“Amateurs.” Summer rolled her eyes. “My boyfriend dumped me after I almost died in a plane crash.”
Ginger seemed suitably impressed.
“And he was the pilot.” Summer seemed perversely smug about all this. “He dumped me while I was still hospitalized with a head injury. I win.”
“You can’t win.” Cammie shook her head. “No one here can win. This is for random strangers only.”
“Boo.” Summer stuck out her tongue.
“We’re wasting some top-tier tales of woe!” Brighton said.
“You can be judges,” Cammie decided. “Someone needs to pick the finalists that people will vote on. Jenna, you can be a judge, too. You must have heard every breakup story under the sun in here.”
“Pretty much.” Jenna nodded.
“We’ll get Kat to call up every journalist and publicist she’s ever met,” Cammie said. “I’ll take point on the grassroots marketing campaign. Jenna, do you have a mailing list? Some way to contact your customers?”
“No, but Marla does. She sends a holiday card to every guest who’s ever stayed at the bed-and-breakfast.”
“The historical society has a pretty sizable mailing list,” Summer offered.
“So does the Naked Finger,” Brighton added. “And we’ve had some customers that could definitely medal in the Bad-Breakup Olympics.”
“Okay, so we’ll send out postcards and e-mail to everyone we can,” Cammie said.
“What about me?” Ginger cried. “What can I do?”
“Make more strawberry wine,” Cammie ordered. “Vats of it. Stockpile like the apocalypse is coming.”
“Consider it done.”
Cammie had vowed not to get emotionally involved in another food-and-beverage venture. She knew better than to go down this road again, and yet, here she was, envisioning grand plans and opening up her heart. With Ian and with the vineyard. But whatever. She’d worry about that later. Right now, she had an empire to build.
chapter 28
By Friday, the contest was basically good to go. Kat and Cammie secured air travel, lodging, meals, spa services, a shopping spree that included both clothing and accessories, and a VIP wine tasting.
“What’s VIP about it?” Kat asked when Cammie announced it.
“Our charm and hospitality?” Cammie raised a glass of strawberry wine to their future. “All we have to do now is send the e-mails, plaster our message all over Twitter and Instagram, and wait for the breakup horror stories to roll in.”
• • •
“Damn, dude. Listen to this one.” Summer whistled as she scanned an e-mailed entry. “This woman was dating a guy and they were talking about moving in together, but he kept leaving the lids of metal cat food cans right at the top of the recycling bin. She kept asking him to wrap them in newspapers or bury them under a cereal box or something, but he kept forgetting.”
Cammie looked up from her iPad, where she was perusing her share of the entries. “Eh, that’s not so bad.”
“Hold on. I’m not done yet.” Summer cleared her throat. “So finally, one Sunday morning, this chick cuts her finger so bad on the metal edge that she has to go to urgent care. Blood was spurting everywhere. That’s a direct quote: ‘Blood was spurting everywhere.’”
“Gross.” Across the bar, Jenna wrinkled her nose.
“But her boyfriend kept insisting it was just a little cut and she was being dramatic, so she had to drive herself to the ER. Then it turned out she had to get surgery.”
“Well, that’s bad,” Jenna allowed. “But it’s not the worst thing I’ve heard today. Or even this afternoon.”
“Still not done.” Summer held up her hand. “Then the whole thing got infected and she lost her fingernail. She says it took months to heal and she had to quit her job because she couldn’t type, and now she has to think about him every time she gets a manicure.”
“From a cat-food can lid?” Cammie was horrified. “Can that actually happen?”
Summer lifted up her laptop to display the screen. “She attached a photo.”
Everyone recoiled in horror.
“I give it an A-minus,” Kat said. “Would’ve been a run-of-the-mill B, but the photo puts it over the edge.”
“B-plus,” Brighton said.
“You give everything a B-plus,” Summer said.
Brighton shrugged. “When I hear an A story, I’ll give it A.”
“Well, I give it an A,” Summer said. “The woman has to live the rest of her life with nine fingernails because some dumbass couldn’t figure out that sharp edges are sharp.”
“Yeah, all right.” Jenna glanced at the chalkboard over the bar and handed a piece of pink chalk to Kat. “Put her on the short list.”
Kat added “cat-food chick” to the short list, which was rapidly turning into a long list. When she’d brainstormed this idea, Cammie had thought it would be fun. But after days of skimming increasingly horrifying tales of heartbreak, Cammie no longer considered this entertaining in any way. “Guys, we need to stop.”
“We can’t stop.” Kat didn’t even look up from her screen. “These entries aren’t going to read themselves. Look, here’s one from a woman who had her breakup live-tweeted by a famous blogger who was sitting at the table next to her at a restaurant.”
“But think about what this is doing to our hearts. To our souls! Think about what this is doing to our dating expectations.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about me and Brighton,” Summer said. “We don’t have dating expectations. Although I feel like I lived half these stories before I met Dutch.”
A male voice interrupted all the laughing and chattering. “Cammie?”
Cammie whirled around to find Ian just inside the bar’s front door. “Oh! Hey! We were just . . .”
