Everyone climbs into their basins. The mud is warm and silky and honestly kind of incredible. Harper makes a sound that I can only describe as deeply spiritual.
"This isdisgusting," she says happily.
Sage moves down the row, handing each of us a small amber bottle.
"This is our high-potency mineral and essential oil concentrate," Sage says. "Peppermint and—"
And that's the last thing I hear, because the warmth of the mud has already sent me into a meditative state. Suddenly I'm back at the vineyard, watching Jessica's hand find Grant's chest, the heel of her palm resting against his sternum.
Sage is still talking. Her mouth is moving. Something about thermal properties, activation, something something.
I'm nodding. I think I'm nodding.
But I'm on Pine Grove Lane, nineteen months ago, in Grant's Tacoma with the windows down, a Bob Seger song on the radio. He'd slowed in front of a blue-grey craftsman overlooking the lake.That one,he'd said.That one,I'd said. At the exact same time. And for about a year, “That one” meant our future. The kitchen he was going to renovate himself. The dinner parties we were going to throw. The rooms where we’d argue about paint colors... where we’d eventually have to decide which kid got which one.
For a second, I let myself grieve. Not for Grant, but for the version of myself who stood in front of that house and believed every word.
It's ironic I saw him at the vineyard today, really. Because that's the kind of place he and I had always said we'd visit.We should do a wine weekend,he'd say, scrolling through some Yelp list on the couch. But the weekends came and went. He'd claim the work week had hollowed him out and he was too tired to do anything. Most week days, he'd text mestuck at the office, don't wait up.The office where Jessica also worked...
"—and whenever you're ready, go ahead and add the oil to your basin," Sage says.
I look down at the little amber bottle resting on the edge of my basin. I pick it up, unscrew the cap and pour.
A cool, minty breeze lifts off the surface of the warm mud, hitting my nose. I close my eyes.
Hmmm, this is so nice.
Then the breeze sharpens. Thickens. Turns into something that feels less likespa relaxationand more like someone is shoving a whole peppermint bush up my sinuses.
Then, the mud begins to fizz.
"Oh," I say.
Thick, eye-watering vapor rises out of my basin in a rolling cloud, swallowing the ferns, the candles, the cucumber water station. And it keeps going. It has ambition.
Becca and I start coughing first. Then Harper's college friend. Then everyone.
"What thefuck," Harper says, already climbing out of her basin, mud sluicing off her in sheets.
26
Beth
The chef stood at the entrance of the dining tent with a pair of silver tongs in one hand, watching us file in. His nostrils flared once, then again. He looked at his sous chef. His sous chef looked at him.
We'd showered. All of us. But the peppermint had sunk into our skin, our hair, the fibers of the fresh robes we'd changed into, and no amount of soap or hot water was going to undo what I'd done to our collective scent. I was the worst of it. Harper said she could smell me from three chairs away, and based on the chef's face when he leaned in to pour my wine, she wasn't exaggerating.
What I'd done, specifically, was pour an entire bottle of high-potency peppermint concentrate into my mud basin. Sage had apparently given very emphatic instructions to useone dropto activate whatever thermal mineral properties the mud was supposed to have. Me? I'd poured the way you pour olive oil over a salad.
I'd apologized to everyone. Three times to Harper and twice to Becca, who'd been in the basin next to mine and had taken theworst of the vapor cloud. Becca waved me off and said it cleared her sinuses better than any Neti Pot she'd ever used.
Everyone else was gracious about it too: laughing and toasting me like I'd done it on purpose. Talia, another one of Harper's college friends, even declared it "the best thing that's ever happened at a bachelorette."
Overall, I was feeling grateful to be surrounded by such great women. But that gratitude kept snagging on a heavy, guilty knot in my chest. Even though I’d told Harper about the scent match thing soon after I told Luna and Maren, I was still holding back the biggest secret of all: the buyout offer.
Which brings us to now. It's just past ten, and the campfire is roaring.
The firepit sits in a clearing ringed by tall pines, and the sky opens above us in a wide dark circle full of stars. Adirondack chairs form a loose semicircle around the flames, and Maren has arranged a s'mores station on a low wooden table: graham crackers, three kinds of chocolate, vanilla bean marshmallows, and a jar of salted caramel.
