Drunk on Love(16)

“Re: (a)—that thanks isn’t coming for quite a while, and when I explain why, you’ll understand; (b) as well. But re: (c) yes, definitely drinks within seconds, but this calls for you to come over to my place. Bring food, I don’t care what it is as long as there’s a lot of it. I just realized I haven’t eaten all day. I’ll provide the wine.”

She did that sometimes, forgot to eat lunch when she was busy working. She almost always realized she was starving by three in the afternoon and grabbed some cheese and crackers from the tasting room. But even if she’d realized how hungry she was this afternoon, nothing in the world would have made her go into the tasting room.

“I’ll be at your place in thirty minutes,” Sydney said, and hung up.

Margot had just enough time after she got home to straighten up the living room and open a bottle of wine—one of her good bottles—before Sydney knocked on her door.

“There had better be a really good reason why you haven’t thanked me yet, if your story is what I think your story is,” she said as she walked in the door and through the house to the kitchen.

Margot poured them both glasses of wine while Sydney took down plates from the cabinet.

“Oh, there is, don’t worry,” Margot said. She closed her eyes and breathed in. “Whatever you’ve brought me smells amazing.”

“Of course it’s amazing, this is me we’re talking about,” Sydney said. She took a stack of boxes out of the bag she’d carried inside. “I could tell from the sound of your voice that you needed carbs.”

She slid a mound of pasta onto a plate, and handed it to Margot.

“Carbonara, like the doctor ordered,” Sydney said.

Margot looked down at her plate and smiled genuinely for the first time since Elliot and Luke had walked into her office that morning.

“Carbonara. Yes. This is just what I needed. How did you know?”

Sydney handed her a fork and waved at her to start eating.

“I always know.”

Margot sat down on one of the high-backed barstools at her counter and dug her fork into the plate of pasta. She took one very large bite, and sighed.

“I love you so much,” she said to her friend as soon as she finished chewing.

Sydney slid her own plate of pasta onto the counter next to Margot and sat down.

“I know you do,” she said. “There’s also bread and cheese and charcuterie, obviously. But we can’t let the pasta get cold. Eat.”

Margot ate. The pasta was perfectly cooked, the pancetta was crispy, every single noodle was coated in just the right amount of sauce . . . this was bliss.

She put her fork down after she had inhaled half the plate, and took a sip of wine.

“Thank you,” she said to Sydney. “For the pasta, and for letting me eat before I started talking.”

Normally, she would have been delighted to tell Sydney about her unexpected hookup with a twenty-eight-year-old. She’d even thought on her drive to work this morning about how fun it would be to spill the details of this escapade to Sydney, to have her cackle and take credit for it and say she told her so. They would have laughed about his I thought I dreamed you line, debated whether she should text him or not, Sydney would have toasted her for this, and the whole thing would have felt even more fun.

Of course, it wouldn’t have happened exactly like that, since the only reason Margot knew Luke was twenty-eight was because she’d seen his birth date on his employment forms today.

She sighed.

“Okay. So. Yes, I went home with that guy last night. Luke. He kissed me outside of the Barrel.” Sydney grinned, and Margot couldn’t stop herself from grinning back. “And then I told him that we couldn’t do that there, that too many people know me around here.” Thank God she’d said that so quickly, at least. “And his place was closer, so we went there.”

Sydney shook her head, her smile huge.

“I didn’t think you had it in you.”

She wished she hadn’t.

“Yeah, well, just wait. The sex was . . . great. Unfortunately.” Or would it have been more awkward if the sex had been bad and he’d shown up at work today? Yes and no—at least then she wouldn’t have felt like her body was on fire whenever he looked at her. “He drove me home this morning—a very gentlemanly move, since he lives only six blocks away, which he knew.”

She took another sip of wine. And then another. She needed fortification for this next part of the story.

“And?” Sydney prompted her.

She took a deep breath.

“And. Two hours after he dropped me off here, he walked into Noble Family Vineyards to start his new job as a tasting room associate. The job my brother hired him for on Friday, when I wasn’t there.”

Sydney’s mouth dropped open.

“Yes, that was also my response when he walked into my office with Elliot this morning,” Margot said. “Elliot told me he hired a ‘William something,’ not Luke Williams! Granted, I didn’t know his last name until this morning, but still!”

Sydney got up and walked back into the kitchen and picked up the cheese and charcuterie.

“I’m glad I got all of this cheese, we’re going to need it after this story.” She sat back down and reached for a cracker. “How did he react when he saw you?”