Page 11 of Wassailing We Will Go
At this, Harrison frowns slightly. So…no discussing the work with Ryan and Britt, you mean.
I’m sorry. My aunts put me in charge of their life’s work; I have to keep my cards close to my chest. I realize this might make things a little awkward for you. I hope it’s not a deal breaker.
He sighs. It’s a hit, I’m not going to lie. But I can manage it.
I exhale in relief. “I’m glad. Here is all the paperwork. You can take it home tonight and take a look. I’m off tomorrow, but I’ll see you back here on Wednesday. Charlie usually takes off Thursdays and Sundays, and it would be great if you could come in and help him tomorrow. You can train with him and keep his schedule for this next week, but then it’d be better if we switched around your hours and have you come in for the busy Wassail weekends. I have a feeling the tour buses are going to love you.“
Guess I’ll do my best to become a Sparks Cidery expert by then, he says and holds a hand out. I take it, and it’s a good handshake, strong without trying to prove anything. See you Wednesday.
He smiles and waves as he leaves, and I watch him from the window as he walks back out to his ridiculous vehicle, shining bright purple in the sunlight. Britt and Ryan did him dirty on that one, but I guess a free ride is a free ride. As I watch him drive away, I have to confront a few facts: there are a lot of problems with my new hire.
While I am thrilled that Charlie has help that he and I are both happy with, I have to be careful with Harrison when it comes to certain trade secrets. It’s not that I think he’d intentionally feed information to bitter&sweet, or I wouldn’t have hired him, but you can tell immediately that he’s a very open, chatty guy. And we’ve still got a few things around here that I’d like to keep under wraps. Namely, while our visitor spend has been down for the past year, two of our ciders won awards last year from the Cider Association of Canada, and that gets us a nice little ribbon when our bottles hit the store shelves, declaring our ciders the best. Charlie’s expertise comes with decades of trial and error, and he’s earned every one of those awards. As a result (and the only reason I have not had a full panic recently), our sales in stores remain high across Ontario and Quebec. bitter&sweet has only just started putting their stock into one or two local stores, but I don’t need to give them a blueprint for success on how to overtake us on that front as well.
So, no information on sales or distribution around Harrison. He can talk cider with Charlie all day long—it’s his job, after all—and do all the soup shooters he wants with Chef, but all information about our business practices stays firmly within the walls of this office. Even before I became general manager of Sparks Cidery, I did not spend years helping my aunts with logistics and distribution to let it all slide now.
It’s funny, when I went to Toronto for university to get a business degree, I figured I was done with the cidery, done with tourism, done with Prince Edward County in general. It was only while I was getting my MBA that I decided to use the cidery as a case study that I was sucked back in.
My aunts created an amazing business, there is no denying it. They expanded their tourism offering in all the right places, and at the end of the day, they made an amazing product. But when I tell you that their pricing structure was a disaster, their sales growth strategy non-existent. Even their website at the time kind of sucked, if I’m being honest. It made for a great subject for my MBA thesis, and by the time I was done with my master’s, I was fully reinvested in the success of the cidery.
After graduation, I worked a well-paying corporate sales job during the day but then continued to help my aunts with their business from afar, in whatever spare time I had. And that was the setup for years. I had a nice but very tiny downtown condo, a boyfriend named Sean who cohabitated with me, and eventually, Steven the cat. Sean had been a fellow MBA candidate in my program, who worked long hours in advertising. He schmoozed clients most evenings, and I never minded because that was when I did work for the cidery. It was a fine, comfortable couple of years, with long hours and a decent pay cheque.
And then I got the call. When Aunt Jenn and Lauren reached out to let me know about their retirement, I knew I couldn’t let the cidery be left in the hands of a stranger. I had worked there every weekend and every summer during high school. Hell, I worked there illegally even before then, getting paid under the table to do odd jobs. And ultimately, my Toronto job was pretty easy to leave, in the end. I agreed to take over the cidery operations, and Aunt Jenn had cried, and Lauren had sighed in relief. I thought the move would be better for my career and for my work-life balance since I was working at the cidery in my spare time anyway.
