Page 135 of Drunk on Love

“If the answer is just ‘I think so’ then you have to talk this out with him,” he said. “Don’t make my mistakes. Don’t wait until it’s too late.”

Margot turned to look at Elliot. What mistakes was he talking about?

He shook his head.

“Long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you, sometime. But for now—you should at least see if there’s a way to work this out. Don’t let it fester.”

Elliot was right. Of course he was right.

Margot started to get up, to go find her phone. Elliot pulled her back down.

“Notnow. Not while you’re drunk, and still mad at him. That story never ends well. Take some time to think about it, but not too much time.” He stood up and reached for her hands to pull her up. “Here. We need to get some french fries in you.”

“French fries!” Margot let him pull her up. “Oh God, I could eat an entire bucket. Do you remember how—”

“How we would sneak out and get fries and Mom would yell at us because she could still smell them in the car the next day? Of course I do.”

He put their wineglasses on top of the bar.

“Wait here.”

He went into the back, and came out a minute later, her bag and phone in his hands.

“I turned off your light, you’re clearly not doing any more work tonight.” He opened the front door. “First fries, and then I’m going to get you home. How exactly did you plan to get home,after drinking almost a whole bottle of wine while sitting on the tasting room floor?”

She followed Elliot out to his truck.

“I would like you to know that I started off drinking wine on the couch, I only later moved to the floor. And I hadn’t gotten that far—I think after the second glass I had some idea of sleeping on the couch in my office? But that would have been deeply uncomfortable, now that I think about it.”

Elliot laughed, and helped her into the truck. Why did they make trucks so hard to get into?

“Can we write it into our partnership contract that anytime one of us is at the drinking-wine-on-the-floor stage, the other one will come bring them fries and drive them home?” Elliot asked. “Because I know my time will come.”

She reached out a hand to him.

“Shake on it.”

He grabbed her hand, and they shook hard.

LUKE GOT TO THEinn early Friday morning. He did not feel entirely... well after everything he’d eaten at Avery’s house the night before, but it was high tourist season, there would be a ton of check-ins and checkouts and questions from guests today, and he had to be ready for all of that.

Avery hadn’t tried to get him to talk about everything, for which he’d been very grateful. But when he’d left, she’d given him a big hug and then said, “Think about what I said, okay?”

She was obviously some sort of witch, because he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what she’d said since then.

My confidence was shot, I felt like a different person, I didn’t feel like me.

That’s exactly how he’d felt at that job.

But, like he’d said, it wasn’t the same.

Midway through the morning, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket.

CRAIG

Expect good news in the next few days

He should be excited about this. Just like he’d told Margot, it was a level up, more money, and aside from either of those things, it was proof to anyone out there that he could hack it, that he was good enough. Better than good enough.

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