by Stacey Jay
Of course, Romeo relished the opportunity to stab me with a prop knife and watch me pretend to die on the floor at his feet. Despite last night’s insistence that he wants my love and forgiveness, I didn’t miss the spark in his eye as he thrust his plastic weapon. A part of him—maybe a large part—still thrills to think of spilling my blood. It’s something I’d be wise to remember next time he comes sniffing around, wanting to “work together.”
“I think you did a great job, Mermaid,” Ben says. “Considering it was your first rehearsal.”
“No, I didn’t. I can’t sing.”
Ben smiles. “You can. Just not as well as you paint.”
I smile back. “Very diplomatic.”
“Maybe Ben should run for Senate instead of my dad. Or maybe he’s as tone-deaf as you are, Ree.”
I poke my head over the seat and stick my tongue out at her, earning a laugh. Gemma reaches over, ruffling my hair. Things have been better between us today. I actually find myself starting to like her. A little.
Too bad that doesn’t make it any easier to imagine Ben spending his life with her. I just want … more for him.
“Now get under the blanket, Benjamin,” Gemma says. “Or you don’t get any wine.”
“I don’t even like wine.”
“You don’t know if you like wine. You’ve never had wine.”
“I have, I—”
“Boone’s Farm doesn’t count, Luna. Under the blanket.”
“Gemma, I—”
Gemma makes a low “huuuaaaah” sound that I think is supposed to be a ninja cry and karate-chops the air near Ben’s face.
Ben laughs. “Dios mio. Fine, crazy woman.” He rolls his eyes but finally pulls the blanket up. Together we scoot down onto the floor behind the front seats as Gemma pulls up to the wrought-iron gate with the swirled S in the center and punches in the family’s entry code.
Beneath the blanket, the air grows warm and filled with the smell of Ben. Even after a long day, he smells amazing. Like the ocean—salty and sweet at the same time—something vaguely food-ish that I can’t put my finger on, and paint. He spent the afternoon finishing up the set while I shadowed Gemma, and didn’t get all the paint off his hands. Specks of brown and white cover his gray T-shirt and freckle his knuckles and forearms.
I fight the strange urge to reach out and scrape the dried drops away with my finger, the way I would if they were on my own skin.
“This is still kind of crazy,” Ben says. “I know we’re underage, but it’s not like we’re going to take that much, right?”
“I know. Her dad is just weird.”
“Her dad is more than weird. He freaks me out.” Ben leans in to whisper the words close to my ear, making sure Gemma won’t hear, and giving me a minor heart attack in the process. I wish I weren’t so aware of his breath on my cheek, his lips so close they brush my hair when he talks. But I am. So aware that I have to fight to keep my breath slow and even. “And I don’t like the way Gemma acts around him. It’s like she’s a different person.”
“Gemma has a few personalities, but you’ll learn to love them all.” I smile, but Ben doesn’t smile back. He just stares at me, a little too intently. I meet his gaze, unable to look away, unable to hide. “What’s wrong?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he whispers back. “It’s just … tight back here.” He looks away, up to where Gemma drives slowly down the winding road.
“Well, we’ll be at the barn soon.”
“I thought Gemma said we were going to a wine cellar?”
“It’s not really a cellar. It’s a big barn where they keep all the wine barrels while they’re aging. They stack them on top of each other in rows. Gemma and I used to play hide-and-seek there when we were little.”
“So you two have been friends since you were kids.”
“Since we were in second grade.”
“Best friends,” Ben says.
“She’s my only friend.”
“No, she’s not.”
I stare down at my knees, confused. Looking into Ben’s eyes is … jarring, and makes me feel less like Ariel than I have all day. “I’m glad. I—”
“Hey! You two!” Gemma reaches back from the front seat and pokes a finger into the blanket, making a dent in our makeshift tent. “We’re almost to the barn. When I say go, crawl out Ben’s side and follow me. I can turn the cameras off on the way in. They don’t record the entrance, just the barrels.”
