Midnight at the Wandering Vineyard

by Jamie Raintree

  And when I sing the chorus, I wonder if it’s myself I’m singing to. I’ve been waiting for someone to come along who would love me—as a girlfriend, as a friend—but there are so many things I don’t love about myself. I’m so afraid of making a single mistake. Could I find a way to love myself in spite of them, the way I used to? Could I be brave once again?

  When I sing about closing my eyes, mine are wide-open and I catch sight of Sam watching me. I’m transported back to our last summer together. So many times I tried to convince myself that Sam felt something more for me, but then the morning would come and he would be a completely different person. I should have been strong enough to let him go, to accept that he could never feel about me the way I felt about him. But I was too young to recognize a losing battle.

  The look in his eyes now, the way he seems to remember it, too—regret it, even—I wonder, if I do take the chance, will I always be waiting for morning? Will I always wonder when he’ll disappear again?

  If I follow his path, disappearing into my love for Sam, will I ever learn to love myself?

  Movement from behind the bar catches my attention. Tyler’s jaw is tight as I finish the last few lines, his entire body pointed toward our table. Toward Sam.

  When the final note of the song dies out, the bar sounds resume and shatter the moment. No one seems to notice the effect the song has had on my heart. I shove the microphone into the MC’s hand and make my way back to the table, people clapping and patting me on the back the entire way.

  I sit down next to Sam. Kelly has gone off to socialize. I spot her in a dark corner with someone we went to high school with, smoking a cigarette.

  Sam places his hand on the small of my back.

  “I didn’t know you could sing,” he says. I put on a smile, suddenly uneasy. “I’m feeling kind of tired. Want to get out of here?”

  I glance back at Kelly with a frown. “I think that would be best.”

  * * *

  “Have a good night,” Sam tells Kelly as he gets out of the car. I hold the door for him so he can climb out of the back seat. None of us seems to be disappointed in ending the night early, having gotten as much adventure as we could handle.

  “You, too,” Kelly says, putting the car in Reverse.

  Before she can leave, I walk around to the other side and lean into Kelly’s open window. I give her a kiss on the cheek and say into her ear, “Thanks for being open.” When she furrows her brow questioningly, I nod toward Sam.

  She doesn’t say anything, but gives me a knowing smile.

  I step back, and Sam and I wait for her to pull down the drive before he holds a hand out to me. I take it.

  “Thanks for letting Kelly come tonight,” I say. My words all but disappear into the quiet.

  “I’m glad to finally get to know her better,” he says. “I’m glad she’s finally been willing to get to know me.”

  “Me, too,” I say.

  We reach the bottom of the porch and I stop to say good-night. Inside, all the lights are off though it’s not even midnight. My parents are already in bed but I’m far from sleep, too restless to sit alone in my room, debating whether or not it’s time to pack my bags, and where I should take them to.

  My eyes and Sam’s meet, both of us thinking the same thing. Ending the night at the guest house is our tradition. Without a word, I intertwine my fingers in his and allow him to guide me.

  The door is already unlocked. Sam holds it open for me and I walk into the cool space. It’s so dark with the porch light off that I can’t find the light switch as I fumble for it. When the door closes, I can see nothing but I feel Sam’s hands on my hips. He pulls me away from the switch and presses me against the wall next to the door, pushing himself against me. My other senses are heightened, and I feel his breath on my face like a fiery energy, sparking and crackling over my skin.

  There’s a long pause where both of us knows what’s about to happen and neither one of us seems to believe it. I’ve compared every man I’ve ever met, ever dated, ever slept with to Sam with only daydreams to compare it to. So many nights I’ve thought about having his hands on my hips, in my hair. And now I’m in the guest house with Sam again, in the middle of the night, and this time, I’m not a girl. Neither one of us is questioning how we feel about each other. There’s absolutely nothing between us, not even Sam’s walls.

  His lips meet mine, strong and certain. I place my hands against his chest and run them up over his shoulders, the way I’ve longed to do so many times, touching him like I was never brave enough to do before. His hands curl around my back, cradling me in his arms and brushing his lips against mine until I’m weak, hardly able to comprehend that this breathtaking man wants to be with me.

  Just as quickly, he pulls away and disappears into the darkness.

  I wait, trembling, searching. A moment later, light peeks into the room as Sam pulls aside just enough of the curtain to allow moonlight to spill over the white bedding. Then he comes and takes me by the hand, guiding me into its glow.

  Standing before him, I wait for him to kiss me again. He gazes into my eyes, speaking to me without words. He’s never been good at telling me how he feels but in my heart, I know. I let my eyes communicate to him the three words I still can’t quite bring myself to say. We draw the moment out. We’ve both waited too long to allow this night to be over too quickly.

  With my hands shaking, I reach up and unbutton Sam’s shirt, one at a time. I untuck it and then reach beneath, running my hands over his bare stomach, his taut skin. He pulls my shirt over my head, his thumbs tracing the curves of my body as he does, and then drops the shirt to the floor. His expression is more serious than I’ve ever seen it, and I wonder if he’s fantasized about this, too.

