Chapter 33
Chapter 33
The Mount Etna eruption is still ongoing; the airport will be closed for the next twenty-four hours, at the very least; despite Nyota’s continuing threats, Rue still does not have a dress; Eli’s wedding planner bursts into tears during their Zoom call and asks to be replaced; the person who owns the ice rink where Rue, Eli, and I used to skate, and who is supposed to officiate the wedding, informs us that he’s too scared of the wee bit of lava trickling down toward Catania to fly in.
All in all, it’s the perfect night for a wine tasting.
We head out at sunset. The vineyards are beautiful, even more so in the purple blanket of twilight. The live band is instrumental and jazzy, soft and melodic in a way that soothes my growing anxiety that this wedding might not be able to happen. The wine…
I try very hard not to let my real opinion show, but I hold on to my deeply held beliefs: all wine tastes the same, and that same is rotten grapes.
“You’re not even supposed to drink it,” Nyota says, frantically trying to turn me into a classier person. “You let it swish in your mouth, savor the finish and the aftertaste, and then spit it out.”
“So I get to suffer through the shitty flavor, and no booze? I’m not bougie enough for this.”
“Fix yourself,” she yells after me, “or I won’t take you with me as my plus-one when I become a lobbyist for Big Grape!”
I find Conor at one of the round patio tables, sitting with Sul, and settle next to him. They’re laughing about someone they know who might be going to prison for financial shit, making jokes about the relationship between ayahuasca retreats and a CEO’s ability to maximize shareholder value. Then Avery and Diego join us, and they switch to Kaede’s day care, one of their quants exiting his polycule after five years, lower back pain, retirement funds, the Super Bowl. The way youths these days can’t write in cursive.
I lace my hands together, drape them over the back of my chair, lay my head on them, and watch it all happen. I may not have much to contribute, but this is fun.
“I swear to god,” Diego says, “the new interns, they don’t know how to sign a document.”
“Ours bitch that they can’t read my handwriting. Fucking children.” Conor shakes his head. Then glances at me. “No offense.”
“None taken.” I smile sweetly. Under the table, I squeeze my hand around his thigh. “Feel free to start discussing how much lower your testicles have been hanging of late.”
Avery spits out her wine. Sul is very close to choking on his cheese cube, so I pat him on the back as I head to check on Nyota, who’s huddled with Tisha.
“Okay, so.” Tisha lifts her fingers and starts counting. “First of all: fuck. Second: shit. Third: goddamn.”
“I was expecting you to continue with the alliterations.” Nyota looks at me, shaking her head. “An all-you-can-eat source of disappointment, my sister.”
“What happened?”
“We’re in trouble,” Tisha explains. “Our parents just told us that they’re no longer flying in. And they were in charge of bringing the present I bought for Rue, this supercute emerald necklace that looks like a leaf. What am I supposed to give her now?”
“I could lend you the trilegged magnet Maya got me,” Nyota offers.
“Oh, shut up. What are you giving Rue?”
“A follow. On Instagram.”
I whistle. “Lucky girl.”
“I know.” Nyota sips her rosé. “But it’s only on a trial basis. The first time she posts a picture of a mountain range with an inspirational quote superimposed, I’m blocking her.”
“You’re safe with Rue,” I reassure her.
“Do I get a follow, Ny? I’m your goddamn sister.”
“Not online, you aren’t. Not until you start curating your profile. For the love of baby toddler Jesus, stop using hashtags like it’s 2014.”
I’m worried about Rue, so I go search for her. The main building of the winery has a lovely porch-like balcony that wraps around it. I walk to the back of it, and that’s when I find her: sitting at a bench in the vineyard below, facing Mount Etna as the oranges and reds slowly trickle out of the uppermost crater. Eli is with her, one arm wrapped loosely around her waist.
“God,” I mutter.
“What?” Conor asks. Somehow, his sudden appearance doesn’t startle me.
“Look at them. They love each other a cringeworthy amount. They just want to be married, and the damn underground magma is not dense enough to let them.”
“Isn’t it the opposite?”
“What?”
“Isn’t the underground magma too dense?”
“The magma has to have enough buoyancy to rise to the surface.”
“I thought the main factor was gas bubbles that…” He shakes his head. Chuckles as he leans forward, palms against the railing.
“What?”
“I can’t believe I was arguing over fluid dynamics with you.”
“Neither can I. Shall I school you on the Nasdaq?”
“And on my low-hanging testicles, too.” He looks at me sternly, desperately trying to pretend he didn’t enjoy the way I called him out. I sit against the railing, facing him, to make it even harder on him.
“Should I have talked about your PhD?”
“I never got one.”
“Don’t be modest, Conor. You have a pretty huge dick.”
