes were frozen. She made it sound like she’d been there, when, long before dawn, it had been him and a sleepy crew his consulting winemaker had contacted at the last minute.

By the end of the night, Riley’s storytelling sounded as if it were all true. Hell, he wanted to be a part of his nonexistent wine club. He’d sold out of the six cases he’d ambitiously packed, and Riley had collected addresses for five more wine delivery customers for “them” to drop off tomorrow.

She’d also sold four of her lights, and the other merchandise in the pop-up shop looked picked over despite her continuous rearranging to keep the displays looking fresh.

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