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I send a quick text to my parents. When I look up, Kel is already at his car, waiting by the passenger door for me. So much for finishing what I started.
Kel
I close the car door as Maggie buckles herself in. I’m a goddamn fucking idiot. This whole motherfucking day has been a disaster.
First, I burnt my biscuits by taking too long in the shower. Because I was thinking about Maggie and had to rub one out so I didn’t show up to the fields with a raging hard-on. Then Marco cut himself on a knife and I had to stitch him up. It’s the one skill from my nursing days that I still use on a regular basis.
And then the destemmer’s belt snapped and took my temper with it. Discovering I’d driven to the wrong location was the cherry on top of a fucktastic sundae.
I saw the way her shoulders slumped when I said I’d drop her off at her parents house. I don’t know what I said wrong, but the last thing I need is to either meet Maggie’s parents or to spend all night in a hotel with her. How can I be trusted to keep my hands to myself when all I want is to feel her wrapped up in my arms again?
The best part of this whole shit-show of a day was the thirty seconds she was in my lap and kissing me.
Even the ridiculous way she climbed across the seats to get there lifts my foul mood every time I think about it. Because she heard the words I didn’t say—I need someone to take care of me for a moment.
Sliding into my seat, I don’t make eye contact as I start the engine, my shoulders tense and chest weighed down by my life and my responsibilities. Maggie leans forward and inputs an address in my GPS, crossing her arms and looking out the window at the drizzle coming down.
Once again, I don’t know how to break the silence between us. Should I apologize? Tell her that I’m desperate for her to stay in a hotel room with me so I can spend all night losing myself in her? None of the words that I want to say are the right ones, so I stay silent. Praying she will rescue us because this is only our second date and I’ve already blown it.
“When my sisters and I were little, we would pick raindrops on the windows and watch them race to the bottom.” Maggie’s voice echoes in the quiet cab as we sit on the highway in Seattle traffic.
“Sydney and I would play car bingo with the road signs.” I sigh and settle against my seat. “Nate and I used to play punch buggy, but that got banned after I punched Sydney too hard.”
“Are you guys close? You and Sydney, I mean?”
We inch our way up Interstate Five, the GPS a red line from here to downtown. The trees open up as we near Seattle proper, not that we can see much in the dark. We’re cocooned in the warmth of my car, safe from scrutiny in the dark. The only lights are what’s reflected off the wet asphalt, not enough to reveal secrets I’d rather keep.
“We are. Or we used to be. She lives outside Portland, which technically isn’t that far, but I’m so busy with the winery and Olive that I don’t see her as often as I used to.” Guilt gnaws at my stomach because I know that’s not the real reason I don’t make time for my sister.
“Do you think your fight with Nate has anything to do with it?” Maggie leans an elbow on the center console, closing some of the distance between us.
Even though I don’t want to answer, I do. Maggie has some kind of magic to her and I find myself able to say the words I haven’t said to anyone else. “She thinks I’m wasting my life at Sunshine Cellars. My whole family does—hell, Greg and Jackie probably do too. But they don’t know what it was like—in the hospital, I mean, during the pandemic. They don’t understand why I had to leave. Why I couldn’t keep doing it.”
Maggie doesn’t say anything, just rests a hand on my thigh. I grip it, squeezing as memories from those terrible years try to surface. “Not being able to help everyone—it killed me. I didn’t see Olive for almost six months because June was terrified I would bring Covid, or something worse, home from the hospital. I was working so many shifts that I ended up renting an apartment closer to the hospital and barely came home for weeks on end.”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Maggie’s voice is soft and soothing. “You take care of people. That must have been awful, having so many people depending on you to help them and not being able to do it.”
“How come you get it and no one in my family does?” Another of the bands across my chest loosens as Maggie’s thumb traces circles on the back of my hand.
“Probably because it’s the exact opposite of my family. No one expects me to be capable of taking care of anyone—I’m always the one getting into trouble.” She leans her head against the edge of her seat, her gaze heating the side of my face. “No one expects particularly great things from me. My older sister told me once if I could stay out of trouble for more than twenty-four hours, she’d file a missing person's report for the real me.”
“I think you’re pretty amazing.” I pull her hand up to kiss the back of it, before letting go to change lanes and exit the freeway, following the car’s directions.
Maggie turns on the music we’d been listening to before and starts singing along to Bruno Mars. When it rolls over to “Right Thurr” next, I join in and we sing along as I make my way to wherever Maggie is taking us.
She directs me to some parking and to my relief, waits for me to come around and open her door for her. “Barbeque, huh?”
“They make the best mac and cheese in the city.”
“Better than mine?” I tease as I follow her swinging hips inside, my fingers itching to hold onto them.
“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it,” is Maggie’s only answer before she pulls me through the doors.
After two bites, I have to admit, their mac and cheese might be better than my own. “What is in this? I need to figure it out so I can copy it.”
Maggie grins behind her lemonade. “Right? Yours is pretty close, though. Definitely has more vegetables.”
Just like before, watching Maggie enjoy her food is a special kind of torture. Each time she takes a bite, her tongue swirls against the spoon and all I want is for her to do the same thing to me. The cut of her sweater gives me a tempting view down her cleavage every time she leans forward to take a bite. My dick is going to have a permanent mark from pressing against the zipper of my jeans all night.
