IN THE CORNER, Ashleigh and Greg-Craig (can’t be sure which one he introduced himself as) are fully making out. They went over there to exchange numbers, roughly six minutes ago.
Everyone else in that corner of the tasting room has since fled. In Ashleigh and Greg-Craig’s defense, that might have more to do with the fact that it’s nine fifty-seven, and Cherry Hill closes at ten.
Sure, it’s a Friday night, but this is a winery in Northern Michigan, not a rave in Ibiza, and all the customers probably need to be up bright and early for yoga, boating, or doing yoga on a boat.
“She okay to drive?”
I turn to find Miles slipping through a portion of the bar that lifts up, with his wallet, phone, and an apron clutched in one hand. “Oh, she’s not drunk,” I assure him. “She didn’t have a sip of the last two pours. She’s just horny.”
He nods somberly. “Being single in the woods is rough.”
At that moment, Ashleigh extricates her tongue from Greg-Craig’s mouth and flounces our way. “So.” With a furtive glance over her shoulder, she drops her voice. “What are the odds you can ride home with Miles?”
I look to him.
He flips his keys. “Fine with me.”
“Thank god.” Ashleigh gives me a brief, firm, yet vanilla-scented hug. “Don’t make this weird at work, okay?”
“What, the fact that I’ve now seen someone lick your tonsils?” I say.
“It was bound to happen eventually! Get home safe, lovebirds.” She’s already on her way back to Greg-Craig. He slips a hand through hers and waves as she steers him outside.
“So,” Miles says, “Craig’s friend wasn’t up to your standards?”
I’m embarrassed to realize Miles witnessed my painful attempt at conversation with Craig’s wingman, a guy in a V-neck so deep I caught a flash of belly button.
“I wasn’t up to his standards,” I say. “He got a pretty urgent work-related text and excused himself. Then I went to the bathroom, and when I passed him, he was playing solitaire on his phone at the far side of the bar.”
“What the fuck,” Miles says.
“In his defense,” I say, “I’m absolutely horrible at small talk with new people.”
“I don’t believe you, at all,” he says.
“Within three minutes,” I say, “I caught myself listing my food sensitivities. I think it’s like a self-sabotaging self-protective thing, where I try to bore new people away.”
Miles looks horrified. “You should have told me you had food sensitivities before I ordered for you.”
“It’s not, like, EpiPen serious,” I say, following him to the door.
“Still,” he says. “And if I’d known you needed help with the Solitaire King of Northern Michigan, I could’ve rustled up a pack of cards from the break room. You’d have been unstoppable.”
“I’m not sure I’m in the mood to be unstoppable, anyway.”
He holds the door open for me. “What about milkshakes?”
“What about them?” I say.
“Are you in the mood for one,” he says. “Because I’ve been thinking about Big Louie’s all night.”
“Who’s Big Louise,” I say, stepping out into the still night, “and does she know how much you think about her?”
“Big Louie’s Drive-In?” The string lights ringing the gravel lot softly illuminate his look of surprise. “You’ve never been to Big Louie’s?”
“No?” I say.
He stops short, looking at me with outright shock.
“Is it a burger place?” I ask.
He scoffs. “Is it a burger place?” He veers left toward his rust-edged truck.
“I don’t even know if that’s a yes or a no, Miles,” I say.
He manually unlocks the passenger door. “That’s a Get in the car, Daphne; I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.”
I hoist myself into the seat, leaning over to unlock the driver’s-side door as Miles rounds the hood.
As soon as he starts the car, “The Tracks of My Tears” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles comes on full blast.
A deceptively happy-sounding song about being incredibly depressed.
I try and fail to swallow a laugh.
Miles gives a sheepish smile. “No idea how that got on.”
“This truck is probably haunted,” I agree.
“Exactly.” He pulls out along the gravel drive. “And if the soundtrack to A Star Is Born starts playing, just don’t be alarmed. Because the ghost likes that one too.”
“This ghost gets more tragic by the second,” I say.
“He’s perfectly fine, thank you,” Miles says.
“Thriving?” I ask.
“Thriving,” he agrees.
“Well, if he’s got any tips for the rest of us,” I say, “have him hit me up.”
