Page 81 of My Grape Crush
And Rhys marches out, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
RHYS
“Is everything okay?”Nicole leans forward on her stool, trying to catch my eyes. “You've been quiet today.”
“I think it’s something I ate,” I reply, the hitch in my voice betraying me. “Not feeling one hundred percent.”
Nicole isn’t buying my fake smile. Why would she? I feel numb. The darkness of Saturday was so complete, Sunday a complete drunken write-off, not even the surgical-grade lighting in Nicole’s mad scientist office could brighten my Monday mood. I’m trapped in a room full of beakers with sticky notes pasted on every inch of available wall space. Energy sapped from tossing and turning all night.
Focus is nearly impossible.
Nicole powers down her computer and swivels to face me. Francis and Rita left to get lunch, but the emptiness in my stomach couldn't be filled with food.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
For the past hour, she’s schooled me in her secret sauce system on how she grades grapes for readiness. She tracks acid, sweetness, and tannins daily, grading them on a one-to-five scale in her Moleskin notebook. When I asked how she knew the wine was ready, she offered a coy smile. “That’s why Evelyn pays me the big bucks.”
But we both know the topic has veered away from rosé production.
I meet her eyes and try to sound pulled together.“The weekend was a bit rough.”
Nicole nods, tapping one finger thoughtfully on her lower lip. Dani has dropped in every day during filming. Every time she did, we joked and played off each other, thinking we were being so discreet. But it’s like me sneaking home at midnight when I was thirteen, raiding the fridge for munchies when Mom wandered in. She sniffed the air and asked questions while I denied everything, a haze of pot smoke clinging to me.
With no sight of Dani today, Nicole puts two and two together. “I was walking the lower vineyards after lunch on Saturday,” she says.“A lot of commotion drifted down from your place.”
One dark eyebrow rises in my direction. How lawyer-like of her, giving me just enough rope to hang myself. My chest tightens uncomfortably. I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to have someone give a shit. For a tense moment, I debate if this is a line I want to cross, revealing my disappointment and frustrations.
But if not now, when?
One quivering breath later, I ask, “Have you ever felt that no matter how much you try to outrun yourself, you smack back into whatever it is you’re trying to escape?”
Nicole hums a sound of agreement, sun-bronzed biceps flexing as she crosses her arms. “Welcome to the frustration of life, kid. I worked a hundred hours a week, a slave to the system and the money I thought would make me happy. Killed vacations to take on new cases. Killed my marriage,” she says, a matter of fact, remorse in the rearview mirror. “Not that it wasn’t slowly dying anyway. Turns out all the big dick energy, dicks in general, had to go. Best decision I ever made. I’m poorer on paper, but ecstatic on every other metric.” She taps a finger on my knee. “Where are you at?”
My smile flickers, then fades. “The slowly dying part?”
Nicole digests that, smart enough not to jump to conclusions without working over the available information. “What would make you come alive?”
To stem the pain of having to rethink every life choice I’ve made until this moment?is what flashes in my mind.
What I say is, “Not being alone. Patching up the relationship with my older brother. And having the courage to face my father. Not to blame him for how things turned out.”
Nicole rolls her stool closer, eyes bright and blue and steady. “Can you tell him that?” she asks gently.
And there it is—The Question.
The silence stretches for several seconds, an abyss as deep and long as all the lost time I need to make up.
I’ve tried to imagine the scenario. Me, the black sheep, emboldened enough to crumble the Peter Trenton dynasty of arrogance and bullying? Would he allow the toxic loop to close? Let me finish a sentence for once? Or will it be business as usual? King of the shit birds picking at me, finding something to complain about.
Even my birth pissed him off.
Mom assumed her thirdborn would arrive early—stats show that is often the case. But I arrived late into the world by four days (typical slacker, Dad huffed for years)on a cold December night that coincided with the Trenton Talent Management Christmas party. With Dad stuck in the hospital waiting for my ass to show up, he missed out on signing Sarah McLaughlin. Ever since, he’s bitched to anyone who'll listen that I'm the reason he missed his own party, allowing “dirtbag opportunist” Terry McBride to snatch up Sarah over drinks.
I was a curse from day one. Can he ever see me in a different light?
“I can,” I say haltingly.
