The next morning, Holly was at the café when I got there. We’d discovered the tiny brunch spot more than a year before when a particularly needy event group at the restaurant kept us long after closing. Cleaning up and dealing with the aftermath meant the sun was coming up the next day when we were finally sprung. We took the bonuses Antony gave us and went in search of something delicious and as far from what we’d been serving as possible.
Enter our brunch spot. Tucked away in a back corner of town, it looked from the outside like it could hold about four people and that it had been forgotten by time. The interior wasn’t a lot bigger, but the owners optimized every inch and were never wanting for customers.
“I already ordered,” Holly said when I sat down in the booth across from her. “I was starting to get the crazy eye from the woman at the podium.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw an older woman with tightly curled blue-gray hair and a stern expression glaring at each table like she was using a superpower to pry somebody out of a seat so she and her similar-looking companions could take over.
“Thanks,” I said. “Alright, so tell me about this trip you’re leaving for today. Antony is sending you out again so soon? I thought he was pretty settled with everything from the last trip and said you were going to have at least a couple of weeks here.”
“That was what he said,” she confirmed, nodding and swirling a thick stalk of celery around in her Bloody Mary. “But you know how he can get. He wants to find new distributors and offer things no other restaurant in the area has. So… I go.”
She made a dramatic gesture with her celery, and I laughed. No matter what Antony said or how long she thought it would be between trips, Holly wouldn’t complain about being sent on another; she would go into it with the same dedication and attention to detail as she did everything else for the restaurant. Like me, Holly was very career-oriented. It was part of why our friendship grew so close, so quickly. And why it worked so well. We understood each other and never faulted the other for the decisions we made when it came to our work.
After talking about her upcoming trip, I told her about my week with my parents and some of the ideas I had for the vineyard. It was hard to think about not working at the restaurant with her anymore. It wasn’t like we worked right alongside each other, but we saw each other frequently during every shift, and knowing we worked in the same place allowed us to commiserate with each other.
But as I told her, we would make time for each other. She could come to the vineyard and visit me, and I could go to the restaurant to see her. We would still have our brunches and our long girls’ nights together. I had a feeling I would need a lot of support and encouragement during this new venture.
“So,” she said, after another Bloody Mary that seemed to be not quite tempered by the quiche and home fries she ate, “tell me more about this guy.”
She lifted one eyebrow and gave me a smirk, but I looked back at her quizzically.
“What guy? Derek? You know him,” I said.
I took a sip of my own drink and then popped half a piece of bacon into my mouth.
“Not Derek,” she said. “His brother. The hot one who drives you crazy.”
The smirk got bigger, and I shook my head.
“He doesn’t drive me crazy in the wiggling the eyebrows, fan myself with menu plans kind of way. He drives me crazy in the why are you such a defiant jackass? I’m going to eventually snap and strangle him kind of way,” I said. “Well, maybe not strangle him. That probably wouldn’t bode well for the future of the restaurant. But I might say mean things behind his back.”
“You talked about him an awful lot the last couple of weeks for someone who supposedly drives you crazy in that way,” she said.
“Look, I’m not going to pretend the man isn’t attractive. He’s gorgeous and has a body that looks like it’s carved out of marble. It’s ridiculous. But the attitude ruins it. He’s aggravating beyond description. He’s grumpy all the time. He frustrates the living hell out of me,” I said.
Holly gave me a knowing smile and swirled her celery in her Bloody Mary again but didn’t say anything else. I detoured the conversation away from Derek and focused on the rest of brunch.
That night I climbed into bed excited about what the next morning was going to bring. It was my first official day working at the vineyard, and I was looking forward to getting some of our plans really underway. Derek and I were going to rock the restaurant and create something awesome together.