Page 62 of Drunk on Love

“First of all, I’ve always thought you and Elliot got along great, and I would never peg you as the killer if Elliot turned up dead,” he said.

She couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“And second, I can definitely forget I heard that. But also: ifwe keep tripping over things, and apologizing to each other, and cutting ourselves off, that’s going to make this drive really annoying. Feel free to tell me no, this is crossing a line or whatever, but for the purposes of this car ride, can we make a rule that we’re just Luke and Margot? That your job and my job don’t matter, and I’m just your neighbor giving you a ride home? And everything we say to one another doesn’t leave this car? Or we could not do that, and just sit in silence for however long it takes to get home”—they pulled onto the freeway and saw the traffic stretched out in front of them—“but I think that’s going to take a while.”

Margot thought about that. While she could usually chatter on for way too long with bright, impersonal conversation about the winery, somehow they already knew each other too well for her to talk to him like that. And it had been a long day; she was clearly so exhausted and stressed about Elliot and the party and everything else that she’d already threatened to murder her brother in front of one of their employees. Who knew what else she’d say?

“Okay,” she said. “Just Margot and Luke. Cone of silence. Thank you.”

She looked over at him. He was concentrating on merging into a lane, but he smiled. She liked his smile way too much. But right now they were just Margot and Luke.

“Honestly, you’re doing me a favor,” he said. “I spent hours with my mom listening to her talk about vintage kitchen goods or whatever; I need some interesting conversation so I don’t go home and start looking up the difference between old Pyrex and new Pyrex, and if you know, please don’t tell me; I know it will just lead to more questions, and I’m trying to pull myself out of this rabbit hole.”

She laughed, like she knew he wanted her to. She could tell he was trying to put her at ease. She appreciated it. Being in the car with him, being this close to him, made all of her nerve endings feel exposed.

“Okay.” He glanced over at her. “I’ll go first. Here’s something that I absolutely would only tell my neighbor Margot, not my hypothetical boss Margot—I up and quit my last job in a rage. Just got furious one day and quit.”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Was it because of what you told me on the way back from the staff dinner? The racist thing that your old boss said?”

He shook his head slowly.

“No. Not for that. I’d probably have more respect for myself if that was why.” He sighed. “It was something small, stupid. I brought something up in a meeting, an idea I had, and he mocked it. Just totally laughed at me, and got other people laughing at me, too. Which had happened more than once, actually—to me, to other people, he did that kind of thing, to kind of get us competing with each other—but I was just suddenly so fucking sick of it. I drafted my resignation email while I was still in that meeting, and about an hour later, I pressed send.”

He wasn’t looking at her. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. It had been hard, she realized, for him to tell her this.

“Good for you,” she said.

He tensed up. She could feel it.

“What do you mean?”

Oh. He thought she was being sarcastic.

“I mean good for you. Really. I’m glad you did that. I’ve worked in toxic places like that and stayed far too long. Good for you for getting out when you did.”

He was quiet for a while. She let the silence grow.

“Thank you,” he said finally. “I’m sure everyone else thinks that I couldn’t hack it anymore, that I wasn’t strong enough to keep going. The only other person I’ve told—really told, I mean—about how and why I quit was Avery. Avery Jensen, you know her; she’s one of my best friends. She also told me I did the right thing. It’s not that I don’t trust her, I do, but Avery never takes any bullshit from anyone, so of course she would think it was a good decision.”

“Avery was right,” Margot said.

Luke laughed.

“I won’t tell her you said that. She’d lord it over me forever.” His smile faded. “Anyway, I haven’t even told my mom that I quit. I gave her some bullshit about taking a sabbatical and told her that’s why I moved back up here. In an attempt to get her off my back, I found a new job at a winery.” He smiled sideways at her.

“Ah, everything makes sense now,” she said.

They both smiled for a moment.

His smile faded, and he looked straight ahead.

“I haven’t even told Avery this, but sometimes I wonder if I should have just kept my head down, worked harder, had more grit or whatever. Or that the real reason I quit was I just wasn’t good enough. I guess... I guess I haven’t told my mom because I know I’d be disappointing her. She’s just so proud of me—you saw her today, she brags about me to everyone like that. And if she knew I failed, like this... I just don’t want to let her down.”

“You didn’t fail, Luke,” Margot said. Did he want to hear that from her? She wasn’t sure, but she had to say it.

He just shrugged.

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