My heart melted just a bit more. “It’s not ridiculous,” I said. “Unexpected, but not ridiculous.”
Martial was barely out of the parking lot when Olivier shouted, “Martial! You’re going too fast! I’m going to be sick!”
Martial turned around to Franck and me. “Please don’t let him puke in my car. I’m still paying for it. You can never get that smell out of the upholstery.”
I sniffed. I never paid that much attention to cars, but come to think of it, this one did still have that new car smell.
“You’re not really going to be sick, Olivier,” Franck patted his shoulder and talked to him in soothing tones. “Right? Or at least you’ll wait until we get you home.”
Martial had turned onto the road through the vineyards and was gaining speed.
“Too fast!” Olivier shouted. “You’re going too fast! Slow down!”
“Mon dieu,” Martial muttered but obligingly lowered his speed. “I could walk faster than this.”
“I’m going to be sick.” Olivier declared in penetrating tones. He performed a dry heave that left none of us in doubt as to the seriousness of his assertion.
Martial stopped the car. Franck, with lightening speed, opened the car door and pushed the top half of Olivier’s body out so that his head was hanging over the road. Olivier upchucked several times.
“Poor guy,” I murmured.
“Can you hold him here?” Franck asked me, indicating the belt loop on Olivier’s jeans. I grabbed on and held him so that he didn’t topple out of the car into his own vomit.
Franck leapt out and knelt down in front of him, to the side of the spray. We gave him time to finish.
“You feel better now mon vieux?” Franck asked, patting his back.
“Noooooooooon,” Olivier groaned.
“You must,” Franck said. “You can’t have anything left in your stomach. It’s all here beside me on the road. The winemaker who owns these vines is going to be thrilled tomorrow morning when he sees the present you left him.”
“At least he chose le Corton Charlemage,” said Martial from the front seat. “No mere appellation controlée for Olivier’s vomit. He only vomits in Grand Cru vineyards. Now that’s class.”
We all started to laugh, even Olivier.
Franck righted his friend again, got back in the car, and closed the door behind him.
“We’re good?” Martial asked.
“Drive on, chauffeur!” Franck tapped the back of Martial’s seat. “Homeward!”
Martial had not even been driving for a minute when Olivier began groaning again. “Tooooooo fast…slow down! I’m going to be sick again.”
We repeated the scenario, all of us marveling that Olivier had anything left to throw up.
Every time we started driving again Olivier would begin to gag and yell at Martial for driving too fast. Franck and Martial conferred.
“I don’t know what to do. We’re never going to get him home this way,” Martial said. “And it’s not exactly like one of us can carry him on our backs over the vineyards.”
Franck rubbed his chin. “I may have an idea.”
“I’m listening,” said Martial.
“What if Laura and I hold him in the backseat so that his head is out of the car. You will have to drive very slowly. I’ll hold his door slightly ajar for his head to fit through, and Laura will hang on to his belt so that he doesn’t fall out.
Martial glanced back at Olivier skeptically, but then shrugged. “I can’t think of anything better.”
We set ourselves up with Olivier in the backseat exactly as Franck had described. I clung to Olivier’s worn leather belt with an iron grip. I was not going to let him fall out.
Franck had the trickier job of holding the door open just enough so that it didn’t hit the vineyards on the side of the road, but also wide enough so that Olivier’s head could be outside and not be slammed between the door and the side of the car.
It seemed to take forever to get to Olivier’s house in Villers-la-Faye with Martial driving roughly the same pace as an escargot de Bourgogne. If we tried to speed up at all, Olivier would begin shouting again.
I stayed in the car while Martial and Franck helped Olivier into his parents’ house and handed him off to his mother—who I could see in the yellow porch light was an imposing Burgundian countrywoman in a spangled floral dressing gown. There was a decidedly resigned expression on her broad countenance.
Martial and Franck walked back to the car laughing.
“Can I drive you home?” Martial asked us.
“I have to go back to Sandrine’s,” I said. Franck and I would have only a few hours left together the next day before he’d leave for Dijon for another week. Time seemed so fleeting, and so precious. Dammit. Why had we not met earlier? But then, we could have so easily not met at all.
“Why don’t you stay at my house?” Franck asked.
The suggestion gave me the equivalent of an electric shock. “I can’t. Sandrine and her parents would be worried.”
“No they wouldn’t,” Martial said. “They’ve known Franck and his family forever. They know who you’re with and where you are. They’re not expecting you back tonight. Trust me.”
“If the Lacanches found out they would…well, I don’t know what they would do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.” Staying over at Franck’s house would definitely constitute breaking the “No Dating” rule, and in a rather spectacular fashion too. If the Lacanche’s found out, the entire Ursus club would find out. That could spell disaster.
“What happens in Villers, stays in Villers,” Martial assured me.
“It’s true.” Franck took my hand. He gestured to Olivier’s house, where the porch light flickered off. “That wasn’t exactly how I planned on spending this evening with you. Let me make up for it.”
We did have only four months together. Still, I was scared. Franck was older and more experienced. I wasn’t ready for things to move too fast. What did twenty-three-year old men expect? I had no clue.
