Pride and Porters

by Charlotte Greene

  Besides the trip being unusually long, Erin was forced to sit in the backseat with Darcy the entire time, listening as Jen and Charlie chatted almost nonstop. She felt incredibly uncomfortable sitting there not saying anything either to the couple in front or to Darcy, and about halfway up, she’d finally had enough. She turned to Darcy, wanting to ask her about her reviews, and was surprised to see that she’d fallen asleep. Erin couldn’t help but stare at her. Her face, normally composed and rigid, seemed softer, kinder. Her pale hair had fallen across part of her face, making her appear less put-together, almost ruffled somehow. In a word, she was incredibly sexy.

  Erin finally wrenched her eyes away, startled to realize that her heart rate had picked up. She wouldn’t deny that Darcy was beautiful—she’d thought it from the beginning—but this sleeping Darcy was attractive in a way Erin found disturbing. She didn’t want to like her. These thoughts distracted her the rest of the way to Estes, and when they finally pulled into the parking lot of Estes Park Brewery, she was surprised to suddenly be there.

  The elevation was higher here and the air much cooler than down in the foothills in Loveland. Patches of snow lay here and there, but Estes still hadn’t had a big snowfall. Erin and Jen had dressed for the colder weather, but Charlie and Darcy were surprised by how much cooler it was. The day was remarkably clear, the sunlight and blue of the sky so vivid and bright it hurt their eyes. All four of them spent a few minutes admiring the majestic views of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains around them before heading inside the brewery. A fire burned in the fireplace, and despite the high ceilings, the restaurant was warm and cozy when they entered.

  Erin caught Darcy taking the measure of the space itself, reminded once again of what she did for a living. She hoped for the sake of the owners today that the staff was nice and the beer was fresh. If her previous article was any indication, Darcy was a ruthless reviewer.

  It was a weekday afternoon, so they had the run of the place. The hostess seemed surprised to see them. She led them to the best table, and they sat next to a bank of windows with views of Longs Peak. Darcy and Charlie were so enraptured by the view that they seemed to forget where they were. Jen and Erin shared a grin. Despite growing up in Colorado, Erin had never become immune to the natural beauty around her. The views of the mountains in Loveland certainly weren’t as spectacular as those in Estes, however, so even for Erin and Jen it was a treat to be here. Erin was up here nearly every week in the summer to hike or camp in Rocky Mountain National Park, minutes away from Estes, and she often stopped at this brewery before heading home. She hadn’t been here since August, and it felt a little like coming home.

  They ordered lunch and two flights of beer to share, and when their beer arrived, Charlie and Jen immediately started drinking from the flight closest to them. They were soon chatting away again as they sipped each taster, and Erin and Darcy shared an amused glance. Darcy raised one eyebrow at her and indicated the beers in front of them. Sighing inwardly, Erin moved her chair a little closer to hers so they could drink together.

  “So you come up here often?” Darcy asked.

  “In the summer, yes. Almost every week. Usually to hike up in Rocky.”

  Darcy smiled. “I knew you were one of those.”

  “One of what?”

  “One of those granola lesbians.”

  Erin flushed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Darcy held up her hands. “Nothing bad—really. I admire someone who enjoys the outdoors, getting dirty and all that. It’s refreshing. Not what I’m used to at all. Most of the women I know in Boston and New York haven’t even seen a hiking trail, let alone walked on one.”

  “Does that include you?”

  Darcy paused and then shrugged. “Not exactly. I’m not a mountain person, per se, not in the summer anyway, but I do like to ski.” She took a sip of the lightest beer and considered it for a moment. She swirled it around in her mouth before swallowing. Then she gave a little satisfied smile, and Erin couldn’t help but feel relieved.

  Realizing she’d been simply staring at her, Erin backpedaled in her mind. “Downhill or cross-country?”

  “A little of both, actually.” She smiled at Erin’s expression. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t take you for a cross-country skier.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  Erin thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. “It just seems a little, I don’t know, hardcore or something. At least, that’s the reputation it has here. I don’t know what it’s like in the Northeast. Most cross-country skiers in Colorado do it in the backcountry.”

