Page 91 of How to Say I Do
You don’t have anything to be afraid of,he’d said.You are exactly the way you are meant to be. Don’t be afraid, Wyatt. You have nothing to be scared of. And you’ll never be alone. I’ll always be with you.
The wine thief slowly filled. My trembling hands transferred a sample of the petite sirah into a wine glass that Liam held out and then handed to me.
The moment of truth. After ten years, a fire, and moving those barrels a half-dozen times, what I was about to taste could be pure garbage. I might be about to serve my father’s finest vinegar to everyone.
I raised the glass in a silent toast and held it to my lips.You’ll never be alone. I’ll always be with you.
A sip—
Rich, velvety ripeness. Complexity. A story unfolding in a taste of love and loss and heartbreak. I was sobbing before I swallowed.
The wine tasted like time, like ten years and my whole childhood distilled into a drop, like my father was standing in front of me again and holding out a grape fresh off the vine. Then we were walking the rows, and I was tracing the undersides of the leaves as he was describing his dream. In my mind, we swung around and headed for home, and he threw his arm around my neck and pointed to the ranch, and I could seeeverything.All of it, past and present and future. All of the blocks, even the ones that didn’t exist when he was alive, and the barn whitewashed for Noël. I saw Liam and Savannah on the back porch with Jason and two other mischievous boys. And Noël, God, Noël was there, too, waving to me and holding out his hand.
Time looped and folded, past and present. All of my father’s love and all the ways he worked this life, nurturing fruit and family in equal portions, and I heard my father’s voice again.I’m so proud of you, Wyatt.
Ten years since we’d bottled this wine, nine years since Dad had been ripped out of my life, and now, abruptly, my dad washere. He was in that glass, he was standing in front of me, he was speaking to me, he wasrighthere. He was so close that I wanted to pull him out of death and draw him back into this life so we could do everything together the way we were meant to, the way we had always dreamed of.Dad, please, please come back.
My knees buckled. Noël grabbed my wine glass before I dropped it. He and I went to the ground, and he kept his arms around me as I cracked all the way open, the anguish that I never, ever let out finally breaking free. I wept against Noël’s neck.
Liam and Savannah and Jason surrounded us, Jason crying because he didn’t understand. He wiggled into my arms, finding a space where he and Noël and I could all hold on to each other. The others came in, too. Frank and Connie, Dean, the rest of the old ranchers, Trish, Savannah’s parents, the deputies that had worked for my father, my former football coach from that year, Mom’s friends from the gardening club. They surrounded me, and I felt their hands on my shoulders, and I heard their voices whispering my name, and my father’s name. “Abel,” Frank whispered. “Your son—"
Crickets sang. A wind chime twittered a soft melody. Wind stroked the vines, the blooming roses, and the dancing wildflowers. I smelled saddle-leather and sun-weathered wood. Dad felt so close.
Noël helped me to my feet. He wiped away my tears with his thumbs, sweeping them out from under my soaked eyelashes.
“Well.” I shot everyone an embarrassed smile as I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “It’s pretty good wine.”
Their laughs were gentle.
“Let me pour y’all some of my father’s best vintage.”
I filled everyone’s glass, thanking each person individually for everything they’d done to help Liam and I, from helping to rebuild our home or helping out with the harvest to taking a chance on our wine when we were just a handful of barrels and two boys who didn’t know what they were doing. Help, too, when we needed it with Jason, and grace while we figured it all out. The open arms of the town, and all the weeks and years of Thursday nights and chitchat and fresh fish. Feeling like we were welcome, and knowing that we belonged.
Noël and I shared a private toast before he took his first sip. This night was a goodbye to my father for everyone else, but it was both a helloanda goodbye for Noël. He would never know my father as a living man, but he’d know him through my memories, and now, through this wine my father had made.
Noël had been so strong holding me up, but when he inhaled the bouquet of my father’s petite sirah, his expression crumpled.
His eyes slammed shut at the first sip. All the stories I’d shared of my dad—summer nights and planting baby green shoots and riding Peanut for the first time—and all the ones I still had to tell—of Dad and me at football games and working on homework, and how he’d taught me to grill the same way I’d taught Noël, and all the little moments hidden all over the ranch, memories embedded into each tree and rock and fence post and field—rose out of the wine like ghost stories.
For a moment, it felt like there were three of us there, that the space around us had expanded and grown, and the sunshine and sweet buttercup scent now surrounding us belonged to my father.
Dad, meet the love of my life,I thought. I gathered Noël close, and he melted into me.
Peach cream and cotton-candy pink slid across the sky, shifting to rose and honey and copper hues as the sun sank beneath the farthest oak branches. Birds sang their daytime farewells. The evening wind was gentle, and it curled around Noël and me like a caress, a goodbye whisper, there, then moving away.
Goodbye, Dad.
The evening softened, and the harvest party got underway. I’d planned for this to be a dress rehearsal for Tessa’s wedding. All the new picnic tables were out, and the globe lights were strung up through the shade sails. Lanterns glowed at the base of the oak trunks, and candles flickered in glass hurricanes nestled amongst the roses and daffodils in the flowerbeds. The dance floor had been put together outside the barn. My yard had been converted from a working space into a fairy tale.
Noël was speechless, standing there with his mouth hanging open like he was catching flies. I snagged him from behind and tucked my smile against the back of his neck. “Do ya like it?”
“It’s…” He shook his head and laid his hand over mine along his waist. “Wyatt, it’s more than I ever—ever—fucking imagined. I didn’t think it was possible to create something this grand. How the fuck did you do this?”
I laughed. “Noël, I didn’t do any of this. These were all your ideas.” He sputtered and spun in my arms. I kissed his nose. “Youcame up with this. I told you I’d make it happen.”
“I didnotimaginethis.” He pointed behind him, his finger circling the yard and the fairy-tale evening. “This is beyond.Beyond, Wyatt. You”—he bounced his finger off the center of my chest—“should be an events manager. You’ll put everyone out of a job.”
“Nah.” I kissed his temple. “Maybe you and I should go into business together, though.”
