“It really meant something to me that she was there,” he goes on. “My family didn’t support my career in business the way I wished they would. I don’t blame my mom but I couldn’t be caught up in their games anymore. With Hannah there... Well, she was like family. But that night, something changed between us.”
We ride in silence for a few minutes as I process this. He still speaks about her with a reverence, the way I find myself talking about him. Maybe no one entirely gets over their first love.
“What happened?” I ask.
“We were together for two years,” he says. “We moved in together, supported each other in starting our careers. And even though my dad didn’t approve of my work, we formed a sort of truce over his approval of my relationship with her. After two years, getting engaged felt like the right step. But the minute I put that ring on her finger, I wanted to call my dad and that’s when I realized how far down the wrong path I’d gotten. I didn’t want to call him because I was excited to share the happy news, but because I wanted his approval. It hit me then that it wasn’t Hannah I was in a relationship with. Not really.”
I nod. “That must have been really hard for you,” I say.
Sam considers it, passing the reins between his hands. Another cloud consumes the sun, dropping the temperature. A chill runs down my spine.
“I thought he would cut me out of his life when I broke it off with her, which I shouldn’t have let sway my decisions. But I did. I thought I had broken free from him when I chose business school over med school,” he says. “But at the first hint of praise from him, I fell right back into old patterns.”
“No one could blame you.”
“Hannah does. She hates me. Thankfully it didn’t ruin the friendship between our parents. She’s married to someone else now. Just had her second kid.”
“Wow,” I say. I know a lot of people are married with kids before thirty but I don’t personally know anyone who is. We’re all still too focused on our careers. But that could have just as easily been Sam. He could be a father by now. I could have never met him. “Do you ever regret your decision?”
“I used to,” he says. “There was a lot to love about her. She was kind and great with my family. She never questioned me. Always let me follow whatever whim I got into my head and went along with it.”
“But?” I ask. I hang on to that but.
“That’s not what I wanted for the rest of my life. I don’t think it was what I needed. It was too easy.”
I laugh. Only Sam would say something like that.
“Isn’t easy good?” I ask. “Isn’t that what people strive for?”
Sam chuckles softly, seemingly at himself. “I guess I’ve always liked a challenge.”
Is that what I am to him? A challenge to overcome? Someone his father wouldn’t approve of, who he could have all to himself?
I urge Midnight a little farther ahead, hoping he won’t see the places I’m still rubbed raw.
“What about you?” he asks. “Anything serious?”
“Don’t change the subject,” I say. “How old are you now?”
I hear the smile in his voice when he says, “We’re pulling the age card out again, are we?”
“You started it.”
Sam pulls Tiramisu’s lead to draw her closer to me until our knees are rubbing side by side.
“Thirty-four,” he says. “Not exactly an old man.”
“Isn’t it about time to start thinking about settling down, though? Wouldn’t it be better to find something easy?”
In essence, not me. Not someone who still has so many untapped desires bubbling under the surface, so many things still to figure out.
“Which answer would you rather hear?” he asks me, his voice low.
“My opinion is irrelevant,” I say, my gaze on Midnight’s saddle, but the words are laced with wanting. I’ve always wanted my words to matter to Sam.
“Don’t ever write off your opinion, Mallory,” he says.
I don’t know if he means specifically about his love life or in general, but either way, my stomach flutters. That’s the thing with Sam. He’s always been able to either make me feel like the most important person in the world, or like I don’t exist. But never in between.
“The truth, Sam,” I say. “I’ve only ever wanted the truth. No matter how painful it might be to hear.”
Sam nods solemnly. “We’re both a little too old to play games, aren’t we?”
“Right,” I breathe. As much as I’ve castigated him for not being open with me, I can’t deny how much I’ve struggled to be straightforward with him. I never said out loud how much I cared about him. I never asked in words how he felt about me. I was too afraid of what his response would be to either confession.
He holds his hand out to me and I stare at it, knowing exactly what he’s asking of me. I look to his eyes, which are relaxed, easy; where we go from here is entirely up to me.
I take a shaky breath and then I take his hand. Maybe we don’t need words after all.
* * *
On Sunday morning, I wake up to Kelly in my bed. Some locals threw a back-road bonfire last night and Kelly had invited me to go with her, but it was mostly people we went to school with, who are the one thing I don’t miss about leaving Paso. Besides, I really needed to get some work done on the brochure.
Kelly came over last night to get ready. She wore the dress she’d gotten from the thrift store and somehow it looked even shorter than before. I didn’t mention my concern over her change in behavior or her seeming lack of emotional processing of her mother’s death. She could be doing it on her own, in the many hours she spends alone in their house. But the dress she wore implied she wasn’t, along with her real motive for attending the party—Kyle was in town and she was lonely.
Kelly is sprawled out next to me in her little black dress, her heels dropped off the side of the bed like they came off sometime during the night. She drools on my pillow and the bedroom window is open, a dry breeze wafting through the room. I can’t imagine the reason for that and decide I don’t want to know.
