#anyways byeeeee!!!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

syoddeye · 5 months ago

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finger

kate laswell x f!reader | ~3.6k words tags: alcohol, age gap (Kate is in her late 40s, Reader is in her 30s), cunnilingus, fingering, slight mommy kink, x2 'good girls', x1 'brat', porn with a dash of plot a/n: kate isn't married in this. reader has hair long enough for kate to grab. happy pride.

Forty swipes deep into dating app hell and down to the dregs of a beer, the bartender exchanges your glass for a tumbler. Face smushed into a palm, you stare incredulously at the liquor. You definitely didn’t order whiskey. Definitely can’t afford it. Even at a dive like this, your budget demands whatever’s on special, tonight being Rainier.

You’re quick to correct the bartender. No way you’re overdrafting again. “Hey–I didn’t order this.”

A knowing smile curves his mouth, and he jerks his head over a shoulder. “No, but she did.”

It’s a surprise your neck doesn’t snap when you look and a second that your jaw doesn’t hit the counter on its way to the floor. The she in question sits at the corner with her arm draped over the back of another stool. Older than you, maybe by a decade. She looks like a suit or off-duty fed, with a dress shirt undone to the top of her sternum, a blazer draped over her seat, and sandy hair pulled into a bun. Your eyes linger on the triangle of skin below her neck, and heat rushes up your neck when they pan to her face.

Though the color is difficult to discern in the dim light, they’re half-lidded and fixed to you over the rim of her glass. She taps the top of the empty seat beside her—as if the free drink wasn't a clear enough invitation.

Not your usual type, but a drink is a drink. It’s polite to respond.

Your thumb swipes the app shut, and you pocket your phone, scooting off your stool on an invisible leash. A warm ball of excitement tugging you across the sticky floor, slowing time in your head. You ferry the whiskey like it’s some grand gift, desperately not wanting to spill a drop and make a fool of yourself in front of whoever the hell this woman is.

Her eyes drop, appraising you on the approach. You think you might be buzzing as loud as the lights.

“Hi,” you pass behind as her arm lifts off the stool, allowing you to sidle into the gap between and hoist yourself up. You set the whiskey on a coaster and tap it with a finger. “Thanks for the drink.”

“Hope neat’s alright.” She replies, head tilting slightly, body turning angling toward you. “Bad day?”

“Bad night,” you correct sheepishly. “I, uh, had a date but they canceled at the last second.”

Her tongue clicks, setting her glass down to undo the cuff buttons of her sleeves. “That’s bad manners. Their loss, though. You’re a knockout.”

The way she says it so casually, oozing confidence you only dream of, momentarily stuns you. You’ve been called ‘cute’ and ‘pretty’, but—Your brain short circuits at the sight of her deftly rolling her sleeves. Slight tan, a dusting of freckles, and a couple of interesting scars. Your eyes flick to hers, an amused smile telling you she’s caught you ogling for the second time.

“Thanks. That’s kind of you to say.” you finally reply, taking a sip of the whiskey in a move you hope exudes poise.

She tucks the fabric to one elbow and starts the other. “It looked like you could use something stronger. Thought a finger or two would help.”

The whiskey nearly shoots out of your nose, but you swallow after an embarrassing choke.

She merely chuckles and extends a hand to pat your back gently. “Of bourbon, that is.”

“Y-Yeah, no, I know,” you sputter and pluck a cocktail napkin from a stack, wiping your mouth and praying for a spontaneous, you-sized sinkhole to open beneath your seat.

“I’m Kate.” She rubs a slow circle near the top of your spine, then flattens her hand to rest her thumb on the nape of your neck. It brushes over the skin once when you give her your name. She repeats it, lifting her glass. “I’ll take their place for the night, unless you object?”

The assertiveness is a stark contrast to your fumbling and the coy indecisiveness of women you typically attract. The question hangs off her tongue, dangling like a worm on a hook. She wants you to bite, you feel it in the heat of her gaze, and let her in. She must be a fed with a focus like that; no way she’s corporate. You’ve lived in the DMV long enough to spot them. Can’t throw a rock without hitting one, anyway.

You smile, feeling the warmth of Kate’s palm through your shirt. “I’d like that.”

“Yeah? Good.” She sips, shifting further until her knee skims the outside of your thigh. “Tell me about yourself, kid.”

That does something for you, and you file it away for later. You mirror Kate’s posture, turning so your knees interlace. You know how intimate this must look to the handful of other patrons, to the bartender, as if you’re already a couple. Yet it feels natural, like you’re supposed to meld into the complete stranger because she bought you a drink. A breath slips out when her hand leaves your back, the angle too far to be comfortable, and drops to your kneecap. It’s like a game of chicken, all these small touches, and you kind of want to lose.

You prattle off the basics. How you moved to D.C. two years ago for work, how the city’s grown on you, and on a tangent, that you’re actually pretty lonely. It spills out of you freely, unable to look away from the steel blues seemingly hanging off every word. It’s the most attention you’ve received outside of work in a long time. It’s that and the whiskey, must be, why the butterflies in your stomach migrate to your chest, evolving into the thrum of a bird’s wings.

