Page 4 of Cockpit
“I know.” The words barely come out.
“And don’t expect a warm welcome.” I swear amusement flashes through the blue of his eyes. “They’ll think you’re there to spy on them and report back to me. They’re already on edge over rumors about the magazine being yanked and their jobs taken away.”
“Lovely.” And then a thought hits. “What about the current staff? Isn’t there someone there already qualified? Won’t they be mad at me for taking a position from them?”
“That will be your first test in management. How to handle people with kindness and tact and earn their respect.”
“Oh.” Excitement flutters in my belly. The kind that flushes across your skin and puts thoughts in your head that you want to hope are real but fear aren’t.
“Sid?”
I snap my eyes up to meet my father’s and realize he’s looking for a response.
“Deal.”
“No hesitation? No, ‘no, I don’t want to move from the city’? No, ‘oh my God, there are no malls in Sunnyville’?”
Don’t, he’s just being a jerk.
“No hesitation.”
“Don’t let me down.”
“I won’t.”
“Has it really been a whole month since I’ve seen you?”
Memories of martinis by the poolside and dancing till closing time in Santa Barbara flicker and fade into a subtle homesickness. “Five weeks actually.”
“Ugh. It feels like forever.”
“That’s only because you’ve been off playing in Seattle with your newest flavor of the month for the past few weeks.”
“I like this flavor.” She laughs that coquettish sound of hers that tells me she’s having way too much fun while I’ve been here busting my ass to no end. “So, how’s the new place?”
The new place is a tiny cottage I rented on the outskirts of Sunnyville. It’s cozy and homey and nothing like the sleek lines and rich colors of my condo in San Francisco.
“It’s . . .”
“It isn’t you,” Zoey says through her laugh, most likely from where she’s overlooking the view of the city I’ve temporarily left behind.
“No, it definitely is not me.” Not the uneven floorboards that creek when I walk on them. Not the hot water that lasts maybe a whole five minutes before turning bone-chillingly cold. Not the nosy neighbors who I’ve found peering over the top of the backyard fence to see what I’m up to. And definitely not the dog that barks incessantly at all hours of the night.
“Wine country and the headquarters for a magazine on motherhood seem serendipitous to me.”
“Either that or a perfect complement. Maybe all those mommies need wine after a long day with the kid.” I laugh at her logic that rings true. “Regardless, you left me to go back to your old stomping grounds.”
“I was too young to stomp on these grounds. It’s more like sleepy suburbia where teenagers go crazy and can’t wait to leave.”
She grunts. Her displeasure for anything that isn’t the hustle and bustle of the city mimics mine. And, yet, the town’s different from what I remember while still somehow the exact same. Hot air balloons float high in the sky, the view from their baskets affording the influx of tourists here for the harvest a visual of the mesmerizing rows of grapevines that pattern the hills around us. They look majestic but, years ago I thought they were annoying. Main Street is longer now, with boutique upon boutique of kitschy items ripe to attract tourists’ wallets. I used to look at the street and see prison walls confining me, but this time around there is a quaintness to it all. An attractiveness that pulls out-of-towners here for weekend getaways or for wine tasting tours.
“Yeah, well, you left and now you’re back.”
“Not by choice . . . but what my dad wants, my dad gets.”
“And what he wants is for you to prove you can save this magazine.”
“Exactly,” I say because she makes it seem as if that’s an easy feat when I know it’s far from it.
