Chapter 21 #2
“I never had you pegged as someone so . . . so . . .” She swallowed her words with a moan as I slipped a finger inside.
“So what?” I whispered as I nibbled on her earlobe.
“Insatiable.”
* * *
The gears ground as the car stalled in the middle of the road. I sat back in the passenger seat and watched Olivia yank at the gearshift, her eyes darting nervously to the rearview mirror.
We were alone on the country road, sheltered from the sun in a tunnel of plane trees.
We’d left the house early and taken the scenic route toward the lavender fields of Valensole, an activity on Olivia’s bucket list. I’d suggested an outing today, not only because I wanted to make her happy, but to prove to myself that I was still able to do something other than sex in the shower, by the pool, in the cottage, on the couch.
I might be insatiable, but I still had some self-control.
“It’s cliché, I know. But I’ve always wanted to see them,” Olivia had pleaded when I’d rolled my eyes at the suggestion of the lavender fields. In the end I’d agreed, but only if she’d let me teach her how to drive stick.
“Ugh! You better take over. I’m never going to get this,” she cried. She’d been saying the same thing for the last half hour since I’d handed her the keys. I wasn’t about to let her give up.
“No way. You got this. Foot on the brake, shift into neutral, and restart.”
“There’s a car behind us!” she protested, and I glanced in the mirror at the tiny moving speck cresting the hill in the distance.
“You’ve got time. Don’t worry about them.”
“I hate this.” She ground the gears but finally got the car moving again.
“You can’t be perfect at everything right away,” I said, laughing when she stuck her tongue out at me. “Careful, I might take that as an invitation.”
After another half hour of repeated stalling and lots of cursing, we were cruising along the serpentine roads toward the massive plateau of the lavender fields.
With the top down I could smell the flowers before we saw them, an inland ocean of purple framed by swaying fields of wheat with Mount Ventoux in the background.
“Oh, so pretty. Look!” Olivia gasped in delight as we descended a winding hill, the car taking on speed as we went. “Ah, what do I do?” she cried.
“Slow and downshift before the curve. And keep your eyes on the road, please. I’d hate to finish up in that ditch because you were distracted by flowers.” I tensed in my seat as she struggled with the gears again.
Somehow, we made it down the hill in one piece and pulled off the road, parking under some trees.
“You’re sure you want to ride in this heat?” I asked before unhitching the bikes. The sun was blazing in the nearly cloudless sky, but thankfully there was a small breeze.
“Yes, I have my hat.” Olivia pulled her straw hat over her hair, and we took off.
The enticing view of her backside in her white shorts and smocked halter top as she rode in front of me was all the encouragement I needed to follow her.
After a few minutes of pedaling, I realized that I was enjoying myself.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ridden a bike recreationally and decided to do it more often.
We rode lazily for a while, stopping in a field where a harvest was taking place and chatting with the workers, then taking off again, the whirring of the bicycle wheels lulling me into a meditative trance.
When I spotted a line of leafy trees in the distance, I suggested we have our picnic there. All that pedaling had burned a hole through my stomach, and I was starving.
“Race you,” I said as I rolled past Olivia, now pedaling like mad behind me.
I reached the trees first and, after abandoning my bike in the dry grass, slid down against the tree trunk, and pretended to sleep. A smile tickled my lips when Olivia’s wheels screeched to a halt in front of me.
“Cheater! You knew I couldn’t change gears.” She pouted as she plopped down next to me, panting slightly, her cheeks rosy from exertion.
“Just admit it, you don’t like to lose. You’re actually quite competitive, but you hide it well.” I pulled her between my legs and kissed her neck.
“I guess you’ve discovered my dirty secret.”
“I plan on discovering more,” I murmured, tasting the salt of her sweat, inhaling the sprig of lavender that she had stuck behind her ear. “Want something to drink?”
She nodded, tickling my nose with her hair.
I opened the thermal backpack I’d filled with our lunch and retrieved a chilled bottle of Reynaud’s rosé.
Olivia laid out the checkered picnic blanket and set out the food she’d prepared early that morning: pan bagnat with heirloom tomatoes and briny olives, homemade cacio e pepe chips, saucisson, and a crusty baguette.
We ate languidly and then, still pleasantly buzzing from the wine, laid down and watched the lavender sway in the warm summer breeze. Olivia laid against my chest as I stroked her hair.
