Page 66 of How to Say I Do
I had that non-disclosure agreement. I wasn’t allowed to tell.
For the moment, Noël and I were the only two inhabitants of our little world. We shared our mornings and our midnights, our coffees and our laughs, our tenderness and ourgoodnight, sweet dreamstexts. We both had our hands cupped around our baby star, sheltering it, nurturing it, keeping it shimmering and radiant and ours.
Three weeks later, I had ten feet of the barn painted. I’d kept up the charade that Peanut was the one doing the work, much to Noël’s chagrin—at this point, I was worrying about how much eye-rolling a man could do before his optic nerves detached—and we were still going full speed with whatever we were doing.
Noël, for once, had an early night, and we’d arranged to video chat until he fell asleep. He’d warned me that it might be short, and I’d told him I surely hoped it was. By my estimate, he’d had twelve hours sleep in three days.
He was adorable on the call, wrapped up in an oversized Gucci hoodie and leggings—"running tights, Wyatt, they’re running tights. They help with muscle recovery”—brandishing a God-awfully hideous bottle of Texas wine at the camera alongside his triumphant smile.
“I wanna watch you try that,” I told him. “I gotta see your face.”
He frowned. “This isn’t good?”
“It’s sold in gas stations here, so, no. It’s not good.”
“Bastards.” Noël scowled at the bottle. “I told them to special order me Texas wine. They swore this was a good one.”
“You were lied to.”
“They probably just drove to Jersey and bought whatever they could.” He cracked the seal and twisted off the cap, toasted me through the camera, and downed a giant chug. His eyes closed and his face screwed up tight, and for a moment, I thought he was going to spew it right out, coat the lens and soak his phone. I laughed, and he shot me a withering glare as he manfully fought to swallow.
“Whatisthat?” he croaked. “Food coloring and nail polish remover?”
“Just about.”
“Wyatt, you ruined me for wine. There are no good wines here.”
“Nothing? At all?” I teased. “In New York City?”
“No, nothing.” He upended another shot of the awful wine, wincing as it went down like turpentine. “God, that’s terrible. Ugh, Wyatt. Where is the Nebbiolo, or your tempranillo? Or your petit sirah?”
“I could find you a good wine out there, if you want.”
“No, I just wantyourwine.”
“I guess you’ll have to come back, then.” I heaved an exaggerated shrug, playing it up like I was joking, like my heart wasn’t pounding.
“Well,obviously,” he said, tossing his head as he set the wine bottle on the floor. “I’ve got to inspect that barn. I’mnotconvinced Peanut is the artist you claim she is. I need to see this in person. I thought she was the world’s greatest horse because she put up with me, but maybe she’sactuallythe Da Vinci of the equines.Imaginethe headlines, Wyatt. It would be bigger than when the Virgin Mary showed up in that grilled cheese.”
I laughed until tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. Noël beamed, looking so dazzlingly happy that it made me glow all the way inside of me.
He was going to come back. There was nothing specific, and nothing was set in stone, but I was going to see him again.
He didn’t last long. The yawns started as he was telling me about his day—babysitting a photo shoot for two nineteen-year-old children of nineties supermodels—“Why, why, always the nineties? Why, Wyatt?”—who were very spoiled and very pampered and very, very sheltered. I told him about block 3 and how the tempranillo was coming in boldly, and that I was having to shade and prune and be aggressive with the vines, but that these were all good signs. Barring a catastrophe, they’d have a great yield.
He was lying down by the time I finished, curled up with one hand beneath his cheek. The phone kept dipping like his arm was drooping and he was catching himself on the edge of sleep.
“You should go to bed.”
“Mmm, I don’t want you to go yet.”
I was all summery inside. “I’ll be here in the morning.”
“I wish you were.” His eyes were closed, and his voice was getting that soft and sleepy cotton quality. “Wyatt, I have a confession to make.”
My heart skipped two beats. “Oh yeah?”
He was rooting around behind him in the seam of the futon, and he pulled his hand out from behind his back with a ball of bright-orange fabric closed in his fist, half of a familiar resort logo crumpled between his fingers. “I sleep with this because it smells like you.”