To your quiet delight, her attention isn’t the only thing she gives you—it’s her interest. She hums and affirms. She asks questions. Digs into the meat of the story you spout off about your shitty landlord. And she squeezes your knee when you share how you spent the last holiday alone in the city. You try to turn it around once or twice, though you abandon that line of questioning after she tells you she’s a ‘contractor’.

Before you know it, you’re finished with a second whiskey and incredibly warm and wanting.

Kate hits you with the Let’s get out of here and loops an arm around your waist outside the bar. In the cab, you let her slide her hand up your leg, stopping in time to eat up your pathetic whine with a languid kiss. Though she pays the fare, you leave a big tip—an apology for the makeout he couldn’t’ve missed through the rearview.

You float through the hotel lobby in a haze of alcohol and lust, barely appreciating the swankiness of the place. Whatever ‘contractor’ really means, it pays well. She practically lassoes you into the elevator with one arm, her suit jacket draped over the other.

“You can back out anytime.” She says, punching the button for her floor. “No hurt feelings.”

The blood in your veins itches with need as you grab her waist and haul her closer. You unabashedly stare, glossy-eyed. This woman, who’s been nothing but kind and attentive and generous—you want to return the favor. Tenfold. Something about her draws it out. “I don’t want to,” You whisper, the elevator softly dinging with each passing floor. “I want more.”

She smiles, hand fitting over the nape of your neck again like it belongs there, and reels you in for another kiss. It leaves you gasping when the lift stops.

Her room is a suite, another token of her apparent success. The best place you’ve ever stayed at came with a coffee maker. There isn’t much of a chance to admire it, though, since she plants you on the wall the moment the door clicks, latching it shut with her free hand. It’s a long, heated stumble further into the room, most of your clothes coming off with each step. It doesn’t hit you until she holds you at arm’s length to sit on the edge of her bed. She smirks up at you, tugging on the waistband of your underwear. Not to take them off but as direction.

You kneel between her open legs without a second thought.

“You still want more?”

Hours earlier, when your date texted a poor excuse to cancel, you didn’t think this was where the night would go. The weight of Kate’s gaze is heavy, almost as intoxicating as the whiskey lingering on your tongue. The anticipation is electric, and the view is…Well, you could get used to sitting on your knees if it’s her holding the reins.

You lay your hands on her thighs and feel the muscles beneath her pants shift. It’s heady, knowing someone this composed and enigmatic wants you, too.

“Yes.” You finally manage, hands sliding up to unbutton her fly and curling over the band to tug them down along with her underwear. Above, Kate chuckles, lifting her hips to allow you to peel them to her ankles. God, how desperate you must look when your eyes whip from her face to the patch of hair before you. Your mouth hangs open, drool already gathering on your tongue.

“You’ll catch flies like that.” she teases.

Her hand lands atop your head. No pull or pressure. Yet.

“But good answer,” Her fingers flex against your scalp. “Show me how good that pretty little mouth of yours is, shall we?”

Yes ma'am.

Without hesitation, you press open-mouthed kisses to Kate’s spread thighs, relishing the sigh of relief from above. You lay another on the hair above her pussy, inhaling her scent appreciatively, then give a few exploratory licks to her labia, avoiding where she wants you to wind her up. Something about a woman in control that makes you want to pick at a frayed edge and unwind her, even just a little bit.

The hand in your hair tightens after more teasing, a silent Get to it. You still spare a couple more wet kisses, then lick a stripe over her hole before slipping it in. Her hips jut toward your mouth, pressure finally applied to your skull. You oblige her, searching for more of the vinous taste coating your tongue. You think it might be the best night of your life when she moans, your hands joining your mouth to gently spread her open.

“That’s it, just like that…” She rasps, voice thin and shaky. “That’s a good girl.”

Your chest bursts at the praise, heat doubling in your cheeks. It cracks your eyes open, vision glazed. The sight of her, brow furrowed and lip caught between teeth—you did that.

You dutifully continue, responding to each jerk of your head with soft groans, each one a direct line to your cunt. Pressing your thighs together, you feel how soaked you are, the cotton sticking. By the time you drag your tongue up to her clit, her legs shake, thighs trembling and bumping against your ears. Kate’s trying to keep them still; the tension beneath your hands charged and telling. When you wrap your lips around her clit to suck, you watch her eyes roll back and square your shoulders to keep her open.

“Atta girl.” She grits between her teeth, the fingers in your hair tightening to pull you snugly against her pussy. Her other hand fists the comforter, the fabric crinkling in her white-knuckled grip. “Don’t stop,” It’s almost a whine, bitten back and forced into a grunt. You could die here, nose buried in her bush and tongue stuck to her clit, chin slipping through her wetness. Drown or suffocate. It’d be a hell of a way to go.

But she comes, eyebrows pinched and mouth wide, going stock-still and rigid until the tension snaps. Kate shakes through it, letting all of one moan loose before clamping her mouth shut, baring her teeth to hiss instead. Her hips buck, and you carefully move with her, intent on catching everything she gives, greedily lapping at her until she tugs your head back.

A wet sheen paints your upper lip to your chin, possibly your throat, and you stare, hands on her knees, up at Kate. Her chest rises and falls with heavy breaths, her eyes dark and color high on her cheeks. Mild carpet burn bites your knees, but you don’t dare move.

