Page 64 of Love Among Vines

She turned away and shook her head. She needed to worry less about the hot-and-cold vintner and more about her future. While she had produced something today, it wasn’t anything sellable. There was a long way to go.

Shit, what had happened to those paintings anyway? Hopefully Rett had put them somewhere safe. She wasn’t about to text him to find out.

She turned her attention to studying for her driver’s license exam and was immersed in dull facts about school buses when a message from Rett came through.

Rett: Let’s have dinner tomorrow. Bring your current budget and a full financial accounting. Savings, checking, retirement, investments, any passive income.

Jade: Do you really think I’d be here if I had a passive income?

Great. More homework.

She Googled budgeting for beginners. Thirty minutes later, a distressing financial reckoning was laid out in front of her.

Even lowering her biggest monthly expense—rent—wasn’t going to be simple. Finding a new apartment meant first andlast month’s rent plus security deposit, and possibly roommates. Finding a place that accepted large dogs was going to be a nightmare. Her fortress of solitude would be gone.

Even moving into the more affordable boroughs wasn’t necessarily the answer. Rent appeared to be at an all-time high.

But if she moved away from the city, public transportation became sparser. And she didn’t have a driver’s license. Or a car. Her only real choices were to suck it up and find a place in Brooklyn with three roommates, or look around the country for a walkable/bike-friendly neighborhood with everything she needed.

On a whim, she went to a real estate website and searched for apartments in Hammondsport. Her mouth dropped open. She could save two fricken thousand dollars a month and give Penny her own bedroom if she decided to move here. But moving here would make no sense. If she couldn’t paint anymore, she would have no income. And what was the job market like in a tiny-ass town like Hammondsport? What would she do, work three part-time jobs to make ends meet?

There was no future here, and having constant exposure to Rett wasn’t going to help anything. Maybe there were similar neighborhoods on neighboring lakes? Seneca, maybe?

“Fuck.” She slammed her laptop shut and pushed it away from her.

There was no easy answer. It was going to take a lot of quick soul-searching. Her future security rested on her ability to reclaim her artistic identity. Maybe spending some time alone in town tomorrow after her shift at the café would help.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

RETT

Rett rolledhis shoulders back when he pulled into Margie’s driveway. It had been a long day at the winery. Todd had called off with a bout of man-flu, and Rett had taken over his tastings. He had run straight to the bank with a deposit and barely had time to go home and laminate some dough for tomorrow morning’s sticky buns.

The front door of the cottage opened, and Jade smiled at him. She wore an orange top and high-waisted jeans. It looked incredible on her but would have looked even better piled on the floor.

He needed to stick to the plan, but she was making it impossible.

He handed over a bouquet of goldenrod and lavender asters.

“For you.”

Penny immediately planted her paws on his torso and panted happily in his face.

“They’re beautiful,” Jade said. “You know there’s no one here to prove anything to, right? Margie went to her bridge club.”

“I don’t need a reason to give a beautiful woman flowers,” he said with one eyebrow cocked.

She smiled. “Come in while I get these in some water.”

A mess of loose papers on the kitchen table caught his attention.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

“For your information, I was doing my homework.”

Jade put the flowers in one of the many vases scattered around the guest cottage and topped it off with water. Then she made a face and fished out a handful of papers from the pile on the table.

“I hope wherever we’re going is cheap. Some of us are on a fixed income.”

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