Midnight at the Wandering Vineyard

by Jamie Raintree

  “No one wears long sleeves here in the summer,” I said. “They hardly wear them in the winter. You’re going to melt.”

  Sam stood and stretched. I caught the movement of his muscles under his shirt for the briefest moment before I averted my gaze.

  “You’re wearing riding boots,” he countered.

  I looked down at them. They were a birthday gift from my dad the year before—a prized possession. I wore them every day and while the leather had held up, they still showed signs of wear. The deep brown color was lighter at the toe, and there was a crease across the front of my ankle from squatting to clean Midnight’s hooves.

  “What’s wrong with riding boots?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Did you go riding today?”

  “No. But I might.” I probably wouldn’t. It was hard to take Midnight out after dark unless the moon was full. That wasn’t the point.

  “They’re an expression of who you are, right?”

  After a moment’s thought, I nodded. I’d never thought of it that way, but I’m sure anyone who knew me would agree.

  “How I dress is a reflection of who I am,” he said.

  I stood and wiped the dust off the back of my jean shorts. I tilted my head playfully. “I think who you are needs to loosen up a bit.”

  I made to reach for the hem of his shirt, to untuck it. I was drunk on the heat, more relaxed with Sam than I usually was. He moved away, laughing.

  “Maybe you need to get more serious,” he tossed back at me. “Haven’t you ever thought of wearing something a little more fashionable?”

  I halted in my cavorting. His words struck a nerve. New York was one of the fashion capitals of the world and I often worried I wouldn’t fit in there, that I couldn’t be myself there—a simple farm-town girl. Mostly I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind. I didn’t have a choice. I was going with Kelly. I’d get through it.

  But did Sam find me too simple, as well as too young? Were even my shoes more proof of my lack of culture and experience?

  “You okay?” Sam asked.

  The barn door creaked open, breaking the moment. Kelly barged in, her mouth set in a hard line.

  “There you are,” she said. “I’ve been waiting at the coffee shop for you for an hour.”

  I gasped. “Shit. I am so sorry, Kel. I completely lost track of time.” I was supposed to meet her when she finished her shift.

  She glanced at Sam, sure of the reason I’d forgotten about our date. At the beginning of the summer, she was worried I’d let work get in the way of our plans and I promised her it wouldn’t. Neither of us had accounted for Sam.

  “We can go now,” I said, meeting her in the doorway.

  She looked like she might call the whole thing off.

  “Fine,” she eventually said, exasperated.

  I followed her out, shooting an apologetic look at Sam.

  As we walked back to the parking lot, Kelly was silent, and even the crunch of the gravel beneath our feet sounded angry. I wanted to apologize again, but the more I ruminated on the situation, the more I felt justified in my actions. I was working after all, and never once had I been upset with Kelly when she got stuck at the coffee shop.

  “You could have called the house,” I said. “You could have hung out with us.”

  I spent so much time at the coffee shop during Kelly’s shifts I was practically a fixture there. I didn’t see any reason why Kelly couldn’t do the same.

  “I don’t want to hang out with Sam, Mallory,” she said over her shoulder. “I want to hang out with you.”

  I huffed at her response, trying to keep my cool. I knew this wasn’t about me, or about being late. It was about Sam, and I was growing fed up with her unwarranted spite toward him. He had never been anything less than polite to her. And besides that, she could have tried harder to be kind toward him, if only for my sake.

  “Maybe if you got a chance to know him, you wouldn’t hate him so much,” I said.

  Kelly stopped walking and turned to me. Her eyes were wide.

  “Mallory, for heaven’s sake, this isn’t about Sam.” She looked off into the distance, her jaw set. “I don’t want to talk about it yet but I just need you right now, okay?”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. It was always something. Was she worried about her fall schedule again? Most of the time, I could deal with her neuroses, her constant need for control. But I was beginning to feel like I was giving more than my fair share in our friendship. I was moving across the country for her. What else could she want? This was my last summer here, too, and despite what she seemed to think, I had my own ideas about how I wanted to spend it.

  “Just please don’t forget next time,” she said.

  I shrugged, not wanting to fight. “Fine,” I said.

  She exhaled, and after she calmed down, she nodded for me to walk beside her.

  “C’mon,” she said. And I did.

  * * *

  As June crept into July, the dry heat seemed to increase in correlation with my feelings for Sam. We spent most of every day together and staying overnight became Sam’s Friday night routine. And because Dad and Sam’s friendship continued to grow, he often stayed Saturday nights, too. Some weekends Sam would take a horseback ride with me, while others he would accompany Dad on a supply run to Bakersfield. I went with them whenever I could, attesting to Kelly that it was part of my job, though technically I wasn’t getting paid for it. Kelly saw right through my excuses, of course, but as the tasting room construction neared completion, and along with it Sam’s time here, I found myself caring less and less about what Kelly thought of my feelings for Sam. My subconscious longing to soak up every minute with him commanded my thoughts, words, and actions. It wasn’t logical, it was pure instinct.