It’s like that for a few minutes. Her hand loosens its grip to pet your hair, her breathing gradually leveling out. Her scent permeates the air and your skin. God, even if you never see her again after this, she’s a part of you now.

“Up,” She suddenly says, standing and gesturing to the bed. “Take off the rest, then on your back.”

You scramble, wincing at the pops of your knees, but she doesn’t seem to notice. The clasp of your bra works with you, unfastening easily, and you shiver when the damp gusset of your underwear slaps wetly against your thigh on the way off. She grabs bottled water from the nightstand instead, drinking deeply, looking away at the curtains covering the windows.

Turning around, she twists the cap and sets the water aside, licking her lip free of a stray droplet. The pink tip of her tongue enough to expel a sharp breath.

Peculiarly, she leaves her shirt on but joins you, crawling onto the bed with a smile that might’ve passed for soft if her eyes weren’t so sharp. She leaves barely any breathing space, draping a warm leg over yours and pulling it toward her. Her elbow rests beneath her, propping her up with a closed fist to her temple. Her other hand drifts from the crease of your thigh, over your stomach, and between your breasts. Head tilting, her tongue darts out again in apparent study, drinking you in. Her attention to the physical is just as reverent as it is in conversation.

You cannot bring yourself to speak, afraid you’ll break the spell. But you twitch once, when her fingers ghost over a hard nipple, and she smirks.

“Yes?”

“Please,” You whisper, not too proud to beg, and reach for her hand. “Please touch me. I am so fucking—”

Kate tuts, freezing your hand’s approach, then softens it with a hushed laugh. “Impatient. If that’s what you want, then let me work.” She pinches the bud between her fingers, slowly maneuvering to her knees. “You were so sweet at the bar. Don’t tell me I’ve brought a selfish brat home.”

A frustrated groan slips out, stuttering into a whimper as she withdraws to sit on her heels. Your teeth catch your lip to silence another when she moves between your legs, not sparing a single glance to her prize. Her hands spider up your shins and down your calves. It’s torture, and she’s incredible at it.

Never in your life have you been called a brat past childhood, and certainly not in the bedroom. It pokes at that earlier inkling, urges it out into the open, but you stubbornly smother it. Maybe you are—but you don’t want to be for her.��

“Kate, please,” you plead again. “Please, I just–I just got worked up when I–”

“Shh. I know. I’m being awfully rude. I’ll take care of you, pretty thing.” Kate purrs, finally lowering her gaze to your dripping center, and her lip curls. It’s calculated, the glacial speed with which she approaches your cunt. Situates herself nice between your spread legs, returning the favor of littering your shaking thighs with kisses, adding teeth into the meatiest parts.

Her nails lightly comb south through your thatch of hair, two callused fingers tracing over either side of your sex. A third finger teasing a trail through the wet, before dipping into the first knuckle. “Fuck,” she gaps, marveling at the ease. “You weren’t kidding.”

Surely you’d think of a smarter comeback other than the nonsensical babble you stammer instead.

Your stomach twists into knots as a second finger joins the first, easing deeper, thumb hovering over your clit like a trigger. Her fingers move slowly and deliberately, but within seconds you’re taking them to the webbing. They crook and drag against your inner walls, coaxing a stream of needy sounds from your lips.

“Wish you could see yourself,” Kate rasps, voice a hair lower. Brow narrowed with rapt attention. “Think you can take three?” She chuckles at the breathy little in a minute you force out. “Good girl, telling me how it is.”

Her fingers start to scissor and stretch, thumb occasionally tapping your clit to see your hips jolt. Your eyes are rolled back into oblivion when her tongue makes contact, and they snap open so fast you need to blink away black spots. Your hands hover over her head, unsure if she’s—fuck, if she’s—

She unlatches from your clit, giving it a peck before nodding at your outstretched palms. As if all business, she sinks back into your cunt mouth-first and closes her eyes with a groan. Your pussy squeezes at the sight, a needy whimper accompanying your fingers as they thread through her hair, ruining her bun.

Kate alternates between devouring your pussy and tongue-fucking your hole, showcasing an almost animalistic side to the controlled woman who charmed you at the bar. The sounds muffled by your thighs, so hungry and urgent, it’s almost too much. You suck your lip into your mouth as the heat flooding your abdomen steadily migrates.

“K-Kate, fuck, I’m close.”

With a wet pop, she lifts her head, face flushed and mouth drenched. Though you quietly protest, your orgasm dancing out of reach, you let a curse shrivel on your tongue. Her fingers slow to allow a third to prod at your hole. It’s a stretch, even as slick as you are. The two of you groan as she feeds them into you. She drops a kiss to your thigh once they’re in, gaze flitting up to read your face on the first languid push and pull.

“Yeah?”

“Y-Yeah, oh, oh fuck.” Your answer turns stupid at the insistence behind Kate’s renewed thrusts. The lewd, squelching sound drowns whatever shreds of coherency and possibly dignity you have left.

Her mouth returns, sawing your clit back and forth, applying pressure in tandem with the plunge of her fingers.

If she minds the number you’re doing to her scalp, she doesn’t show it. Her hair comes undone under your desperate hands, trying to fuse your cunt to her jaw. Tit for tat, though maybe she thinks as you do, finding a warm and wet pussy a suitable demise.

