Page 73 of How to Say I Do
“Mmhmm. All things, great and small, that go into each vine. Sky and stars, rain and light. Your own hands, even.” He brushed off his hands and peered down the line of trellises. “You just can’t do this if you aren’t patient.”
Patience: another way he and I were so remarkably opposite. I couldn’t even finish one yoga class, and I have pitched tiara-throwing tantrums after missing the express train downtown. I couldn’t grow anything, either. I always wanted to hurry it along; the whole growing part never came fast enough, and, getting bored, I’d forget critical things, like water and sunshine.
The longest I’d ever stayed still in my adult life, without needing to check email or text messages or follow up on a meeting or have to rush to the next event or just to check, to see, to make sure, had been with Wyatt.
Running a vineyard and operating a winery were two distinct things, and while the vineyard was the most obvious of Wyatt’s two operations, the winery, and all the goings-on that came after the grapes were harvested, was just as spectacular, more science blended with art and magic.
Wyatt took me to his wine ‘cellar’—he’d built it himself, an above-ground hangar constructed in the cool shadows of a long-dry creek bed—and showed me his fermentation vats and his barrels full of wine in the middle of their aging. The thickened shade and the depth of the old creek kept the wines cool and calm, and allowed his barrels to age delicately in silence.
His fermentation was natural and organic. He crushed the grapes manually—“Sometimes I stomp ’em, and then at the end, I crush ’em by hand.”—and let the innards mingle with the grape skins and the wild yeasts. Mashed pulp shifted leisurely into wine, and then was racked and filtered and aged and, finally, bottled.
“These are last year’s barrels,” he said, guiding me down the long back wall. Wyatt’s signature in permanent marker was scrawled beneath the ranch’s brand, burned into the wood. “And these…” The barrels grew older, the ink marking the fronts fading with each year we passed. “…are the wines I’m aging. Baby Boy, Yellow Rose, and—”
The oldest barrel of all sat alone. It had two signatures, Wyatt’s and his father’s.A. McKinley.
Wyatt laid his hand over his father’s name. “This is the very first one, from those first ten acres of petite sirah. We crushed those grapes ourselves, and we stained our boots purple and ruined our jeans—” His eyes closed, and his fingers curled over his father’s name. “That was supposed to be the first harvest of the rest of our lives.”
I pulled him close, and he cradled himself against me, and we held each other in the faint light next to his father's only wine.
Wyatt taught me how he got that perfect whitewashed look on the barn, scraping each individual board in bright-white paint. It was monstrous work, and it sucked, all of it. I was miserable, but I put on my tough face and got to it. Peanut trotted over to snort and supervise while we toiled away.
I didn’t notice when Wyatt backed off. I kept working, sweating buckets as I trudged onward. He tossed out “good job” and “yep, just like that” while I painted and scraped and painted and scraped and—
“Wyatt, this is so much work,” I protested, scraping my twentieth board. “Jesus, why don’t we just paint it white and call it done?” I huffed, shooting a glare where I thought he was, working near me—
“You imagined it like this.” His voice had come from behind me. I twisted—
He was perched on the split rail fence, his boots hooked on the wood and his hat tipped back, all lit up by the sunshine and looking fantastically pleased with himself. Peanut hung out next to him, and he was scratching her chin. Both of them seemed to be laughing at me.
I’d started the day decked out smartly in my Vineyard Vines, but now I was going to have to burn these clothes. I felt like I’d gone swimming in dirt and dust and spattered paint. There was no coming back from this amount of grossness. The hat Wyatt bought me was soaked with sweat.
And therehewas, doing nothing at all and as sassy as Peanut, gazing at me as a smile blew out his cheeks.
“You imagined it,” he said again, readjusting his hat. “So I’m gonna make sure it comes out exactly how you want it.”
“Oh,you’regoing to make sure?” I spun the scraper and stalked toward him. “Not me, who, itappears, is the only one actually working here.Howlong have you been sitting down, exactly?”
Shit-eating is how I would describe his grin. Shit-eating and delighted.
I turned to Peanut. “I see now what happened. He roped you in, Peanut. You were just trying to help, and he set you up. I’m certain of it. And that, sir”—I spun back to Wyatt— “is equine labor extortion. I’m sorry, but I am going to have to call someone about this.”
I was wagging the paint scraper in time with my sarcasm, and Wyatt just kept right on smiling at me. He hooked his boot behind my thigh when I was close enough to snare, and then he dragged me in the last two feet by my belt loops.
“You’re doing a fantastic job.”
“Mmm.” I slung my arms around his neck. Our hat brims were jostling for dominance. He settled his further back so he could pull me in even closer. I thought,This is it, this will be our new first kiss.
Fuck the paint scraper. I dropped it in the dirt. Wyatt’s big hands stroked up my back—
Peanut shoved her nose between us.
Wyatt lost his hat and toppled off the fence, landing on his ass in the dirt. Peanut hooked her chin over my shoulder and looked down at him. Swear to God, she laughed.
Wyatt was bound and determined that Peanut and I would become best friends. I was skeptical. Peanut hadn’t liked me at all the first time I visited, but our goodnight at the barn had gone well, and she seemed to like how I sassed Wyatt. We were partners in crime when we teased him.
Wyatt showed me how to sweet talk her and how to brush her, and then how to feed her sugar cubes and apples. The first time her giant lips moved over my palm, I nearly screamed. But I kept my cool, and Peanut seemed to recognize that I was really trying. She was extra gentle with me for the rest of that afternoon.
In the evenings, Wyatt and I checked the far blocks of vines, which, like exploring his property, was best done on horseback. So up onto Peanut I went again. Wyatt had her and I spend half an hour together in the paddock before our first ride out, and I learned how to talk to her and guide her with the reins, and to let go of my terror and relax my tightly-clenched thighs.
