The Wedding, the Winery, and Will, page 1
Taylor Hahn
The Wedding, the Winery, and Will
Taylor Hahn is a writer and lawyer based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University and Fordham University School of Law. Visit her online at taylorhahn.com.
Also by Taylor Hahn
The Lifestyle
The Wedding, the Winery, and Will
Taylor Hahn
A Vintage Short
Vintage Books
A Division of Penguin Random House LLC
New York
Copyright © 2022 by Taylor Hahn
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Vintage Books eShort ISBN 9780593469088
Cover design by Maddie Partner
vintagebooks.com
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Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Taylor Hahn
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 1
I’ve always considered myself the smart one in the family, but it turns out my mother is a true evil genius.
At 7 a.m. on the dot, she called me out of the blue. “I need your advice,” she said. She’s never asked me for advice. She’s exclusively given me advice. “I’m designing the tablescape for Janey’s wedding. Would you go nautical or tropical?”
“Neither,” I say, reaching for my phone to check my work email, only to realize I was already talking on it. “Vehemently neither. How has she not planned this already? The wedding’s in just over two weeks.”
“Two weeks is plenty of time. It’s at a Cracker Barrel, Meredith. Not the Waldorf. We’re not fancy like you.”
“I’m getting married at the Waldorf? I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
“Whose fault is that? And what’s wrong with cocktails out of coconuts? It’s festive.”
“It’s a December wedding in upstate New York.”
“What would you suggest then, Martha Stewart?”
“I don’t know. Something woodsy. Pine and candles. Can I go back to sleep now?”
She gasped. “A winter wonderland. We’ll do ice sculptures shaped like elves.”
“So…Narnia-themed?”
“Glitter drifting from the rafters like fake snow,” she went on, undeterred.
“You know Janey will not help clean that up.”
“Horse-drawn sleighs to carry everyone to the reception!”
“What is the budget for this wedding?”
“Fine. This is why we need you to come early. You’ve got the best taste in the family.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and frowned at it. It must have been broken. My mother could not have complimented me. Janine “Aren’t You Going to Put on a Little Lipstick” de Luca does not compliment me, her most displeasing offspring. Considering one of my brothers is in prison, that’s saying something.
“So, you’ll help?” she asked.
“I have work.”
“But Janey wants your help. Don’t you want her help, Janey?”
My niece’s voice in the background said, “What? Oh, sure, whatever.” There was a grunt.
“She’s doing squats,” my mother explained. “Bridal bootcamp. Your father will nab you from the bus station at four.”
“But—”
“Janey’s counting on you, sweetheart, she just said so. You’ll stay through Christmas, so you’ll have plenty of time to get to know Will.”
“Who’s Will?”
No answer. I glanced at my screen. She’d already hung up.
So, here I am. Lugging the giant suitcase I’d bought for the trip to Italy that my married ex-lover promised we’d take, up and down multiple flights of subway stairs to catch the two-hour Amtrak from the city to Albany, then the one-hour bus to Knox, where my dad will “nab” me from the station at four. Not exactly the glamour I’d once anticipated for this suitcase, and yet, probably the most action it will ever see.
Like I said, my mother is an evil genius.
* * *
—
There are six of us de Luca children: Edward is the oldest, then Bridget, Catherine, Philip, me, and Margaret. Philip is the only other offspring who lives out of town, though not by choice, given that he’s in a minimum-security federal prison for eight to twelve more months. Don’t worry, he didn’t hurt anybody. In fact, if you ask him, he was giving back to the community by selling fake IDs to the high school kids—at a discount.
Janey, the bride, is technically my niece, but at twenty, she’s only five years younger than me. Her mom is Bridget, who got married straight out of high school and started reproducing. Growing up, Janey, Margaret, and I were more like three sisters than two sisters and their niece. We spent summers camping in the backyard and taking swim lessons at the Y. We had crushes on the same boys and even shared a diary.
Now, I’ve met Janey’s fiancé only once, and to be honest, I can’t remember his last name. She is as close as ever with Margaret, and I’m on the outside looking in.
Is it so bad that I wanted to get out of Knox and have a different life? One where I didn’t get married and pregnant before I could buy liquor? Date someone I haven’t known since kindergarten? Aspire to be something other than a regional manager? My family takes it personally that I left, went to college, went to law school, and got a job at a firm in the city instead of coming back to hang up my shingle and represent the drunk teenagers who got arrested for using Philip’s fake IDs, or the neighbors suing each other over who keeps piling snow in whose yard. To them, I’m the big-city bitch with Botox and Blahniks, no matter that I’ve never purchased either of those things, who looks down on their existence. If I’m ordering takeout instead of joining them for Sunday dinners, I might as well be injecting my Blahniks with Botox to keep the leather stretched tight. They are the ones who look down on my existence, the existence I carefully built for myself.
