“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“You’re being you again.” I scowled stopping my attempts to open the door. I couldn’t do it myself and the smug shit knew it. He could milk this for everything it was worth but it wasn’t going to change my mind.
“What does that even mean?” He sputtered. His lips touched the back of my neck and I was convinced he was going out of his way to drive me to madness with his subtle touches and cleverly showing up whenever I needed him.
“It means you’re being gallant. You’re being kind. Polite. I don’t know. Give it any adjective you want, but it doesn’t make me come to a decision any sooner.” He agitated me with his closeness and yet I wanted to pull him closer, slip inside him and live there safe and cozy as if no time at all had passed between us. An impossible reality, but a dream nevertheless.
Andy leaned into me, his breath against my neck flowed down my shoulder like a satin ribbon teasing my skin. “I think I’ve been more than patient, don’t you.”
“We’re only going to argue about this. I want to go. You want me to stay.” The discussion was old hat and I respected his relentless drive, but it still didn’t change facts. I was a bad penny, he didn’t want me, he wanted an idea of me that walked out on him, did unforgivable things.
“I don’t think it’s quiet the same thing as wanting to make sure you have safe transportation back and forth from town to the winery. You can’t keep calling taxis and Ubers. This is a college town, but it’s not New York or Vegas and once winter comes you’re going to want your own wheels.”
Andy was assuming I’d be here for the first snow and while that sounded romantic, I hadn’t seen snow in a decade and I didn’t plan on doing so now, or ever if possible.
“Maybe we should find the bikes. That’s gotta be easier than trying to open a door that’s been shut this long.” I reminisced about those summers biking back and forth. In the beginning, it had been both Easton boys and then only Andy once football started.
I lived for those days. I had no worries except getting home in time for dinner so Nona wouldn’t complain. Grandpa would tell stories about living in Greece as a boy before he met Nona, and if she went to bed early, he treated me with stories about my mother. I had few memories of her and no keepsakes. She’d gotten pregnant with me as a teenager and ruined her chance to be a prima ballerina. My father had been a boy who ran off with the circus if the stories were true. My gypsy blood offended my Nona while my mother had no interest in being a child herself raising a child. She dropped me off one day into my grandfather’s arms and ran away to live on the Cote Azure with a new lover. The died in a boating accident and my Nona banned her name from ever being spoken again. If it hadn’t been for my grandfather I might have thought I’d been birthed by wolves.
They moved here taking over a cousin’s winery when he died of old age and the rest I supposed was history for me. A long dark and lonely history that didn’t have much in the way of negativity until my Nona signed me up for dancing classes in the hopes of having me follow my mother’s footsteps. Little did she realize how true that would become.
“Where did you go, firefly?” Andy brushed my hair back and tilted my chin up. Our eyes met and he looked, truly saw me. I tried to shield my expression and look away but he wasn’t having it. I could have been naked and it wasn’t my skin he was seeing but that vulnerable part of myself I couldn’t hide even from him.
“Remember that summer we biked down to the river and on the way back it rained so hard the road washed out.”
“I remember my dad yelling at me like he never yelled before thinking we were missing or worse.”
“My Nona just looked at me like I’d disappointed her and went right back to cooking, but not my grandfather. He grounded me that summer and made me stick to his side walking up and down the rows of grapes and replanting the lemon trees in the greenhouse.”
Andy smiled like he remembered the bitter parts too only with time they had less bite. “That was the longest time we spent apart up until now.”
“I couldn’t wait to get back to school even though my English was still terrible and girls like Becky and her groupies teased me horribly.”
“If your Nona hadn’t fallen she would have homeschooled you that year. I might have never seen you if it wasn’t for the deliveries to the pub.”
“I think my grandfather felt bad for me once the shock wore off. I think he realized the only time I came out of my shell was around you.”
“Since we’re being so honest, I should tell you that I cried for a week and I heard my mother ask my dad to call your grandfather.”
It warmed my heart to know Andy the boy hadn’t changed too much from Andy the man. He didn’t have anyone fight his battles for him now but his heart was still oversized and dipped in gold. I shouldn’t have found that sexy. I shouldn’t have wanted him so badly as I did in the moment, but I did.
I cleared my throat and brushed that aside walking back to the door. “I guess I’m going to need that car then.?
??
“As you wish.” Andy crowded me again and we resumed our push and pull to open the door. Three more yanks and we finally had it rolling on the track. The doors spread open and the car I remembered lay underneath a canvas tarp. We worked together to pull off the heavy cover unearthing the ugliest vehicle ever.
I coughed from the dust and Andy pulled me out of the way.
“I don’t remember it being this…grey?”
“I thought it was brown?”
“Did he paint it?”
“A nineteen-ninety Chevrolet Celebrity? I doubt it. It was the boat of station wagons.”
“Ugly, Andy. Let’s call it what it was. Nona didn’t drive and when he died this thing sat here.”