Page 76 of While You Were Trending

I’ve been immature and thoughtless plenty in my life too.

And I probably still have my blind spots.

He pockets his phone while Flow lays her head in his lap. “So who are the grape fairies, and what do they do?”

I glance back inside.

Cricket’s left the sitting room, but I suspect she’s still within earshot.

Most of the time I’ve been here, it’s been me worrying about other people. But I know my friends are worried about me now.

Not that I’ll tell things I shouldn’t about the winery, but that I’m vulnerable and off-kilter after everything that’s happened since the morning of the wedding.

“Pip’s marriage was…rocky at best,” I tell Declan. “So when Dean died, she signed a contract letting the neighbors have the grapes here in exchange for tending the fields.”

“They’re the grape fairies? Winona and her crew?”

“They are. DeanhatedWinona’s dad—Walter, he comes for dinner sometimes because he likes Pip—and Dean also didn’t think women could run vineyards and wineries, so asking Winona to manage Dean’s fields and then giving her Dean’s grapes for her own profit was one of Pip’s fuck-yous to her dead husband. The grapes are worth a lot more than the cost of the labor to keep up the fields.”

“People do the strangest things sometimes,” Declan mutters.

I grimace.

Having seen some of what I saw on the internet this afternoon—yes.

Yes, they do.

And I’ve been one of them before.

“My mom was in town,” I say, heat gathering at the base of my neck.

I shouldn’t do this.

But I suddenly need to.

Declan shoots a glance at me. “I know. I saw her.”

“No, I mean the day of the wedding.”

“Yes…”

“Alex’swedding.”

His eyes focus sharper on me. “You don’t have to?—”

“Just—please just listen.”

“Okay.”

“My mom was in town, and she was mad at me because she should’ve been planning my wedding considering how long we dated, and just to shut her up, I told her that he was getting married to someone else, so he clearly hadn’t ever really loved me.”

Flow whines louder while Declan looks down at his feet.

But I suddenly need to do this.

I need to do this because I’ve never had a chance to do it before, and despite years of evidence to the contrary, after everything Declan’s done since he got here, I think he’ll listen.

And hopefully listen well enough that I’ll be certain he can’t possibly like me anymore, which will solve the problem of me wondering if I’m starting to get a crush on my ex’s best friend, or if I just like when people like me.