Page 22 of A Vine Mess
While it annoyed me to no end that my sisters continued to ask me such questions four months after the breakup, she wasn’t entirely off base.
I thought I was over it, but there were days when the crushing weight of the realization that I was alone yet again—that I had to start from scratch with someone new—suffocated me. It wasn’t that Iwanted to be with Alfie. Far from it, in fact. It was just that, despite the pitfalls of our relationship, we’d found a rhythm together. Maybe not an ease, but some weird, twisted sort of comfort in knowing we had each other at the end of the day.
Although…that hadn’t been enough for Alfie.
Maybe that was the worst part, the hardest hurdle for me to jump over. Not the fact that we’d ended, but the fact that he hadn’t ended itbeforehe stepped out on me. Had I been the perfect girlfriend? Of course not. But I’dtried. I’d tried so fucking hard, had let him strip me down to my bones and rebuild me the way he wanted.
I supposed that made me young and naïve, to let a man control so much of who I was.
“Maybe I’m not,” I whispered to my sisters at last. “And I can’t explain it, but…Ineedthis. Alfie took so much from me. I need to find myself again, and what better way to do that than a cross-country adventure?”
“Doesn’t hurt that your tour guide is hot as fuck,” Chloe added.
Though we all broke into fits of laughter, I couldn’t disagree.
No, that certainly didn’t hurt at all.
Liam pulled up behind my building the following morning, and I let out a delighted squeal of surprise.
“Oh. My. God,” I gasped, rushing forward and running my hands all over the exterior. “We’re really taking this?”
Liam only nodded, his normally composed expression breakinginto a toothy smile at my excitement. “What do you think? This a chariot fit for a winery heiress?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not an heiress.” Then I glanced over my shoulder at him and grinned. “But it’s perfect. You’re cool with driving a purple vehicle?”
And itwas. The van wasn’t just any vehicle—it was an old-school Volkswagen Crafter van, painted a beautiful pastel purple that inexplicably matched my hair. The top half was white, the accents chrome that shone brightly in the early morning sunlight. The seats were a sumptuous-looking dark purple cloth, the back windows tinted and covered by what appeared to be Roman blinds.
“My masculinity isn’t threatened by the color of this van, Wildflower,” he said, puffing out his chest for show. “I’m glad you like it. I would’ve gotten something different if you didn’t, though.”
“What’d I tell you the other day? This is your adventure. I’m just along for the ride,” I said as we both strode toward the side of my building, where everything I’d need for this road trip waited.
Liam had told me to pack as light as possible, and I swear I’d tried. But from the way he glanced skeptically between me and my duffels, the sleeping bag, and the two canvas reusable grocery bags I’d stuffed full of nonperishable food items—and, okay, the bottoms of both were lined with extra clothes, plus a medium-sized paper grocery bag full of a special project I’d been curating for ages—I’d done the best I could under the circumstances.
We returned to the van and Liam popped open the back door, revealing the surprisingly spacious cargo space. Along one sidewas Liam’s luggage, which filled all of one bag.Men, I thought wryly as we loaded my duffels. The other side was overtaken by some folded up mechanism.
“What is that?” I asked, gesturing to it.
“The bed.”
“Thebed?” I asked, incredulous. “This thing is outfitted with a mattress?”
Liam shrugged. “I mean, yeah. It can only sleep one, so on nights when we’re really roughing it, I’ll take the tent and you can sleep in here. I told you that the other day.”
I tossed the duffel I carried unceremoniously in after the one he’d carefully placed and folded my arms over my chest, turning a glare on him. “Why can’t I sleep in the tent too?”
My annoyance evaporated almost immediately as Liam gaped like a fish, grasping for something to say. “I just figured…” he finally settled on.
“Well, you figured wrong. You know—” I started then cut myself off with a rough shake of my head. “Nevermind.”
He stepped closer and pushed a lock of purple hair that had clung to my lip balm off my face. His calloused fingertip scratched against the skin of my cheek, and a shiver raced down my spine. “No, tell me. If we’re going to be stuck together for the next two weeks, we need to be honest with each other. Right?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. The poor guy kept stepping on landmines he didn’t even know existed. I shuffled backward, dropping my gaze and scuffing my shoe through the gravel at my feet. “First, please don’t say things like ‘stuck together,’” I pleaded. “If you didn’t want me to come with you, you could’ve just said so. And if you’ve changed your mind, you better let meknow now so I can haul my stuff back upstairs.”
“No, no,” he said, holding his hands up placatingly. “I’m sorry. That was a poor choice of words. I just mean we’re going to be spending basically every waking second for the next fourteen days together. It’ll only make things uncomfortable if one of us does something that pisses the other one off. This”—he gestured between us—“is a good start.”
I softened at that, at his willingness to make sure I was as relaxed as possible on this trip. And having an open line of communication with a man who wasn’t my dad for the first time in my life felt…nice. Foreign, but nice.
“He—Alfie made a lot of comments like that. About being ‘stuck’ at family functions with me.”