Franck caressed my palm with his thumb. “I have to go back to Dijon tomorrow. Please. You’ll be safe with me, I promise.”
“OK,” I said, listening to my heart and ignoring my head.
“Let’s walk back to my place,” Franck said. “It’s only five minutes from here.”
I gave Martial les bises, and Franck did as well.
“Thanks for your help Laura,” Martial said. “That was quite the initiation into our little tribe. I’m surprised you didn’t run away screaming.”
“There are compensations.” My eyes slid over to Franck, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Besides, it’s going to make a funny story. Think of how much you can tease Olivier about it in the years to come.”
“Now there is a happy thought.” Martial ducked back in his car, waved, and drove off.
Franck interlaced his fingers in mine. We began walking through the village, which was lit only by the soft light of the street lamps. The air was mild but fresh. It smelled of new beginnings.
“You really didn’t mind that whole thing with Olivier?” Franck asked
“When a friend is in trouble, what else can you do but help them?”
Franck studied my face. “Do you mean that?”
“Of course. Why?”
“It’s just that…my old girlfriend wouldn’t have agreed. She would have gotten angry with me about it and sulked for days.”
Ah. So here it is. The infamous ex-girlfriend. “Stéphanie mentioned her to me. She said you went through a hard time after you broke up.”
“Stéphanie shouldn’t talk so much,” Franck said mildly. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Yes, I did have a hard time, but I think it was more about other things I needed to work through. The fact that Juliette and I broke up…that was just the catalyst.”
“Apparently you shut yourself in your bedroom and tried to overdose on philosophy.”
Franck looked slightly abashed, but amused. “T
hat’s a good way to put it. I was young and naïve.”
“Less than a year ago?”
“Yes.”
“Somehow, I just can’t picture you ever being that naïve.”
He gave me a wolfish look that made me doubt the wisdom of agreeing to spend the night with him. “You may be right about that.”
We were walking in front of the church, which I knew was at the top of his street. I felt like I was teetering at the apex of a steep roller coaster.
“Do you miss Canada?” Franck asked, as though sensing my need for distraction.
“Not as much as I thought I would. I miss the ocean though. I was born and brought up on the tip of an island. We vacationed on a different island. Not being able to go down to the beach when the urge strikes me still feels unnatural—as if I’ve had an arm chopped off.”
In front of the bakery, which had its curtains drawn for the night, Franck stopped and pulled me towards him. He leaned down and gave me a gentle kiss.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
I hesitated a moment. “Oui.”
“Why?” he sounded truly surprised.
“I never really had many serious boyfriends before. I’ve never stayed over at anyone’s house.”
“Vraiment? That makes me wonder what is wrong with all the men in Canada.”
I was flattered and a bit shocked at this revolutionary perspective. What if my dearth of boyfriends in high school hadn’t been my fault, after all, but rather because the boys back home were lacking?
“You must have had boys back to your house in Canada,” Franck said.
I chuckled. “My father is a hunter. Any boy who crossed the threshold of our house got a tour of my dad’s extensive gun collection within the first five minutes of being under our roof. That cooled their jets pretty effectively.”
Franck grinned. “Vraiment?”
“Really. I wasn’t allowed to have any boys up in my room at all. That was the house rule, and after seeing my dad’s rifles, no guys were keen to test it.”
“Poor spirited of them,” Franck murmured in my ear. “Still, I’m not going to take advantage of you. I promise.” He thought for a moment more. “I have an idea. Can you wait here a second?”
A fat, gray cat was our only company in the deserted street. Still, I didn’t think there were many bandits or murderers roving the streets of Villers-la-Faye. Waiting here, I decided, was not as scary as going up to Franck’s room with him. “OK.”
Franck gave me a kiss and jogged down the street. I watched as he scaled the stone pillar on one side of his parents’ gate and disappeared over the other side.
It hit me out of the blue that Franck’s gate was the one where I had seen the young people on my way up to that dinner at la Maison des Hautes-Côtes with the Beaupres in late August—which felt like a lifetime ago.
It must have been Stéphanie and Olivier and Franck I saw, and that man following me with his eyes…that had been Franck. Something powerful ran through me just then, some sense that, unbeknownst to me, fate had turned its focus on Franck and me some time ago, all the way back to that Rotary meeting in Victoria when I chose France over Belgium. Suddenly everything took on a cosmic significance that shook me down to my soul.
What was I doing standing out in the silent street of a Burgundian village at—what time was it anyway?
Just then the village church began ringing—a resonant clang marking each hour. The bell beside my room in Nuits-Saint-Georges did this too but, by some miracle, I had learned to sleep through it.
I counted out the twelve rings of the bell. The last slow chime shimmered through me and beyond to the vineyards that surrounded Villers like a magic carpet. Midnight. I shivered, and it wasn’t from the evening chill.
There was a scraping noise and then, stealthy as a cat, Franck re-appeared over the stone pillar. He leapt down onto the road, landing far more gracefully than I ever could. I stared at him in the moonlight. Was this where life meant to bring me all along? To him?