I nudge Kelly until she stirs. “Morning, sunshine.”
She groans a response.
“Plans didn’t work out as you hoped?” I ask, stifling my laughter.
She groans again.
After I drag Kelly out of my bed, offering her a towel to wash her face and a spare toothbrush to clean up, I decide we should check off the next item on our bucket list. Kelly, hungover and smelling like smoke, disagrees but once she raids my closet for activewear, she meets me on the porch. Sweat has beaded at the back of my neck and underneath my sports bra while I waited, as well as between my skin and the backpack I have tightly strapped on.
I hand Kelly a water bottle and a hat.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“You’re going to need to stay hydrated. And the hat is to keep the sun off your face.”
Kelly pulls the hat on over her braid and, after a few failed attempts to find a comfortable place for the water bottle, clips it to her waistband.
“I don’t know if I like the sound of this. Or the look of that backpack. Just how long are we going to be gone?”
“Hey, you already agreed to it. It’s on the list.”
“Then I agreed to it ten years ago.”
“Just like I agreed to smoking,” I say. “You said the list is sacred, and damn it, we’re going to treat it that way.” It’s surprisingly fun to have the tables turned, me being the responsible one.
“You are way too perky this morning,” she complains, squinting through her headache.
I start in the direction of the stables.
Kelly reluctantly follows me to my favorite trail, which is less private since Tyler started running trail rides through the property again. If we had more time I would have resear
ched a better trail nearby for a hike, but for today, this is adventure enough. I’ve rarely placed my feet directly on it and it’s stunning, to see it from this angle, eight feet lower. It feels new all over again.
Kelly is less enchanted.
“I never would have chosen this voluntarily,” she says, already panting.
“And yet, you wrote it on there. The thing is entirely in your handwriting.”
Between breaths, she says, “You can be very persuasive.”
I laugh. “Nothing better for a hangover than to sweat it out,” I say. “Besides, we’ve been hiking for all of five minutes. I hiked for an entire week once and it was the best week of my life.”
“There’s something wrong with you,” she says, but I find her snark humorous.
“It can’t be that surprising to you,” I say. “You know about that time I tried to run away, right?”
It was shortly after we moved to the vineyard but before I met Kelly. I was angry at my dad for uprooting our lives, as any seven-year-old would be, and I decided that if Dad was unwilling to return to Chicago, I would go myself. I packed my rolling suitcase, walked out the back door, and planned to hoof it across the five states between here and there. I never made it off the grounds, as many acres as the vineyard covers. I got lost among the vines, but that didn’t stop me from walking until my legs finally gave out. My parents assumed I kept walking to try to find my way back to the house, but Kelly knows the truth—I walked to see what else I might discover. The fact that I had nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep, and that my parents might be worried sick never crossed my mind.
“I remember,” she says. “Your parents have retold the story a thousand times.”
We both laugh because to my parents, that story is the epitome of what it was like to raise their roaming daughter—the result of having parents who always made me feel loved and safe, I suppose. That night when Dad found me, instead of being angry at me, he fished my blanket out of my suitcase, spread it out on the ground, and we lay on it together, staring up at the stars in the twilight sky. He didn’t once ask me if I wanted to go back, only getting up once I was tired enough that I suggested it myself.
“I guess I never got over my tendency to drift,” I admit.
“You made it through college,” she says encouragingly. “I have to admit, there were times I had my doubts.”
I might be offended by the comment if it were coming from anyone but Kelly, but she is my mirror. There’s no hiding from her honesty, and while it can be uncomfortable at times—frustrating, even—that’s what I count on her for. That’s why I need her in my life.
I sigh. “There were times I had my doubts, too. That’s why I had to...take some breaks here and there.”
“Hiking,” she says.
“Hiking. The North Country Trail. It goes south from the New York–Pennsylvania border and wraps around the Great Lakes. I made it sixty-six miles. I only had a week off work and I wasn’t used to carrying the heavy pack.”
“Only,” Kelly deadpans. She doesn’t know about the plans Sam and I discussed and I’m too embarrassed to admit them, that I fell for his smooth talk. There are some things we don’t even tell our closest friends. Some shame we carry alone.
“I could have walked on to the end,” I say. “I could have never come back.”
Kelly and I hike the rest of the way to the pond, evading piles of horse manure, and to my satisfaction, as we set our stuff down on the sandy shore, Kelly looks flushed but gratified.
I open the backpack and pull out the blanket I shoved into the bottom, spreading it out for us to sit on. I also pull out the sparkling waters, mixed berries, and protein bars I got from the store last night.
“Look at this,” Kelly says, impressed.
We sit next to each other and sip from our waters as we watch the sun glinting across the water.
“So why this bucket list goal?” Kelly asks me. “Why today?”
I open the container of berries and offer her one. She takes a raspberry.
