“Are you forgetting my propensity to ramble drunkenly?” I asked, watching him drain the bottle with a long pour into my glass. The appetizers fanned across the table: endive with prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, and a sweet balsamic glaze; tiny meatballs with rosemary and sweet corn; a bowl of perfectly charred shishito peppers; and—my favorite—a shrimp-and-calamari ceviche that made my eyes water with its perfect tartness.
“Contrary to what I said,” he told me, putting the empty bottle back on the table, “I think I like your rambles. You aren’t some crazy lady on the plane anymore.” He lifted his own glass to mine and clinked it gently. “You’re Pippa.”
Well. That was rather sweet.
“I think tonight I want you to ramble,” I said, flushing and leaning a little closer.
Jensen’s eyes dropped to my mouth, and then he seemed to remember himself and he sat up. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I’m the least interesting person at this table.”
I glanced around at our friends. Ruby and Niall had their heads together, Hanna had gotten up to use the restroom, and Will was reading the scotch menu, clear across the other side of the table and—in a restaurant like this—only in the loudest shouting distance.
“Well,” I allowed, “that may be true—as I’ve heard nothing from you to dispute it—but as you’re my only option at the moment, I want to hear you talk.”
He blinked down into his glass, took a long breath, and then looked over to me. “Give me a topic.”
Oh, the heady power. I leaned back in my chair, sipping my wine as I considered this.
“Don’t look so Machiavellian,” he said, laughing. “I mean, what do you want to hear me talk about?”
“I certainly don’t want to hear you talk about work,” I said.
He agreed with a smile: “No.”
“And the ex-wife sounds like a pretty gross topic.”
He nodded, laughing now. “The grossest.”
“I could ask why you haven’t been on a proper holiday in two years, but—”
“But that would be discussing work,” he interjected.
“Right. I could ask about this softball team Hanna keeps mentioning,” I said, and Jensen rolled his eyes in exasperation, “or your ability to run several miles every morning without requiring payment or some sort of monster chasing you . . .” I chewed my lip. “But really, I think we both know that I find you rather sweet, and more than rather attractive, and I know there is no London mistress, or Boston wife, but I want to know whether you have a girlfriend.”
“You think I would be on this trip,” he said, “with my sister and her husband, and Ruby and Niall and . . . you . . . if I had a girlfriend?”
I shrugged. “You’re a mystery to me in many ways.”
His smile was a tiny tilt of his mouth. “No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
I smacked the table, and he startled. “Lord, why not?” I cried. “Virility such as yours should not go wasted.”
Jensen laughed. “ ‘Virility’?”
“Right.”
He flushed at this. “Well . . . I guess I’m picky.”
“I gathered,” I murmured dryly.
He squirmed a little in his seat. “I like to be able to control things.”
I leaned in. “Now, that sounds interesting.”
Smiling in a way that told me he knew he was going to disappoint me with what he would say next, he added, “I meant, I think I enjoy that aspect of my work. Every relationship I’ve been in since Becky feels a bit like chaos.”
“They can be,” I admitted. And when I said it, I realized I knew exactly what he meant. I’d never felt with Mark that I could predict what he was going to do next, like I had any finger at all on the pulse of his love for me. Ours was a relationship constantly unscrolling, the remaining story unknown. I understood for the first time since the breakup why, for the past year, I’d felt that tight, needling anxiety inside me. And why I didn’t feel it at all anymore.
For as much as I wanted love to be an adventure, there was certainly something to be said for stability in places.
“But, yeah,” I continued, “I agree they shouldn’t.”
“Dating after being with someone for a decade was disorienting,” he said. “It’s a new language I haven’t quite mastered yet.”
“I’m sure Niall can relate,” I said.
He nodded. “Max and I talked about that once. Luckily, Niall’s settled now. What’s weird,” he continued, and then smiled sheepishly up at me, “and sorry, this veers into gross ex-wife territory, but things with Becky always felt predictable, until she left, out of the blue. I thought we were happy. I was happy. Imagine how stupid I felt that I didn’t even notice she wasn’t.”
I realized in a depressing gust what he was telling me: as far as he was concerned, relationships were damned if you do, damned if you don’t. His first love seemed to be happy, but wasn’t. And everything that came after felt like it was happening in a language he didn’t speak.
I opened my mouth to answer, to reassure him somehow that this is life, and it’s messy, but for all the women out there like Becky, there are at least as many who know our minds and our hearts enough to be honest—but the words were cut off by a piercing wail.
The sound was so wholly different from any version of a fire alarm I’d ever heard that for a second some odd, ancient part of my brain screamed SEEK BOMB SHELTER IMMEDIATELY before Jensen took my hand and pulled me after him, calmly exiting the restaurant via the indicated fire escape route.
He did it with such surety that it occurred to me he might have scouted out the exit plan before we were seated. Not only did he stand and react as if he’d been expecting the fire alarm to go off, but he knew exactly where to go. I wanted to hand him a shaken martini and live out a one-night James Bond fantasy.
The fire alarm carried over the sounds of surprise and concern and finally the understanding, shouted by waiters as they ushered people outside, that it was a small kitchen fire and everything was fine, please stay calm.
