Page 56 of Merlot Marriage

Nate’s been harder to get to know, but over the course of the weeks I’ve been here, he’s thawed out with me. He’s got a wicked sense of humor that he rarely shows, and he really does knowwhat he’s doing around the winery. He just can’t seem to stay civil to the customers who come in.

“Am I staying? Who else is going run this place?”

Kel stops tidying the drawer and turns to face us. Well, Nate. I’m forgotten as the two men face off.

“You don’t have to be a martyr to this place, Nate. If you don’t want to be here, then go. Go back to France if that’s what you want. Whatever life you had out there that kept you from coming home for five years is probably still waiting for you.” The hurt dripping from Kel’s words feeds the tension building in the air around us.

“And if I leave, who runs this place? Sutton?” Nate growls.

“I’m sure they can hire someone to run it.” Kel waves away the question.

“And what happens to my parents? To their home? Tomyhome? I just walk away and let them deal with it?”

“Isn’t that exactly what you did before? You came home, heard the news, picked a fight with Sydney, and then stormed back off to France without so much as a goodbye.” Kel grabs a set of pruning shears and makes to walk past Nate.

But he grabs his arm, stopping him from leaving. “Why do you think I have to stay? I owe it to you, and to this place, to be here. I shouldn’t have left like I did. I’m sorry I made you deal with the mess I made.” His shoulders drop, and he releases Kel’s arm. “This place, I know how to fix—”

Kel snorts, and Nate winces.

“Not fix. You did an amazing job taking care of it. But I know what I’m doing here. It’s Sydney I don’t know how to fix things with.”

“Have you tried apologizing? Have you even talked to her since you’ve been back?”

“She won’t listen to anything I have to say. Every time I try to talk to her, she just walks away.”

“I don’t know what happened between you two, but she’s been a mess since you got back. Did you know I had to pick her up…”

I step further back into the shadow of the casks stacked against the wall. I feel like an intruder, being here while they hash it out. When they don’t react, I silently move toward the open roll-up door behind me. Their conversation fades as I step out into the sunshine.

The August heat is intense, the sun brutal while we have yet another heat wave. My feet are trapped in the work boots Nate insists I wear when I do anything out in the vineyard with him. I’ve dropped the sharp pruning shears enough times to not argue, but I still miss the freedom of my thongs.

I pull my phone out of my pocket, half hoping for a text from Ophie even though I know she probably isn’t even awake yet. When there isn’t anything, I send her a kissy face emoji, then scroll through my emails while I wait.

An email from Jono’s company stares back at me. I’d applied months ago, mostly to appease my family, with no intention of following through unless I got kicked out of the States. But the email confirming my interview with them tomorrow morning feels less performative than it did forty-eight hours ago.

But can I really drag Ophie all the way across the world? And do I even want to?

It’s taken two years, but the Pacific Northwest has really grown on me. I still hate the winter here, but the summer and Ophie make up for it. Would it be so bad to stay?

Footsteps echo behind me. I shove my phone back in my pocket as Kel claps a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry. We’re still working some shit out.”

“No worries, man.” I shrug. “Is Nate coming?”

“In a second. Sutton called.”

Kel and I shoot the shit while waiting for Nate to reappear. He’s excited about the baby and the international culinary classhe’s taking next term. Listening to him talk about the different directions his life has gone, from nursing to handyman to chef, makes me think that maybe Ophie and I don’t have to figure it all out right now. We’re only twenty-six—we have time to try out different jobs and places to live.

“So, Nate’s got you sold on the reusable bottles?” Kel leans against the cellar door, arms crossed over his chest, one leg kicked over the other.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t have skin in the game either way, but he seems keen to make it work. Numbers-wise, it’ll take a few years before he sees any kind of return on it, but if he’s got Sutton’s backing, I think he could make it work.”

If Nate’s goal was to make this place as profitable as possible, I wouldn’t recommend he be on the front lines of the reusable wine bottle movement. But since he doesn’t have the pressure of having to increase profit year over year, he can afford to. Nate is convinced that if he can show Sutton how good he is at running Sunshine, he might be able to buy it back from him one day.

I don’t think he meant to let that last idea slip, but he was very impassioned—and a little buzzed—when we discussed it the other night.

“So, he’s finally seeing the benefit to Sunshine being owned by a billionaire and his wife who don’t actually need it to be profitable?” Kel smirks.

“I think he’s finally seeing that Sutton may be the answer to modernizing this place,” Nate answers for himself, stepping out into the hot morning air. “Between my dad’s stubborn refusal to try anything new, and the French abhorrence tomodernité”—he adds air quotes to drive home his thoughts on the French—“I’m so tired of hearing ‘but we’ve never done it that way’ that I might lose my mind. Sunshine Cellars is a nice little winery that will never be anything more unless we invest in being different. I have lots of ideas and no way to test them.”

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