“I thought you might want to get away,” I say. “It seemed like you wanted to escape last night.”
“You have no idea.”
“Do I have anything to worry about?” I ask. The scent of nicotine still covers her skin, something I never would have thought Kelly capable of. Everyone responds differently to death but this behavior deviates so drastically from the careful choices Kelly has always made. I would hate to see her get into trouble.
“I want to be different,” she says, staring out at the water. “I can’t be the same.”
I nod. I know exactly what she means.
“I know it’s soon,” I say, “but have you thought about what you want to do?”
Kelly takes one of the protein bars and opens it as she ponders the question.
“You know, for as much time as I spent during our teen years planning the future, I don’t think I ever really let myself believe the day would come.”
I take a slow breath. I have to remind myself I’ve forgiven Kelly for lying to me.
“And the day I seriously thought about it...” The day she asked me if she could go with me, I realize.
“Kelly, you can’t feel guilty about that,” I say, moving closer to her. Tears form in her eyes and her bottom lip puffs out like a child’s.
“I was going to leave her when she needed me the most,” she says.
“You couldn’t have known that. You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
She wipes roughly at her eyes. I rub her back in a sad attempt to soothe her.
“She wanted you to go,” I add.
“Go where?” she asks bitterly. “Those plans were fantasies. And even now, when I try to picture a future without my mom in it, without that piece of shit house we live in, outside this small town, it’s like it doesn’t compute. Like I’m too afraid to hope for anything because I know I can’t have it.”
“But you can,” I’m quick to say. “Maybe you don’t have to go far. Your mom said you have family in LA. There are a lot of career opportunities in LA.”
Maybe I could go to LA, too. I could find a job there, and I’d be close enough to home to visit more often. I’d be trading one city for another but for Kelly, it might be worth it.
“I don’t know,” Kelly says. “Maybe. I have no idea how much it would cost to make the move.” After a pause: “Shit. Without Mom’s disability checks coming in, I might not even be able to afford to stay. I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Kelly buries her face in her hands. I wrap my arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t worry about that right now,” I say. “Whatever you decide to do, we’ll figure it out.”
She rubs her hands down her face and takes a deep breath, then picks through the berries, her expression stiff.
“I finally have the freedom I’ve always wanted,” she muses. “So why do I feel so guilty?”
* * *
Tyler pulls into the parking lot just as Kelly is leaving. I give a final wave to Kelly as Tyler hops out of his truck, swinging his keys around his index finger. He wears a day’s worth of strawberry stubble and the way he meanders in my direction in his fitted jeans and white T-shirt, he looks more cowboy than ever. I attempt to make a joke, but the words don’t reach my lips.
“What are you up to?” he asks.
“Showering, probably,” I say, motioning to my sweaty hiking clothes. “Unless you want to take a ride.”
“I have some time,” he says.
But when I turn toward the stables, Tyler grabs my hand and pulls me in the direction of his truck instead.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“I have a better idea,” is his only response. He hops in and I get in on the passenger side.
“Where are you taking me, cowboy?” I ask.
“You’ll
see.”
He fires up the engine and bolts down the dirt road, bouncing us all over the dusty cab, a grin from ear to ear. I grip the handle above the door, shaking my head at his antics but laughing nonetheless.
On the main road, the ride levels out and Tyler turns south, away from the heart of the town, leaving me even more puzzled. But I trust Tyler so I relax and let him take me wherever he wants to go.
“Oh,” he says. “I have something for you.”
Tyler leans across me to open the glove box. He reaches inside and pulls out a plastic toy horse. He’s sheepish when he hands it to me.
“I came across this and thought you might like it.”
I laugh. It’s such a random gift when Tyler and I have never been ones to exchange gifts in the first place. It reminds me of the toy horses I used to play with in my dad’s office. And as I look it over, I realize the markings are almost exactly the same as Midnight’s. Tyler acts nonchalant, trying to pass it off as an aloof gesture, but I can tell he put some thought into it.
“This is really thoughtful,” I say.
“I thought you could put it on your desk or something.”
I squeeze his arm. “Thank you.”
Tyler clears his throat. “You’re welcome.” He reaches over again and closes the glove box.
After a short drive out of town, Tyler makes a left turn down a long driveway with an overhead sign that reads West Wind Farms. The property expands for acres in every direction, but instead of grapevines, it’s mostly grass, the occasional tree, and, as the name implies, the breeze that brings it all to life. Ahead there are several log-cabin-looking buildings—a house and a couple of others that must be barns or some kind of storage.
“What’s this?” I ask him.
“You’ll see,” he says.
Three dogs surround us as we approach the buildings. I hold my breath as Tyler navigates them, but they move around the car intuitively, used to farm life. Tyler pulls into a lot and shuts off the engine.
“My friend owns the place,” Tyler says. “His name is Mick. Do you know him?”
Midnight at the Wandering Vineyard Page 23
