Page 42 of Grace on the Rocks

“Gross.Butbetter you than me.”

He snorted, scrubbing a hand over his eyes like he was exhausted.

“Is it going to be super expensive?Yourlate-night work-related activity?”

He nodded. “Itry not to focus too much on the expense.”

“Because you’re turning the house into a distillery?”

“No, the house is just a demonstration of whatIcan do.Imean, it needs doing anyway, which is… convenient.”

“I don’t get it.”

“My investor’s very keen to see how it could work: a carbon net-zero distillery.I’madapting the house to demonstrate a little of what it would take.”

“Like a diorama?”Graceasked, remembering a fourth-grade science project about the solar system.

He nodded enthusiastically. “Like, how energy from the panels would run everything, how the water would be collected and filtered, how the flavor could be achieved without peat, all of it.There’sthings we do ’cause it’s how they’ve always been done, but finding a new way forward is an art as much as a science.”

His face lit up and came to life as he talked about his plans and, for maybe the first time since they’d met, he didn’t look angry or annoyed.Ittook years off him.Gracehad kind of assumed starting a distillery was just some youthful dream to have unlimited booze at his disposal, garnering the adulation of all the other drunken hooligans.She’dfigured the eco thing was just a gimmick, his grandfather’s house a convenience.Butthis whole endeavor lit a fire inside him the way writing used to do for her not so long ago.

“Jules already likes my whisky.Whenthe house is done, they’ll know they can trust me to operate green.Ifthey like what they see, hopefully they’ll recognize the value in locating it here and give me the capital to get to work.”

God, butGracewas a sucker for a man with a plan and the passion to make it happen.Itdid things to her chest and her belly, things she’d rather not dwell on.Itwas all so terribly inconvenient.

“Do your neighbors understand all this?” she asked, nodding out towards the beach where more than one local had stopped to gawk that day, hurling insults loud enough to be heard each time the trio had set their hammers down.Ithad to be wearing on him. “Ryan…”

He shook his head, scowling more deeply than ever.

“Have you told them though?Withthose exact words like you just told me?”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times as though testing out whatever hurtful things he planned to say when he told her to butt out.Forsome reason, she liked this careful side of him, as if he were a writer himself, revising before he spoke words onto the page.

More people should be that careful with their words instead of letting them fly the moment they entered their heads like both of them had done in the airport.Heclearly regretted the whole exchange and was trying to avoid any further first-draft mistakes in conversation.

“They don’t give me a chance,” he finally explained, rather than telling her to mind her own beeswax.

And wasn’t that a familiar problem?Therewas nothing worse than being held to account for someone else’s mistakes, stumbling more with each unfair accusation to find the words or the fortitude to defend yourself.

Grace supposed it was the same reason she became a writer.Asa kid, she’d always had the right words at the wrong time.Asa writer, she could give her characters the speeches her teenage self had been unable to say, the courage she’d been lacking.

Could she do the same for him now?

“They will listen,” she said, with more conviction than she felt. “You’llmake them.”Wherewas this coming from?Howcould she even know? “Oryou won’t, and they’ll either get over it or run you out of town.”

He looked like he might actually cry.

“I’m kidding.Peoplehate change, but they’ll get over it.”

“It’ll create jobs.”

“Yeah?”

“Not many: one, two percent.”Heshrugged. “That’sten new jobs wouldn’t be here otherwise.Notto mention, hopefully, increased tourism.Islay’sgot the peated whiskies.Lewishas the stones.Givefolk a reason to come down here aside fromBàgha’Chiùil,” he spat, rolling his eyes.

“One percent, huh?”

“Give or take.”

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