“Do they really have a problem with people sneaking in and stealing wine?” Ben asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “No one except Gemma, anyway.”
“That’s right. I am a menace to society and my own family, muahaha,” she says, earning a snort from Ben, who obviously assumes I know he and Gemma are in a counseling group together. I wonder if he knows that she told me why he was there, and what he’ll say when I finally have the chance to ask about the violence in his past.
“You ever shoplifted the hooch before, Mermaid?” he asks, nudging me with his elbow, oblivious to the direction of my thoughts.
“No, I’ve always been too nervous.” I shift my weight, trying to keep my right foot from going to sleep. “And I don’t drink very often.”
“Me either,” Ben says. “It doesn’t do much for me.”
“Will you two quit talking about how you don’t like to drink?” Gemma shuts off the car. “You’re killing the buzz I don’t even have yet. We’re here to steal expensive wine, damn it. Now get in there and enjoy yourselves before I have to beat the fun into you.”
Ben smiles and throws off the blanket, his hair wild around his face. I follow him out, slamming the door shut behind me, turning just in time to catch Gemma smoothing his hair behind his ear. The rain still drizzles the way it has all day, but it doesn’t seem to bother them. They linger there together, Ben smiling at Gemma and Gemma smiling back, and for a moment, I see what they could be to each other—friends, lovers, the real deal.
The sight should lift my spirits, give me hope. Instead, my gut twists as Gemma takes Ben’s hand and pulls him into the barn. An image of Ben and me in the dressing-room mirror—his arms around me, my hands fisted in his shirt—flashes on my mental screen, followed closely by a wave of something that feels a lot like envy.
Shameful, forbidden, maybe even deadly envy, so strong I rock on my feet.
What am I doing? How can I even think about feeling something like this? I can’t be jealous of Gemma. I can’t let myself keep thinking of Ben as … as …
My skin flushes hot and then cold, prickling with awareness, almost as if my moment of weakness is being observed. I turn in a circle, scanning the muddy parking area in back of the barn and the drooping vineyards beyond, searching for the source of the crawling sensation. But there’s nothing. Just acres of bare vines with a gray sky above and black clouds moving in along the horizon—a sign of more storms to come.
“Come on, Ree. Move your skinny ass.” Gemma’s hiss comes from behind me, where she and Ben linger inside the metal door that serves as the entrance to the modern, very unbarnlike barn.
I hurry to join them, forcing a laugh when Gemma pinches my arm on my way by. Something like that would normally make Ariel laugh, so I do. It doesn’t matter that I am uncomfortable and ashamed. Ariel would never covet her best friend’s boyfriend—not even for a second—and I am an Ambassador who knows better. Who’s known better from the start. From now on, I vow to remember it isn’t part of my job to feel. My feelings don’t matter.
“What’s up?” Ben asks as we follow Gemma down the first row of barrels. They’re stacked all the way to the ceiling and give off a pleasantly sour, woodsy scent.
“Nothing.” I deliberately move closer to Gemma. “Just trying to figure out if that storm is coming our way.”
“It is. My brother texted me during practice and told me to come straight home after,” Ben said. “There’s supposed to be a tornado watch or something.”
“But Ben didn’t
go home right after practice, did you, Ben?” Gemma turns to run her red fingernails down Ben’s arm. They match her tight red T-shirt and black and red striped dance pants and complete a look that is pure vixen. “What a bad boy you are.”
“There’s a reason I’m a troubled teen on Monday and Wednesday mornings, mija.” He winks at her, but it’s the look he shoots me over his shoulder that makes it hard to swallow. I tell myself it’s because his words make me nervous, make me wonder if he’s more dangerous than he seems. It certainly has nothing to do with the way the expression on his face changes him, gives him an edge, makes him look so … so much more …
“Are all these barrels the same type of wine? Or are they different?” I ask, determined not to even think words that start with S and end in Y.