As it turned out, the escape route placed us behind the winery’s restaurant, at the top of a hill overlooking the vineyards. Long past sunset, the vines seemed like a dark labyrinth of wood and foliage. Jensen dropped my hand, quickly tucking his into a pocket, and gazed out at the view. At the far end of the row before us was a small structure, what appeared to be a shed built in the center of the vineyard.
“What is that out there, do you think?” I asked him, pointing to it.
Will and Hanna slid around a few mildly hysterical older gentlemen and then sidled up beside us, looking at it.
“I think that’s where they sit outside and have lunch,” Hanna guessed. “I would. It’s a beautiful view.”
We scooted forward, making more room as people poured outside.
Will shook his head. “I’m going to say it’s the Shagging Shed.”
“I think it’s likely where they keep their smaller harvesting implements,” Niall said logically, and we all glared up at him, Will making a quiet snoring sound.
Behind us, waiters and staff were scurrying around, trying to reassure diners that everything would be handled and the situation wouldn’t interrupt our meal indefinitely.
But for now we were banished out here.
“I want to go see,” I said.
“Do it,” Will urged.
“Pippa—” Jensen began, but I turned to him, grinning widely.
“Race you!” I said, stepping off the concrete patio and taking off into the soft earth, leaving a stunned silence in my wake.
The wind felt amazing, cool and sharp against my cheeks, and for the first time—thank you, pinot noir—I giddily pretended I was in an actual race, pumping my arms, feeling the ground give beneath my shoes and pass behind me.
I heard the steady footfalls behind mine and then Jensen was there, slowing to run alongside me and giving me a bewildered look before his competitive side seemed to win out. He sprinted the rest of the way to
the shed, turning when he reached it and waiting for me to come to a gasping, wheezing finish at his side.
Standing still as the shed itself, he stared wordlessly down at me while I caught my breath.
“What the hell was that?” he finally asked, a small smile pulling at his lips. “I thought you didn’t run.”
I laughed, turning my face up to the sky. The air was cool, a little damp; the sky was the color of my favorite indigo dress. “I have no idea. We were getting so serious in there.” I pressed my hands to my sides. “I liked it, I just . . . I think I’m a bit tipsy.”
“Pippa, I don’t—” Jensen stopped when I turned, walking over to a small window of the shed to peer inside. Just as Niall had predicted, it was full of gardening supplies, buckets, tarps, and coiled hoses.
“Well. That’s decidedly uninteresting,” I said, turning back to him. “Sadly, Niall was right.”
Jensen took a deep breath, staring at me with an unreadable expression.
“What is it?” I asked him.
He laughed without humor. “You can’t just—” He stopped, digging a hand into his hair. “You can’t just run off into a dark vineyard.”
“Then why on earth did you follow me?”
He blinked, surprised. “I mean . . .” He seemed to find something suddenly ridiculous in his answer but gave it to me anyway: “I couldn’t let you run off into a dark vineyard alone.”
This made me laugh. “Jensen. I’m barely a city block away from the restaurant.”
We both looked back at the group of restaurantgoers still mingling on the sloping patio, still waiting to be allowed back inside, and still entirely unconcerned about what we were doing.
I turned and looked at his profile in the dim light from the distant winery. I wondered if he was thinking back to our conversation at the table, about the conundrum of not trusting yourself and not understanding others.
“I’m sorry about Becky,” I said, and he startled a little, looking down at me. “I’m sure loads of people said that in the beginning, when it was most raw. But I bet hardly anyone says anything about it anymore.”
He turned to face me fully but didn’t respond except to give a cautious “No . . .”
“I remember when my grandmum died.” I looked away, out at the rows and rows of grapevines. “It was years ago; she was relatively young. I was eleven, and she was . . . well, let’s see . . . she would have been in her late seventies.”
“I’m sorry,” Jensen said quietly.
I smiled up at him. “Thank you. The thing is, everyone was quite sad for us at first. Naturally. But over time, it seemed harder that she was gone, for Lele, at least. All these big and small moments Grandmum was missing. It didn’t really get easier, per se. Our sadness just got quieter. We just didn’t talk about it anymore, but I know every tiny heartbreak and victory that Lele couldn’t share with her mum weighed on her.” I looked back up at him. “So what I’m saying is, yes, it’s six—six years since Becky?”
“Yeah. Six,” he confirmed.
“Six years later, and I’m sorry that she’s not in your life anymore.”
He nodded, opening his mouth and then seeming to try to strangle down the words. Jensen clearly didn’t like to talk about himself when it came to relationships. At all.
“Thank you,” he said quietly again, but I knew that wasn’t what he’d originally had on the tip of his tongue.
“Say it,” I said, holding my arms out. I spun in a slow circle, arms outstretched. “Vent it to me, and to the grapes, and the vines, and the tiny gardening tools in the shed.”
Jensen laughed at this, glancing up to where our friends stood talking as they looked out at us in the middle of the vineyard. “Pippa, you’re—” He stopped abruptly as a quiet hissing noise came from our right, and then our left.
I bolted backward. “What is that?”
He groaned, reaching for my arm. “Fuck! Come on!”