  Darcy raised her eyebrows. “So I’ve heard. I’ve done a little of that, in the backcountry, I mean, but it’s definitely harder in the mountains nearest to me. Snowmobilers have overrun most of the backcountry trails. When I was a little girl, my father would take me and my sister almost every weekend up to the White Mountains, but it’s been getting harder to find trails reserved for skiers. If I do cross-country now, I usually have to go to a resort.”

  “You have a sister?”

  Darcy smiled, her eyes warm and far away. “Yes. She’s a lot younger than me. My father remarried when I was a teenager, and she was born a year after that. She just started at Julliard a couple of months ago.”

  Erin was going to ask her more, but their food arrived. As Erin ate, she couldn’t help but picture Darcy skiing. It was a pleasant thought. Darcy had a long, svelte body, and with her pale hair and eyes, she would be every bit the Nordic princess in her snow pants and sweater. Erin flushed at the image and had to wrench her eyes away from Darcy’s face to stop herself from staring again. The confused tumult of her thoughts soured her stomach a little, and she pushed her food away, nearly uneaten. Jen threw her a concerned glance, and Erin shook her head at her to dismiss it. She spent the next few minutes staring out the window as everyone else finished their lunch, trying very hard not to look at Darcy again.

  She was still annoyed that the woman was hiding the fact that she was writing reviews of every brewery they visited, but Erin was starting to become accustomed to the idea. After all, it was her job, and being anonymous meant that the reviews would be authentic. Still, part of the reason she’d started to forgive Darcy was the growing attraction she felt. It wasn’t the kind of attraction she would ever act on, but she was easy on the eyes—no one would deny that. Yet the dishonesty was still there, and Erin knew she’d need to bring it up soon or risk being in the same position as Darcy—lying by omission.

  “So,” Charlie said, pushing away an empty plate, “where to next?”

  “There’s a newer brewery in town I haven’t had a chance to try yet,” Erin said. “I didn’t even know it was open until recently. It was one of the reasons I’ve been meaning to come up here before winter.”

  Charlie grinned. “You don’t know how lucky you are to have so many breweries to choose from. It’s incredible that the populations here can support so many.”

  Erin smiled, proud again of her home state. There really was no place like Colorado for a beer drinker.

  “Shall we, ladies?” Charlie asked, standing up.

  They followed him outside, all of them surprised to see that the weather had turned in the hour they’d been indoors. They hadn’t been able to see the storm coming from the mountains in the west, and now the sky was exceptionally ominous. Up here at elevation, the clouds seemed very close, almost within reach, and they were roiling with energy and darkness, like a thunderstorm, headed right for them.

  “Oh, crap,” Jen said. “That doesn’t look good at all.”

  “I thought the weatherman said it would be nice up here today,” Darcy said, frowning.

  Erin and Jen laughed, and Jen said, “You can’t rely on the weather up here or down in Loveland, for that matter. At all. It can change on a dime and often does.”

  “I’ve been caught in storms so many times, I can’t even tell you,” Erin added.

 
“What do we do now?” Charlie asked. “Should we drive down to Loveland, or do we have time for a quick stop at the other brewery? We could get a growler to go.”

  Jen and Erin considered for a moment, and then Jen shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. It probably won’t be a big storm—not if it wasn’t on the weather this morning—but it could make driving dangerous later today if we wait even a short time.”

  All four of them made their way over to the car, deflated. Charlie seemed the most put out by it, but then, after he unlocked the doors, he stopped and slapped a hand to his forehead. “Hold on—I just had an idea.”

  “What?” Jen asked.

  “When do you two have to be in to work tomorrow?”

  Jen and Erin glanced at each other and shrugged. “Ten or eleven, I guess,” Jen replied.

  “Do you think the roads will be okay by tomorrow morning? I mean, if it snows?”

  Jen nodded. “With a fast-moving storm like this one, they should be. They’re good about keeping up with the roads around here when it snows. They have to be.”

