Page 83 of Playing Dirty
I laugh, and she nudges my ribs with her toe.
"And that's sweet of Fiadh," she adds. "I'll text her a thank you. She and I had a really nice talk about it at that dinner in Dublin, so it means something that she followed up."
"I'm glad. They're all mad about you and keep asking when we're coming back." I shake my head. "And Mam's taking full credit for us, by the way. Tells anyone who'll listen that putting you in my childhood bedroom is what lit the spark. She's very smug about it."
Margot giggles into her wine. "I don't know that it was the deciding factor, but sure. Let her have it."
"There's no stopping her anyway." I rock the swing slowly with one foot, and for a while we sit with it, the wine and the hills and the crickets tuning up somewhere in her garden.
Then, because it's been sitting in my chest all week, I just say it. "Can I ask you something?"
"That sounds ominous."
"How long do you want to keep this quiet?"
She goes still, her glass halfway to her mouth. It's the question we've both been stepping around since Ireland. The separate cars, the hotel rooms under different names, the whole careful circus of it.
"I don't know," she says finally. "Until the season's over? Until the internet forgets my face? Until it's... convenient?" She lets out a slow breath. "Which is starting to sound like an excuse, even to me."
"I'm not pushing, Ace. I mean that." I run my thumb along her ankle. "I just need you to know the quiet isn't me hiding you. I'd tell the whole world tomorrow. It's your call, and I'll wait as long as it takes."
"I know you would. That's almost the problem." She turns the stem of her glass. "You just decide a thing and it's decided. I run every worst-case first."
"So run me through one."
She huffs a laugh, but it's thin. "I dunno. Just the comments, the think-pieces about whether I'm using you or you're slumming it with the wine girl." She swallows. "And I know I'm supposed to be above caring what strangers think. But I don't think I'm ready to hand the internet a reason to hate me on purpose."
"That's a fair fear. It's not a small thing, what they already put you through."
"It's not just the strangers." Her voice drops. "When it getsloud out there, it gets loud in here too." She taps her temple. "The anxiety doesn't care that it's irrational. It just floods. And I finally feel steady with you. I'm scared of anything that might wreck that."
Something in my chest aches at that, and every instinct I own wants to fix it, to plant myself between her and the whole braying internet. I set my glass down and take her hand properly.
"There's no clock on this, Margot. Not from me."
"You really mean that?"
"I really do." I press a kiss to her knuckles. "When you're ready, you're ready. And if you're never ready to make a production of it, then we'll just be the worst-kept secret in Napa. I don't need a press release. I just want you."
"After the season," she says softly. "When it's quieter. I’ll be ready then."
"After the season." I pull her legs tighter across my lap. "Deal."
22
Margot
"Oh my god! That fiddle-leaf fig iseverything!" I gasp, stopping in the center of the garden shop's conservatory. The air is humid and thick with the scent of damp earth, a literal jungle where vibrant orchids and trailing vines compete for space alongside monsteras that have grown to the size of armchairs.
Dot appears at my elbow, her gaze tracking mine to the massive fig. She’s an institution in Solstice Ridge, having run this botanical shop for decades. Somewhere north of sixty, she sports an immaculate grey pixie cut, oversized shark-shaped earrings, and neon-green frames that magnify her eyes to an adorably owlish scale.
"Sweetie, you aren't ready for that plant yet," she says, delivering the final verdict.
"Oh, not even after the strawberries?" I cast a longing look at its six feet of glossy perfection. "Cause they’re thriving. I've even been leaving little bags of them on people's porches like some kind of berry evangelist."
She clicks her tongue, adjusting her neon frames. "Yourgardening skills are improving, but your track record with high-maintenance indoor foliage is, and I say this with love, a history of hospice care."
I let out a soft laugh, because Dot is a local legend for a reason, and she never fails to speak her mind. She runs her shop less like a retail space and more like an adoption agency.
