Chapter 3 ~ Acidic Character

EDWARD

The stupid grin on my face was hard to hide, despite the fact that no one was interested, and refused to dissipate, for whatever reason, as I stood there for the longest time on Napa’s main highway, watching where Emmett’s jeep had previously sat.

“Quirky,” I said, amused, remembering the furious look she’d given me when Emmett had used the word ‘cousin’ with regards to her.

I pondered on the word I’d, for some reason, used to describe the brunette that I wasn’t exactly introduced to and then finally, I started on my way back to the vineyard, fiddling with my baseball cap and shoving my hands back into my pockets.

Tired and frustrated with the attitude I’d shown the woman, not even quite understanding why I’d given her such a hard time, I half thought about grabbing a cab back to the house and taking a nap in the back seat but then decided against it. 

A date.

That’s funny.

I needed the air flowing through my head to clear out the chaos it was experiencing all of a sudden.

I also needed to stay focused, deliberate and to the point.

Definitely not amused and or bewildered with a piece of ass.

Cute, funny, awkward and quite sassy, piece of ass, granted, but still…

My mission was to get the vineyard cleaned up, get dad set up for his caring and get the hell out of dodge and back to what I did best.

Which definitely was not…taking care of a vineyard.

Or chasing after a cute piece of ass.

I laughed at myself, even.

Clearly I needed to get her out of my head.

By the time I got back to the house, it was pretty late, or, early, depending on how you want to look at it but regardless, I needed at least four hours of sleep.

Which meant, I had about another hour to take a walk through the house and maybe even take a peek out at the vines to see how everything looked.

Not that I’d see much of the grapes, but I figured I’d ease myself into it by looking at them by moonlight, first.

They always seemed like less of a threat, that way, for some reason.

In the daytime, by the sunlight, they were nothing but a God awful memory of shit that sat way too far back in the shadows of time for me.

The tour through the house wasn’t much better, though, come to realize.

My parents room, Carlisle’s that is, shoved a dagger through my heart and a vague image of my mother passed in front of my eyes.

Aside from the fact that it too, was a complete disaster area.

He still had her picture sitting next to his bed and I still didn’t know why but I could definitely, at least, identify with the magnetism of the twenty some odd year old photo.

I walked over, picked it up and sat down, staring at the look on her face as she stood next to my father as my head moved from side to side, wondering what had possessed him to keep such a painful memory.

Even in their supposed, happiest of times, she didn’t look happy.

And by the time she had said goodbye to Napa, she was so bitter and angry, that any stranger would have barely even known she was a wife…and a mother.

I hardly remembered her at all but the one thing that had always stuck with me was that she saw me standing on the stairs that night, crying my three and three quarter year old eyes out, asking her why she was leaving us and when she was coming back but she didn’t even have so much as a wave for me.

No kisses goodbye, or tears that might have told me she was just as sad to be leaving me as I was that she was going.

Just a few hurtful things to my dad and then…She was gone.

We never heard from her again.

I set the picture back onto my dad’s end table and grimaced a little.

I couldn’t blame her, really. My dad did love his vines.  No one could ever compete with them.

Not even the love of his life.

How was I supposed to ever expect any more from him?

Of course, when you’re almost four, you don’t think about those things.

Still, I often wondered, growing up with him, if he blamed me for the fact that she left, and if that was why I could never seem to do anything right.

Why I never wanted to do anything right.

And if he’d known some of the shit I’d accomplished on the battle field in the past four years, would that have maybe changed his mind about me?

Did I care, anymore?

I breathed in slowly and pushed the image of my mother out of my head with an exhale, moving on the guest quarters, where Emmett used to stay so many nights.

The guy may as well have just moved in, considering the amount of time he spent at my house, and the amount of food he’d consumed…

I grinned at a few choice moments in time when we had caused more than just a couple of grey hairs to grow in on my dad’s head.

But then, that would have taken away the dramatic effect things had on the situation, once he started working for Carlisle, I guess.

In truth, that was when things probably took a turn with us.

Poor guy didn’t know who to stay more loyal to.

His best friend…or his employer.

Should of just worked taken the job with the Volturi winery, would have saved us both a lot of heart ache, buddy.

I was about to head out back, giving up completely on the internal touring, when I realized, I needed a little something to dull the memories and took a sharp left turn down the stairs that lead to my father’s personal wine cellar that held on his favorite of favorites.

I passed up the Whites all together.

Lame.

And ended up on the Merlot sections.

The reds were always my favorite.

“Yes, this’ll do,”  I said as I pulled out a year I remembered, oh too well.

I found my dad’s private stash of bottle openers and corked it, found the glasses and then let the silky goodness slide in until it was about half way full.

