Drunk on Love(98)

He got out of bed and started pulling his clothes on.

“You don’t think I’m good enough for a job like this, like everyone else. That’s it, isn’t it? You only think of me as your ‘young, impressionable employee,’ an extra set of hands in the tasting room, that guy who’s helping out his mom, who’s available at your beck and call whenever you happen to have time to see me. That’s why you haven’t told anyone about us. You don’t care about me, or what I want. It’s all about you, Margot, isn’t it?”

Margot stepped back. She had a blank, empty look on her face.

“Is that what you really think of me?”

He picked his belt up from the floor.

“Maybe I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think you’d be supportive,” he said. “Or that you’d care about me, instead of only about yourself. And I was right.”

“I guess there’s my answer,” she said right before he slammed her front door.





Twenty-Four


MARGOT DIDN’T GET TO the winery until well after eleven that day. What with Luke, and the sex, and the fight, and the worse fight, and all the crying she did in the shower after he stormed out of her house, she’d been a little delayed that morning.

She wished she could rewind, go back to that morning, to how happy they’d been. How did that fight get out of hand so quickly?

How could he walk out of her house, just like that? When he’d told her about the interview, so casually, right after telling her he’d been pretending to date Avery for months, she’d lost it. She’d tried to stay calm about the Avery thing, even though it freaked her out. She could have taken one of those hits alone. But both of those things, back-to-back, had been too much for her to handle. They made her realize how absolutely not casual she was about him, how important he was to her, how central he’d been to her life over the past month.

She should have just been happy for him, like he’d wanted her to be; congratulated him about the interview; asked more questions. And then, later, she could have asked him what this meant for the two of them.

Why didn’t you tell me? she’d whined, like Luke owed it to her to discuss every single thing with her. He didn’t! He hadn’t wanted to tell her!

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? He hadn’t wanted to tell her. She wasn’t important enough for him to want to tell her this major thing in his life, about how and why he’d changed his mind so quickly, so completely. He hadn’t trusted her to talk to about something like this.

They’d only been together for a month; that wasn’t that long. Just because she’d gotten herself in so deep, so fast, that didn’t mean he had.

But it felt like it had been more than a month. It felt like they’d been together since that very first night.

She wanted to call him, apologize, start over. But when she thought about some of those things he’d said that morning, she stopped herself. No. She had too much pride for that. Plus, if they could have such a big and terrible fight like that after only a month, there was no hope for their relationship. This should be the honeymoon period, right?

She was at the winery; she couldn’t think about Luke. She had a million things to do today, little things to wrap up after the party; there were guests coming to the tasting room all day, she already felt guilty for how late she was, she had to be on, bright, smiling, welcoming, all day. She couldn’t let Luke distract her.

Like he’d been distracting her for months. Ever since that first night, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. She’d thought about him every single fucking day since then. He’d put her off her game. Yes, the party had gone okay, but just think how much more organized she would have been if he hadn’t been around, doing things like causing her to zone out in the middle of the day thinking about him and making her decide to stop working at six instead of eight and bringing her dinner and giving her massages and putting her in the right frame of mind to write the newsletter so people would open it and come to the party and—

She had to stop thinking about this. She needed to get her head in the game, forget about him, at least for the next few hours while she was at work. She could wallow later, at home.

She went into the winery through the back way, so she could avoid talking to the guests in the tasting room. It usually put her in a good mood to walk through the tasting room in the morning when there were already guests there—she got to greet everyone, smile at them, see how much fun they were having. It usually gave her a little boost to start her day. But right now, she needed some time. She’d go in later, say hi to whoever was there, make sure the staff knew she was around if they needed her, thank them for their hard work yesterday. But she needed a moment to turn herself back into Margot Noble, co-owner of Noble Family Vineyards, and not the Margot who sobbed in the shower this morning.

She sat down at her computer and flipped it on. She automatically checked the sales for the last day, like she did every morning.

Wow.

Either people had gone home from the party and decided to order even more wine, or all of the posts on social media—including the ones about Porter Eldridge—had boosted their profile, or something else, but their sales had risen dramatically last night and this morning, even excluding the wine they’d sold at the party. And a bunch of people had joined the wine club overnight.