Bittersweet

by Sarina Bowen

  “That’s right.” He lifted his bearded chin a little defiantly.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t think you cared that much.”

  His bushy eyebrows rose. “Why would you say that? I called, I asked you out, didn’t I? Twice, I think.”

  It had honestly never occurred to me that I would have had the power to hurt him. “Let’s see. You were this big football star, and I was just some freshman that was doing badly in all my classes. And my boyfriend had just obliterated my self-esteem.”

  God, just remembering that month gave me a pang in the center of my chest. College was supposed to be fun. That’s what everyone said. But I was a ship at sea. My prep school friends were all conquering the world and I just couldn’t get anything right.

  Griff picked my hand up off the table and stroked my palm with one thumb. “I liked you a lot, princess. But I did a shitty job convincing you.”

  I put an admiring hand over his brawny wrist and squeezed. “That was April or May of your senior year, right? We would have gotten a few good dates in, maybe. Then you moved to Green Bay. Timing has never been our forte, Griffin.”

  He gave me a sad smile and then paid the check.

  Then we went back to the bunkhouse and had sex in absolute silence, because the building has no insulation between rooms, and we weren’t in the mood to be exhibitionists. What was passing between us this weekend was romantic and difficult and also private. I wanted him all to myself for just a few hours more.

  I got my wish. Griffin bent me over his desk and gave it to me right there in front of a sky full of stars. Then he scooped me up and tucked me into the bed where we napped until we were ready to do it again.

  The weekend was perfect. But eventually Monday arrived. It always does.

  In the pre-dawn darkness I heard Griff’s alarm go off. He stopped its beeping, then rolled over to hold me. “Gonna miss waking up with you in my bed,” he whispered. “But I understand why you have to go.”

  Since I didn’t know what to say to that, I just hugged his big, naked body a little more tightly.

  “I’ll take you back after breakfast,” he said quietly. “And next week when you make your pitch to those assholes, I hope they give you every last thing you want. And if they don’t, I hope you’ll try again.” He stroked my hair. “I never got the chance to find out if pro ball was going to happen for me. I didn’t get to figure it out for myself. But you can have that chance.” He kissed the top of my head. “But if you get discouraged…if you need a day off from trying, I’ll be here where you can find me.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the heat brewing behind them. I don’t know what I’d ever done to deserve this man’s attention.

  “Never expected you to run a car into the ditch beside my road,” he said. “But I’m sure glad you did. Most fun I had in a really long time.”

  I buried my face in his neck and hugged him tightly.

  We stayed there pressed against one another for a couple minutes until the sound of footsteps moving about the bunkhouse let us know that the day was beginning whether we liked it or not.

  With a sigh, Griffin Shipley slid out of bed, tucking the covers around me again afterward. Then he got dressed.

  After he went out to greet the day, I hugged his pillow like the damn fool that I was.

  It was a quiet journey back to Boston. Griffin turned on the radio after a while, which was fine because neither of us felt much like talking. As the buildings grew taller, so did my sense of dread. Saying goodbye to Griffin was going to suck. Tonight I’d go to bed lonely on my hard little futon, wondering what the hell I’d done.

  But tomorrow morning I’d be back at work, learning the ropes of the restaurant business. The days would pass in a haze of kitchen work and then the terror of trying to impress a panel of seasoned restaurateurs.

  “Baby?” Griff’s voice shook me out of my reverie.

  We were almost to my little apartment house already. “Yeah?”

  “Can you do me a favor? I haven’t gotten any paperwork from your buyer, and this Friday I can get him the first thousand bottles. Would you nudge him again?”

  “Sure!” I said, happy to have a task to do. “I’ll call him right now.” I took out my phone and thumbed for Burton’s number.

  While it rang in my ear, Griffin found a semi-legal parking spot a few buildings down from mine.

  “This is Bob Burton.”

  “Hi, it’s Audrey Kidder calling with a question.”

  “Hi Audrey. Shoot.”

  “Shipley Orchards is set to deliver forty cases this week, but they’re still waiting for a contract. Could you nudge the contracts department for me? This is the biggest dollar amount of all our Vermont purchases, and the man needs a contract.”

  There was a silence on the line. But I didn’t panic. I gave Griff a smile, and the one he returned to me was so handsome that I actually missed what Burton said in my ear.

  “Could you repeat that?” I had to say.

  “I said—there’s not going to be a contract, Audrey. We found a better price.”

  “A…what?” I gasped. That didn’t even make sense. “A better price? How?”

  “You brought us the cider at six-seventy-five. But there’s a New Hampshire cidermaker who will do six bucks. So we sent him a contract instead. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “No!” I yelled. No to all of it. “You can’t do that.”

  Another pause. “Of course I can. Business is business.”

  “But…!” I couldn’t even decide what to freak out about first. “They’re labeling it for you. It’s going on a truck in four days. You agreed to purchase two hundred and fifty cases at six-seventy-five a bottle. If you needed a six-dollar price, you should have said that weeks ago.”

  I heard a viscous thump. Like someone smacking the dashboard with two fists. I couldn’t even look at Griffin.