He brandished a set of car keys. “I’m going to take you somewhere for a surprise.”
“It’s midnight.” I forced myself to sound normal. “Are things still open?”
“The place I’m taking you is always open.” He beckoned me behind the house, where his father’s car was parked beside the tall stone wall of the barn that was covered in ivy, just across from Félix’s house.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we climbed in. “I think I should warn you that I’m an extremely curious person.”
“You’re just going to have to wait, ma belle.” Franck smiled at me as he backed up. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
As we whipped through the vineyards, an almost full moon emerged from behind some puffy clouds and illuminated the rolling vineyards.
“Are you glad you were sent to Burgundy?” Franck asked. “Stéphanie told me you could have been sent to Belgium.”
Could he read my mind? The idea sped up my pulse. No. Be rational, Laura. Your imagination is running away with you as usual.
“I’m definitely glad,” I said, reaching over and putting my hand atop his on the gearshift. “Especially now.”
Franck smiled at me between changing gears. A smile that almost stopped my heart. “So am I.”
We went through one stone village, then another, until finally Franck turned the car onto a dirt track that ran under what looked like a tunnel of trees, where the shafts of silver moonlight barely penetrated. I couldn’t decide if it was peaceful or ghostly. It was certainly beautiful. I wanted to ask more questions, of course. Or I could just trust him.
We drove until the road ended. Franck parked the car and got out of his side and came around to open my door.
“How gallant,” I said.
He pulled me to him. “I try.”
“Where—”
“Just let me lead you. Close your eyes.”
I did and tried not to trip over my feet as Franck gently led me to what felt like a large, flat stone surface to sit on. The chill from the stone seeped through my jeans but I could feel Franck’s warmth as he sat down beside me.
“You can open them now.”
In the moonlight—here the trees were behind us, so did not obscure the sky—a burbling river eddied and whorled in front of us. I looked down to where we were sitting on a monolithic slab of rough-cut stone set on two upright slabs of stones. This place was magical.
“Imagine it’s the ocean,” Franck said softly, his arm stealing around my waist. “It’s the closest thing I could think of on short notice anyway—Burgundy is incredibly landlocked—but I thought maybe this would make you miss home a little less.”
My fear vanished and was replaced by awe at the sweetness of Franck’s gesture and the amazement of discovering him. Time seemed suspended by our kisses, but eventually the rock beneath us started to seem cold and hard.
“I think my bed might be more comfortable,” Franck murmured. “Although I do love being here with you.”
I laughed softly. “Let’s go home.” I still didn’t know what was going to happen, but how could I not trust a man who had brought the ocean to Burgundy just for me?
CHAPTER 28
We seemed to be passing through different villages on the way back to Villers-la-Faye, though, with the tricks of the moonlight, it was hard to know for sure.
“I’m just taking a little detour.” Franck looked over and explained. “Are you hungry?”
It had been a long time since those few slices of pizza in Savigny. “Yes.”
“Trés bien.”
Franck pulled the car up to the back of a non-descript stone building in the middle of the village. The only remarkable feature was that the back door was slightly ajar and a light was on inside.
“Who’s up at this time?” I wondered out loud.
Franck winked at me. “You’ll see.” He got out of the car and disappeared inside.
When he re-emerged he was carrying a small
brown paper bag.
“What the—” The moment he opened his door the heavenly smell that preceded him answered the question for me. I couldn’t mistake the scent of freshly baked pain au chocolats. He passed me two.
“I hope you like pain au chocolats,” he said.
“Who doesn’t?”
“Exactly. The baker just took them out of the oven.”
I took a bite. The pastry was flaky and piping hot, and the chocolate inside was melty and gooey. I let out a half groan, half moan of pleasure. I looked up after I had swallowed to see that Franck was watching me with an intent expression.
“What?” I said.
“I’m just wondering if I could make you make that sound with something else. Something that doesn’t involve food.”
I took another bite. “You could try.” I sent him a mischievous look. “But there are few things better than a good pain au chocolat.”
“I’ve never really gotten along with anyone who doesn’t love food.”
“Me neither.”
“I hope that you love other things as well.”
I thought of our time spent at Franck’s Burgundian ‘ocean’. “I would say chances are good.”
“So would I.” Franck watched me with a glint in his eyes.
I waited a few minutes after Franck had started to drive while still managing to finish his pain au chocolat. “How would you know the boulangerie would be open?” I asked.
“That’s the hours they keep. My grandmother used to be the boulangère in Villers.”
“Really? At the bakery across the street from your house?”
Franck nodded. “The house we live in now was my grandfather’s house. That’s how my grandparents met.” He twitched a shoulder. “He liked her bread.”
I chuckled. These past several hours were unlike any evening that I had spent with a man before in my life. The amazing thing was, even though I was reeling from the novelty of Franck, part of me felt comfortable in a way that I had never felt before with anyone—as if all I had to be was myself, and that that was enough. I yawned.
“Do you need your bed princesse?”
Princess. “I guess I do,” I said to him. “What should I call you? Mon prince?”
My Grape Year: (The Grape Series #1) Page 24