  He comes closer to me, wrapping his arms around me to unhook my bra. He pulls it away until only my sensitive skin is pressed against his warm body. I look up at him and the hunger in his eyes tells me there’s no more waiting.

  We both stop running.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THEN

  Kelly walked out of the party, into the thickness of night, and I raced after her.

  The music faded into the background, the crunching of our shoes on the gravel and our heavy breathing replacing it. I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Did you really think I wasn’t going to find out?” she spat out over her shoulder.

  “I didn’t—” I started to say, though I didn’t know how I planned to finish the sentence. She didn’t wait to find out.

  “I mean, really? In a town as small as this? And you had a news crew here, for God’s sake. Do you have any idea how insulting that is?”

  I could hardly keep up with her angry flight toward her car. I panted in exhaustion, and in pain from the damn heels.

  “You found out about it on the news?”

  She stopped then, and I nearly slammed into her.

  “No,” she said, her eyes glowing as she glared at me. “Mallory, I practically live at the vineyard. I’ve known about it the whole time.”

  Her words were a punch to the gut and I found myself too breathless to respond. She had been testing our friendship and I’d failed.

  “You were so careful not to mention it,” she went on. “I was too blown away that you could actually betray me so completely to confront you about it, but I held on to a very little amount of faith that you would get your head out of your ass before the actual day of the party. All the way up to the time it was supposed to start, I waited for your call. I had Jeff on standby to take over my shift so I could be here.”

  She choked over the words, embarrassed by the vulnerability of them. She covered her face and wobbled like she would fall over.

  I reached to catch her fragile body in my arms, shame washing over me like a hurricane. I had done this to the person I loved. “I’m so sorry,” I cried into hair
as she sobbed against my shoulder.

  For a long few minutes, neither of us could catch our breaths enough to speak. Then, finally, Kelly stood tall and looked me in the eyes like she was about to say the most important thing she’d ever said in her life. And she did.

  “My mom is in the hospital, Mallory.”

  “What?” I choked out.

  “I got a call but it wasn’t from you, it was from the EMTs who picked her up off the floor...” She could barely get the words out, and I realized why she was so distraught. “I’ve been calling you for hours but you couldn’t answer because you were too busy in his arms. I’ve been trying to tell you all summer how much worse she’s gotten but you’re so caught up in your own world that you can’t see anything else.”

  She started walking again, leaving me dazed and dizzy with questions.

  “Is she okay?” I called after her.

  “I hope he’s worth it,” she called back.

  “Can I come with you?” I tripped over my own feet as I stumbled after her. She turned on me.

  “It’s too late for that, Mallory,” she cried. “You don’t get it. It’s not just that you weren’t there when I needed you most. It’s that your family is my family, too. At least I thought they were, and you know how much that has meant to me. You know how much I’ve needed that. This place, with you, is the only place I’ve ever felt safe. Or loved the way someone is supposed to be loved. And you cut me out on the most important night of your lives.”

  I covered my mouth to stop the sob rising in my throat. Tears spilled onto my cheeks.

  “I don’t even recognize you anymore.” She motioned to my outfit, the meticulously smoothed style of my hair, the extra makeup, the heels.

  I felt assaulted by her words, mostly because they were true. They broke me in a way I couldn’t fully comprehend in that moment. All I knew was that I felt an overwhelming sense of not being enough. No matter how dressed up and put together I was, Sam still couldn’t show his affection for me in public. No matter how much I tried to be who Kelly needed me to be, my own selfishness got in the way at every turn. And no matter how much I tried to follow my own heart, it always led me away from the people I loved. This summer I’d made the wrong decision at every turn.

  “These were our last few weeks together,” Kelly said, “and you gave them away to someone you don’t even know and probably never will. And you and I will never be these people again. We’ll never be who we are to each other right now. If time wasn’t already going to make that true, you just guaranteed it.”

  “What do you mean, our last few weeks together?” I asked.

  A car drove by, the headlights flashing in our faces. Kelly’s was shiny with tears, distorted almost beyond recognition with anger, and hurt, and grief.

  “Come on, Mallory,” she said. “I was never going to Columbia and we both know it. I can’t leave my mom here alone. She can’t even cook a meal for herself.”

  “But you—”

  “I knew you wouldn’t go if you didn’t think I was going with you.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I was quick to say. “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to, Mallory,” she cries at me. “You have so much potential, it’s sickening. You can’t spend the rest of your life in this small town for me. Not for me, and sure as hell not for him. I won’t let you. You have the chance to make something of yourself. It would be selfish of you to throw it away when I...”

  She looked away, hiding more tears. I tried to go to her but she stepped farther away.

  “That isn’t fair,” I hissed. “This is your dream.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess you’re not the only one who lives in an imaginary world.”

  She walked away then, the broken pieces of my heart in her hands.