  This had to be fixable.

  “Burton,” I said. “Listen to me. A family business has changed its entire operation to accommodate your order. You can’t just walk away from them.”

  “We don’t have anything on paper,” he said. “It’s done, Audrey. We contracted with the folks in Lebanon already. They brought us our first cases last week.”

  “Then you’ll have two ciders on your menus,” I said through gritted teeth. “More is more.”

  “Not this time. I have to go into a meeting now.”

  The man hung up on me. I was still in shock, sitting there on the seat of Griff’s truck, my phone against my ear.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. Then I finally risked a look at Griff’s face. His jaw was as tight as I’d ever seen it. His face was hard, as if carved from granite. “I’m going to go over his head,” I said. “I’ll go to headquarters today and talk to his father.”

  Griffin didn’t look at me. His gaze was fixed straight ahead. “I should have gone with my gut. I never do business with people I don’t trust. This one time I took a chance…” He reached for his steering wheel and gripped it in two angry hands. “Fuck.”

  “I’ll…”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said, but his voice was icy.

  “I know, but…” But what? I’d set that price. Griff had been willing to sell at six bucks, and I’d negotiated a higher price. I’d thought I was so smart. “They can’t do this. I won’t let them. You invested a lot of money in those tanks.”

  Griffin gave an angry grunt. “My mistake. I make a lot of those, apparently.”

  That statement sent a chill running down my spine. I knew without any doubt that he also meant me. “I…” My first attempt to speak failed, because I choked on the word. Swallowing hard, I tried again. “I have to go. I’m going to fix this.” I yanked my duffel bag off the floor and grabbed for the door handle.

  He didn’t stop me.

  I jumped down and turned around to find Griffin still staring out the windshield, his jaw tight.

  After slamming the truck’s doo
r, I hoofed it up the block. My hand shook as I unlocked the door to my building, and the jog upstairs was a blur.

  Once inside the apartment, I ran through a fog of marijuana smoke and into my little room. I threw myself and my bag down on the bed and tried to think. The cider order was worth just over forty thousand dollars to the Shipley family budget. Every manager in the BPG C-suite was going to get a call from me.

  So I unzipped my bag and got out my presentation notes. I’d put a BPG org chart in there as a cheat sheet—so during my presentation I’d always know the function of anyone who asked me a question or made me clarify a point.

  Beginning at the top, I started dialing.

  The president didn’t take my call. But I left a message with his receptionist, claiming I had to speak to him on a matter of utmost ethical import. Hopefully breaking out the SAT words would help. Then I called the corporation’s general counsel and told his assistant that I had knowledge of the buyer trying to break an oral contract, and that BPG could be sued.

  Finally, I called the elder Burton.

  “Audrey! I’ve been expecting your call.”

  “You have?” Shit. “Sir, we have a problem.”

  “My son let me know that you’re disappointed.”

  “D-d-disappointed?” I almost couldn’t say it I was so fiercely angry. “You sent me to Vermont to do a job, and I did it. I put my own good name on the line for your company. You can’t just steam roll the good people who are trying to do business with you!”

  “Calm down, sweetheart.”

  I let out a little shriek of rage. “Why should I? You’re destroying my credibility. As well as your own.”

  “You watch your tone,” he snapped. “It’s my name on the annual report, and it’s me who has to answer to shareholders. There is a better deal out there in the marketplace. That’s how markets work.”

  My stomach rolled. Because I knew all too well how markets work. “He’ll meet your six dollar price,” I said quickly. “But you can’t just yank the order.”

  There was a pause, during which I almost vomited from stress.

  “Five dollars,” Burton said. “I don’t need the product now, but for the right price I would buy it.”

  Fuck. I closed my eyes and took a slow, calming breath. “No can do,” I whispered. “No deal.” That’s what Griffin would say, anyway.

  “Then I guess we don’t have anything left to discuss.”

  Truer words had never been spoken. I took the phone from my ear and I tapped the screen to disconnect.

  I looked around my little room, tidy except for my notebooks spread out on the bed. But inside I was all torn apart. Debris everywhere. My heart in tatters. I lifted the nearest notebook and opened it to a drawing of my tapas restaurant logo. I’d curved the words Small Plates into the top and bottom halves of a shining dish.

  The page made a satisfyingly destructive sound when I yanked it out and tore it in half. I did the same thing to the rest of the pages. One by one I tore them down the center.

  Next week I wouldn’t be pitching for the competition. Griff always said he refused to do business with people he didn’t trust. Now I understood why. I didn’t want to breathe the same air as people who would do what they just did. So I sure as hell didn’t want to be the face of their restaurant.

  Fuck. Me. I just spent many months of my life trying to win their favor. What a waste of time.

  Hello, square one? I’m back.

  This realization was so exhausting that I lay down on my bed, in a nest of torn paper. I put my head on the pillow and tried not to think about Griffin’s angry face. I’d just cost him forty thousand dollars. And because of me, his family was going to have to worry about cash flow every day for the foreseeable future. I pictured their worried faces around the dinner table as Griffin tried to explain what happened. I could see Ruth’s patient frown so clearly in my mind. Dylan’s scowl. May’s frustration…

  Lying there, hopelessness simmered inside me until it boiled over in the form of tears.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Griffin

  Anger was my primary reaction to BPG’s fucking betrayal of our agreement. For a few minutes there I was so enraged I couldn’t even speak.