“Daphne,” he says. “The first piece of advice anyone is going to give you for improving your situation is going to Big Louie’s. How is it possible you’ve lived here for . . .”
“Thirteen months,” I supply.
“Thirteen entire months,” he says, “and haven’t had their Petoskey fries.”
“What are Petoskey fries?” I ask.
He tuts. “No wonder you’re so depressed.”
“Is this place in Petoskey? Are we driving an hour and a half for fries?”
“No, they’re named after Petoskey stones.”
“Which are . . . ?”
The country road has reached a four-way stop, and he essentially pulls over to look at me. “Daphne.”
“Such an air of disappointment. Every time you say my name.”
“Was Peter keeping you locked inside a bunker?” he says.
“Just tell me about these rocks, Miles.”
“They’re fossilized coral,” he says, like this should be obvious. He eases off the brake and we roll through the empty intersection.
I say, “And this is connected to french fries . . . ?”
“Tenuously,” Miles answers. “But they’re amazing. The fries, I mean. They’re slathered in cheese and jalapeños.”
“Well, that explains why I’ve never had them,” I say. “Peter isn’t a big slatherer. He’s more of a wheatgrass-shot-and-lean-meat-after-leg-day kind of guy.”
“What?” Miles says, faintly amused. “You weren’t allowed to eat without Peter?”
I roll my eyes. “It wasn’t about ‘being allowed.’ I don’t know how to cook. He does.”
On our second date, he’d made me dinner. Salmon and asparagus and a keto-friendly pasta salad. I would’ve been less impressed to learn he was an Olympian. Cooking was the one thing Mom didn’t do while I was growing up. We lived on takeout, and weekly nacho nights. But Peter started every day with a green smoothie, and made dinner from scratch most nights. Peak domesticity, as far as I was concerned.
A couple months into living together, he’d tried teaching me the basics, but I always slowed things down too much, so I’d moved back to dishes duty.
“Wheatgrass.” Miles shakes his head. “You were a gym couple too, right?”
“I mean,” I say, “we were a couple with gym memberships.”
“And you went together,” he says. “On a regular schedule.”
We did. It was one of very few silver linings to our relationship ending that I no longer felt any guilt about not going. Peter was into pretty much every form of physical exercise, but I was slower and less coordinated than him, so the few times we’d tried hiking or biking, it was more frustrating than rewarding. At the gym, we could do our own things, but still spend time together. With how busy his job kept him, that time was valuable.
“We’re both really organized,” I say. “We did everything on a regular schedule.”
He gives me a look. The back of my neck prickles. “Fine, yes, we did that on a schedule too,” I say.
“Nothing wrong with that,” he says. “Life can get busy.”
I stare at him, trying to work out if he actually believes this, or if he thinks I’m hilariously boring. Maybe Peter thought it was boring too.
Misreading my expression, Miles says, “No, we didn’t have a schedule. But it could’ve been helpful. Sometimes, she and I fell into sort of living our own lives. But I’m not anti-schedule. Just anti-wheatgrass.”
I accidentally snort, a little disbelieving pony.
Miles’s eyes narrow on a grin. “I’ve never had wheatgrass in my life. With a knife to my throat, I’m not sure I could say what wheatgrass even is.”
“No one could,” I say. “But I’m talking about the calendar.”
“The calendar?”
“Yes, the calendar.”
He affects a look of innocent confusion. “Could you by chance be referring to the wall-sized whiteboard where you track your paychecks, your phone calls to your mom, and your menstrual cycle?”
“No,” I say, “I’m talking about the one where I track your complete unwillingness to plan ahead and stick to a schedule. Thus indicating you are anti-schedule.”
“I just didn’t realize how important it was to you to know where I was,” he teases. “Should I share my phone location with you?”
“No, it’s fine. I wouldn’t want to clip your wings, tether your spirit, all that.”
“I’ll put my stuff on the calendar,” he says. “If it really matters.”
I shrug. “It’s fine. Just don’t get mad if I come home while you’re in the middle of entertaining a lady fr—oh my god. This song actually is from A Star Is Born!”
“Is it?” he says blandly. “Strange.”