My mouth watered, even though I hadn’t had a single sip of any type of wine since leaving Napa and I instinctively swirled the liquid around and held the glass up to the light to see the legs that it left.

Carlisle had grilled me on everything grapes, wine and vineyards, every day since I was twelve but it was still funny to me, how many things you remember even after being away for so long.

“Like riding a bike…”

Or a UH-72A army helipcopter.

I could already smell the aroma before pulling the glass closer to my nose to smell it properly.

Very robust. Not bad, dad.

But I’d wait till I was outside to get the proper experience.

And as I walked out onto the patio, I almost felt a crack in the side of my rib cage at the state that the vines were in. 

Even in the moonlight, they didn’t look so good.

“What in the hell…?”

They looked older, withered, weeded…and not at all in shape for harvesting.

Or selling.

“Jesus, dad…”

I sat the glass and the bottle down, then walked a little closer to the edge of the slabs of concrete leading out to the plants but stopped just short of taking a step into the greenery and put a hand up against the pillar to really take it in.

This was gonna take a little longer than I thought to get the crop back together and sellable.

Maybe someone would buy it as is…

The Volturi family would…but like it or not, there was no way in hell I could do that to Carlisle.

Period.

Dead or nearly dead, he’d find way to come back and tan my hide for even thinking that.

Stupid subconscious.

I went back to my wine and took a seat, stared out at the crotchety, currently worthless vines and took a sip, letting it smother my tongue for a minute or so.

My eyes closed as I let the moon shine down onto me as I swallowed the alcohol.

“Bitter.”

The wine, not me.

Although…yeah, maybe just a little bit.

“Woodsy…and…peach?”

I looked at the glass.

“Huh.”

Carlisle never ceased to amaze me, in all honesty.

I wondered what exactly I’d missed and absentmindedly pictured Carlisle sitting next to me, waiting for me to give up,  because after all, I knew that inevitably, I’d missed something, I always did. 

And Carlisle was always overly anxious to tell me what it was.

Not tonight, dad, sorry.

After all, I was in charge.

I took another sip and leaned back into the chaise and another face graced my mind.

Frazzled, brown hair…

Chocolate eyes with just a tinge of snark laced around them…

Tits I wouldn’t mind sucking on…

Lips I wouldn’t mind sucking my….

I grinned and took another sip. 

Then filled the glass up.

“Not gonna happen, Cullen.”

For one thing, she was taken, as Emmett so gallantly put it.  I don’t screw with engaged women, no matter how perfectly un-perfectly sexy they may be.

And secondly, I couldn’t afford the attraction, anyway.

Attractions tended to turn into distractions, distractions create, confusion, confusion leads to missing my re-up and that just wasn’t acceptable.

Still…

I smiled as I emptied the bottle into my glass.

No harm in appreciating the exquisiteness of certain aspects of her…

Yeah.

Nice try.

“Carlisle is not going to be happy with you when he finds out you opened one of his best bottles, Edward.”

And there goes my quiet evening.

“Hello, Alice.”

“Are you drunk?”

“That’s a relative question.”

“Of course you are.”

Alice always was a know it all.

“I thought you didn’t work nights,” I mentioned, changing the subject.

“I moved in full time about six months ago.”

That was odd.

“Why?”

She rolled her eyes at me and started to say, “Not my…”

“Story to tell, yeah I got it,” I finished for her.

She sat down in the chaise next to me and we both sat there quietly, looking out at  the vines for a while before she finally said something.

“What are you planning on doing?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“Edward…”

“Alice.  I’m not nearly drunk enough to have this conversation and you don’t have nearly enough patience to give a shit or to understand my reasons for doing what I plan on doing, anyway, so…”

I swirled a hand at her to let her know that even thought I was stumbling through the words, that I knew that she knew exactly what I was trying to say, despite the scowl on her face as she watched me babble.

I got up, grabbed the glass and the wine bottle and started to head back into the house.

“I think you’re acting irrationally.”

The woman seriously, always has to get the last word in.

“I think if dad didn’t want me to sell the damn place, he wouldn’t have listed me, the prodigal son, as the soul decision maker on all things Cullen Vineyard, back here in Sunny Napa.

It was a Jack Nicholson moment, what can I say?

And just when I thought I was getting away free and clear…

“I think he’s trying one last time to prove you’re not the asshole everyone thinks you are.”

I hesitated.

For a second or two.

Then kept on walking because that was just…stupid.

Everyone doesn’t think I’m an asshole.

They know it.

Even Carlisle.





A/N:  There are several types of acids found in wine - they all affect how acidic a wine can be. The most profound acids found in wine are tartaric, malic, and citric.