With deliberate timing, her fingers bury themselves, bullying through the tight clasp of your walls, and teeth graze your clit. They sever the last thread of control, and your vision whites out. Head tipped against the pillow and heels digging into the bed, you shatter, voice unrestrained and echoing through the hotel room. A sliver of embarrassment stitches through the silence after, the neighboring suites an afterthought.

Kate cleans you in the afterglow. Your legs twitch uncontrollably as a towel dips between your legs, brain too muddled to appreciate her undoubtedly flattering words.

She climbs into bed after that, tucking the pair of you underneath the sheets. You guess you’re staying the night when she folds around you in a spoon. She sighs, deep and satisfied, breath tickling your ear. “Good?”

“Better than good.” A tired giggle ekes out, snuggling into the bedding. Your eyelids droop, your head blissfully swimming from the faint smell of Kate on your lips. You swallow, unable to stop yourself from sleepily asking, “What’s after this?”

Her lips press to your temple in a prolonged kiss. Long enough to make you think you made a mistake. Then she whispers. “Sleep. A shower. Then room service in the morning.” She must sense your unease, though, as she adds, “We’ll talk then.”

You nod, half-lost to slumber already, savoring the figure eights she traces on your side.

In the morning, you wake to an empty bed and a knock on the door. One foot in post-sex sleep-induced delirium, you find a robe in the ensuite and greet an amused-looking hotel employee at the door. Cart in tow, they breeze past you, lifting a cloche from a mouth-watering breakfast and a small carafe of coffee.

“Do I need to…pay for this?” You ask, head as scrambled as the eggs on the plate.

“No, it’s being charged to the room.” The man says as he unloads the cart onto the room’s table. He delays his departure, though, and you get the message. He leaves with the last of your cash, and you spot a note tucked under Kate’s pillow.

Sorry to leave you like this. Duty calls. Take your time with the room. No one will bother you beyond delivering breakfast. You can reach me at this number if you need a finger or three, again. - Kate

You snort and shove a piece of bacon into your mouth to distract yourself from the ache between your legs.

Later, you consider adjusting your age preferences up a bracket across your dating apps before deleting them altogether. You send a text, and it’s under a minute that three dots appear.

>> Miss me already, kid?

#kate laswell x reader #laswell x reader #anyway #no one look at me for 3-5 business days #dropping this and heading out for the night byeeeee #kate laswell

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formulaforza · 1 year ago

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—strawberry wine

and all the times we used to have. (nothing defines a man like love that makes him soft). pairing: daniel ricciardo x female reader warnings: language, angst babyyy love, mackie... 5k ish. this is. definitely something. perhaps it should have stayed in the drafts but dani selected it from a group of it's peers yesterday evening.

It’s been years since you last spent enough time at the vineyard to be considered even a part-time employee. It’s hard to be there, now, in a way it didn’t used to be. Watching it fade away into obscurity and beg someone–anyone–to buy the property to land so your family can get out without generational debt. The fields just hold so many memories, an ancestral kind of history; your first job, the place you had your first drink, where you fell both in, and out of love for the first time. Being there now, watching it die a malignant death is just… sad. There isn’t anything poetic about it.

You long for the days of the peak, of never ending days spent behind the counter in the barn selling wealthy people on the aesthetics of a small, family-run vineyard. Of your father hosting tours and your mother tastings, of you, pink nose and shoulders kissed by the sun, picking grapes by hand. Of the days where help still had to be hired.

For a while there, it seemed like there was a never ending rotation of teenagers and twenty-somethings willing to do manual labor for minimum wage–thirteen an hour–from sunup to sundown. They’d even host the occasional tour on busy Saturday evenings, would be compensated in under the table bottles of wine and cash tips. None of them ever stuck around longer than a couple months, found better jobs indoors, closer to school, better pay. Well, nobody except Daniel.

Daniel worked at the vineyard for… four-ish years, with varying availability depending on seasons and school and racing.

Sometimes, when you lose yourself to sentiments and fantasy, you imagine a world where the Vineyard never faced any competition, where it is still thriving and you take over your mother’s job when she retires. Daniel still works there, maybe in the fields where he was always supposed to be, or maybe front of house guiding tours and helping you with tastings. Life is simple and plain and at the end of every night you lock the barn doors and go home together and eat dinner and grocery shop and do your taxes. Daniel strums the guitar on the porch when it rains. Life is easy and fun and you laugh more than you don’t.

It’s silly, really. But first loves are always silly.

He is one of the many memories that haunt the property, walking the lines of grapevines feeling more like a walk through a fogged out graveyard than anything.

Even now, all these years later, you can still see him sat in the swivel chair in the office doorway, throwing grapes at you while you attempt to run the dusty cash register. It’s a cool July afternoon and he’s got a stupid grin on his face and can’t look anywhere but you.

Daniel is kind of like those people you know you’re given young so that for the rest of your life you know what real feels like. They’re more a lesson than a lover, unfortunately.

—

You move through the place like you own it, which, you suppose technically you do, in some will locked away in an accountant’s filing cabinet, this all belongs to you. Right now, though, you’re seventeen and just returning from school, already setting up your homework on the end of the counter, a spattering of greetings from the local customers and the local hands, the people who know that this is more of a natural habitat than anywhere else on the planet will ever be.