But maybe they’re right. Maybe I am the coldhearted stereotype who’s got a closet full of pencil skirts but a soul devoid of morals. I slept with a married man, after all, didn’t I?
Correction: loved a married man.
Chapter 2
After three hours of writing and rewriting an email to my boss to request—rather, beg—for last-minute permission to work remotely for the next three weeks due to a “family emergency” (not far from the truth considering the very real possibility of a winter tiki wedding), my bus pulls into the Knox station. I stretch my neck, expecting to see my dad sitting in the driver’s seat of his truck, reading the paper. Picking people up is my dad’s love language. Every time I flew back from college, he’d drive three hours to get me from JFK. The ride back would be mostly silence, but a comfortable one. I didn’t need his words to know that it was his way of showing me he was happy to have me home.
But it isn’t my dad waiting for me—it’s Bridget, Janey, and Margaret, dressed in hot-pink sashes with glitter on their cheeks. I brace myself. When there’s glitter involved, they can’t be trusted.
I heave my suitcase onto the sidewalk and turn to face them. Janey throws her arms wide like a gymnast sticking her landing and yells at the sky, “I AM GETTING MARRIED!” Her sash says Bride to Be, Bridget’s says Designated Drunk, and Margaret’s says Bad Influence. With a smirk, Margaret hands me one that reads Maid of Dishonor.
“I’m flattered,” I say, and drape it over my head.
Bridget wraps her arms around me, squeezing tight, whispering, “So glad you’re home.” In her puffer coat, it’s like hugging a pillow. But something cold and hard is pressing into my back, and when she steps away, I see she’s double fisting Miller Lites.
“Isn’t she too young to drink?” I ask, nodding at Janey.
“We’re making an exception,” Bridget says. “On her wedding night, she’ll become a woman anyway. Right, Janey? You’re a virgin, right?”
But Janey is either too busy to answer or ignoring her mother. With a deftness that only comes from practice, she extracts her keys from her pocket, jams one into the bottom of her can, and shotguns it.
Margaret reaches up and starts yanking a hot-pink wig onto my head. “Don’t even think about trying to get out of this,” she says.
“It clashes with my hair,” I protest. Out of all my siblings, I’m the only one who ended up with my mother’s bright copper hair. I once thought she liked having this trait in common, now I’m not so sure.
“It covers your hair,” Margaret insists.
Janey grabs the handle of my suitcase and drags it through the snow toward Bridget’s Volvo. “The bride cannot be late to her own bachelorette!” she calls.
<
—
In the car, I learn Janey’s bachelorette is at a winery just outside of town. “Since when is Knox classy enough for a winery?” I ask.
“Since Will arrived,” Bridget says.
That name again. “Who is this Will person?”
Bridget smiles at me in the rearview. “I’m surprised Mom hasn’t mailed you all the Knox Ledger clippings she’s saved about him.”
“Will is a businessman,” Janey says.
“Will is uptight,” Margaret says. “He stands like he’s holding a fart.”
“Will is sexy AF,” Bridget says, “and Mom wants you to marry him.”
I snort, cracking open my beer. No police officer here has ever stopped anyone for drinking in a moving vehicle because they want to do it, too. “I’ll try not to be insulted by that.”
“What’s insulting?” Bridget asks.
“That Mom thinks my life is incomplete until I have a husband.”
“Mom just wants you to be happy,” she says. “And to her, marriage equals happiness.”
“And she’s right,” Janey chimes in dreamily.
“Someday, Meredith,” Bridget says, signaling off the only highway that runs in and out of town, “you’ll meet your match and then you’ll be eating your words.”
I shift my gaze out the window, but I’m only seeing Nathan, in bed beside his wife, morning light slanting across their knees as they read the paper and drink coffee. I’d thought he was my match, and it turned out he was, just not in the way I’d hoped. He was the match that lit the flame that started the fire that burned my childish fantasies about love into smoking, charred remains. He is ground fucking zero, and I’m left facing the fact that I’m a bad person who had an affair with a married man. I shouldn’t be trusted. I should be punished. “I’m done with men,” I say.
Bridget parks and kills the ignition. “That’s just something lonely people say.”
I realize we’re at the abandoned airplane hangar the town used to store snowplows in. High school kids would break in here to get wasted and have sex. Or, so I’ve heard from Margaret. I was usually studying. But when we go in, I see it’s been renovated with cobblestone floors and sweeping wood beams. Fireplaces with ornate mantels roar at each end. I’m shocked at how tasteful it is. It’s romantic and stunning and cozy.
“I’m sorry, who did you say Will is again?” I ask. “Is he filthy rich?”
“Some kind of real estate developer,” Janey says. “Whatever that means.”
“It means filthy rich,” I murmur.
“Wait until you see the vineyard in the summer,” Bridget says. “You’ll die.”
“You can make wine in upstate New York?” I ask.