  In Bakersfield, between pickups for hay, horse food, new wooden posts, and netting, we would have lunch or stop by a thrift store where I would help Sam pick out more suitable clothes for painting and horseback riding—T-shirts designed by companies instead of people, and classic Levis that fit him like sin. I found a pair of cute lace-up work boots that Dad bought me as an early birthday present, which became my new wardrobe staple, my riding boots inadvertently shoved to the back of my closet.

  And at night, after Dad and Sam had their requisite glasses of wine—Dad resuming his customary single glass, and Sam more than making up for it—I walked Sam to the guest house and we talked until the early hours of the morning, my chair pulled close to his side of the bed.

  We talked about who we were in high school—him, the debate team captain and the head of the school newspaper; me, the girl who spent too much time staring out the window and getting good grades only because Kelly would kick my chair to bring me back to reality. We shared our favorite movies, having none in common but promising to try at least one or two of each other’s top three. And I made him tell me, in painstaking detail, about his mountaineering plans—where he would go, for how long, and what he wanted to see. In all the vivid pictures he painted, I imagined myself there. Just a daydream, I told myself, but anytime he touched me, my imagination became clearer.

  It was mostly small talk but I felt like I was finally getting to know the real Sam—the Sam he kept to himself, hidden behind Italian wool and chrome. It was in the little details that he came to life, and as I uncovered them, I saw how they played out in our everyday interactions—the subtle movie quotes, the way I would sometimes catch him humming his favorite songs at sunset when he thought no one was listening, the smile he tried to hide whenever Dad complimented his work.

  I tried not to notice that we never talked about his family, his homelife, or whether he had anyone waiting for him when he returned.

  In the mornings, we sat in companionable silence on the porch with our coffees, sweetened with cream and sugar the way he liked it. He was always pensive in the morning a
nd I respected his space, content to revel in his physical presence.

  With the first week of August came an irrepressible heat, a buzz around the upcoming harvest, and the urgency to inaugurate the tasting room. It had come together almost overnight once the construction began. Concrete, windows, rooms, walls, doors, electrical, lighting. We watched the space transform before our eyes.

  There was also the growing tension of what might happen with Sam before I left for Columbia in a few weeks, but thankfully, with the distraction of the upcoming events, I didn’t have time to worry about it.

  The busyness around the vineyard meant that the Summer Bucket List was put on the back burner. Kelly and I hadn’t officially discussed it, but I had to reschedule our dates so often that eventually she stopped asking and I pretended not to notice. It was easier than having to see the look on her face when I told her I couldn’t get away from the tasting room. But because we couldn’t spend as much time on our own, she got over her resentment of Sam enough to spend more time at the vineyard with us, and I enjoyed that even more.

  One night, we all gathered in the tasting room—Dad, Sam, Kelly, and me—to put on the first coat of paint. Sam and I had chosen a color called Old Map that was somewhere between gray and cream and added to the rustic look we were going for. Nineties country blared on the CD player and we all donned our ragged clothes as we took our rollers to the freshly textured walls.

  Kelly and I sang along to every word, dancing as we worked, and I kept glancing at Sam, who managed to look even cuter in the clothes we’d gotten him at the thrift store than he did in his suits. Dad and Sam worked with a wineglass in their free hand and whenever Sam caught me looking at him, he grinned. Mom joined us late in the evening after work, not painting, but stealing a glass of wine and laughing as she judged which of us had more paint on ourselves than the wall. It was one of those perfect nights I knew I would always remember, even as it was happening.

  We finished the final coat just before nine. Dad let us off the hook for cleaning up until the next morning and left me in charge of getting Kelly home. She’d had to leave her car at the coffee shop when it wouldn’t start and Dad picked her up, promising to look at it in the morning.

  After Dad followed Mom inside for the night, Sam crossed his paint-covered arms across his chest and said, “I’m starving. Is there anywhere we can get some food at this hour?”

  Kelly had to get back to her mom and her bed for her early shift the next morning so we all piled in next to each other in the cab of Dad’s truck. Sam next to me so Kelly could get out first. I tried not to look at him as I drove but I was overwhelmingly aware of the contact of his leg against mine. When Kelly got out of the truck in front of her house, her warning glance was clear. I knew she didn’t trust me alone with Sam, but I’d already put it out of my mind by the time we made it back to the main road.

  “So where are you taking me, Mallory Victoria?” Sam asked. He’d slid closer to the door once Kelly got out of the truck. But not all the way over.

  “You’ll see,” I said.

  I took Sam to a local Mexican dive that was popular for a quick lunch during high school and, I felt certain, was the opposite of the five-star cuisine and stuffy maître d’s he was used to. His reaction confirmed my suspicions.

  We sat on the patio, eating with our hands from the squeaky Styrofoam containers, hot sauce dripping from our chins, but I didn’t taste a single bite. All my senses were focused on watching him, intoxicated by the way he came alive in this foreign environment and the way he looked at me for introducing him to it. I wasn’t out on this limb on my own. I was sure of it.

  “Should I take you to your hotel?” I asked when we finished.

  Though I wanted Sam to stay—I always wanted him to stay—another part of me was curious about the life he led the rest of the week. Was he messy? Was he organized? Did he make the bed himself or let someone else do it?

