Save the Last Text by Stewart Delancey & Ray Marika

Author:Stewart, Delancey & Ray, Marika [Stewart, Delancey & Ray, Marika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Contemporary
Amazon: B093ZDZL67
Goodreads: 58119908
Published: 2021-07-19T07:00:00+00:00

14

Raeanne

Sunday morning I was back at The Cunning Ham winery, sitting at a big round table with a glass of sparkling wine and orange juice in front of me, listening to Hannah explain how we were going to make the fancy centerpieces she’d designed for El.

“The roses go like this,” she was saying, holding up the little bouquet of pink and white roses, “and then the ribbon knot is super easy. Just in, under, around and….voila!” Somehow the flowers and ribbon in Hannah’s hands had miraculously turned into the most impressive tiny bouquet I’d ever seen. “And then just drop it into the little vase and tuck the greens around it, pulling the ribbon through.”

“This reeks of a craft,” Robin said. “I’m no good at crafts. What if I just focus on keeping all the glasses full?”

“Mom,” El moaned. “Just do your best.”

“You know I’m no good with crafts,” she said, lifting a few roses and somehow mangling them with the ribbon until each one had only a few petals left. “Remember the crochet incident of 2006? Or the time we were going to make concrete handprint stepping stones for the garden?”

El sighed and explained, “Mom almost strangled herself with the crochet yarn. I came home to find her all tied up, and I thought she’d been subdued by someone trying to rob the place.”

I knew asking was the wrong move, but I couldn’t help it. “And the stepping stones?”

El sighed. “We should have bought one of those kits at the craft store, but Mom thought it would be easy. She bought a whole bag of concrete and had me stick my arm into the bucket where she mixed it. It was the fast-setting kind, and by the time she’d figured out that we should have just poured a bit into a mold and then tried to do the handprint, I was stuck. We had to call the fire department to get me out.”

“But… I mean…” Pam seemed utterly confused by this. She wasn’t alone.

“Let’s just do our best,” Hannah suggested sweetly. “But Robin, you can be in charge of refreshments if you want.”

Robin seemed satisfied by this and she sat back, holding up her finger and squinting her eyes as she looked at each of our glasses, evidently trying to measure how much mimosa we had without actually standing up.

The little round table was filled with flowers and surrounded by women, most of whom I didn’t really know. Of course I’d met Pam and El, and crossed paths with Robin a few times and met Hannah. But then there were Janice and Sophia, a friend of El’s named Gigi, who she’d met at a wine conference she attended for work, and a very old woman named Pauline, who was whipping out centerpieces faster than I would have imagined possible.

“So,” Robin said, once she’d topped off all the glasses. “I’ve gotta tell you, Rae. My inner thighs are as sore after your dance class as they were the time I entertained that group of rodeo cowboys stopping through from Redding.

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