Predictably, Sean did not want work-life balance, and he definitely did not want to live in the County. We tried long distance for a month or two, but honestly, our relationship had already become that of cordial roommates long before then. Roommates who canoodled, but still. You would think the dissolution of a three-year relationship would have hit me harder, but it didn’t. It felt like a different life altogether, like it wasn’t so much a breakup as a full exit from a completely different world and into another. Ultimately, Steven was the only one who made the step into the new world with me.
Which all leads to the second major problem with Harrison. I have been single for about eight months now—happily so, even, focused only on my work, with no distractions, ever since my last relationship imploded shortly after I took over the cidery. Until yesterday around 9:47 p.m., when I suddenly became very, very distracted. If someone were to design the perfect spy to infiltrate the place and get all my secrets, Bond-villain style, they did a bang-up job recruiting Harrison. That scenario is obviously ridiculous, but the distraction factor remains, as does the impropriety. I am his boss, and he is here to fill a business need within the company.
Not a Kate need that was apparently awakened around twenty-four hours ago with a giant, stupid crush.
CHAPTER SIX
THE CIDERY IS CLOSED ON Tuesdays. Everyone else is off, so I should take the day off too—relax, do some yoga, perhaps. Maybe read another six to seven pages of my book.
But Charlie and Harrison are at the cidery, and I know they’re preparing to transfer the cider over for a second fermentation. Charlie has done this dozens of times, and there is very little I can do to assist with this process, and yet I feel compelled to go and make sure everything is going well. Out of professional interest, of course.
Further derailing my morning is that while I was waiting for my coffee to brew, I made the mistake of looking at Instagram, and I saw that bitter&sweet announced a huge Christmas party for the last Saturday of Wassail—at the same date and time as ours. This, and the fact that I have no more croissants (not even stale ones), really ruins my day, and it’s not even 9:00 a.m. I sigh. Well, one of these problems is solvable, at least. Between the lack of croissants and my gross, milk-less black coffee, there is no more getting around the fact that I am in desperate need of groceries.
I go into town to get basic life supplies, which in my house basically amounts to coffee, pastries, milk, ibuprofen, and cat food. Thank God the cidery has a restaurant, and thank God for Chef Mel, or I can’t guarantee that I’d be reliably eating all of the food groups every day.
The checkout line is long, thanks to the Tuesday Senior Discount, and I pass the time playing the daily crossword on my phone. I am desperately trying to put together the letters that make up whatever the most widely spoken language in Cambodia is when I hear someone clear their throat behind me. I turn to look.
It’s Ryan. Ryan Chan, of bitter&sweet fame, and also internet fame because he has seventy-nine thousand followers on Instagram and over two hundred thousand on TikTok. That Ryan.
Hi, Kate, he says. How’s it going? His smile is friendly, and his teeth are unbelievably white.
Oh, uh, hi, Ryan, I say, putting away my phone (the language is Khmer, for the record). Not bad. How’s it going with you?
I don’t know why I’m perpetually shocked to run into people when I’m running errands in the County. I guess because in Toronto, every interaction out around the city always felt anonymous, but around here, I’ve come to know everyone’s name. The cashier doesn’t wear a name tag, but I know her name is Angie, and she has a Boston terrier named Frank. In the next line over, I see my mechanic, Jordan, who recently gave me a great deal on winter tires. This is normal County stuff. Running into a fellow business owner should not make me want to melt into the ground, yet here we are.
I’ve been wanting to get in touch, actually, he says. About Wassail. I know the tour buses usually finish at Sparks for the last weekend, but I wondered if you’d consider switching that up this year? We’re planning a huge end-of-the-season party, and we’d love for you to join us. And then Haz doesn’t need to choose between the two, either. We could have, like, a cidery hop, where we all go to yours and then to ours?
It takes me a full five seconds to realize that Haz must mean Harrison. Five seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, but when you’re processing it in real time while someone is obviously waiting for you to say something, it’s an eternity.
Oh! Um, I’m not sure. That last weekend has a lot of sentimental value for us, too, you know—end of the season and everything. Let me run it by my team.
I will be doing no such thing. The last stop of the night, when guests are loosened up from an evening of touring, is a reliable spending spree, and our gift shop and tasting bar really need that last boost before we close for the season. We’re sure as hell not giving up that spot.
Sure, sure, he says. It’s so great that you took him on. He was a pretty depressing sight those first few days. Had a beard like Santa when he first flew in. We made him shave before we sent him to the spa. Seems like that did him good, and then he met you, of course.