  “No. I’m going to need my car in the morning.”

  “Okay,” I said, flushing with satisfaction.

  Sam and I rode back to the house with the windows down. Sam found a Journey song on the radio and sang it off-key, both of us laughing the whole time. I watched him, the way he smiled, the way the wind blew his curls around his eyes, and I knew my heart never had a chance. Not with Sam. And I didn’t care. I was willing to accept whatever consequences came, but what I couldn’t accept was letting him leave in a few weeks, never knowing if we could have had something, even if only for a moment.

  When we got to the vineyard, Sam challenged me to a race to the guest house, both of us laughing and sliding on the gravel all the way there. I slammed against the door first, panting for breath. Sam, having lost, staggered up next to me. Once I got the door open, he chased me inside, grabbed me around the waist, and fell back onto the bed with me in his arms.

  I stiffened in shock—he’d never been so forward about touching me, always giving me a respectful amount of space. I didn’t want to move and scare him back into politeness. I wanted his hands on me and more.

  I gauged his expression. I could barely make out his features in the light of the moon coming in through the windows—we’d run right past the lights—but I could see his smile hadn’t wavered.

  He kicked off his shoes. When I didn’t immediately do the same, he pulled my foot onto his lap and unlaced my boot, tossing it onto the floor. He held my gaze as he unlaced the second. When he fell back onto the bed, he rolled onto his side, his head propped on his hand.

  Deciding he wasn’t going to pull away from me, I stayed close to him.

  “I forgot what it felt like to... I don’t know, relax,” he said with a laugh. “God, that’s embarrassing to admit. That must sound insane.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know if he could see it.

  “It’s not crazy. I think that’s how it is for most people.”

  “That’s not how I want it to be for me.”

  “Then why don’t you do it more often?”

  Sam ran his hand across the blanket between us, his fingers long and smooth. “I guess I forgot how. Or maybe I didn’t realize I wasn’t. Does that make any sense?” he asked, laughing. “This is why I have to go to Colorado. Get away from everything.”

  As much as he talked about the mountains, and his goals for “bagging” them, the trip didn’t sound relaxing. It sounded like running away. But what from, I still wasn’t sure.

  “I wish I could go,” I said, and the moment the words were out of my mouth, I felt their truth. Not just because I wanted more time with Sam, but because I wanted to taste that kind of freedom. Maybe for most eighteen-year-olds going away for college was enough. But not for me. I needed to be outside. I needed to feel the sun on my eyelids, nature so close we became one.

  Maybe I wanted to run away, too.

  But I couldn’t do that to Kelly. I couldn’t abandon her plans.

  “You can,” he said.

  I couldn’t find the words to answer him, because all my focus was on the feel of his breath dancing across my cheeks, his mouth so close to mine. I knew exactly how to loosen him up, but I didn’t know if I was brave enough to do it.

  I’d never been the one to kiss a guy, always letting them make the first move. And it was Sam. He could kiss anyone, and I was no one. But I was known for jumping into things before thinking it through and I couldn’t think of a reason to change now.

  I leaned infinitesimally closer. Sam’s breath stopped, but he didn’t move away. I moved closer again, my heart beating so hard my entire body vibrated in anticipation. He was still. Finally, I leaned close enough that our noses brushed, and I could feel the warmth of his body so near to mine. Our breaths mingled together, and our lips tickled each other so softly.

  I waited.

  And then, gently, Sam pushed his lips to mine, completing the kiss and setting my soul on fire. His hand slid over
my hip and pulled me closer. I wanted to put my fingers in his hair, but I was so nervous I didn’t move. Instead, I reveled in the sensations of him and of knowing I wasn’t alone in my feelings. The most beautiful man I’d ever seen was kissing me.

  When he finally pulled away, he pressed his forehead to mine and let out a soft chuckle.

  “Mallory Victoria,” he said on a breath, “you are trouble.”

  The corners of my mouth tugged upward. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”

  But underneath my bravado, a sadness pooled in my gut, knowing I wouldn’t share this experience with Kelly. We’d shared everything with each other until now, but I wouldn’t allow her to take this moment from me. It was too fragile, too precious. The realization that our friendship was changing already was confusing and painful enough.

  Thankfully, Sam kissed me again.

  SEVENTEEN

  NOW

  On Thursday, Tyler and I walk the horses back to the stables after our morning run. It amazes me that after ten years away, I can so quickly fall back into my old routines. Yet after a week and a half away from New York, I’m starting to have a hard time picturing my life there. Waking up to Tyler and Midnight just feels right.

  As Tyler and I brush the horses and chat about our plans for the day, a soft voice echoes across the breezeway. Kelly’s voice. I intended to visit her today and tell her about my plans to stay but I’m glad she beat me to it. Her behavior since Shannon passed has been worrisome.

  “Oh,” she says when she sees me. “I wasn’t expecting...” She trails off.

  Me to stay. I fill in the blank. I try not to take offense at that. After all, I do have work obligations. But she’s more important. Most people underestimate the necessity of good friends in life, and for a brief period in time, I was one of those people. I fell for the idea that being desired was more important than being loved. I learned quickly how wrong I was.