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Amara waved a hand. “Don’t even worry about it. That house has seen enough sand to fill this entire beach.”
About fifteen feet off the foot of the stairs, she’d spread a blanket on the sand. An old fashioned wicker picnic basket sat off to the side, its contents spread around it. An array of cheeses, fruits, and chocolate, plus a hunk of crusty bread, crackers, thinly sliced meats, and, of course, four bottles of wine.
I raised a brow at the selection of bottles.
“What? I wasn’t sure what kind you’d want.”
“If it’s all CD, it doesn’t matter.”
“You know it is,” she scoffed. “You think I’d drink anything but the best?”
No, I really didn’t.
I pulled my shirt off, feeling overdressed compared to her, and reclined on the blanket next to her while she poured herself a healthy serving of red wine. Before she took a sip, she moved to fill my glass, but I pressed a finger to her lips.
I crooked a finger. “Don’t swallow that, and c’mere.”
She obeyed and came to me, her lips pressed tightly closed around the mouthful of wine as she met my mouth.
“Open up.”
We did in unison, the aromatic red liquid swirling from her mouth to mine. I let it run down my chin and linger on my tongue, allowing the layers to settle. I swallowed before kissing her again, sliding my tongue between her lips, tasting the wine on both of us. Leaning away slightly, I licked a small, errant drop from her jaw, and she kissed along mine, laving her tongue across my stubble, mopping me up.
“Pinot Noir,” I said when we broke apart.
“My favorite,” she said, grinning. “Although I’ve never had it quite like that.”
“It’ll never taste the same again, will it?”
With a happy sigh and a head shake, she poured another glass and handed it to me.
“Red wine grapes are so hard to grow well around here, though. Did you know it took my parents nearly ten years to perfect this recipe? And even now, we don’t always get enough from the harvest every season to make a significant amount. That’s part of the business though: making adjustments when the weather or the crop doesn’t quite cooperate.”
Despite the fact that we were literally in business together, I’d rarely actually listened to Amara when she spoke about work. Now I had no choice but to, completely mesmerized by her voice and her words. The way her eyes lit up, her hands waving in front of her. It was clear she loved her job, was passionate about wine and the work we were doing. How had I never seen it before?
“You are…impressive,” I said at last, reaching out to tuck a lock of hair that had blown across her face back behind her ear.
She gave me a modest shrug and said, “That’s what we’ve been telling you,” though I didn’t miss the blush that crept into her cheeks with my compliment.
“What was it like growing up around here?”
“Wonderful,” she said wistfully. “I mean, during the school year, we lived down in TC, but in the summers we’d come up here and spend three months at the Villa. Both Mama and Daddy worked so much back then, but they let us roam free and trusted us to stay out of trouble.”
“And did you?”
She gave me a mischievous smile. “Most of the time.”
I could easily picture her and her sisters running rampant across the peninsula, letting tourist boys fall hopelessly in love with them before ripping their hearts out at the end of summer. I could imagine the five of them racing up and down these beaches, building sand castles and trolling the shore for Petoskey Stones.
Once again, that pang I’d experienced back at Torch Lake echoed through my chest.
I was an only child to a man and a woman who were in their late-thirties by the time I came along. They’d given up on having kids—or maybe they’d never wanted them; that wasn’t a question I was keen to learn the answer to. They were content with a life spent loving only each other, so when I came along, they didn’t really know what to do with me. Before me, they’d been nomadic, roaming across the country to where they wanted, when they felt like it. Mostly, I kept to myself. I was a studious kid, always getting good grades in school, and I graduated at the top of my class. I considered my best friends the characters I read about in my favorite fantasy novels likeEragonandLord of the Rings. I didn’t do drugs or break curfew—mostly because I didn’t have one. I didn’t even drink or really party at all until I left for college.
My parents are wonderful people who I love dearly. I never wanted for anything growing up, and I knew they loved me in their own ways. But when I stacked my own childhood up against Amara’s? I’m sure it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for her, either, but I’d seen her with her sisters and parents enough to know that I’d missed out on that kind of unbreakable, unshakable family bond.
But I lucked out when I got to college. Though we lived on opposite ends of the country, I still spoke regularly with my roommate, who I’d met freshman year and lived with until graduation, and was actually in his wedding. I made great friends out in Napa who I chatted with a few times a week, and since I’d met Owen, he’d become the closest I’d ever get to having a brother.
Maybe that’s why I’d been so willfully ignorant of the red flags in my relationship with Amie. She’d been content to travel and party and work. There hadn’t been a day when we’d had a frank conversation about the future, or what we wanted out of life. In hindsight, that relationship hadn’t been much more than a couple of fuck buddies who decided to slap a more serious label on it in an attempt to hide its flaws.
