I slide onto Carterella’s bench seat beside her and hold my head in my hands. “Goddammit. I believe you.”
“I’m really sorry, Zoe,” she says softly. “And I’m even sorrier that I’ve given you so many reasons to believe I’d do such a thing. I’ve talked it over with my family, and we all agree it’s only right that Into the Woods replaces all the base wine lost by the Brett infestation with our own. I know the terroir is different, but we had a great year, and Chance assures me that it’ll work for y’all’s purposes.”
I whip my head up. “Really?”
“I told you I had a plan to keep you from financial ruin.”
“Why?” The word falls in the forest like a dead tree, loaded and heavy. It’s all thewhys wrapped into one, not just why she’s saving our asses now after being so resentful for doing that in the past, and Rachel knows it. Why did she abandon me?
“I could ask you the same thing.”
When I look at her, I feel such an amalgamation of feelings, of times long gone and worse, times never had. “What do you mean?”
Rachel sighs. “Why Charlaine, Zoe?” she says, meeting my gaze. “Why not me?”
My head rears back so hard it’s a good thing it’s attached to my neck. “Um,” I sputter, dumbfounded at the direction this has taken, “first of all, you’re not gay, Rachel, and second,you’re not gay,Rachel.” I wouldn’t speak so surely about someone’s sexuality if I didn’t know it with every fiber of my being, but Rachel is deeply straight. Her first crush was on Burt Reynolds.Burt Reynolds!He was probably sixty, and she was twelve, but she printed out pictures of that mustachioed alpha and plastered them all over her bedroom.
But … could I be wrong?Isthere some connection between Burt Reynolds’s chest hair and eventually realizing you’re a lesbian?
“IknowI’m straight!” Rachel’s eyes tear up. “You two have rubbed it in my face every chance you got!”
“You’ll have to explain yourself because I sincerely don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“When we were kids, it was me and you,always. I had nobody else, but it was okay because you liked me. Even though I had zero hand-eye coordination and played sports for shit, and I wasn’t pretty, and I was a huge nerd who chewed up her pencils and played board games and had a crush on Alex Trebek—”
“And Burt Reynolds,” I add, because now I can’t get those hairy chests striped with low toner lines out of my head.
“Do you know how hard it was, being in Charlaine Woods’s shadow? You were her fan, but I was her wannabe, the little sister who couldn’t compare. She was great at everything, and it all came so easily to her—she justwas, and the way she was, wasright.” Rachel swallows. “But I was all wrong. I thought that one day, I’d get to be just like her. I’d magically run faster, make the soccer team, look hot in shapeless Umbros, too.” She lets out a bitter laugh. “But I never did, and you saw all of that, knew I’d never be Charlaine, and you still loved me, Zoe. We were a united front on everything, even her. Especially her. She was perfect, and we were in awe of her together. Intimidated by her,together. But then she was outed, and I thought, wow, Laine’s finally gonna have to pay for being who she is. But even being a lesbian didn’t change a thing! Gilmer County in the aughts? Was she invincible or something, I mean,come on!” Rachel clenches her fingers, then releases them one by one. “Laine has never, not once, experienced any repercussions for being who she truly is. She’s not stuck in a prison of her own unacceptable, unlikable, unpopular personality. She gets away with everything, and no matter what, everyone will always love her more than me.” Rachel’s eyes well up again. “Even my best friend.”
“I didn’t love her more than you, Rachel,” I say quietly. “Just overnight, you made hating Laine your number one priority, and all that hate squeezed out the best parts of you. You never wanted to play Settlers of Catan anymore or lay in the fields reading mysteries together. And I think”—my throat tightens—“I think you knew I was gay before I did. And when it started to show, you hated me for it.”
“I did,” Rachel admits, “but not because I hate gay people. I hated it because it felt like Charlaine was stealing you from my team and putting you on hers, because you’re right, I’m straight as hell! And I felt so incredibly”—she throws her hands in the air, searching for the right words—“uncool. So dumb. So basic.” She looks down at her lap. “So left out.”
“You do know you’re in the majority, right? White, cis, heterosexual?”
“In the world of people I cared about, I wasn’t. I even tried it once.”
“Being gay?” My brow furrows. “You did not. With who?”
Rachel shrugs. “Some girl on my hall freshman year at UGA, but her mouth felt … I don’t know. Too small.”
“Too small?” I laugh, and even the corner of Rachel’s mouth quirks up. I’ve heard many explanations for why women aren’t attracted to other women, but lacking a cavernous mouth is a new one. But the laughter dies in my throat because we’re still sitting here, the mountain of Rachel’s feelings and all the hurt they’ve caused lodged between us. “I still don’t understand how you could just walk out of my life, Rachel.”
Rachel’s head slumps forward against the steering wheel. “If I could’ve stopped talking to my family back then, I probably would’ve. When my parents gave your dad the money they were going to use to buy my new car, I just felt so …unimportant, you know? Like everyone else’s needs mattered more than mine. Even if I followed the rules to aT, I still couldn’t win. My parents would always love everyone else more.” Her voice breaks, and she wipes the tears trickling down her cheeks furiously away.
It all makes sense now. Rachel embedding herself in her family’s business, still chasing her parents’ approval, pitting herself and Into the Woods against our vineyard every chance she got. The way she attacks Laine for leaving their family, for breaking the rules Rachel treats like commandments and still getting away with it. How she must’ve felt to hear that, once again, her family had decided to back someone else’s dreams over hers when they voted to give Laine the money set aside for Rachel’s microbrewery. How badly it must’ve hurt that when Bluebell was picked for the showcase, I refused to share it with her.
“Jesus, Rachel. I’m—I’m sosorry.”
Rachel sits up, her face pink with tears. “You are? Why?”
It’s not that Rachel’s perception is right—Molly and Ezra adore Rachel and her bitchiness and always have. But it’s easy to see how she’d feelwronged. It’s easy to see all the hurt and anger living just under her skin. And after all these years, it’s still easy to seeher.
“I just—wish I could’ve been there for you.” I give her a sad smile, full of regret for how we got here.
“I wish you could’ve, too.” Rachel’s face buckles in on itself, her raw sobs undoing something in my own heart. “I’m so sorry I pushed you away, Zoe.”
In a slow-motion undoing of reality, I wrap my arms around her and let her cry against my dirty T-shirt as she spews apology after apology for the Brett infestation, every stolen idea, every mean word, every day we’ve spent apart. She pulls away suddenly, her face streaked with mascara tears. “But one thing I’mnotsorry about is warning you off Charlaine! She’s no good, Zoe! She’s selfish, puts her career first, and uses people who love her to get what she wants.”
