Page 12 of Grape Juice
“Yes,doch,oui. My girlfriend and I have been dating since high school. We went to university together, and then she’s been working to go to law school while I’m finishing out viticulture school. And then, eventually, once we’re married and settled, we’re going to inherit her family’s vineyard, and we’ll make wine there together.”
“Wow! A full twenty-year plan! Way to make a romantic story deeply unromantic. At the very least, give us somedetails,” Ruby prods. “How’d you fall in love? What’s she like? Is she beautiful? What’s her zodiac sign?”
“She’s a Taurus, and yes, she has very nice hair,” Julian answers earnestly. The three of us hiccup with laughter in response. Ah, the austere Julian-ness of it all.
“I don’t know! It just makes sense. I’m not a very romantic person, but yeah, I would like for us to get older together or whatever, OK? Is that not sappy enough for you?”
“But... you’ve never dated anyone else? Ever?” Henri sweeps a curtain of hair out of his eyes with his forearm, leaving a small scrim of dirt across his forehead.
“Nein.”
“As in nine people or as in German forno?” Henri pokes.
“No—but don’t make fun of me.” Julian gives him a stern look. “Haven’t you been dating your girlfriend for just as long? At least I had the balls to propose!”
I feel Ruby nudge me in the ribs, a physical acknowledgment that we’ve crossed over into new territory. And though Henri seems just as reticent to answer as I am to hear his response, I know we’re all flagrantly curious.
“The difference is... I couldn’t marry her. Can’t marry her.” Henri shrugs and angles himself toward Julian so I can see only the back of his head while he speaks. “We’ve been together since university, but we’ve known each other since we were little kids. We grew up together; we’ve got shared friends and all that. We’ve both dated other people... but barely. That’s why we’re taking this break. Or... it’s part of the reason, I guess.”
“Is romance dead? My God!” Ruby throws her hands in the air in frustration. “You’re both telling the most unsexy stories about being in love I’ve ever heard.”
Henri laughs gently. It’s an exhale, really, tinted with laughter.Fou rireis a phrase he taught me yesterday afternoon: “giggling.” What sparkling wine tastes like.
“Well,” he continues, still angling his speech toward Julian, “I think we’re both a bit unhappy. But we’ve never been unhappy without the other one. I guess maybe we both sometimes feel like furniture in each other’s lives.”
“I don’t understand.” Julian shrugs and bends a branch down toward him to clip a particularly healthy bunch, letting it fall with a heavy thud into the bucket below.
“Furnitureis a good word for that.” I feel compelled to contribute something to the discussion—as if my relative silence is telling on me. As if to prove that I can participate casually, that I’m not rapturous over these tepid declarations from Henri.
“I don’t think of my girlfriend as a sofa, particularly,” Julian retorts, and instantly, the rest of us are doubled over, laughing with giddy fatigue. A rare, unexpected joke, nestled in Julian’s signature deadpan delivery, punching through the melancholia of the exchange. It’s like we’re letting air out of an overinflated thing.
As I giggle, I reach above my head to clip the end of a vine, and my hand slips. My clipper clamps around the end of my pointer finger instead. I draw in a sharp inhale and drop the clippers to the ground to clutch my finger, where blood is blooming like an ink stain at the tip.
“Ça va?” Henri is fast in that boyish, poised-to-protect way.Our first declaratively tender exchange of the day, I think.How relieving, how relieving.He holds my finger and examines it from both sides. “Hmm, yes, we’ll have to cut that one off.”
I roll my eyes, and he smirks. Then he holds my wrist, elevates my hand, and leads me around the back of the pickup truck to our water jug, switching the tap on to rinse my cut. I watch ribbons of bright red mix in with the water and drip down both of our forearms before pooling at our elbows and then the ground. I wonder what’s loosened him up, warmed him toward me. Why now?
When things look clean enough, he pulls my hand outof the stream to reassess, watching as fresh blood finds its way out in small droplets. With an assured, pointed curiosity, he flicks his eyes up toward mine. Then without hesitation, he lifts my finger to his mouth and sucks as if he’s releasing olive flesh from its pit. My other fingers dangle uselessly, debating whether they’re meant to cradle the stubble on his chin or hang limp. I feel the damp, living heat of his mouth, the gentle edge of his teeth. Feel my body respond with desire, the swell of it radiating from somewhere deep inside me.
We stand like that, no longer anxious or shifty about the project of prolonged eye contact, daring each other to look away. He pulls my finger free, inspects it for improvement, then retreats to the cab of the truck.
He returns with a Band-Aid. “All better, no?” He wraps it around my finger.
I nod. “Thank God we have a medical professional here.”
“I think I might’ve just saved your life.”
“It’s possible.”
On the other side of the truck, there’s a loud “Ahem” from Julian, looking askance with his hands on his hips. “If you’re done over there, we’ve got grapes to pick.”
We jog over, smiling, to resume our positions. I glance at my finger with fondness, as though the neatly applied bandage serves as some saccharine souvenir of Henri’s affection.
“Well, now that I’ve got an audience back, it’s my turn,” Ruby starts as soon as we’re in a rhythm, clipping away, shaking out our knotted biceps. “I do, indeed, have secrets.”
“This better be good.” Julian tosses a mangled branch of rotting grapes gently in her direction.
“Of course it’ll be good,” I call back without a clue what she’s about to share.