“I can’t,” Bridget says. “But Will can.”
Then, from a distance, my mother calls, “Just in time!” and we all turn in the direction of her voice. She’s hurtling toward us, waving a pink sash in a cloud of Aqua Net hair spray. “Will is about to leave,” she says to me. “Hand me your coat.” She’s already tugging it down my arms, balling it up, and shoving it at Bridget. My head jerks as she snatches off my wig. “Will is from San Francisco,” she’s saying. “Single. Very tall. Bought the old schoolhouse and turned it into condos. Earned his money in technology.” She says this like it’s as futuristic as a moon colony. “Is that how you’re wearing your hair now?”
But before I can untie my messy bun or even hand Bridget my Miller Lite, Mom is dragging me toward a wine-barrel-turned-cocktail-table, where a man in suit pants and a dress shirt stands with his back to us, staring at his phone.
“Will!” Mom calls. “Look who I finally found.”
When he turns, his expression is, at a minimum, annoyed, and at a maximum, outright hostile. His dark, steely gaze slides from my mother to me to my Miller Lite. “No outside food or drink allowed,” he says in a voice both deep and measured. For some reason, I think of Batman.
Mom grabs the beer, still half-full, and shoves it in her purse. “This is my daughter, Meredith. She’s a lawyer. In Manhattan. Very smart. Lives in an apartment,” she adds, as if mine is a flat overlooking the Champs-Élysées. “Don’t you, dear?”
“Indeed,” I say, trying to flash my mom wide what are you doing? eyes, but she’s looking resolutely away.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Will says, though he is texting, and does not bother to look up.
Even my mom loses a bit of steam at his blatant indifference, and even though I didn’t want her to drag me over here in the first place, my claws activate. Nobody insults my mother but me. Especially not tall, cocky jerks with dimples in their chins, or worse, very nice shoulders and even better hair. Does he think being good-looking gives him the right to treat everyone like shit?
I narrow my eyes at him, not that he notices, since he’s still texting.
“Will is going to turn Knox into the next Hudson,” Mom presses on.
“But Hudson’s the new Brooklyn, isn’t it?” I muse.
At that, he looks up from his phone. “Are you in real estate?”
I smile, but my eyes are shooting laser beams. “No, I just thought you were. If you’ll excuse me, I need a drink. Badly.”
Right now, I’d chug cherry cough syrup if that’s all they were offering.
At the bar, I tap my fingers on the wood for a minute, waiting for the guy in flannel rinsing glasses with his back to me to turn around. Eventually, I can’t take it. “Excuse me? I’m in desperate need of alcohol.”
The guy grins over his shoulder with an easy sort of charm, all scruff and sparkling blue eyes. The opposite of Batman in every way. “Are we talking intravenous or through your eye ducts?” he asks.
“I was thinking the old-fashioned way. Did you say eye ducts?”
“Eyeballing,” he says. “Very popular with eighth graders.”
“Yikes. Remind me to never have children.”
He lines wine bottles on the bar, their labels facing me. “What’s your poison?”
“Pinot noir, please.”
As he snags a glass from the shelf behind his head and pours, I notice he’s got something written in black on the back of his hand.
“Phone number?” I ask, accepting my wine.
“This? This is a reminder to buy medicine for my goats.”
I lift one brow. “Goats…plural?”
He grins. “Don’t worry. Only my pig sleeps in bed with me.”
“Phew,” I say, and take a huge gulp of my wine, but as the taste settles on my tongue, my gag reflex starts to scream in protest. I can’t help it—I spit it right back out. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I think this bottle might have gone bad.”
The guy sighs, taking a shot glass from beneath the bar to pour himself a swallow. “No, that’s just the way it tastes.” After he drinks, he grimaces. “Fuck, that’s bad.”
“Is this Will’s wine? No wonder he’s so tense. He’s going to go out of business.”
“Unfortunately, it’s my wine.” He holds out his hand, eyes teasing, mouth an amused smirk. “Gavin. I’m the winemaker here.”
The feeling drains from my body, humiliated into paralysis. “I’m so sorry. It’s really not that bad. It’s—”
“No, no. It is. I should have warned you. Wine is only as good as the grapes, and the stuff Will buys might as well be a juice box past its expiration date.”
“Does Will have taste buds?”
“Will doesn’t care about wine. This place is just about money. It’s a wedding venue first, a bar second, and a winery third. A very reluctant third.” Gavin draws two fresh glasses from the shelf and fills them with white wine. “Here. This is the only one worth drinking.”
I take a tentative sip and relax. “You’re my hero.”
I kill time at the bar, avoiding the party, drinking my tolerable wine, trying not to think about Nathan or New York or what the fuck I’m doing here. They don’t need me, clearly. Janey’s over by their table, dropping it like it’s hot while her fifteen actual friends scream woo! in a circle around her. I don’t belong over there. I’m not a wooer.
