Home. If only a couch could solve all my problems.
“Thank you,” I say, overcome with emotions I’m afraid they misinterpret. I am grateful, but I would trade it for more time with them in a heartbeat.
Sam walks in the back door and sees the moment we’re having. He holds up his hands in apology. “Sorry,” he says. “I was going to grab those cheese platters.”
“Of course,” Mom says. “Thank you.”
Sam goes around the other side of the island. I clear my throat, getting myself together. I don’t want to fall apart in front of my parents, let alone Sam. I slip the money back into the envelope and fold it up, getting it out of sight.
“Thank you,” I say to Mom and Dad more earnestly. “Thank you so much for always supporting me and believing in me. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have you as my parents, but I’m very grateful. It means a lot to me.”
Everything is going to be okay. Like Dad said, if I take it one day at a time, one step at a time, I’ll find a way to live this new life. This money will give me a fresh start, a chance to redesign my apartment and my life.
“I’m glad we can do this for you,” Dad says, putting his hand on mine. “You’ve done more for this vineyard and for us than you know.”
It feels like an apology for not always being there, for spending more time at their jobs than with me. But I understand now that it wasn’t just about the money—their work is their passion, their purpose, their contribution to the world. And all they want is to know I’ve found mine.
With a quick nod, I accept.
“I love you guys,” I say.
The three of us embrace. Over my parents’ shoulders, I see Sam slip out the back door.
“We love you, too, Mallory,” my dad says, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
THIRTEEN
THEN
For the few days after Sam spent the night for the first time, the energy between us became disconnected and broken. He suddenly had things for me to do that left me in the office all day, when before, he’d always kept me close in case he wanted to hash out an idea. And Sam was full of ideas. He needed to hear them out in the open air before he could decide whether they were any good or not.
That week, though, he didn’t quite meet my eyes when he spoke to me and in those long, lonely hours in Dad’s dusty, sweaty office, I questioned everything I’d done and said that night. I’d walked out of the guest house on a good note, I’d thought. Yet Sam had become distant and I didn’t understand why. Maybe I’d fooled myself into thinking we’d become friends, or something like it.
I found solace in the time I spent with Kelly.
We took advantage of the late-summer nights and the loosened reins that were coming with adulthood to tackle items on our bucket list—sleeping outside under the stars, creating a time capsule that we buried under a tree at the top of our hill, being tourists in our town, the town we were leaving. We reminisced about high school like it was already a decade behind us and talked about the future like nothing but magic and fairy tales lay ahead.
Still, thoughts of Sam niggled at the back of my mind. Since Kelly didn’t approve of my feelings for him, I kept them to myself, pretending he didn’t mean anything to me. Rationally, I knew any attachment I formed to him was bound to end in heartbreak. I was leaving and so was he. It was easier to remember that when he wasn’t around, but of course, I couldn’t avoid him forever.
“Want to go for a ride with us this morning?” Dad asked over a breakfast of cold cereal.
“Do you have to ask?” I replied. I was so surprised to hear he was planning to take Rocket out, I didn’t immediately catch the “us.” Mom had left for the office as I was sitting down to eat. “Wait, who?”
“I invited Sam out.”
“He said yes?” I couldn’t picture Sam doing anything that led to the possibility of getting dirty. Did he own any clothes that didn’t require dress shoes?
Dad nodded, milk dribbling down his chin.
I helped Tyler brush and saddle the horses while Dad checked on the grapes before Sam arrived. When I told Tyler our plans, he asked, “Can I hop on the back of Midnight with you?”
“Why?” I asked, though by his amused grin, I could guess.
“Because seeing Mr. Shiny Watch ride a horse is going to be hysterical.”
I bumped my hip against his. “Lay off. He’s probably ridden before. He’s traveled all over the world, you know?”
“Wow. I’m so impressed,” he said. “Just because you travel the world doesn’t know you mean anything about life. Or people. Or yourself.”
I stopped brushing Midnight’s tail and looked at Tyler. “And what do you know about life?”
“I know it’s about a lot more than how expensive my car is.”
I happened to agree with Tyler, but I believed there was much more to Sam than that—he just held his cards closer to his chest.
“What’s it about? The thing they call rodeo?” I asked, quoting Garth Brooks.
“I’m not a cowboy. I’ve never even seen a bull up close.”
I laughed. I teased him, but for as much time as we spent together, I realized I didn’t know anything about what Tyler’s plans for the future were, or what he wanted out of life. Was working at our vineyard enough for him? Forever? Selfishly, I hoped it would be. I had to leave the vineyard, to go find myself, and it would make it a lot easier if I knew Tyler would always be there when I came back.
“Connection,” he said in an uncharacteristically thoughtful response. But he said it quickly, like he’d been thinking about it a lot lately but didn’t want to draw attention to it.
“Go on.”
“Like with Midnight here.” He patted her rump. “Or you. Friends. Family. The dirt beneath our feet. You can’t tell me that guy is connected. Everything about him is perfectly tailored to put distance between him and everyone around him.”