Here I was cuddling again. I barely recognized myself.
“We never talked about when I’d be leaving,” she said out of the blue, and I tensed. I didn’t want to think about that yet. “If I’m going to help Lucie, I’ll need to go back to Paris next week.”
There was no way I was letting her leave so soon and regretted ever having suggested that plan. “Do you want to go back to Paris?”
“No.” She squinted at me accusingly. “But you seemed to like the idea when Lucie mentioned it.”
“If I did it was only because I felt like a piece of shit for wanting to get in your pants.” I pressed my face to the top of her hair, inhaling the rosemary-mint scent of her shampoo, and ran my hand over the bare skin at the small of her back.
“And now that you have, you want me to stay. Is that it?”
“ T’as tout compris .” I ran my finger under the band of her shorts.
“I understood that.” She laughed. “You know, I think my comprehension is improving. I just need to get over my fear of speaking. Maybe we should only talk in French.”
“Mmm, maybe we shouldn’t talk at all.” I rolled her over onto her back and nibbled at her lips.
I wanted to forget the panic that came over me when she talked about leaving.
It was the same hollow pit in the gut I used to get as a kid each time my mother threatened to leave the house after my parents fought.
I was always afraid she’d abandon me. I didn’t like that I was feeling this way at the idea of Olivia leaving.
Especially when I knew it was inevitable.
Eventually, I stopped kissing her and pushed myself up on my elbows to gaze down at her beautiful face. She stroked my cheek, and I fought back the urge to rub into her like that damn tomcat.
“I do have to decide what I’m doing this fall.” She sighed.
“You know my opinion about that.” I don’t know why she was still hesitating. Law school was obviously the wrong choice for her.
“Not everyone can live from their passion like you.”
I laughed bitterly and sat up, resting the backs of my arms on my knees, staring into the distance. “I’m not very passionate about anything anymore.”
Except about you . The thought flickered uninvited through my mind. I shook my head to clear it.
“What do you mean?” She sat up and turned toward me.
I’d been dreading saying the next part aloud, afraid to make it true. “This problem I had . . . with tasting. It’s gone, disappeared this past week.”
“I wondered if it had but didn’t want to ask you.”
“So it’s pretty obvious that my problem is my work. All that pressure, for what? I just don’t care anymore.” I took a dried blade of grass and twirled it between my thumb and forefinger.
“Why did you care? In the beginning,” she asked.
“When I first started it was like I was contributing to something bigger than myself.” Though it was a long story, I told her my theory about history and culture and time being wrapped up in wine.
“Then the more successful the business became, the more it was about spreadsheets and bottom lines, bullshit meetings with pretentious hedge fund managers. I let the competition with Thomas fuel me for the past few years.”
She ran a finger up and down my forearm soothingly. “So do you think if you were able to prove him wrong about your business, it would be better?”
“No. I don’t care. That’s the problem.” I flopped back down and stared at the clouds.
“You don’t think it has anything to do with losing your dad?” she asked quietly.
Immediately, a sour taste filled my mouth.
I’d created the business to get away from him, to prove to myself that I was my own man.
I’d be damned if this all came down to him at the end.
And yet, his death had triggered something.
I guess I’d constructed my identity in large part in opposition to him and now that he was gone . . .
“Monsieur Reynaud told me that he wants you to take over his domaine,” Olivia continued.
I shook my head at the image that conjured up. For a crazy second when he’d first mentioned it, a thrill had run through me, and I’d considered it. But I’d only ever worked on the business side of the wine. “I’m not a winemaker.”
Suddenly, despite the breeze and the fresh air, it felt as if hot bricks were pressing down on me. I stood and started stuffing our things in the backpack. “Come on, lazy bones, I’ll race you back to the car.”
“We’re leaving already?” Olivia pouted.
“Unless you want to hang out until sunset for the arrival of the Instagram influencers.”
“Good point,” she conceded. “I’ll race you, but this time I’m taking your bike.”
She stood and dusted herself off. It was impossible to look away from her, especially there in the dappled afternoon light with the lavender fields in the distance turning her eyes an almost violet blue. Since I didn’t have a camera, I burned the image into my memory.
“Well?” she asked. “What do you want to do now?”
“You’ll find out.” I waggled my eyebrows at her, and she laughed and swatted at me. “Insatiable.”
“Only with you,” I said and realized it was the truth.
And that I was in big trouble.