  “But hey,” she said as she unlocked her car, “once you get settled in New York, call me if you ever find the Mallory I used to know.”

  I stood, my mind reeling, as she got in and sped past me, like we’d never known each other. Like we never would again.

  When the dust cloud disappeared behind her, I went into the house, ran up to my room, and cried into my pillow. I sobbed until my muscles ached, Kelly’s words playing over and over again in my head. In one moment, my entire future had shifted and it would never be the same. It couldn’t be.

  Once I calmed down, I did the first thing I could think of: I went to Sam. If Kelly wasn’t going to Columbia, I was going hiking with Sam. And never in my life had I wanted to escape so badly. I needed to not feel the pain ripping at my insides. I needed to know I hadn’t thrown away my friendship with Kelly for nothing.

  There was a soft light emanating from the French doors of the guest house and a shadow moving inside.

  I banged on the door, my breathing rapid and my heart pounding. Everything rode on the moment when I would ask Sam to be honest with me, when I would ask him to love me. I’d avoided the question all summer but now that I’d decided, I couldn’t hold it back any longer.

  The door cracked open, and Sam appeared in the cautious space. His dress shirt was unbuttoned and hanging open, revealing his undershirt. His feet were bare and his hair messy and I could picture coming home to this vision every night for the rest of my life.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked, his face pinched in concern.

  “No,” I gasped, no longer able to hide my true feelings, my pain, my desire.

  “Things didn’t go well with Kelly?” he asked.

  I shook my head and waited for him to move aside to let me in.

  But he didn’t.

  There was an awkward pause between us.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  He had always been the one to invite me inside at night, sometimes just shy of begging me to join him, but this time, the door stayed firmly between us and he looked down at his feet, unable to face me.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

  All the air was pulled from my lungs. “Why not?”

  “Mallory...” he beseeched me. “You know this could never happen. I live in Washington. I work for your dad. And you’re young. You have so much life ahead of you. I don’t want to hold you back from that.”

  My chest constricted, and my vision swam. My last possibility was disintegrating before my eyes.

  “But what about hiking?” I asked, my voice feeble. I sounded pathetic, I knew, but I was desperate. If I didn’t have Kelly and I didn’t have Sam, I had nothing.

  Sam’s eyes softened, sympathy in them.

  “I never said we would go together,” he stated, as unaffected as ever. “But you should go. You’ve spent your whole life on this vineyard and there’s so much more out there.”

  I ran through every conversation we’d ever had in my head. Had I really made it all up?

  No, I may have been naive but I wasn’t stupid. He may not have said we’d go hiking together but it was implied in every conversation, every touch, every kiss. And I’d believed him.

  “Screw you,” I said, my anger erasing all my efforts to be the perfect woman for him. I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t even remember why I’d wanted him in the first place. He was arrogant and condescending and a hypocrite. “You’ve been all over the world and you can’t see a good thing when it’s standing right in front of you.”

  I stormed off, never looking back. I held back my tears as I stumbled up the dark stairs and barely made it back into my bed before I cried myself to sleep.

  When I woke up the next day, Sam was gone.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  NOW

  I wake up the next morning with Sam’s arm draped over me. His body is wrapped around mine, his chest against my back, his chin tucked into my shoulder. With my eyes still closed, I recall the night before.

  The depth of his kisses.

  His soul reach
ing out to mine.

  The sheen of sweat between our bodies.

  There wasn’t a single drop of alcohol to blame it on. It was just the two us and everything we ever wanted from each other.

  I open my eyes and marvel at his strong, smooth forearm, the details of his hand, each of his fingernails. I trace them with my lips, using all of my senses to take in every inch of this body I thought I’d never get to touch.

  When my mouth reaches his palm, Sam stirs.

  “Good morning,” I say softly.

  “Indeed it is,” he says.

  I roll over to face him and curl myself into him, placing my ear against his chest. I’m all too aware of my nakedness. It’s still new to me, being close to a man. I’m not used to revealing myself.

  Sam twists his legs into mine to pulls me closer. He kisses the top of my head.

  “Last night was perfect,” he says. “This is perfect.”

  I agree.

  We don’t rush the morning after, breaking the pattern of emotional turbulence and second-guessing. Sam seems to sense I could use the reassurance and he holds me close, running his fingers over the peaks and valleys of my body.

  Eventually, I lock myself in the bathroom and, embarrassed, pee in the house that feels much smaller all of a sudden. I dress in my clothes from last night and we share a cup of coffee at the dining table, not wanting to go outside or open the doors on this fragile moment. We talk about our work and our plans for the day and we savor this time for as long as possible.

  But when I see him eyeing his stacks of paperwork, I know we both have to get back to real life. We have to trust that what we’ve shared is real life, not a caught-up-in-the-moment thing. He walks me to the door and I give him a long, final kiss.

  “You’ll be here later?” I ask him, fingering the collar of his shirt.

  “Mallory.” He grabs my fidgety hand. “I’ll be here,” he says, and I believe him.