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“Okay.”
I switched calls and answered. “Hi.”
“What the fuck, Alex?” Vicki’s voice rang through the speaker. “You slept with Sophie. Are you kidding me? Are you actually fucking kidding me?” She then sounded as if she was choking.
If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve assumed Vicki was choking on tears. But she never cried. Not even when her great-grandmother passed away last year. Vicki was the definition of a person who bottled up her emotions and placed them in a box she buried deep within herself, until one day that box was going to burst open. I had a feeling the news might set it off.
“And she’s fucking pregnant, did you know that?” Vicki continued. “Did you know that
Sophie is havingyour baby?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. The way Vicki was screeching on the cell phone made my skin crawl. “I know that Sophie’s pregnant.”
There was a moment of silence, followed only by the sound of her breath blowing sharply out of her lungs. Vicki wasn’t just angry, she was furious, an irrational fury that wasn’t justified. We hadn’t been temporarily separated when I slept with Sophie;we were done, and there was no chance of getting back together—Vicki had made that clear.
But I wasn’t going to match her anger. I understood where it was coming from. Vicki was a complicated woman. Her frustration wasn’t just about me sleeping with Sophie, but rather stemmed from her guilt over not wanting children and hiding that secret from me. Now combined with her anger that I’d found what she couldn’t give me elsewhere, it created a storm of unresolved emotions, making it impossible for her to see the logic of it all.
“Is she going to keep the baby? Areyou? Are you going to move in with her and pretend you’re one big happy family?” She snickered, and I could almost imagine the snarl on her face, the way her fists were probably clenched so tight they left half-moons imprinted on her palms.
“You’re not being fair.”
“Fair?” she laughed out loud, her voice laced with venom. “Are you being serious right now?I’mnot being fair. How about you? It’s like you did it on purpose just to get back at me.”
“You know that’s not true,” I replied a little more sharply, my patience waning. “It was an accident—”, just when I was going to confess my affection towards Sophie but then realized it was not the best time.
“Bullshit.”
“Believe what you want to believe,” I replied, catching Sam’s eye.
He was walking toward me, clipboard in hand, his lips pressed tight. He mouthed “Vicki” and pointed at the phone pressed to my ear. I nodded and he rolled his eyes in response.
When Sam walked off, I added, “All I can say is that whatever happened between Sophie and me had nothing to do with you. I have no intention or had any intention of getting back at you. And if you don’t want to believe me, then that’s your problem.”
I ended the call before Vicki could spit out a retort. I was practically buzzing from adrenaline. My hands were shaking, and in my profession, that was never a good thing.
Taking in deep breaths, one after the other, I put on my professional mask and headed to room six.
It was just after seven p.m. that evening when I parked my car in Sophie’s driveway. The sunset glow hit the sycamore tree, turning its leaves gold, and the street itself looked like it had been dipped in honey.
The front door swung open and Sophie, who was wearing gray sweatpants and a yellow T-shirt, frowned when she saw me. “Hey, are you Okay? I told you, you didn’t have to make the trip to St. Helena. I’m fine.”
"Well, I didn't listen, I never did," I replied, noticing how her gray eyes seemed almost transparent in the sunlight. "Instead, I picked up some takeout on the way here." I lifted the plastic bag to show her and then took a step back. "Unless you want me to take the veg dumplings and eat them all by myself? I'm not beyond doing that."
Sophie’s frown melted into a laugh as she stepped aside. “How did you know dumplings are my weakness?”
“A lucky guess.”
“No one’s that lucky,” she said, leading the way to the kitchen. “Either you got hold of Becks or you found me on social media.”
I laughed, placing the takeout on the counter and unpacking its contents. “Are you telling me there’s a picture of you up on the internet somewhere claiming how much you love dumplings?”
“I’m not denying it.” Sophie grinned, settling onto one of the two bar stools at the counter, and rested her elbows on the marble. “I’m also not denying that I’ve eaten nearly twenty-five dumplings in one sitting.”
We both laughed and when our laughter died down, a sudden shift in the air dampened the lightness. I could feel it like I could feel the cold, and I knew Sophie could too. Her grin faded into a grimace, and she dropped her head in her hands. "I don't know how I'm going to go back to work tomorrow, Alex." When she lifted her head, tears streaked her cheeks. "What if Vicki fires me? Well, I guess I have to leave Becks there and find another job." She slid off the stool, her shoulders rigid. "What if she doesn't, and she spends the rest of her career at Vineyard Valley hating me?"
Both of those were valid possibilities, but there was also the possibility that Vicki would get over it with time and move on—though that seemed far less likely.
After dropping the Styrofoam container on the counter, I rounded the island and extended my arms. Sophie walked into my embrace, and I wrapped her tightly in a hug, breathing in her rosy scent, savoring the heat of her body pressed against mine.