She glanced around at the short list and the photos of cat-food-lid injuries and the onlookers watching them with rapt attention. “Let’s step outside,” she suggested.
He walked with her to the little white gazebo in the town square. “You look busy,” he said.
“We’ve spent all day reading breakup stories.” She filled him in on the details. “It’s just one romantic disaster after another.”
He sat down on the shaded steps of the gazebo. She sat next to him. They watched the tourists strolling on their way to the boardwalk. The weathered bronze dog statue stood watch over the proceedings.
“It makes me think about how important perception is,” Cammie said. “Like, two people can go through the same breakup and have completely different takes on it.”
“Like what happened with us,” he said quietly.
She tried to figure out how to respond to this. They hadn’t talked about it yet, not in any depth or detail. No matter how much time they spent together or how close they felt, this was the one thing that she hadn’t been able to bring up.
“Yes.” She inclined her head. “I’m sure that you and I have very different versions of what happened and why.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “How does your story go?”
Her first impulse was to protect herself—and him—by being vague and circumspect. But she couldn’t shake the stories she’d spent the day reading—all the pain, the hilarity, the bravery of people who’d fallen in love and then fallen apart and pulled themselves back together. So she told the truth—her version of it, anyway. “In my story, I was the bad guy. I’m the one who left.” She settled back against the wooden slats and stared out at the ocean. “I was the villain because I had a choice to stay or go, but you didn’t. You had to stay, but I chose to go. So I’m selfish by default.”
“That’s the end of the story,” he pointed out. “What’s the beginning?”
“Oh, well, the beginning is all empty gas tanks and strawberry patches and hormones.” She tried to sound detached. “R
emember all the hormones?”
He smiled. “I remember.”
“The beginning was so sweet and the middle was so good that it made the end so bitter.” She took a breath. “But I also know that the story couldn’t have ended any other way. I couldn’t be the girl you wanted me to be.”
He absorbed this, quiet and still. Cammie stared at the whitecaps cresting on the horizon. Finally, she asked, “What’s your version?”
“In my story, you were the girl who was too good to settle down with a twenty-two-year-old farmer in a tiny town in Delaware. You were meant for bigger and better things.”
“I assume you’re being ironic.”
He shook his head.
She kept looking at the water. “You’re the one who predicted—correctly, I might add—that my restaurant would fail.”
“I should never have said that. You dreamed bigger than I could. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
And there it was. The L word. In present tense, too. This was her chance to ask all kinds of questions, open all kinds of doors.
She remained silent.
“In my story,” he continued, “I’m the guy who didn’t do anything. That’s worse than being the villain. I just stood there and let things happen.”
“I had no idea you felt that way.” How could she? They’d never talked after she’d left.
“Revise your story,” he urged her. “You weren’t the bad guy. You had a choice, but so did I.”
“Not really,” Cammie said. “Family legacy and all that.”
“I had options, but I didn’t see that until after you’d left.”
“And you’d sworn you’d never ask me to come back.”
“But you came back, anyway. I’m glad you did.” He leaned over and pressed a soft kiss against her temple. “Even though you’re not staying.”
She didn’t realize she’d expected him to ask her to stay until now. No matter how many times she left, he would let her go. No matter how many different ways they spun their stories, he would never change that part. He’d asked her to stay once, and he’d never ask again.
He had his sticking points, and she had hers.
“I thought about you,” she confessed. “After I left.”
“I thought about you, too.”
They watched the waves for a few more minutes, and then her phone’s alarm beeped.
“I have to go.” Cammie got to her feet. “The grapes call, and I must answer.”
He stood up, too. “You’re doing a great job.”
“I’m trying.” She reached out to touch his arm. “I’m trying to love farming. Truly. I’m trying.”
“But you don’t.”
She shook her head. “It’s just not who I am.” Part of her wanted to apologize, but she stopped herself.
He walked her back to her car. “Hey.”
“Yeah?” She matched his pace and stride.
“We still have options.”
“You think so?”
He took her hand in his. “Always.”
chapter 29
The next morning, Kat was wrapping up a phone call in the parlor when Cammie came in from the vineyard. “Want the latest grape report?”
Kat clicked off the phone with a big smile. “Who cares about grapes?”
“Uh, I do.” Cammie glanced at her aunt, who was polishing wineglasses by the tasting bar. “We all do, don’t we?”
“Right now, we’re focusing on strawberries.” Kat put the phone down on an upended wine barrel. “That was the guy who owns the snooty little grocery store down by the boardwalk.”
“The one we never shop at because it makes Whole Foods look like a bargain?” Cammie asked.
Kat nodded. “That’s the one. Mom, did you talk to him about donating some stuff for our breakup contest?”
Ginger sniffed. “I tried, but he said no.”
“Well, he may have said no, but he said you were very charming.”
“Well.” Ginger adjusted her necklace, slightly mollified. “Obviously.”
“Did he change his mind about donating?” Cammie asked.
“No, but he said he might want to stock the strawberry wine.” Kat paused to wave through the window to Josh, who was lovingly detailing the tractor by the barn. “He said he’s been hearing rumors about it all over town.”