Danny also moves around the place like he owns it, which, if it was up to him he probably would. He hums your name as he moves past, taps the opposite shoulder to the one he leans over, reading your textbook over your shoulder. “It’s seventeen,” he quips.

“It’s a history textbook,” you reply, eyes unmoving from the page.

“Seventeen-seventy, cunt.” There’s a half-empty bowl of fruit sitting on the counter. He leans over you to grab an orange. “Captain Hook and such,” he adds, hosting himself up onto the counter with a thud. You’re sure one day the old wood is going to give out on him and he’ll fall straight onto his ass. Part of you hopes you’re around to see it, the other knows that he’ll find a way to not only make it your fault, but also tease you about it for a minimum of six months.

“Fuck off, Danny,” you punctuate, just loud enough for him to hear.

“It’s Daniel, now.”

You snort. Finally, you give him your attention. “Danny is too unprofessional for a hot-shot Red Bull junior driver like you?”

“See,” he pops his thumb harshly through the peel of the orange, the citrus scent wafting out into the humid air. “You get it.”

You pout. “I’m still going to call you Danny.”

“No you won’t,” he laughs. God, the smell of orange is overwhelming, the kind that lingers long after the fruit is gone. When Danny goes back to work in a few minutes, tosses the peel and into the trash by the office door, he’ll still linger in the room with the smell of citrus.

“I will.”

“You know what,” he hums, biting into a slice. “Let me make you a deal.”

You smile, shake your head. “Shouldn’t I be the one making you a deal?”

He groans against the fruit, “Can you just?”

When you look up again, lean back in your chair and cross your arms, he has orange juice running down the side of his hand, all sweet and sticky and summery. “Fine.”

He smiles goofily, all fucking proud of himself just because you agreed to shut up for thirty seconds. “You can keep calling me Danny, but only if you let me take you out this weekend.”

“Danny,” you protest. This is far from the first time he’s tried to plant the seed of a date with him. It’s had to’ve been a year, by now. You know he’d drop it if you would just give him an answer, but a year later you still haven’t been able to deliver anything definitive.

He shrugs. “‘Dem’s the rules, honey.”

Maybe what you say next is your greatest mistake, or maybe it was what you were always going to say. Maybe you feel like you can say it because he leaves again soon, for longer than ever. You won’t have to live with the consequences of your actions, of your words. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s simply that you think Daniel is far too proper a name for the sticky-handed vineyard tour guide you’ve grown particularly fond of. Danny is much more fitting for him, which is most certainly why you say, okay. When are you picking me up?

—

You drive out from your parents house with your dad in his old Ford Bronco. It’s half rusted out and half chipped blue paint, with worn leather seats and a steering wheel somehow more worn than the rest of it. Seven black tree air fresheners hand from the rearview mirror, new car smell. This relic is well past that–he’s been driving it out to the property literally forever, and this trip won’t be any exception.

You hardly recognize the place, you think as you slam the squeaky door shut with enough force to make sure it really latches.

The fields are overgrown with tall grass and shrubs and mustard flowers. The trunks of the grapevines act as headstones for the sprawling field of dry, sunburnt plants. You don’t think anyone has been out there with a plow in months, if not years.

The barn, the one you grew up in, has been lost with the rest of the place to time. Red paint chips off the wood in massive flakes. The branding that had once run in big wooden letters along the top of the door have all since fallen, leaving a sad outline of your family name in its weathered wake. Two padlocks, one rusted shut, sit on the lock. Every step you take kicks up more dust.

You’re removed from your thoughts, from the hauntings and the sentiment and the memories, by the creaking of the tailgate on your father’s truck. Stuffed in the back of the Bronco are your afternoon tasks; a pair of bulk cutters for the padlocks, a new, state of the art keypad lock given to your Dad by a realtor, a post hole digger, and five for-sale signs haphazardly packed any way they would fit.

You spend most of the next couple hours digging holes along the road, filling them with the wooden posts of the for-sale signs, looking disapprovingly at the thirty-something in a suit that has been tasked with selling the unsellable property.

This is, what… the fifth person you’d hired to sell this fucking place. Soon enough, you’re going to be sticking up For Sale by Owner signs with a hand-written phone number in black sharpie along the fences that were supposed to keep animals out. Realtors were never in the budget to begin with.

—

You’re waiting on the old front porch when he pulls up in his beat-up truck, John Denver playing through the open windows, his hand moving in the wind up the entire dusty driveway. You don’t know what he can see, that your Mom is watching out the kitchen window with a friendly smile.

You’ve got your best sundress on, one that you’d debated wearing for almost thirty-six hours. The first week Danny worked in front of house with you, he spent the entire shift flirting with one of your Dad’s friend’s daughters. He said that sundresses are a crime committed against teenage boys and that when he meets God he’s going to have words with him over pretty girls and their affinity for said sundresses.

You’d laughed then, because you thought it was silly. You remembered it because you thought the new kid was kind of cute, in a you work for my parents and I could never think you’re cute way.

“Fuck,” is the first word out of his mouth, before the car door is even closed behind him, followed quickly by a check of his watch and “am I late?”

“No, no,” you smile, tucking a wind-blown strand of hair behind your ear, standing to your feet on the wooden stairs. “You’re early, actually. I think,” you chuckle. “I’m just,” you can feel your cheeks flushing. “I’m just excited.”

