Eight Hundred Grapes

“Bride’s nerves?”

He looked up, deciding whether to throw a rock at the window or just run upstairs and ask his future daughter-in-law if she was going crazy too.

“I’m taking you somewhere,” she said.

She took him down the vineyard, to Block 14, the small opening there, where she had a blanket and a bottle of wine and a small radio. They couldn’t hear the music from here. They couldn’t see anything but each other. Dan started kissing her, soft at first then harder, pulling up her dress from behind. She gripped his waist, his hip, bearing against him as he pushed himself into her. His hand holding her stomach.

He pushed her curls off her face. “Can this be the first time we’re doing this?”

It was the first. It wasn’t the last.

Have-to-Have

When I arrived at the house, the driveway was full of trucks, catering trucks and a florist truck, a van from a furniture company called Moving Up. The staff was in motion, setting up for the evening. They moved through the house and over the lawn, carrying candles and lanterns and flowers, lemons and grape leaves in glass vases, sofas on their backs.

“Hey there.”

I looked up to see Suzannah standing behind me, in the middle of the driveway, wearing a long blouse like a dress, short booties. Eight months pregnant and gorgeous. Like she belonged there.

“I’ve arrived,” she said.

She held out her arms to hug me, and I jumped in, so happy to see her it was crazy.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? What do you think I’m doing here? I’m pawning off my work.”

She squeezed me hard, then she let go.

“Um. How did you leave out that Michelle Carter was the baby mama? That is the craziest part of this whole thing.”

“What does it change?”

“How I’m going to tell this story to everyone else.” Her eyes went wide. “Is it true that she does a honey cleanse every January and the rest of the year lives on French fries and burgers?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I read it somewhere. That’s not the point.”

“What is?”

“Can you find out how she does it exactly? I love French fries and burgers.”

I tilted my head, looking at her. “Did you really drive all the way up here?”

“No. I flew and rented a car. For eight hundred dollars.”

“That is crazy.”

“For you, since you’re insisting on paying me back.”

I smiled. “You are amazing.”

She rolled her eyes. “Can we avoid going over the obvious? There is a time crunch. I have fifty minutes until I have to catch a flight back to Los Angeles.”

“You don’t want to stay for the harvest party?”

She cradled her stomach. “Sweetie, if I can’t drink, it may as well be the dentist.”