Page 133 of Drunk on Love

He rolled down his windows and turned up the music. He hoped Avery got them potato salad, too. Maybe that would solve all of his problems.

Twenty-Five

THE TASTING ROOM WASbooked solid with appointments on Thursday, and with Taylor gone, Margot didn’t sit down all day. She chatted and laughed and smiled with guests, encouraged them to have another sip, buy one more bottle, relax with a glass of wine on the new Adirondack chairs out on the grounds. It was a relief, to be around people all day, to be busy from when she walked in the door, to not have to be alone with her thoughts. She was successful, she was thriving; there was no need to think about Luke, why she hadn’t heard from him, how lonely she’d been all week, how she’d almost texted him that morning about his interview and had chickened out.

At six that evening, when everyone was gone, she locked up the building and turned off the lights in the tasting room. But instead of getting in her car to go home, she went back to her office. She might as well get more work done, since she was here, and she’d been terrible this week about getting work done at home. At home there were reminders of him everywhere, all ofthe places she normally worked: her couch, her kitchen, her bedroom.

She looked at her phone, which she’d planned to ignore all day. She hadn’t, exactly, but at least she hadn’t checked it as obsessively as she had all week. Nothing from Luke. Sydney had texted, though.

SYDNEY

Come by tonight? Charlie has a new menu item you’ll love. Or I could bring something by after work?

She’d told Sydney everything on Monday night, over an enormous amount of pasta, and Sydney had very reassuringly been out for Luke’s blood. That had been great, to feel angry at Luke, instead of sad. But tonight, Margot couldn’t handle Sydney’s concern for her and urge to destroy Luke. She loved her for it, very much, but right now, she needed to just be.

MARGOT

Working late tonight, maybe tomorrow

Tell Charlie I said thank you.

She worked for a while before she got up to go to the bathroom. Oh, and wait, had she gone through the whole closing checklist before she’d locked up the tasting room? She hadn’t closed up in a while.

She went back in the tasting room and looked around. The bar was cleaned up, the wine was all put away, the dishwasherwas loaded, but—oops—she’d forgotten to turn it on. She did that, and then had a sudden vision of Luke, his sleeves rolled up, fixing the dishwasher.

“Fuck!” she yelled to the empty room. Did he have to be everywhere in her whole fucking life? She’d known this man for only two fucking months!

She took a glass down and pulled out one of the bottles they’d opened that day at random. What was the fucking point of owning a winery if you didn’t get to drown your sorrows in wine at least once?

She poured a glass and then sat down on one of the couches by the window.

His interview had been that day. She’d tried, so hard, not to let herself think about it, but she had. All day. He’d said she was being irrational to be so angry, to feel so betrayed that he’d decided to do this without telling her, that he’d decided to do this at all, and maybe he was right. But for the past month, almost as soon as they’d really gotten together, he’d been completely woven into her life. Okay, fine, almost completely—he was right, she hadn’t told Elliot about him, or anyone else at the winery. But she’d talked to Luke about so much. She’d told Luke about all of her conflicts with Elliot, about what he’d said at the funeral, about how hurt she’d been, then and since; she’d sobbed like a baby on his shoulder at the end of the party; she’d told him everything she and Elliot had talked about after she’d come home. She’d thought of him—she’d treated him—as someone she could share her whole self with, without having to edit herself, without having to hold anything back. And she’d believed he thought of her that same way, too, especially after that car ride when he’d told her about leaving his job. She’d trusted him with everything, in a way she rarely trusted people.

She got up, opened a new bottle, and poured herself more wine. This time, she brought the bottle back to the couch with her.

She stared at the sky out the window, the faint orange and pink and purple of the approaching sunset. Sunset was so late this time of year.

Had Luke spent all of this time with her thinking about his next move, his next step, the rest of his life, without sharing any of that with her? They’d been dating for real for only a month; this was probably her fault for expecting too much of someone far too young for her, of thinking that he wanted the same things she did. Sure, he was twenty-nine, but in man years, that was more like nineteen. She should have known that. He’d said that he thought they were something, he’d seemed to care about her, but he’d decided to go back to a job he’d hated, without even talking to her about it. And he’d walked out on her and hadn’t come back.

She felt tears fall down her face, for the first time since Sunday morning.

Had he cared, the way she’d thought he had? The way she’d cared? Even when he’d told her about that stupid lie he’d told his mom about dating Avery, the way he’d saidI’m with youhad seemed so definite. But maybe that meant something different to her than it did to him. Maybe they just thought of their relationship differently, wanted different things. He had been pretending to date someone else the whole time, after all. Maybe she shouldn’t have built this whole relationship up in her head with a twenty-nine-year-old guy she’d been dating for only a month who had told her at the outset he wasn’t staying in Napa for long. Maybe this was all her fault, not his.

It probably was. She was too much for most people. For most men, especially. She wanted too much, she talked too much. Shecared too much. Luke was probably just done, and this was his way of telling her that.

Her wine on the coffee table seemed very far away. Why was this coffee table so low, anyway? You had to sit all the way up and then reach all the way forward for the wine—she should do something about that.

For now, it was far easier to just sit on the floor, where she could have her wineglass right next to her. And then she could pull her legs into her chest and drop her face on her knees.

She poured more wine into her glass and took a gulp. Had she been unfair to Luke? Irrational, like he’d said she was being? Probably, but everything about their relationship had been irrational! Had it been rational for her to sleep with him that first night? No! Had it been rational for her to lust after him every fucking day when he was working for her? No! Had it been rational for her to pull him into her house and kiss him just hours after he’d quit working for her? Absolutely not!

She reached for her wineglass again. Then she looked up with a jerk as the tasting room door opened.

“Margot?”

It was Elliot.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m in here.”

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