Page 16 of Pour Decisions
“Well, he made me mad at him,” I say.
“And he visited you first thing in the morning,beforethe competition, to bring you coffee and donuts, explain, and apologize.”
She has a point with that too.
“So, what are you saying?” I ask dumbly.
“I'm saying, guilty people don’t do that, so how the hell could you let him leave without smoothing things over?”
That’s when it hits me. He was here to apologize. He brought coffee and good donuts. The good donuts from Wilsons. Even though he couldn’t have possibly known they were the good donuts, somehow he did. And coffee. She’s right—guilty people don’t do that.
Oh god, what have I done?
“I don’t know,” I cry. I fling myself back onto my bed. “Now what do I do?”
“Now you apologize, you dope.”
“Why do I do these things to myself?” I whine.
“I don’t know,” Tess says. “But you definitely have a knack for making things harder on yourself than they ever need to be.”
“It was a rhetorical question, Tess,” I groan.
“You know, I’ve never understood the reason for rhetorical questions. I mean, why ask it if you don’t want an answer anyway? It makes no sense to me.”
“How am I supposed to apologize? I don’t even have his number. Ohmigod, I still don’t even have his last name!”
“You said the WCWA sent out an email about him. Find it.”
See why Tess is my person? When I’m frantic, she’s calm. If I’m yin, she’s yang. If I can’t come up with the answer, she will. I grab my laptop and scroll through my emails, not finding the one that Barbara mentioned anywhere during her sanctimoniousyou’re disqualifiedspeech.
“I don’t have it. I can’t find it. They didn’t send it to me. I knew this was a setup. Somehow, someway. This is why I didn’t know. I’m not trying to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist here, but—” My breath comes faster, my heart racing at the idea that someone is out to get me. Not so much in athey’re going to kill mekind of way, but more like athey’re out to sabotage mekind of way. “Tess, this is just all too convenient to be anything but a setup.”
“You’re talking nonsense. No one is out to get you. There is no plot. You weren’t purposefully excluded from the email.”
“Oh, but I was.”
“I guarantee I can come over there and find it somewhere between your inbox, junk folder, and trash bin.”
She’s right, she probably can. IF they ever sent it, that is. Which I’m not convinced they did. I hate that I am obsessing over this, but I can’t help myself. Isn’t it always easier to believe the worst than the best?
“Settle down, my little psycho,” she chastises. “Take a deep breath and try to be rational about this. You know, the opposite of you.”
I scoff at her inside joke. I tend to be histrionic in case you couldn’t tell. Tess gave me dictionary once, and she replaced all the words that meant something close to irrational or quirky, with my name and tiny little pictures of me. Excitable, unreasonable, dramatic, nonsensical, nutty, you get the drift.
I follow her instructions and take a few deep breaths.Breathe in the flower, blow out the candle. Breathe in the flower, blow out the candle.“Okay, I’m good.”
“Now I want you to do an internet search with his first name and the WCWA competition.”
I do, and the website for the WCWA comes up with an announcement about Riggs as a last-minute judge substitution. They have a picture of him and a link to his website.
“He’s vineyard consultant. Oh, and a grower,” I tell Tess.
“Not a shower?” she quips.
I laugh despite myself, happy for the slight release of tension. “He showed and growed just fine,” I tell her. “His last name is Daley.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Where’s he from?”