I couldn’t argue with Tyler. I thought when Sam had spent the night, when he took off all his armor along with his shoes and jacket and belt. A little bit of honesty had slipped past his filter. Was that why he’d pulled away?
“What’s it about for you?” he asked. It took me a moment to remember what we’d been talking about.
“Hell if I know.”
He didn’t laugh at my response, just continued to brush Midnight’s hindquarters.
“What?” I urged.
“Air,” he said.
“Air?”
“For you. Wind in your hair. Room to breathe. Blowing one way and then in the completely different direction.” He laughed, seeming to picture something in his mind’s eye. Or maybe at the truth of his words. My chest ached—with love or vulnerability—at being seen so clearly. Sometimes I wondered if Tyler knew me better than Kelly. Or maybe he just allowed me to be my completely flawed self more than I felt like I could with Kelly, who always pushed me to be better. I appreciated that aspect of our friendship, but sometimes it was exhausting.
Sam arrived then, taking my attention with him.
“So how do I do this?” he asked with a bashful grin.
I kept my pleasure in check at being the one to teach him how to put himself in the saddle. It took him more than a few tries to get the momentum to throw his leg over the other side and while at first I didn’t know how he’d react to my physical guidance, when he didn’t pull away from my touch, I used my hands to propel him in the right direction. His triumphant smile when he got it filled me with hope that a few awkward days wasn’t a death sentence to our friendship. And as we rode through the vines that afternoon, Dad sharing stories from his childhood, Sam stole curious glances at me, like he was finally seeing a different side of me—a side that didn’t have anything to do with my dad or the vineyard.
Dad and Sam started drinking e
arlier that day—eating, talking, laughing, and sharing bottles of wine from the surrounding vineyards to assess the competition. For a few hours before dinner, Kelly came over and Sam’s voice drifted up through my bedroom window while she and I took a reprieve from the heat and watched a movie on my bed. When she left to make dinner for her mom, though, I sat on the back porch step with a book; Sam and Dad’s chatter in the background becoming my soundtrack of that summer.
When the sun finally set, Sam was mellow, dehydrated, and a little sunburned across the bridge of his nose. He took up Dad’s offer to stay in the guest house without argument this time and Dad offered up my services once again to get Sam settled in. I ran upstairs to Mom’s bathroom to get the aloe vera before I led Sam to the space he was quickly claiming as his own. He was more at ease this time, heading straight for the bathroom while I replaced the bedding I’d washed during his last overnight stay.
“I’m going to have to leave some glasses in here,” he said with a laugh when he reemerged. “I can’t throw away a pair of contacts every time I stay.”
My skin flushed at the thought of him making it a regular occurrence. While I was still young, I knew it wasn’t healthy—physically or emotionally—for Sam to drink past the driving limit often, but it also felt good to be needed. It felt good to be needed by Sam. It felt good to be alone with him, however fleeting.
“Do you drive back to the hotel blind?” I asked.
Sam shrugged and fell into the freshly made bed, his belt already off, his shirt untucked, his socks and shoes off. I filled a glass of water and left it on the nightstand with two aspirin.
“You might want to put some of this on your face,” I said, handing over the aloe vera.
He furrowed his brow, then touched his nose and winced. “Damn.”
I uncapped the tube and held it out for him to take. Instead, he closed his eyes and rested his head closer to the edge of the bed.
I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe, as I squeezed some of the aloe onto my fingertips. I rubbed the gel between my hands to warm it, then slowly, delicately, I pressed my fingertips to the bridge of his nose. His skin was hot. He sighed.
I smoothed the gel over the rest of his nose and his cheeks, the shape of his face so unfamiliar. I covered his forehead, too, for good measure, and because I couldn’t believe I’d been given permission to touch him so intimately. I hadn’t realized until that moment how infrequently I’d ever felt the curves of another person’s face.
When I finally pulled away, he murmured, “Thanks, kiddo.”
The jolt of that one word after such a visceral moment woke me to reality like a bucket of cold water. Kiddo? Was that really how he saw me? Thankfully his eyes were still closed because tears prickled at the corners of mine.
“Welcome,” I whispered.
I closed the aloe vera and placed it on the nightstand so he could apply more in the morning. It was time for me to leave. Sam didn’t want me. He just needed someone to send his emails, make sure there was fresh soap in the shower, and stroke his ego when he had a new branding idea.
Then he tilted his head so he could look at me and his face was so beautiful my heart skipped a beat.
“Stay,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.”
I wanted to stay, but I knew I shouldn’t. So far Sam had made the boundaries between our work relationship and our friendship pretty clear. Even at eighteen, and even as infatuated with Sam as I was, I intuited that those boundaries were better for my heart, whether I liked them or not. Sitting with Sam in the guest room would obliterate those boundaries. It would confuse my feelings for him with his feelings for me even more.
I pulled the chair from the corner over to his side of the bed, and I curled up in it, my feet tucked beneath me. Sam turned onto his side and folded his arm beneath his head, resting on his biceps.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked him. I heard the defeat in my voice, but he didn’t.