Ginger’s hands flew to her cheeks. “He did? My basement wine might find a home in a real brick-and-mortar store?”
“Yep. And they’ll probably charge a ton of money for it, too.”
“This is fantastic!” Ginger stepped back from the bar and did a little jig. “Our money problems will be solved!”
“Not quite.” Kat held up her palm. “It’s one tiny shop that might go through a case or two per month.”
“Buzzkill,” Cammie muttered.
“Truth teller,” Kat corrected.
“But it’s a start,” Cammie insisted. “If we keep hustling and building our brand, eventually we’ll turn a profit.”
“Define ‘eventually,’” Ginger pressed.
Kat ignored this and started barking out orders. “Everyone go get dressed. Our goal is to have the display up and running before lunch.”
Cammie blinked. “We’re going right now?”
“Yes! No time like the present! Time is money!” Kat clapped her hands to spur them to action. “We’ll have to stop and pick up a white tablecloth and those little paper cups, maybe some food to pair with the wine.” She looked at Cammie. “What goes with strawberry wine?”
“I have no idea.”
“Guess. Pretend you’re back in your restaurant, bullshitting to a bunch of snobs in suits.”
Cammie closed her eyes and envisioned exactly that. A wistful smile spread across her face. “Maybe a rich dessert? Like pound cake or cheesecake?”
Kat started making a shopping list. “Okay, so tablecloth, cups, napkins, toothpicks, cheesecake, pound cake . . .”
“Wait a minute,” Ginger said. “Are we just allowed to hand out wine to random people in a store?”
“Why not?” Kat shrugged. “As long as they’re over twenty-one.”
“That doesn’t sound legal.”
“Does to me.” Kat grinned. “And we’re going by the motto that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
“Good luck with that. Call me when you get arrested.”
“I won’t have to call you; you’ll be right there with me.” Kat slung her arm around Cammie’s shoulders, then beckoned for Ginger to join them. “The family that goes to jail together, stays together.”
“I’m not going to get arrested.” Ginger batted her eyelashes. “Just look at me. Who would arrest such a sweet, helpless old lady?”
“Spoken like a true grifter.” Kat looked proud. “All right, go get yourselves cleaned up. And don’t be afraid to show a little skin. Sex sells, you know.”
“Then take your own advice and wear that lovely blue dress I got you for Christmas,” Ginger said. “It shows off your cleavage and it covers your scars. And your tattoos.”
“I’ll let you pick my outfit if you’ll let me pick yours,” Kat retorted.
Cammie left them to bicker, and hurried to shower and change. A familiar, almost pleasurable tension was starting in her shoulders and back. She couldn’t farm worth a damn, but she could present food and beverage like nobody’s business. By the time she headed back downstairs, she had her game face on and the address of the nearest restaurant-supply store mapped out on her phone.
Jacques was waiting for her at the bottom of the staircase, and she bade him good-bye with a kiss on his wrinkly forehead. “Wish us luck, buddy.”
• • •
“Excuse me, ma’am, would you like to try some organic, locally sourced strawberry wine?” Camm
ie held out a white paper cup. “Handcrafted right here in Black Dog Bay.”
The woman in the grocery store aisle was wearing a preppy pair of pink capris, about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of diamond jewelry, and a tight, sour expression.
“Strawberry wine?” She lifted the cup to her nose and took a suspicious sniff. “Isn’t that something that hillbillies make in a bathtub?”
“You’re thinking of moonshine,” Kat said helpfully. “Which is actually making a comeback among the Brooklyn elite.”
Ginger gave Kat a death glare and stepped in to save the conversation. “This was handcrafted from heirloom strawberries with the very latest in small-batch wine-making technology.”
Kat and Cammie both gaped at Ginger. Apparently, the ability to bullshit about wine ran in the family.
The customer looked intrigued. “Really?”
“Yes.” Ginger managed to appear entirely earnest. “It’s a secret family recipe with a modern twist.”
“I suppose I’ll risk it.” The woman barely wetted her lips with wine. Then she took another, bigger sip. “That’s delicious.”
“In season and on point,” Cammie said. “Sweet, but not too sweet.”
“Hmmm.” The woman took another sip. “And how much is it?”
Everyone looked at one another, panicked.
“Thirt— Forty dollars,” Cammie blurted out. Ginger gasped. Kat cringed.
“Forty dollars?” The woman blinked. “Per bottle?”
“Yep. We’re running a sale.”
Ginger let out a little moan of despair.
But the woman regarded them with newfound respect. “I had no idea fruit wines cost so much.”
“Mass-produced fruit wines probably don’t.” Cammie kept her tone and posture aloof. “But this is unique. Locally sourced.” She paused, eyeing her potential customer. “Limited edition.”
Ding, ding, ding.
The blinged-out blonde cocked her head. “Limited edition?”
Cammie nodded, her eyes earnest. “When it’s gone, it’s gone.” She neglected to mention that Ginger would just whip up another “limited-edition” batch.
Once Upon a Wine Page 24