“All of these are chardonnay, aged in French oak, for anywhere from six months to a year,” Gemma says, putting on her tour guide voice, turning to motion to the barrels on either side of the aisle. “Chardonnay is Sloop Vineyard’s biggest seller and twenty-six percent of the market share nationwide. Sloop also prides itself on its Bordeaux varietals, but you won’t be seeing any of those on this tour.” She cocks her head, flicking her hair around her face like a slightly deranged Barbie doll. “Those wines are aging in barn three near the Sloop family home, where Gemma Sloop’s dickhead father might actually be working today.”
Ben laughs. “You know a lot about this stuff.”
“Dude, I was raised with a wine bottle in my mouth,” Gemma says, dropping the perky persona. “Of course I do.”
“You ever think of doing what your dad does?” he asks. “Making wine for a living?”
“I don’t want to do anything my dad has ever done.” For a moment Gemma’s expression grows dark, almost … haunted. But then the big smile is back and she’s urging us to “Come on!”
She darts to the left, down another row of barrels, toward a line of large upright tanks near the wall. She drops to the smooth concrete near one of the tanks and reaches underneath, pulling out a package of paper cups decorated with cartoon characters that she proceeds to fill from the spigot on the side of the tank.
Ben laughs when Gemma hands him a cup with a green monster on the side. “Nice. Very fancy,” he says, catching my eye, checking to see if I’ve noticed he’s used the word he said he likes to hear me say.
And I have. Of course I have.
I look at the ground, worried that my presence here is a bad idea. It could be my mind playing tricks on me again, but I would almost swear that Ben is flirting. With me. Right in front of his soul mate. Which is so bad that bad can’t even begin to describe it.
“You know, I’m not sure I’m in the mood for wine after all.” I make a face and put a hand on my stomach. “Maybe I’ll just wait in the—”
“Don’t even think about it, Ree.” Gemma presses a cup with a pink monster on it into my hand. “It’s the last semester of senior year. We’re almost free and I want to celebrate with my best friend.”
“Gemma, I—”
“Say ‘yes, ma’am.’ ”
“Really, I don’t—”
“Say it!”
I sigh. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, you’re going to drink, and you’re going to like it.”
So I drink, and Gemma is right—I do like it. The wine is smooth—sweet, but not too sweet—and leaves a buttery taste lingering on my tongue and warmth spreading through my chest.
It’s been years since I’ve had a glass of wine. I haven’t allowed myself the luxury. I can’t afford to have my senses clouded even the slightest bit. But today it seems unavoidable. I take tiny sips—only one for every two of Ben’s and Gemma’s—but by the time we’ve been sitting on the floor for half an hour, I’m getting tipsy. My cheeks feel flushed, my lids droop, and my muscles are looser than I can remember.
I stretch, relishing the tingle in my toes.
“No more school talk,” Gemma says, putting an end to our discussion as to whether or not the physics teacher realizes his nose hair touches his upper lip. “Let’s play a game.”
“I hate games,” Ben says.
“I hate people. And yet, here I am, with both of you,” Gemma counters with a grin. “How about I Never? Or do we want to go old-school with some Truth or Dare?”
“Not Truth or Dare. Please,” I say, some fuzzy memory of Ariel’s reminding me that she hates the game.
“I Never it is, then,” Gemma says. “I’ll start.”
“But I don’t know how to—”
“Shush.” Gemma waves her hand, silencing Ben. “Listen and learn—I’ve never stolen wine from the Sloop vineyard.” She tips her cup in our direction. “Now we all drink because we have. That’s how it works. If you’ve never—you don’t drink. If you have—you do. Easy.” We all take a sip of our wine. I hold it in my mouth for a moment, relishing the taste before letting it slip down my throat with a sigh. “Your turn, Benjamin.”
“Okay … I’ve never …” Ben stretches his legs out toward the center of the circle we’ve formed. It’s darker inside the barn than it is outside, but I can still see the paint on his jeans. It’s a different color than what he used today, a mix of lavender and dark blue that makes me wonder what he was painting the last time he wore them.
I’m suddenly possessed by the longing to see Ben’s work, to see how it compares to Ariel’s, how it compares to the landscapes and portraits I painted as a girl.