A thoughtful stare. “You really are,” he muses, “a constant menace.”
“I try.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Nah. Wine’s too grapey. You?”
He shakes his head.
“What’s your excuse? You’re not one of us, the unwashed masses. You like wine. You have a refined palate. You pair shit, and…” I straighten, in utter disbelief that I missed this. “You’re not drinking.”
He glances around, as if to highlight the absence of a glass. “How observant of you.”
“No, not just right now. You no longer drink. I haven’t seen you take a sip of alcohol since you got here.”
His stare seems to ask: Do you want an award for noticing?
And yes, I do. Also wanted: answers. “But you weren’t…?”
“An alcoholic? No. I don’t think I was. But it got to be a bit much.”
“When?”
“A few months ago.”
My throat seizes. “About ten or so?”
A pause. He nods, silent, and I have to clench my fist. All I want in the world is permission to reach out and kiss him. I nearly do so, but he adds, “I figured it might be better to take a break. I never liked myself much when I drank, anyway. The things I said…They could be quite cruel.”
I can relate. There have been approximately ten thousand times in the last few years when I haven’t liked myself. Nine thousand and nine hundred of them, I was angry and said something unfair to someone who didn’t deserve it. “Do you miss it?”
“Hating myself, or drinking?”
“Either, I suppose.”
“I miss the alcohol…sometimes. Often, even. Not this week, though.”
“Why not?”
The look he gives me practically begs me to keep up. Come on, Maya. You know why. Use that top-recruit brain of yours.
“To make up for it, I still give myself plenty of opportunities for self-loathing.”
“Glad that’s taken care of. If you need any help…”
“Don’t worry, Maya. You remain the reigning queen of my regrets.”
A dull ache spreads through my bones. But he’s smiling, like he wants to turn this into banter, into our usual back-and-forth, and…
“Let’s dance,” I say. The music is faint, the balcony poorly lit, and I don’t think I’ve ever danced to slow music in my entire life. Still, I pull him closer.
“Maya, it’s not a good—”
But we’re already doing it. My arms are wrapped around his waist, and we’re swaying, and after a moment he’s holding me, too. Even tighter than I do him.
“Hi,” I say into his shirt.
“Hi, Trouble.” His lips find the top of my head. Linger. We’re barely moving—this is not dancing, this is a hug . But I can pretend, if that’s what he needs.
I bury my face in his chest, and say, “Thank you for today. With Eli.”
“You’re welcome.” His hand caresses my hair. “You’d have both calmed down on your own, eventually.”
“True. But it was nice, not wasting half a day resenting him. My therapist would be proud of you.”
“Mine would be proud of me, too.”
I laugh. Clutch the cotton of his shirt. “Conor?”
“Yeah?”
“I really—”
“Hey, Hark, the cars are—” Avery cuts off as she rounds the corner of the balcony. Her expression shifts from amused, to confused, to hurt.
Betrayed.
I put some space between Conor and me, but it’s too late.
She clears her throat. “The cars will be leaving soon,” she says. Then spins on her heel and leaves.
We return to the villa.
The sky is starless, pitch black except for Mount Etna, which spits out little bursts of fire, then large waves of smoke. Everyone makes Mordor jokes. Paul brings up the apocalypse. Axel asks what Mordor is. Avery laughs a little too loudly.
There’s a prehistoric flavor to this. Beautiful, yes, but also a reminder of the insignificance of our little lives. Job interviews and marriage certificates and normal range of iron levels and tax extensions and a fifteen-year age gap and even the Friedman doctrine…do they matter, when the earth is sputtering fire like a giant dragon?
I steal a glance at Conor, but he’s not looking at me. Surely, we’re not just going back to our respective rooms. The world is ending. Sauron might take over Middle-earth. But Minami pulls him aside. They talk by the pool, clearly worried for Eli and Rue and the wedding, and I don’t have a good excuse to loiter. I climb the stairs up to my room, and nearly have a coronary when I find my brother in the upholstered chair by my desk.
“Why am I having flashbacks to that time I snuck out past curfew and came back to you sitting on my bed?”
He chuckles. After our fight, I feel more relaxed around him than I have in a long while. “And you kept insisting that you’d just gone for a run.”
“I had .”
“You reeked of weed and wore a denim miniskirt.”
“Oh, right.” I laugh. “Then maybe I hadn’t.”
“That’s why I grounded you for a month. Out of curiosity, where were you?”
“Hmm. I think at the time I was hanging out with a guy whose older sister went to UT. She would get us into parties at the dorms all the time.”
He nods like I’ve solved an ancient mystery. “Then maybe that’s the reason I’m reminding you of that night.” He sighs. “Maya, I think we need to talk about Hark.”