  “Let’s stay over then!” Charlie said happily. “I’ll pay, of course. We could find some little cabins or something. Rough it a bit. What do you say?”

  All three of the others turned to look at Erin, knowing she would be the deciding factor, and Erin had to laugh at their identical, pleading eyes. “Fine, fine. We can stay. Especially if you’re paying, Charlie.”

  Jen let out of whoop of triumph, and they all laughed. Charlie put Darcy on cabin duty as they got in the car, and by the time they’d parked at the second brewery, Darcy had reserved two cabins nearby.

  “What a treat!” Jen said as they got out of the car again. “We almost never get to stay up here in Estes. I mean, we’ve camped overnight in Rocky a million times, but not often in an actual hotel or anything. I’ve only done it once or twice. What about you, Erin?”

  “Same here—once or twice. It’s so close to Loveland, it just seems silly to stay over.”

  “Well, I’m glad to oblige,” Charlie said. “And now I can have a little more to drink, too, since I don’t need to worry about driving.”

  “We still have to get to the cabins,” Jen said, laughing.

  “We can call a cab!”

  When they entered the new brewery, Erin was surprised to find how small it was. It even made their brewery in Loveland seem large by comparison. Rock Cut Brewery had clearly traded space for location, however, as, like Estes Park Brewery, it was directly on the route in or out of Rocky Mountain National Park. Unlike the other brewery here in town, Rock Cut was, like Bennet Sisters, only a taproom with no food, and after Charlie expressed confusion about this situation, Erin explained the different laws about breweries in Colorado and why they’d decided to open a taproom only. This was, however, only part of the truth. In reality, by the time Erin and Jen were in a position to open BSB, Erin had been in and out of restaurant work at one or another of her father’s restaurants for so long she couldn’t stomach the thought of working in another, even if it was her own. Getting the cheaper license to open a taproom had been a win-win for her since it meant not working with food ever again.

  Erin spoke to the server and was able to arrange a quick tour with one of the brewers. After showing her around the small operation, the brewer joined them at their table for a while to talk shop with Erin, and it wasn’t until they’d been conversing for several minutes that Erin realized Darcy was listening. She threw her a quick glance and couldn’t help but blush under her intense scrutiny. Darcy grinned but kept staring, and for the rest of the conversation, Erin’s face felt hot under her gaze. When the brewer finally excused himself to go back to work, Erin turned toward her, and Darcy smiled more widely.

  “You’re really passionate about your work,” Darcy said. “I like that.”

  Erin blushed harder and couldn’t help but look away. It was hard to meet Darcy’s eyes. She wasn’t used to this kind of forwardness. She turned her eyes to Charlie and Jen, who had moved their chairs so close together they might as well be sitting in each other’s lap. Without any other options, she turned her gaze to Darcy, who was also eyeing Jen and Charlie. Her expression was cold, unhappy. This impression disappeared a moment later when she looked at Erin, but Erin knew what she’d seen. Darcy clearly wasn’t entirely happy with what was going on between Charlie and Jen, and while Erin still had her own reservations about them, Darcy’s concerns made her want to leap to their defense.

  She shook her head to dismiss her annoyance. “Yes—I am passionate. It’s my whole life, really.”

  Darcy leaned forward onto her forearms. “Tell me about it. How did you get into the business?”

  Not able to stop herself, Erin asked, “Is this on the record?”

  Darcy’s eyebrows shot up and she laughed. “So you figured me out? I’m the big, bad reporter from the big, bad city. Did you Google my name or something?”

  Erin felt her color rise again, as that was exactly what she’d done. She nodded.

  Darcy considered her for a moment as if weighing something in her mind, and then she shrugged. “Well, if the cat’s out of the bag, I don’t mind talking about it. As long as you don’t spread it around. But no, my question is not on the record. I just talk about the wine and beer I review, and sometimes the wineries or breweries themselves, not the winemakers or brewers.”