We started to run, but in only a few seconds, we were inundated with the heavy spray of sprinklers from every direction. Water poured on us, drenching us, from delicate pipes of water strung across the vine lattice, from the sides, and from below, delivered by quickly rotating sprinkler heads near our feet.
We took several more slippery steps in the dirt, but then I nearly fell onto my back; Jensen barely caught me.
Running was futile. We were soaked.
“Forget it,” I yelled to him over the deafening sound of the sprinkler system. It was as if we were caught in a downpour. “Jensen,” I said, grabbing his sleeve as he made to return to the winery. I turned him to face me.
He stared at me, eyes wild. It wasn’t just that we’d had a bottle of wine after a day of drinking small tastes over and over and over. It wasn’t just that our meal had been interrupted, or that we were presently soaked outside, in October, in a small Long Island winery.
From the savage flash in his eyes, it was as if something had been shaken loose in him.
“I know we don’t know each other at all,” I shouted, blinking the water out of my eyes. “And I know this sounds crazy, but I think you need to yell.”
He laughed, spluttering under the spray of the sprinklers. “I need to yell?”
“Yell!”
He shook his head, not understanding.
“Say it!” I cried over the roar. “Say whatever it is that’s in your head this second. Whether it’s work, or life, or Becky, or me. Like this!” I sucked in a gulp of freezing air as words nearly burst from me. “I want to hate Mark, but I don’t! I hate that I fell so easily into a relationship that was just a pit stop for him, one that I saw as a possible forever! It never was, and I feel like a fool that I didn’t see it earlier!”
He stared at me for several breaths, water running down his face.
“I hate my job!” I yelled, fists at my sides. “I hate my flat, and my routine, and that it could go on like this forever and I might not have the courage to do anything about it! I hate that I’ve worked so hard but when I look around—compare my life to everyone else’s—it feels like such a small drop in such a massive bucket!”
He looked away, blinking past the fat drops of water on his lashes.
“Don’t make me feel foolish,” I said, reaching out to press my hand to his chest.
Just when I thought he was going to turn away and walk back to the restaurant, he tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and yelled over the roar of the sprinklers: “We might have had kids by now!”
Oh my God.
I nodded, encouraging. He looked back down to me, as if seeking affirmation, and his features changed when he let in the emotions: his expression grew tighter, eyes sharper, mouth a harsh line. “They’d be in school!” he said, wiping a hand down his face, momentarily clearing the water away. “They’d be playing soccer, and riding bikes!”
“I know,” I said, sliding my hand down his arm, lacing my dripping fingers with his.
“Sometimes it feels like I have nothing,” he gasped, “nothing but my job and my friends.”
That’s still a lot, I didn’t say. Because I understood: it wasn’t the life he’d imagined for himself.
“And I’m so angry at her that she couldn’t tell me earlier that it wasn’t what she wanted.” He wiped his face again with his free hand, and I wondered for a beat if there was more than just water running down his cheeks. In the darkness, I couldn’t tell.
“I’m so angry that she wasted my time,” he said, shaking his head and looking away. “And then, I’ll meet someone, and it feels like . . . why bother? Is it too late? Am I too uptight, or too uninteresting, or . . .”
“Just been stabled too long?” I said, trying to make him laugh, but it seemed to have the opposite effect and he dropped my hand, sighing heavily.
“What a pair we make,” I said. Taking his hand again, determinedly, I waited for him to look at me. “It’s not too late. Not even if you were eighty. And you’re only thirty-three.”
“Thirty-four,” he
corrected in a growl.
“And, please,” I continued, ignoring this, “most women aren’t that obtuse about their own lives and feelings. Your first real bite was into a rotten piece of fruit. There are so many more ripe ones on the vines.” I did a tiny, drenched shimmy, and he cracked a little smile at this, glancing to the gnarled zinfandel vines around us. “I don’t mean me,” I added. “I don’t necessarily mean the next woman you meet, either. I just mean, she’s out there. Whoever she is.”
He nodded, staring down at my face. Water sluiced across his forehead, over his nose, tripping across his lips. For a heartbeat, he looked like he might kiss me. But then he shook his head a little, staring at me as if waiting for some magical directive.
“I’m sorry you lost her,” I said more quietly. “And I know it’s been a long time, but it isn’t too long to still be royally pissed off about it. It was a dream you lost, and that’s bloody terrible from any angle.”
He nodded, squeezing my hand. “I’m sorry about Mark, too.”
I waved this away with a laugh. “Mark wasn’t a dream. He was a fantastic shag I kept waiting to turn into a better bloke.” Considering this, I added, “Maybe he was a dream, but it was a short one. If I’ve realized anything on this trip so far, it’s that I didn’t really need to take three weeks away to get over him. But I’m glad to have it anyway.”
I saw the shutters return but didn’t really curse them. It was his process—I knew it already: Give a little, close up shop. Protect. So I made it easy for him and dropped his hand so he could lead us back to the patio, where people were filing back inside. We would laugh about how insane I’d been, how wacky that Pippa is, and go back to our rooms to change into dry clothes for a new dinner.
SIX
Jensen
Monday morning, I was up before the sun.
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