“Yeah.” I sipped my beer. “You’re right.”
“I know I am.”
I laughed.
“Still a cocky little shit, aren’t you?” I asked, grinning. He grinned back.
“Damn right,” he said. “It’s how I got where I got. You have to have balls. And let me tell you something. Ally has balls.” I cocked an eyebrow at him, and he sighed. “Metaphorical ones. Maybe physical, I don’t know. Our relationship isn’t like that. She’s been a good friend of mine for a long time, but we don’t jive that way and never have. It’s why we can work together so well. There’s no physical attraction at all.”
“None?” I asked, surprised.
“No, none,” he said. “You look shocked by that. I thought you hated her.”
“Just because I think she’s a pain in my ass doesn’t mean I don’t have eyes, Derek.”
He laughed. “Fair enough. That’s all beside the point. You don’t get to take your anger out on people who are going to be helping to bring the vineyard back to where it deserves to be.”
“You really think we can do that?”
“With your skills at rebuilding? Kane’s knowledge of grapes and wine? Cameron’s business acumen and Alex’s understanding of technology? And my kitchen skills? Yeah. I think we can,” he said emphatically. “I believe in the plan we have. What’s more, I believe in us. We can make that place better than even Grandma and Grandpa believed it could be.”
I nodded.
“To Grandma and Grandpa,” I said, holding up my beer. We had switched to mugs of draft a bit ago, and some of it sloshed on the bar, sending foam down my hand. The bartender eyed me suspiciously, and I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring, totally sober smile.
“To Grandma and Grandpa,” Derek said and clinked his mug to mine.
Together, we drained our beers and held up one more finger to the bartender. The grimace on his face told me he was either going to turn us down or make sure we had rides before he even touched our mugs again.
The rideshare dropped me off at my house a little past one in the morning. I waved to Derek, who split the fare with me, and watched as it drove away. I had a mild moment of panic as I patted my pockets, looking for my keys, and remembered that I had them in my jacket pocket and not my jeans. Pulling them out, I stumbled up the sidewalk to the front door and grimaced.
On the ground, next to the door, was a potted plant. A very dead one. One that Monica planted not long before she passed, and I had no clue about. There was so much she did that I didn’t realize. So much life that I was unaware of and didn’t appreciate fully. Now I was staring at this plant that had not only died but had been sitting there for two years.
I turned the key in the lock and went inside. Flipping on the light, I took in the open floor plan of our cabin in the woods and sighed. There was so much in that house that reminded me of her. So many things that did me no good. Things that didn’t evoke good memories or was practical or useful. Just things that hurt me. Things that reminded me of what could have been and never would be.
I walked over to the chair she always sat in when she crocheted. The bag with the unfinished blanket was beside it, open like she had left it. When I found the blanket, I had stuffed it back in there, like she would catch me going through her things and be angry or something.
Now, two years later, drunk and with a clarity I hadn’t had in some time, I reached into the bag and pulled out the blanket.
It was blue and white, colors I loved and used often in the house. It was about half the size of a full blanket, and I held it out to look at, really for the first time. I smiled. She’d been good at crocheting, that was for sure. The hook she used was still hanging on the edge of the blanket, and I took it out, tossing it back into the bag.
Those things could be donated, I decided. I could drop them off at a Goodwill and feel good that someone would get them and love them and use them. She would have wanted that. But the blanket, that was mine. Unfinished, like our lives together, it would live with me always. I folded it up, feeling the urge to bring it to my lips, and kissed it. Then I brought it with me into the bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of the dresser that still had her clothes in it. I put the blanket inside and made a mental note to go through the dresser too. I’d need a pretty big donation bag.