  “And ruining the reputation of actual people while you do it. That review I read was brutal. If word got around, they’d be destroyed.”

  Darcy shrugged again. “That’s their problem. I can’t help it if they’re serving swill.”

  Erin went deadly cold. “You don’t mind if a business closes because of your review? Most people depend on their jobs for their livelihoods. Those people—the ones who produce the product you so casually put down—they’re friends of mine. Who knows what will happen if they have to shut down. You’re talking twenty, thirty people out of a job. Not all of us have a trust fund to fall back on.” Erin immediately regretted saying that bit about the trust fund, but she was still angry.

  Darcy narrowed her eyes for a moment. “Let me ask you this then, Erin. Do you like their beer? Do you honestly think they’re making good product, or is it just that you like them personally?”

  Erin flushed again. “That’s not the point—”

  “Ah, but it is. That’s exactly the point. My job is to review the product of a winery or a brewery, not to talk up the people who work there. And I’m always honest.”

  They were quiet for a while, both of them focusing on the beer samples in front of them to avoid more awkwardness. Part of Erin understood what Darcy was saying, but she couldn’t get over the idea that another brewer—a brewer like her—might soon lose their business because of this woman. It was difficult not to take it personally. Despite being in a market that supported and sustained a great many microbreweries, like any small business, most breweries were only four or five months from disaster at all times, sometimes less. One bad review could end any of them.

  Again, unable to let it go, Erin asked, “Are you reviewing every brewery you visit?”

  Darcy didn’t respond to the hostility in Erin’s voice. Instead, she shook her head. “No—only the exceptional ones, good or bad. I’m trying to do a couple from every town we visit. I might do a kind of concluding article that mentions some of the others I don’t go into in depth. Maybe with some kind of starred review chart. I’m still weighing my options.”

  Erin continued to stew and drink in silence. She glanced once or twice at Jen and Charlie, both of whom were so wrapped up in each other they seemed to have no idea what was happening on the other side of the table. She was happy that her sister was enjoying herself, but it was difficult not to feel like a third wheel around them, even with someone to talk to. While it was true Jen hadn’t dated anyone in a long time, the same could be said for Erin, too. She’d had a few one-nighters in the last couple of years and had even seen one woman more than once, but she ha
dn’t seriously dated anyone in years. This thought, coupled with the beer that was starting to muddle her head, made her feel morose and self-pitying, and she lashed out at the nearest, easiest target.

  “Hey,” she said to Darcy. “I haven’t seen you go out for a cigarette all day.”

  Darcy looked confused. “I don’t smoke.”

  “That’s funny, because I could have sworn you did. The first night I met you, you were outside. Someone was smoking—I thought it was you.”

  Darcy’s confusion lasted another moment, and then her eyebrows rose and her face paled. “Oh. That was Luis. You were there?”

  “I was there. You didn’t see me and Lottie.”

  Darcy leaned forward, her face sympathetic and worried. “Listen, Erin, I’m sorry about what I said and how I behaved. We’d been drinking all day on very little sleep—”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  Darcy grabbed her hand. “I do. My remark was insensitive and rude.”

  Erin’s resentment faded as she stared into Darcy’s eyes. Her hand was warm on hers, and she was very tempted to simply hold it for a moment. Her heart rate picked up, and her mind went into overload. What was she doing? This woman was toxic. She needed to get away from her and soon.

  Erin jumped to her feet, her chair squealing loudly. The others stared up at her, clearly surprised. “I’m going outside for a minute and get some air. Be right back.” Darcy leaned forward as if to say something, but Erin turned and hurried through the door before she could object.

  The temperature had taken a significant dip in the last hour, and the sky above was a dark, leaden gray. Nothing was falling yet, but it looked like it might start snowing or sleeting at any time. Still, the cool air felt marvelous on her overheated skin, and she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.

  Finally calm, she was just about to go inside when she saw something that stopped her dead. Lottie was walking across the parking lot, hand in hand with someone Erin recognized: Will Collins. Her heart squeezed with dread. How on earth had this happened?