$250 for a ceiling shampoo? Was that really necessary?
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
There were HOOF MARKS on my CEILING. Send it to my Pay-Me app.
I snort despite the hit my checking account’s about to take, then transfer the funds over less two dollars and fifty-two cents, an amount I pick at random, because the discrepancy will bug her to no end.
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
Received.
A second later, thetyping …notification pops up, then disappears, pops up again, my petty smile growing until another text arrives.
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
Stay away from Charlaine.
I stare down at the phone in disbelief.
Zoe
Being that she’s my vintner…no.
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
Romantically, asshole.
Zoe
Why, you got dibs or something?
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
She will destroy you, Zoe, and you know it.
WARNING, it’s that bitch Rachel
Also, you owe me $2.52.
I slowly lower my forehead to the bar again. I’m too tired to think about Rachel’s ominous words, and now too broke to feel joy.
“Am I interrupting your nap?” Tristan cruelly flicks each switch on as he enters for his afternoon shift. He’s got charcoal eyeliner on today, which means swooning will occur in this tasting room tonight. The smoky gray brings out the grassy centers of his hazel eyes, and he knows it. Right now, those babe magnets are fixed on me in a decidedlyare you kidding meposture.
Ungrateful subordinate.
“Yes.”
He sighs through his nose as he readies the tasting room for our Thursday crowds. And by crowds, I mean Ms. Betty’s cross-stitch club that comes here every week to drink and embroider until someone gets hurt. He puts out an assortment of tapestry needles, spare hoops, and embroidery floss in discount colors at their usual table by the windows. All he needs are the butt cushions from the back to pad the chairs for our genteel guests and their long-suffering asses and a healthy stock of chilled Georgia Girls, and we’ll be ready for a long, rowdy afternoon with the ladies.
Laine enters through the patio doors, the epitome of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, whichhow?
“Good afternoon, boss!” She hops onto a barstool and beams at me. It’s enough to make my dead pulse stammer in my veins. Before when she called me boss, it was snide, a reluctant acquiescence to whatever dumb thing I was demanding of her. But this time, it’s friendly and light, a nod to our new understanding forged beneath the canopy of my mother’s tree. A door creaks open inside me, just an inch.
I try to smile back, but it collapses into a yawn. “Bad afternoon. Sleepy afternoon.” Broke afternoon more like it, but despite Laine’s pivotal involvement in yesterday’s goat debacle, I’m not asking her for money to help cover it. Not sure why, exactly.
Laine scoffs and drums her hands happily on the bar. “Get some coffee and come right back. I’ve got an idea I want to run by you.”
I’m too busy frowning to move, though.
