Page 20 of Vine

“I… um… won’t.” He indicated to his jeans. They were light grey and attractively tight around the crotch area. I zoomedmy gaze back to his earlobe. “And these are more suited than pyjamas to outdoor work, I agree. Thanks for the warning about the frost.”

I agreed too. Denim wasn’t ideal, especially if the rain started up again, but a step in the right direction. I’d run out of things to say and wasn’t sure if my throat would let me say more anyhow, so I settled on a curt nod and retreated.

In an hour or so, as soon as the first rays of sunshine tipped in its direction, today’s dusting of frost would slink away. I never had the luxury of slinking anywhere, not with my bulk. As my boots crunched over frosty soil, the heat of a thousand curious stares scorched the back of my neck. I’d find no hiding places from them amongst the bare vines. One of the men, sheltering under the tent and not especially small himself, said something to the other in English, and they both sniggered. My face flushed. Mockery translated into any language.

“Hey, wait.”

The tug of a hand on my sleeve. The man with kissable cheeks caught up with me. This close, his right eye still wasn’t quite as open as the left. Below it sat two brown freckles.

“I just wanted to thank you for the other night. I should have come and found you sooner. I meant to drive into St-Martin and buy you a gift and drop it over, except everyone thought I’d better not drive, seeing as I must have banged my head. I did, though not very hard. And I’d have probably given you this dreadful cold. I’ve pretty much been in bed since, another reason why I haven’t been to visit. But a poor excuse, really. I’m Caspian, by the way.”

He held out his hand, and I took it before I had time to worry whether it was the right thing to do or not, especially as he was recovering from illness. And I also had a lot of words to process, not to mention the sensation of his skin touching mine. Hisfingers were cool from working outside and a bit damp too, but they didn’t prickle my skin like some people’s.

“You should wear gloves; your soft hands aren’t used to handling dirt.”

He laughed, but not in a nasty way, and the end of his small pointy nose shone pink. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’ll add gloves to my shopping list.”

He rubbed his hands together to warm them. “I’m so, so grateful you found me. Goodness knows what might have happened if you hadn’t. I’d have ended up in hospital, I should imagine.”

His mouth made a good smile shape, wide and natural. And his cheeks creased at the corners. Like me, he also had nice teeth, very white, and mostly straight. Just the eyes were sad. I didn’t dwell on them for long, but long enough to know the smile didn’t match.

When his grin faltered, I realised he was expecting me to say something. My own name, for starters, because he’d shared his with me.Caspian.

Caspian.I’d practice it later, but I liked the name already. It suited him. The kind of name lingering on the lips, like smoke.Caspien.Caspienne. La mer Caspienne!The Caspian Sea! I felt a thrill of pleasure.He’d been named after a sea.

“M—" I began, then stuttered to a halt. Counting four of my fingers against my thumb, I tried again. “M?—"

Phonation, the ability to form speech, is a neat system. Basically, it starts in our brains. We decide what we want to say. For example,hi, Caspian, rescuing you was no trouble at all. Glad to see you’re better. Why don’t you pop over for a drink one evening?Then we take a breath and start speaking on the exhale. The flow of air moving up the windpipe makes our vocal cords come together and vibrate, chopping up the air flow into a buzzing noise, like bees. The really clever part is how weunconsciously manipulate our lips, teeth, and tongue to shape the buzz into speech.

As usual, the last bit defeated me. Thoughts were no problem, and the breathing part came naturally. I even got the buzz going, but stopped it immediately when the next bit didn’t follow. Instead, I focused on the nearest vine, clasped my hands behind my back so he wouldn’t see my fingers counting each other, then looked straight ahead and stayed that way until he left.

He didn’t leave.

“And you’re absolutely right about the secateurs.” He treated me to his warm smile again, as if he hadn’t noticed the excruciating gap in our conversation, nor the odd humming as I failed to put a simple sentence together. “I’ve already nipped my thumb with them once this morning. I’m popping to the hardware store when I finish today to buy some decent gloves. Hey, where’s your gorgeous dog run off to?”

“There.”

Single words often worked fine, as if I caught myself out with them. Noir sat on my doorstep, waiting to go back inside.

“Can’t blame him. Horrible weather. And your house is lovely. Mind you, it’s snowing in England. Two feet deep in London. I don’t suppose you get much snow here, do you? Being a bit farther south and so close to the sea?”

I bet Éti could immediately placela mer Caspienneon a map. She’d travelled the world over. I’d only left France a few times, holidaying in Spain as a child and more recently with Nico and my dad, to watch Éti play soccer in Italy and Germany. In my mind, it was somewhere to the east of Ukraine, bordering Russia perhaps. I’d look it up later.

“Anyway, I’m so glad we bumped into each other. It’s been nice talking to you. And I really should have dropped by soonerto thank you in person. With a present. I’ll come over tomorrow, if that’s okay? And now I’d better get b?—”

“Max,” I said.

Imagine if I’d been called something like Zachariah or Cornelius? No one would ever discover my name. “Max,” I repeated, just because I could.

“Oh…oh.” He stuttered, like he’d never come across it before. He should have done; it was pretty ordinary. “Max,” he parroted back to me. “Solid. It suits you. Well, it’s been very nice meeting you, Max. Until next time.”

More words spilled out of me, the ones I really wanted to say, because I wanted him to know it was okay that I’d seen the bandage on his arm and knew he was sad.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” I said. I hoped he understood what I meant.

Caspian smiled again, but not as happily. “I’ll try very hard not to.” He looked away, back towards the big house, like the roots of his sadness were buried there. “Thank you. But I can’t make any promises, I’m afraid.”

I watched him pick his way through the piles of chopped branches and shallow muddy puddles until he safely rejoined the others. All in all, ignoring the tongue-tied bit at the end, my flirting had gone as well as could be expected. And at least he’d swapped the thin jacket for something sturdier, with a hood, too. Nor had he tripped. And despite a pricking compulsion to draw the window shutters and spy on him through the cracks, like some sort of creep, I didn’t. Because I was not going to obsess, I was not going to obsess, I was not going to obsess.

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