“Come on, Ben,” Gemma urges, knocking his shoe with her black dance sneaker, making me jerk my eyes away from his legs. “While we’re still young enough to remember the things we’ve never done.”
Ben smiles. “I’ve never snuck out of my house in the middle of the night.” He drinks, Gemma drinks, and I force my cup to remain in my lap. The thought’s never crossed Ariel’s mind. Where would she sneak off to? In a town like Solvang, when her best friend prefers to spend her evenings with the male of the species? My own exploits out my balcony and down the trellis don’t matter.
“Your turn, Ree.”
“I’ve never …”
“Something good,” Gemma says. “Something even I don’t know.”
I sigh, head spinning pleasantly as I search Ariel’s memories for something a little scandalous but not too intimate, and come up empty. I sense secrets in Ariel, but those are shadowy places in her mind, memories she’s worked so hard to forget even I can’t recall them. I give up, deciding I’ll just have to lend her one of my scandals. “I’ve never hitchhiked after dark.”
Gemma sticks out her tongue. “No fair. I already knew that.” She doesn’t drink. Ben doesn’t either. I feel some small satisfaction in that as I take another sip of chardonnay.
“Okay, my turn again. I’ve never gone skinny-dipping.” Gemma and Ben drink, sharing a knowing smile over the edge of their cups.
I’ve never gone skinny-dipping. Ever. When did they? Did they go together?
Just how far has Gemma and Ben’s relationship progressed? I know Gemma has been with a lot of guys from the private school. I’ve never seen her and Ben do anything but hold hands, but that smile is … telling.
I clear my throat and stare at my knees, refusing to admit that the thought of the two of them happy together in that way isn’t a pleasant one.
“You’ve never ditched school? Not ever?” Ben nudges my tennis shoe, making me blush again. I’ve missed his question. Because I’m too busy thinking about things that are none of my business. They aren’t, really, not unless some flaw in Ben and Gemma’s sex life is responsible for keeping them from a full, auras-glowing-red commitment.
“No, Ree is the perfect daughter,” Gemma says, a hint of meanness in her tone. “She never does anything Mommy doesn’t like, including majoring in what she wants to major in at college.”
“Where are you going next year?” Ben asks.
“Santa Barbara City College School of Nursing,” Gemma supplies in a falsely chipper voice. “Because her mother went there for her n
ursing degree.”
“Where did you want to go?” Ben pulls his legs in to his chest, ignoring Gemma.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t sure. I was thinking about art school,” I say. “But nursing is a good field to get into.”
“If you like blood and germs and wiping other people’s butts.” Gemma snorts. “And doing what Mommy tells you, of course.”
“Leave her alone,” Ben says, heat in his tone. “Some of us have to think about how we’re going to earn a living. Not everyone has a trust fund.”
Silence falls over our corner of the barn. Gemma’s expression hardens before a forced smile works its way across her face. “Totally right. I am so spoiled and out of touch. Forgive me.” She tosses back the rest of her wine in one gulp.
Ben sighs. “Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I just—”
“No, it’s cool.” Gemma jumps to her feet. “I’m going to go grab some chips from my trunk. Anybody want pretzels or sour gummy bears? I hear they pair well with stolen chard.”
“Gemma, I—”
“Last chance for snacks,” Gemma says, cutting Ben off again. “Any takers? Going one, twice …”
“I’m good,” I say.
“Me too.” But Ben doesn’t sound good. He sounds angry, frustrated.
“Okay, but don’t try to steal my sour cream and onion chips when I get back because I won’t be sharing. Help yourself to another glass if you want.” She turns and disappears into the maze of barrels, leaving us alone.
I study Ben’s tense profile, knowing this is my chance to urge him to forgive Gemma but unsure what to say. I feel so confused, my thoughts muddled by wine and concerns that go deeper than anything alcohol-related. Despite the brief moments of connection, Ben and Gemma just don’t seem right together.
“Sorry,” Ben says. “I don’t like the way she talks to you.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, really. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
