Page 27 of Grape Juice
I sit up and lean into her shoulder, and she wraps her arms around me. The smell of her, the press of her sternum where my forehead rests, the weight of her elbows against my shoulders—they all feel familiar. Like we’ve held this pose many times over many years.
“Thank God you’re here,” I murmur into her chest. “Maybewe’ve been the real love story all along.”
“Oh, of course we are, mate. Isn’t it obvious?”
XIV
Before I fall asleep, I type an email to Emma. I think about calling, but it’s midday in New York, and I hate the discordance of talking to each other from the vantage point of different times of day. How can we possibly hear each other correctly while she blinks through daylight, and I, darkness?
So I write. I tell her about the rare flavor of friendship that I’ve found with Ruby, the absolute, violent joy of sitting at this dinner table. Then, Henri—the fact of wanting, the destabilizing whirr of it. The buoyancy, the heaviness. The guilt, the euphoria. At the end, I sign my name and add a postscript.
P.S. Feeling this way about someone tastes like vanilla ice cream. It’s juvenile and innocent—even though, the reality is, it can burn holes through your teeth if you’re not careful.
I fall asleep nearly instantly after hitting send—as if I’ve used up some great quantity of caloric energy shippingthe contents of my note through the airwaves and over an ocean into the little Brooklyn apartment that awaits me on the other side of all of this. However impossible it seems that there is an other side to all of this.
When I wake up the next morning, there is already a reply waiting for me.
Listen up, mademoiselle. I’ve got some profound wisdom to offer (you’re welcome): You’re awfully good at tasting things, but you haven’t had an appetite in a long time. I was starting to wonder whether I’d ever see you blasted open and raw to the world again.
I know you were the one who left Max—but that’s heartbreak too. And frankly, I think falling out of love devastated you more than the breakup did. The fact that you had it in you to experience something that large—and that it could vanish. Poof. I think that terrified you (of course it did). So it makes sense that you’re terrified now, huh? You denied yourself an appetite for so long. And now it’s back!
Even if this all ends in a dumpster fire—which it very well may—you’ve still proven to yourself that you’re capable of feeling in BIG (and dare I say healthy?) ways. And if you get off the plane and all you wanna do is lie in bed and subsist on whiskey and peanut butter for several weeks, I will happily lie right on down next to you and do the same.
For now, go make me jealous.
Signed, your utterly irreplaceable, radiant, disarmingly wise best friend,
Emma
P.S. You’ve always been better at postscripts than actual letters.
I black out the screen and hold my phone to my chest like some mummified treasure. Thank God for the friendship of women. Emma, in all her astuteness, is correct: It hasn’t occurred to me that there’s one more fear at play. It’s not just my aversion to full-bleed tenderness; it’s also the stupid psychological specter of fallingoutof love. The fact that some sentiment could grow to mythic proportions—then somewhere, in my own fallible little brain, it could disappear. A cruel trick of serotonin, maybe. And without admitting as much, I’ve been denying myself the pleasure of love for fear of letting it evaporate.
In the morning, working the vines feels like a montage from some prized, shot-on-film flick with an immaculate Rotten Tomatoes score—the kind produced by Swan Dive or Neon that well-dressed, tastefully tattooed people buy tickets to see at the Tribeca Film Festival. Henri and I inch along each row in tandem, speaking to each otherlike windup toys, never letting up. At every opportunity, he reaches through the vines to squeeze my hand. And even for all the innocence of the gesture, few things have ever felt so potent.
Every few yards, when the greenery grows sparse enough for us to face each other full-on, unobstructed, he leans in to kiss me gently, quickly. A halfhearted attempt at discretion. At times, he ducks in and out so swiftly, he catches me on the chin or the cheekbone.
In the afternoon, when the sun has shifted, panels of light slip through the vines, framing him in gold. We’re picking Sylvaner, talking about cities. “Tell me about New York,” he says. “AboutyourNew York.”
My favorite question. I smile big, even knowing he can’t see it. “I’m biased. It’s my hometown,ma ville d’origine. I’ve been there my whole life.”
“Even better.”
“You know, there was never a time before I started riding the subway—and sometimes it makes me wonder how much of my life I’ve spent underground.” I scrape curdled grapes onto the grass with the edge of my clipper. “It’s not an easy place to live. It’s dirty, and expensive, and impossible to navigate—or impossible to keep up with, at least. It makes your world feel too small and too big. But then, just when you’re ready to give up all hope, it reels you right on back in.”
“Buthow? Give me an example?”
“I, um... I have this thing about riding my bike overbridges. No matter how disaffected or bitter I feel about the city, every single time I ride my bike over a bridge, and I watch the rim of the city unfurl in front of me, I’m hit with this stupid, giddy twinge of awe. I can’t help but be astounded.”
“Whybridges, though?”
“I don’t know... from up there, it’s like the city has better posture.”
Henri looks at me with pointed intrigue, his chin cocked. “And that’s what goes on in your head while you commute on your bicycle?”
I blush and keep clipping.
He pauses, moves aside a branch, and kisses my eyebrow. “Tell me what it sounds like. What does New York sound like?”
