Page 116 of Blush
And there had been; Sadie’s inspiration for her thesis had been discovered there. She tapped her pen on the table, looking up at the winding narrow stairs that led to the second-level shelves.
The room was also one of the few places at the vineyard that didn’t remind her, with every rustling tree and warm breeze and sunset, of Mateo. It took all of her willpower and self-respect not to seek him out. She’d caught a few glimpses of him from afar, and every time she was useless for a solid few hours afterward.
She flipped through her dog-eared, Post-it-noted copy ofScruples, trailing her finger along the highlighted passages she was using as support text in her paper. She skimmed over a section she wasn’t using but one that jumped off the page given her current state of mind:She was no Emma Bovary, no Anna Karenina, no Camille—no spineless, adoring, passive creature who would let a man take away her reason for living by taking away his love.
Damn right, Sadie thought. Still, the sooner she got back to campus, the better. Why torture herself? She gave her mother some help, now it was time to go. The thing was, she felt oddly torn between the two places. Before now, missing classes for any reason was unthinkable. But the vineyard felt more real and urgent than her life at school. She wanted to be a writer, and to be a writer she had to experience things. The creative juice she needed would not be found in the pages of a book—at least, not all of it.
“Sadie.”
She jumped at the voice behind her. Mateo’s voice. Incredulous, she turned around. He stood in the doorway, dressed in his usual jeans and a T-shirt, tan and achingly beautiful.
He walked toward her, and it seemed to happen in slow motion.
She stood up. “What are you doing here?”
“Your mother told me this was where I might find you.”
Sadie processed this: He’d asked her mother about her? Did he specifically track Leah down, or did they just happen to run into each other? It didn’t matter. Either way, she and Mateo were talking for the first time since the night she’d stood in the pouring rain, only to have him blame her for her grandfather’s mistakes. And yes, she had made a slightly obnoxious comment about being published inThe New Yorker. Clearly not the finest moment for either one of them.
“You spoke to my mother?” she said.
“I did. And your mother just spoke tomymother.”
That didn’t compute for a moment, but then she realized her mother had taken her suggestion to invite Maria Eugenia to the Harvest Circle. Mateo confirmed this. “And Leah offered to fly her in. She said it was all your idea.”
Sadie nodded.
“What made you do that?” he said.
“I kept thinking about the photo in your office,” Sadie said. “The one she took of the flowers in the wine. Also, what you said the day you told me about her.”
“What did I say?”
“That she has a feminist heart.” If there was one thing Sadie had learned that summer, it was that feminism took all different forms.
He smiled. “Well, I wanted to thank you. It was a really thoughtful gesture.”
“I’ve missed you,” she blurted out.
“Sadie...”
“I know, I know—my grandfather, your father, the sale of thewinery. I’m just saying...” She crossed her arms, trying to stay measured even as her emotions bubbled up to the surface. Feelings she’d been trying to bury in schoolwork. In reading. In a campus book club that didn’t get off the ground. “I thought being back at school would help me forget about you. But it hasn’t. And what I said aboutThe New Yorker? Writing isn’t as important as what you’re doing here. I create stories, but you create life.”
He looked down at the ground, taking a long pause before responding. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. “For the record, I wasn’t blaming you for what’s happened with the winery. I was, in a clumsy way, trying to explain that it’s complicated. Too complicated—especially since we have totally different lives.”
She swallowed hard.
“I mean, our lives aren’t that different. I’m here now, trying to help my mother save this place. And if things work out, I’ll be back more often. I want to be here. Not just because it’s where my family lives. Great writers are a part of something larger than themselves. That photo in your office of the man writing in chalk on the building to represent the lost of Guatemala—his art means something. It’s not just academic or intellectual. I want my life and my work to mean something, too. So if we can keep this place in the family, I want to come back as much as possible. And even if that doesn’t happen, well, I still want to open up my life more. And maybe, I don’t know, you and I can hang out. I want to try. Don’t you?”
It was hard to lay her feelings so bare in front of him, but it would be even harder to keep them unspoken and always wonder, what if? If he didn’t feel the same way, at least she knew she had done all she could. She would know the ending would not be her fault.
He moved closer, touching a lock of her hair, his eyes searching her face. She held his gaze until he finally leaned forward to kiss her gently on the lips. She threw her arms around him, pulling him against her. Their kiss deepened. This was it, Sadie thought. This was love. This was her man. The rest of her life would have to fit around this.
“I guess I should have known I wasn’t coming here just to thank you,” he murmured. “I missed you, too. And yes, I want to spend more time together. We’ll figure it out.”
“No time like the present,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?”