“You pick,” he said, yawning.
There was something I’d been dying to know.
“You said at dinner the other night it was time for another adventure once you leave here?” We’d had a family dinner, Kelly included, which was as awkward as it sounded. But afterward, while everyone else cleared dishes, Sam had said something that piqued my interest. He said it when no one else would hear, to me alone.
“Yeah,” he said, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. Every expression that crossed his face made my heart contract. I so badly wanted them to be for me.
“What did you have in mind?”
Sam rolled onto his back, his hands landing on his chest. “Climbing Colorado’s fourteeners,” he said on a dreamy breath.
This. This was what I’d been waiting for. A genuine disclosure of his deepest desires. Not fancy cars, not designer clothes, not perfectly coifed hair. A true calling of Sam’s heart. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I hated to admit it but I needed to know more.
“Fourteeners?” I asked.
Sam laughed at his own clumsiness as he struggled to sit up.
“There are fifty-three mountains in Colorado that reach fourteen thousand feet above sea level,” he said. “You have to get up at, like, three o’clock in the morning and climb thousands of feet to summit before the monsoons hit. The air is so thin at the top that some people bring oxygen with them so they don’t get altitude sickness.”
“That definitely sounds like an adventure,” I said sarcastically, but I recognized that my own heart rate had sped up at the idea. The feel of my muscles working, the ground beneath my feet, the air.
“It’s a little bit crazy,” he said with a laugh, “but imagine the view at the top.”
I could picture it immediately—Sam with his determined gait, his skin darkened by the Colorado sun, his curls dancing in the breeze, and nothing but trees for miles in any direction.
“It suits you,” I said.
When I closed my eyes, I was there with him, my hair tracing the hollow of my neck as it got caught by the mountain wind, and Sam reaching his hand out to me. Just the two of us.
Wind in your hair, Tyler had said. Room to breathe. Blowing one way and then in the completely different direction.
I opened my eyes. Sam stared at me.
“What?” he asked. “You’re smiling.”
I shook my head. “It just seems...perfect.”
Sam lay down closer to me this time and grabbed my hand, setting my nerves on fire. His thumb traced my tender tattoo like he was fascinated by its texture.
He yawned and his eyes fluttered shut.
“It will be,” he murmured to himself. A few minutes later, when his hand slipped from mine, I ran my fingers over his forehead once more, wishing I could place a kiss there, that I was the woman in his life who could do things like that without a second thought. Then I crept out of the guest house.
The next morning, I woke him up with coffee and while at first, he seemed sheepish about the intimacy between us the night before, once he washed his face and put his clothes back together, he acted like himself again. As we drank coffee on the back porch, I tried to understand how he really saw me, the furtive glances, the emotions I felt between us. But which version of Sam was the true one: the Sam who was clear-minded yet guarded, or the Sam whose inhibitions had been swept away with a few glasses of wine?
FOURTEEN
NOW
I hear the music start as I’m putting on my makeup, and soon the parking lot is full again. From the bathroom window, I watch people with their glasses of wine, huddled in clumps. The sun has nearly set, and the string lights in the stables are on. It’s a beautiful scene—a magical scene—and yet I find myself putting off going downstairs as long as possible. Once I join the party, that will be the beginning of the end of this visit and I’m not ready to say goodbye.
; When I finally work up the courage, the party is in full swing. There are ten tables set up in the breezeway of the stables, five on each side with a space left open for dancing. Lights line the ceiling and each of the stalls. Rocket, entertained by all of the commotion, sticks his head out of his stall and nudges people passing by or nips at their hair. The mares, on the other hand, have retreated into their stalls to avoid the noise.
I sneak into Midnight’s stall, where she’s nestled against the far wall. The music drifts in, but it’s muted.
“Hey, girl,” I say. When she sees me, she reaches her nose out and I run my hand over the length of it, pulling her close to rest my face on hers. I’ve never been able to say the word goodbye to her. “I’m going to miss you so much,” I whisper instead.
We stand that way for a long time, Midnight munching on hay, a humid breeze blowing through the stables. I close my eyes and memorize this moment, breathe it all in.
My body unclenches.
“There you are,” Kelly says, coming into the stall. I turn to her. She looks lovely in a white summer dress, her hair loose and long with her bangs twisted and pulled back like a delicate crown. “People are asking for you,” she says.
“I’m coming,” I tell her. I kiss Midnight, and though she shows no signs of understanding the fact that I’m leaving, I sense a sadness in her, too—she’s always mirrored my moods.
As I approach the stall door, Kelly puts herself in front of me.
“Before we go out there,” she says, “I want to say I’m sorry about earlier. I got carried away.”
I hold up my hands to stop her. “You don’t have to apologize for anything. We’ll find a way, okay? Whenever you’re ready, I’d be happy to help you in any way I can.”
“It was stupid—”
I place my hands on her shoulders and with resolution, I tell her, “We will.”
Midnight at the Wandering Vineyard Page 15