  Audrey disappeared in a frantic scramble toward her apartment building, and I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even watch her go. I couldn’t think about her just now. I was too upset to say anything comforting. And too pissed off at myself.

  I knew those bastards couldn’t be trusted. I’d told her that the second she showed up on my property. But instead of listening to my gut, I’d let my heart lead me astray. The cider business was my dream, so I’d let them convince me it was possible. I’d sunk a lot of money into equipment. And now my family would pay the price.

  My overtired brain went right to damage control. I took out my phone and called home. My mother answered on the first ring.

  “Griffin? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said carefully. “But I have a bit of a situation.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Don’t let Dylan print any more of the BPG cider labels.” That was the only thing I could save—a thousand pages of adhesive labels and the ink printed on them.

  “Why?”

  “The company is trying to cancel their order.”

  I heard my mother’s gasp through the phone. “They can’t do that!”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “But they are. It looks bad.”

  I had to give my mother credit. She was always solid in a crisis. The next thing she said was, “We’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Though the fallout was going to keep me up nights.

  “Your father had almost the same thing happen to him once.”

  “What?”

  “He had a handshake deal to sell milk to Kupper Cheeses. But they reneged. Your father also declined insurance on his outbuildings for a few years, then lost a barn in a fire. That cost us a fortune.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. The man made a lot of mistakes, but they didn’t make him a failure. You’re going to make a few, too.”

  I shut my eyes, trying to wrap my head around Dad’s fuckups. Logically, I understood that everyone made mistakes. But I hadn’t allowed myself any room to make any.

  “Audrey must be out of her mind,” my mother said gently.

  I flinched. If not for Audrey, I wouldn’t be in this pickle.

  “Griff,” my mother pressed. “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t really know,” I admitted. “At the moment, I have bigger problems.”

  “No, you really don’t,” she pressed. “Unless you think you can change the company’s mind, I think Audrey is your only problem. Where is she?”

  “Her apartment,” I guessed.

  “And where are you?”

  “In the truck. I need to come home.”

  My mother’s silence spoke volumes. She was not pleased. “Talk to her,” she said. “Don’t leave Boston angry.”

  “Then I’m gonna be here all year,” I snapped.

  “Honey, this isn’t her fault.”

  I knew that. Mostly. But I’d let my guard down in a serious way. Ever since she’d waltzed into town I’d lost my mind a little. She’d made me think selfish thoughts, when I really hadn’t been able to afford to think that way. “I gotta go, Mom. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  “Don’t make a little mistake into a big one,” she said.

  “I don’t even know what that means. Take care.” I hung up.

  Then I called Isaac Abraham and got his wife Leah. “Hey, lady. I got a little bad news.” I told her what BPG had done. “So I’m not going to be trucking any produce to them next week. I’ll tell the others, too. You all can make your own decision—either take the stuff into Boston together or bail on them. But I’m done with BPG.”

  “Man, Griffin, I’m sorry,” Leah said. “I don’t think Isaac will want to sell them anything now either.”
r />   “That’s your choice,” I said quickly. “But I wanted to let you know right away so you could plan ahead.”

  “I think we’ll take a lot of product to the Norwich market tomorrow and try to move it locally instead.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “Do you want me to make some calls for you? The baby is napping.”

  “Would you?” I gave her a list off the top of my head of farmers whose goods I’d hauled into town last week.

  Then I just sat behind the wheel of my truck feeling lousy. I’d just undone Audrey’s work for the second time. Many of those farmers were about to bail on BPG just on principle. Unless they couldn’t afford to. And now transportation would be an issue.

  But I couldn’t really worry about that. It wouldn’t be me hauling their shit after they backed out on forty large of cider.

  That done, I needed to get home and think through my next few months’ cash flow. If I sold off the rest of the herd across the street, I could use that money to get by. Though I’d need to find a buyer for all the cider I’d been pressing, and quickly.

  I cranked the truck’s engine and waited for it to warm up. Then I reached around to the back seat in search of the sandwich May had sent me for lunch.

  But my hand collided with something else. An Easy-Bake oven in a box.

  Hell.

  Audrey had leapt from my truck like it was on fire. She’d forgotten the gift I’d given her. Maybe she didn’t care about it after all.

  Yes she does, my conscience complained. She cares a great deal.

  She could get it later, though.

  I started the engine and extracted myself from my parking spot. It took me twenty minutes to get out of Boston. I’d lived in this city for five years in college and the traffic pattern still confounded me. Finally I reached the highway and accelerated northward. I still felt like an utter heel. But there was work to be done.

  My phone rang. The number was our landline at home.

  I ignored it.

  It rang again. Ever since my father died, I got a little weirded out whenever it seemed like my family needed to reach me. So I pulled off at the next exit and parked the truck.