“Yeah,” he moves to you quickly, nervously. In the way only teenage boys on a first date do. “I’m excited too.”

“You look nice,” you say, stepping down the final couple of steps and meeting his waiting hand. “Your hair. I feel like I only ever see you in a hat.”

“Thanks, yeah,” he laughs. You’ve always loved his laugh, even when he’s annoying you and annoying customers and annoying himself. His laugh has always been good. “You look beautiful. I’ve never seen you, I mean. Not that you don’t always look–”

“Danny,” you interject as he opens the passenger side door.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah,” he offers a smile and closes the door. Just before it latches shut, though, you hear him finish his sentence. “Thank you.”

He takes you to King’s Park, to the botanical garden after a stop for ice cream. He tells you that he’s had a crush on you this entire time and you ask him to tell you something you don’t already know. It’s then, in the botanical garden next to the water garden, that he tells you about his quote-en-quote ‘silly, kind of, like, backup dream, I guess’ where he has his own vineyard, brews his own wine and spends every day half drunk and wholly happy.

He stumbles through the entire telling of it, which is how you know he’s not fucking with you. He never gets nervous when it comes to fucking with you.

Perhaps that is where your silly, kind of like, backup dream started. The one where you and Daniel are working at the vineyard together and life is all death and taxes and grocery bills but somehow, in the midst of all the dull normalcy, you’re both happy as happy can be.

—

“Someone is out there looking at the place today,” your father tells you over the phone. You try to talk every day, a habit you’ve both picked up in the past couple years, in the time and space since you’ve turned thirty.

“You’re kidding,” you say. You’re sitting at the kitchen table, shoveling spoonfuls of some health-conscious cereal into your mouth (another post-thirtieth habit). “Who?”

“I don’t know, kid,” you swear you can hear the frown on his face, the deep smile lines and the frustrated forehead wrinkles from months in the direct southern sun. “Probably some fucking developer.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he sighs. “If I’m right, I’d bet they break ground on a neighborhood within the year.”

Your sigh matches his. You can’t even imagine it, front yards and vinyl flooring and white walls built on a foundation of your childhood memories. It’s like going back home, to your childhood home that you sold so many years ago, and discovering it’s been bulldozed, wiped clean from the face of the Earth. “That’s so sad.”

“I know, but, well. You know, honey. It’s not like we have much choice.”

You nod. You do understand. You understand more than you wish you did. “I know. I know. Still pretty fuckin’ sad, though.”

There’s a long silence. The kind of silence that can only be shared by a father and a daughter; a silence that speaks more words than the dictionary can hold. “She’d understand it,” he finally speaks. “She wouldn’t fucking like it, but she would understand it.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I know she would.”

—

“Are you going to kill me?” You giggled, stumbling over your feet. Danny is leading you on the property, one hand over your eyes, the other on your waist, guiding you poorly.

“And be the first fucking suspect?” He laughs. “I think not.”

“Okay, then where are you taking me?” You beg. It's been going on like this for some half hour, before he even covered your eyes.

He laughs. You laugh. All the two of you do is laugh. “Can’t you lighten up?”

“Not when I’m being led to my death. No, I can’t!”

He stops, turns you around a hundred and eighty degrees and takes his hand off your eyes, fingers digging into either of your shoulders. “Babe," he says, and you'd think he was about to tell you he killed someone.

You mimic his seriousness, find humor in it. “Babe.”

“You trust me.”

“Do I?” You smile. He cocks his head to one side and rolls his big brown eyes. You would commit crimes for his eyes. “I do.”

“Okay, so then fucking trust me.”

“Okay,” you nod, closing your eyes.

“Okay?”

“Yes. Okay," you reach blindly for his hand, bring it to your eyes to block the light from them once more. "I trust you. Let’s go.”

After a short, terribly blind walk, Danny finally stops. You’ve been able to hear the river that flows out the back of the property for twenty minutes, but it’s close enough now that you can smell it; the sticks and the rocks and the mud and the water. You can practically feel the splashing of the water bouncing off the boulders.

“Okay. Open,” he instructs, removing his hand from your eye, moving his arms to hug you from behind, arms wrapped over the front of your chest.

You open your eyes to find a picnic, carefully set up with a spread of dinner and drinks and dessert, complete with a plaid flannel blanket and candles that smell like citronella masked with lavender and a bouquet of white roses already in a water filled vase. “Danny,” you hum, leaning your head back against his shoulder.

He kisses your temple, whispers against your hair, “Happy Anniversary.”

“Danny,” you drag out the letters of his name, of the nickname he only lets the people he loves call him by. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy and special.

“Honey,” he mocks you, sways behind you.

“This is too much,” You crane your neck to look at him, and then turn your whole body so you’re flush against his chest, close in a way only you get to be. “You’re so sweet.”

He laughs and it vibrates in both of your chests. A feeling you’ll never tire of. “I mean, this is not too much. Arguably, this is too little.”

“No,” you back away, out of his grip and take small steps backwards, towards the picnic and the waiting meal, pulling him along with you by interlocked pinkies. “This is perfect. You’re perfect.”

“Well,” his grin grows. “I can’t argue with that.”

