Page 33 of How to Say I Do
Two fingers. Wyatt’s eyelashes fluttered on my skin. I was wild, out of control, screaming into the pillow. Wyatt pressed his hand into the small of my back and held me in place while he pushed his face back in my ass and went to town.
I was so hard I was dizzy. I couldn’t last, not like this. Everything was seizing, abs and thighs and shoulders, and then—
I roared as I came, shooting all over myself and the bed, completely untouched. Wyatt made a muffled noise of surprise against me, one hand trying to reach me like he wanted to stroke me through it, the other still busy with his fingers working my prostate. He moaned, something delirious and Dionysian, and then flipped me to my back. I was a rag doll, limp and soaked in my own come, and I flopped and sprawled, staring up at him with the dazed exultation of the supremely well-fucked.
He was hard again. His mouth was wet, shining with spit and me, and he stroked himself with one rough hand as he ran his fingers through the come painted over my stomach. I had enough neurons still firing to wrap my hand around him, too. We were face to face, sharing breaths, our hands a blur on his cock. His eyes locked on mine. I was whispering his name and ridiculous things like,You’re so beautifulandFucking gorgeousandNever, ever, Wyatt, and evenI adore you.
Wyatt came with a wrenched-open cry, his eyes squeezing shut as he pressed his forehead to mine. Drops of his come spattered weakly across my belly. I grabbed his face and rained kisses on his clenched-shut eyes, his shivering lips, his magenta cheeks.
We fell asleep like that, clinging to each other, sticky, come-covered, sweat-soaked, not saying a word. There was a spell between us, and it seemed like speaking would shatter it, or would let the real world come creeping back in. Not that, anything but that; I wanted to stay in this bed forever with him.
I woke what felt like an eternity later, climbing out of a black hole of unconsciousness as something warm and soft slipped up my thigh. My eyelids fluttered.
“Sorry,” Wyatt whispered. He kissed my shoulder. “I was wiping you down.”
The heat, the gentleness— Wyatt with a washcloth. He finished cleaning the inside of my leg, then briskly wiped up his own sticky places. I hauled myself upright against the headboard to watch him as he padded to the bathroom, rinsed the cloth, and hung it in the shower to dry.
The night was still thick with darkness. The moon was low, no longer bouncing silver off the ocean’s white caps, but instead threw a butterfly net over the sleep-hued world. Wyatt had propped open his balcony door, and night breezes and tropical flowers floated in on an updraft. Buoy bells from the marina tolled in slow, rhythmic peals.
Wyatt returned and perched on the bedside next to me. He took one of my hands in his, holding it between his rough palms as he peered at me.
“I want to show you something,” he eventually said. He squeezed my hand, then went to his duffel. Rumpled clothing exploded out of the top, and he pawed through t-shirts and boxers before he dug out an old leather journal. The pages on one corner were water-warped and rumpled. He held it to his lips and closed his eyes, then came back to the bed and crawled in beside me. The journal stayed closed in his lap.
Whatever this was, it meant something incredible to him. We’d spent hours making love, putting our hands and mouths and tongues on every possible part of each other, but Wyatt was shy about this collection of papers bound in old leather.
“I only have three things left of my father.” Wyatt tipped his head toward his dove-gray hat, resting crown down on the nightstand. “His hat.” His hand went flat across the leather cover. “This journal.”
I waited. “And the third thing?”
Wyatt’s smile was small and sad. He said nothing. That, at least, was going to remain a secret for now.
“My dad had dreamed of opening a winery since before I was born, and he’d been working on it for just as long.”
He flipped open the journal to page one. The date in the corner was from twenty-six years ago, and the first sheet was covered in looping chicken scratch.
“He wrote down everything he researched and everything he learned.”
Page after page passed, bullet-pointed notes and pen sketches of vineyards, drawings of grape bunches and outlines of homemade wine presses made out of buckets.
“When I was old enough, he let me help.”
The next page flipped. Instead of Wyatt’s father’s careful sketches, there was a crayon drawing: vivid green streaks and purple circles meant to be grapes, but drawn larger than elephants. A little house squatted on a crayon hill beneath a yellow sun with six stubby arms. Wyatt’s father had carefully inscribed the corner,Wyatt’s Vision, Age Five.
More pages. His father’s research, Wyatt’s coloring. Adult chicken scratch shared space with crayon. A tall stick figure held a watering can and wore a sheriff’s badge beside a smaller stick figure with a big smile. Both wore cowboy hats. Yellow sun, blue sky, purple grapes. Child Wyatt’s repertoire wasn’t extensive, but he was dedicated to his themes.
Eventually, the drawings shifted from crayon to colored pencil and became more mature, less cartoonish. More lifelike, too.Wyatt’s Vision, Age Twelvelooked almost identical to Wyatt’s father’s ink outline of sloping vineyards sprawling over three rugged hills, labeled withcabernetandtempranilloandSangiovese. Wyatt joined in with his father’s research, too, filling up pages in his own rounded, teenage handwriting, listing out the merits of different hot-weather grapes and rooting techniques and trellis construction. They’d obviously passed the journal back and forth, dating the top corners of each page as they went and leaving notes for each other while they plotted their future.
Then the handwriting shifted. Suddenly, only Wyatt’s was present. His father was gone.
I stilled Wyatt’s page-flipping and backed up to the last page his father had written. April 17, nine years ago. My fingers drifted over the date and then down the to-do list Wyatt’s father had scrawled. The last line:Wyatt, your opinion? I think the mustang grape would be good for native rootstock grafting.
“He and Mom were killed two days later.” Wyatt’s voice flickered like static. “I had the journal with me at football practice.”
“Wyatt…”
No wonder he’d hesitated before pulling this journal out. Seeing this, his father and him painstakingly building their dreams, was so deeply intimate. It felt like I’d plunged my hands into Wyatt’s soul, or like I had rooted around inside his heart, uncovering scar tissue and shadows.
He closed the journal and set it carefully next to his father’s hat. Both his arms wrapped around me, and he rested his cheek on top of my head. “Tell me about your family. You’ve never said anything about them.”