“So you haven’t moved on to the anger phase yet,” I say.
He shrugs. “I don’t know if I have that phase in me.”
“Really?” I say, surprised. “I’ve been camped out in mine for weeks . . .”
“Getting mad never fixes anything,” he says.
“Neither does moping.”
“I’m not moping. I just like sad music.”
Looking at him, I have to believe it. Minus a few rough days and one tense phone call I overheard through his bedroom door, Miles has seemed more or less totally fine, even cheery since the breakup. Whereas I’ve been living in a low-grade state of constant misery.
He turns off the road, toward the fluorescent glow of a drive-in burger joint.
On either side of the squat building, a row of parking slots nose up against menus mounted to speakers. Between the two rows, a handful of blue metal picnic tables are arranged in the cement courtyard. The place is hopping with suntanned, beach-waved teenagers, sitting atop tables and queuing at the optional walk-up window.
None of the food runners carrying the red plastic trays looks a day older than seventeen. I wonder if Peter and Scott and Petra hung out here in high school. The place has a distinctly fifties look, everything faded to suggest it’s always been here, the meeting point for the hungry, drunk, and horny since time immemorial.
Miles cranks his window down. “What do you want?”
“I’m a tourist here,” I say. “What do you recommend?”
“Chocolate-cherry milkshake and Petoskey fries,” he says.
I nod approval, and when the very crackly voice comes over the speaker, he orders the same thing for each of us.
“So what happened with the drunk guy at the bar,” I ask him.
He studies me for a few seconds. “Oh. Him,” he says when it clicks. “He was just trying to order another flight, despite no longer being able to stand. Happens all the time. Just needed to defuse it.”
“And how did you do that?” I ask.
“Told him if he got into the cab we’d called for him, we’d comp his last two drinks, and not ban him from the premises.”
“Wooow,” I say.
“Wow what?”
“You laid down the law,” I say, “without your smile ever cracking.”
“Things go smoother if you don’t let people get a rise out of you,” he says. “If you give them control over how you feel, they’ll always use it.”
“Finally, I see your cynical side,” I say.
He smiles, but his jaw is tight, and the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s not cynical. If you don’t give other people responsibility for your feelings, you can have a decent relationship with most of them.”
Honestly, that’s not far off from thoughts I’ve had. Only for me, it’s never been about controlling the feelings themselves. I wouldn’t know where to begin with that. It’s more, controlling the expectations you have for certain people.
If a person lets you down, it’s time to reconsider what you’re asking of them.
In the dining courtyard, the rowdy teenagers start gathering their things, shaking their trays into the trash before piling too many people into a couple of junkers parked side by side. A minute later, a girl in denim cutoffs and an EAT AT BIG LOUIE’S shirt comes out of the burger shack with a paper bag and two paper cups, little teal outlines of Michigan printed in a patterned row around them.
Miles watches my reaction to the first sip. After the initial hit of brain freeze, the taste registers and I let out a little moan. Only then does Miles take his own sip and stuff his milkshake into the cupholder. “You know what we should do?”
“I don’t want to sob to Bridget Jones together,” I say.
“At most, it was a slow trickle of tears,” he objects. “And that’s not what I was going to say, but if you’re going to just shut me down like that—”
“No, no!” I grab his elbow. “I’m sorry. Let’s hear it. What should we do?”
“We should go to the beach,” he says.
“Isn’t the beach closed after dark?” I say.
He squints. “Which beaches have you been going to?”
I shrug. “The one across from the library? With the food trucks and the ice cream pavilion and the sand volleyball courts.”
“That tiny little beach all the fudgies go to?” he says. “With the teal Adirondack chairs? That sand’s probably not even local. Bet it’s trucked in from Florida.”
“What’s a fudgie?” I ask.
“Daphne,” he tuts. “Daphne, Daphne, Daphne.”
“Let me guess: I’m a clueless fool,” I say.
He starts the car. “No, just a sweet, naive, beautiful little innocent, raised in captivity by a man who loves wheatgrass.”
“So the beach doesn’t close after dark?” I say.
He backs out of the craggy parking space. “Not any of the good ones.”