“I love you so much,” you tell him, because you do, because you’re eighteen and everything in this life is so simple and black and white.

“I love you, too, and–”

“Oh my gosh,” you cut him off, wide-eyed and giddy. “Wine with strawberries?”

He nods. “Strawberry wine, if you will. For the winery with no strawberry fields.”

“This is better,” you state, with the utmost confidence, without even a sip or a sniff or any idea of what white wine he’d used as a base for his little cocktail.

“Definitely not, but sure.”

“It is, because you made it for me. That makes it perfect.”

—

You’re completely removed from the actual buying and selling of the property. It isn’t up to you to decline or accept or field offers, that’s all your dad. The place is still his, at least for a couple more weeks while all the paperwork processes.

It was an anonymous buyer, according to your Dad. Cash offer, over asking price. He’s not sure how the real estate agent managed it, and honestly? Neither are you. Objectively, that land isn’t worth the cost of cleaning it up. Everyone in their right mind knows it. You just come from a particular bloodline where the mind never was quite right when it came to the vineyard.

What shocks you most, though, is that the anonymous buyer–supposedly–is interested in restoring the place rather than bulldozing it.

“They asked me about the dirt,” your dad tells you on one of your daily phone calls. “Wanted to know about berries.”

“Berries?”

“Yeah, strawberries or raspberries or something like that.”

You scoff. What kind of fucking idiot is buying this land? It might just be a herd of manufactured houses after all. “Well, it’s too hot here for raspberries. Everyone knows that.”

“I know, that’s what I told them. They could probably grow strawberries in July or August.”

“Are they trying to make strawberry wine or something?” And, as if this is some fucked up kind of movie, and not real life, it all comes back to you. Every memory, every moment, all at the thought of fucking strawberries in wine.

“Good fucking luck to them, if they are.” Your grandparents entertained the idea of it once, all the fruit wines. It’s a fucking shit-show, according to legend. Hell to try and make, Heaven to taste. It just wasn’t worth it for them. But apparently now it’s worth it to someone.

You chew on the inside of your cheek, bite and bite until you’re worried you’ll draw blood, that you’re a single tooth away from popping a hole clear through the skin. There’s no way, there’s genuinely no way, right? “Dad?”

“Shoot.”

“It’s not.” You almost stop yourself, you almost have some common fucking sense and realize just how vast the world is and how completely unlikely it is that– almost. You almost stop yourself. “The anonymous buyer, it isn’t Daniel, is it?”

“Daniel?” He scoffs on the other end. “Better not be that fucking cunt.”

You smile, the kind of smile that you know you should feel guilty for having. “He’s not a cunt, Dad.”

“I never fucking liked that kid.”

You’re right–you think. You’re right, Dad. You didn’t like him. “You loved him.”

“No, I lost all my respect for him when he left you like he did,” his voice is laced with a calm seriousness. He’s always been your blind defender.

“Yeah, Dad,” you pause. Now’s as good a time as any, you suppose. “I’ve been… that’s not exactly how it went down.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Daniel didn’t leave me, and even if he did, Dad, he wouldn’t have done it then.”

—

“What the fuck are you talking about, you’re breaking up with me?” His voice cuts through continents. He’s somewhere in the UK, or maybe Italy, or maybe Asia. You honestly can’t keep track anymore, can barely keep track of the days of the week that you’re living much less the ones he’s in.

“It’s exactly what I said, Daniel,” you say, try to keep your voice as level headed as possible, to juxtapose the way your mind races, the way your heart rate spikes and your palms sweat and everything in you hurts. “Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

“No, no. I’m making this fucking hard,” he’s riled up enough for the both of you. “You don’t just. This isn’t how this works, babe. You can’t just break up with me.” He’s raising his voice with you. You can count on one hand and have fingers left over the amount of times Danny has yelled at you, and this is the first time it’s not scary.

“I can, and I am,” your voice comes from your throat, choked out over the lull of your entire body begging you to please, please don’t do this. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry!” He yells, the last letter sound cracking with the realization of his actions. “You’re not sorry. If you were sorry, you wouldn’t be doing it.”

“Okay, sure. Whatever.” He doesn’t make this easy, not that you’d expected it to be easy. You’d hoped for something cleaner, though. Less mess. “I’m having a great time breaking your heart.”

“Just. Why? Why are you doing this? What happened? What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything, D,” you sigh. You didn’t know that your heart could physically hurt. You thought that was some crap that they made up for movies and songs and poems, some grand metaphor for how sad you get. “I can’t be a girlfriend right now. To anyone.”

“That’s such bullshit.”

You can feel yourself shutting down, closing every part of yourself off, running on pure survival instincts. “I know. I’m a cunt.”

“You aren’t… fuck me. I mean, fuck, dude.” He laughs. There’s not a thing about it that sounds happy. “I know you don’t want this, I know it. Talk to me, please. Tell me what’s going on and I can help you and everything is going to be fine, baby. Just. Please.”

“Daniel.”

“Why are you calling me that?!”

“It’s what you like to be called!” You yell back, feel the burn in your nose and your cheeks and the sting in your chest.

There’s silence for so long you wonder if he’s hung up, if you’re supposed to. It’s minutes before he speaks again. “Not by you, it’s not.”

—

It’s been just past a year since the place got sold, and nobody from your family–nobody–has been there since. You moved out of town years before the sale, and your Dad has joined you, wants to be near you in his ever increasing age and always deepening wrinkles. When the arthritis sets in, someone needs to forge my signature for me, he tells you.

It’s not until her birthday that you’re back in Perth, that you’re struck with the sudden spark, with the idea to drive past the vineyard, to see what idiot is trying to plant raspberries in the Australian heat, to see who's living in your shoes and wearing your clothes and sleeping under your bed like a monster.

“I don’t know that we should do that,” your Dad says. “It’s going to make you sad.”

You shrug in the passenger seat of the old Bronco. “We’re in the parking lot of a cemetery, so,” you offer a near silent chuckle. “I think we’re a bit past sad.”

“Okay,” he nods. “There’s something you should know, then.”

“Don’t tell me it’s a neighborhood.”

“No, no. It’s a vineyard. Strawberries and grapes in the fields.”

“Well, good then,” you nod, glide your hands through the air outside the open window. “What’s wrong with it?”

He shrugs, drums his fingers on the beat up steering wheel. “You remember when you asked me last year if it was Daniel?”

“Dad. Don’t.”

“Well, I didn’t know it then, but–”

“I’m serious. Don’t tell me this, please,” you’re a second away from sticking your fingers in your ears and humming a nursery rhyme to keep the unsaid unspoken.

“Daniel bought the place, hon.”

“My Daniel?” You squeak. You haven’t felt this young in a while. Or this small.

He laughs, turns to face you with a look that begs you not to be so damn daft. “The only Daniel that means anything to anyone in this family.”

“When did you find out?”

“As soon as they put the sign up. I was still living out here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” You have so many questions. You don’t think there’s any you actually want answers to.

“What good was it going to do? I never thought you’d be back here.”

“Well. I’m back.”

He nods. “You’re back.”

You’re back. You never really left, you don’t think. It’s not something you can do around here. Perth is in your blood the same way wine is, some grand, immovable part of your soul. You suppose Daniel is there too, taking up a plot of land in your soul that can never be sold. He lives in you like summertime and sadness and strawberries. Strawberries. Him and his fucking strawberry white wines.

“He’s got strawberries?” You croak. Tears pull on your voice but you won’t give them the satisfaction. You’re grown now, it’s time to fucking act like it.

“Strawberry wine. First batches just came out last month. I heard it’s pretty good.”

“I bet.”

“You still wanna go?”

You nod, cold and stunted. “Yeah.”

You see the cars before you see the barn, they’re overflowing out of the parking lot and stopped on the side of the dirt road that leads to the drive. You’ve never seen it so busy. It looks like the pictures your parents used to show you, the ones where the place was fresh and new and shiny. The barn has a fresh coat of red paint, the parking lot is repaved and half full of ATVs with a logo for DR3 Wines printed on either side.

Above the door, a matching phrase, in simple white wooden letters–like what once was–hangs, announces the place to passers by.

Inside, it smells like wood, like lavender and citronella and alcohol. There are pictures on every wall, carefully framed photos of everyone in the world besides him. The counter is that same old slab of wood, the one that you always hoped he would fall through. On the wall behind is are more 4x6 photos than you can count, all unframed, all messily taken. He’s in some of those, holding a camera or posing with friends or hugging a grapevine. There’s one with you, right in the middle. You and he and your Mom on the back field picking grapes. It’s taken by your dad, you still remember that morning clear as day.

There’s another of you; a selfie taken on a point-and-shoot, the two of you with glasses of white wine and strawberries. Next to it is a picture of Kristen Bell and Dax Shephard leaning against the counter, half-drunk glasses in each of their hands.

Framed, on the edge of the counter, right beside the register, is a photo of the place when he first started working there, of your Mom and your Dad standing proudly in front of it. You took it. You left it in the office when your Dad decided to lock the doors for good. Our Story, the plaque below it reads, with a QR code to scan.

It leads to a linktree, to social media links and tasting menus and a merchandise shop. The last link, though, is stomach curling. It’s her name, your Mom’s. Fighting for her, it reads. When you click it, you’re taken to a website that encourages donations, that spreads awareness and promotes research, that thanks Daniel by name twice in two paragraphs for his consistent and generous donations and support.

Before you can make a bee-line for the exit, to tell your Dad that he was right and this was a mistake, you’re met with a red-faced teenage girl asking you if there’s anything she can help you with. “No, uh,” you swallow hard. “My parents were the previous owners, we just stopped in to see the place.”

“Oh my gosh, would you like a tour?”

“Um…” you pause, because you don’t know if you can handle being here. Seeing the place like this again. “Danny’s not… Daniel isn’t here, is he?” She shakes her head. You nod. “Then yeah, I guess. Let me just grab my dad?”

—

You get an invite to a VIP tasting at his vineyard two weeks after your visit. It’s scheduled during the F1 summer break, so you have no doubt he’ll be there, and if that wasn’t clue enough, his handwriting glaring back at you on the invite is about as obvious as obvious can be.

I hear you’re snooping around the old stomping grounds. I’d love to be there when you do it. Bring your Dad if he’s free. It’ll be a good night, lots of strawberry wine–the real shit this time. All love, (always your) Danny.

read part two, everywhere, everything, here!

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