Screwmates(40)

Nothing is perfect.

The next chapter was about choosing the exact perfect time to pick the grapes. Sometimes, the sugar content becomes optimal at, like, two in the morning, and the village must turn out to pick those little globes of juice before they turn. If Marc had bothered to mention that wine books were basically race-against-the-clock thrillers, I would so not have fought him on this.

Somehow, the entire day managed to pass between stolen glances at him over our books. Besides a few refills on the Snack Tray, we spent the entire time in the living room, just poring over the information gleaned from the library. Who knew libraries were such a font of information? Kidding, kidding. Kind of.

The best part was how damn comfortable I still felt with him, even after confronting my own super-uncomfortable feelings. There was a lot of relief there, though. I mean, we had to live together. We were living together. If my dawning l-o-v-e was going to make waves, I’d sooner jump ship. But feeling like this, together but separate, enjoying our own books in a shared space—I wasn’t quite sure how to frame it, but it felt good. It felt like we could move forward.

That was all I really needed when it came down to it. Just to move forward. The sentimentality was so fresh, surely it wouldn’t seep into my pores the way a long-term affair would. So I was having an emotional response to a physical attraction, but it would fade. It would.

It would!

And then everything would be fine. Back to business. Back to normal. Absence rarely made the heart grow fonder if said absence was longer than about three or four weeks, I’d read once. And everything you read is definitely true. As long as you didn’t read it on the internet.

Anyways, he’d be gone for actual months. So a few weeks of pining, perhaps? A few weeks of winding down Screwmates, then, and wrapping up the series. By the time both of those things were done, I’d be completely over him. I would no longer remember how his slightly curly hair felt between my fingers. No clue how my skin tightened at the graze of his touch. I probably wouldn’t be able to pick the shade of his eyes out of a crayon box.

It was going to be the best thing that could possibly happen to us. “Us”. I had to stop using that word, for one thing.

“Hey, Marc?” I asked on a whim.

“Yeah?” He looked up with a smile as warm as cinnamon.

“Are you subletting while you’re gone?” His smile disappeared into the furrows of his brow. I noted that this was clearly a stressful subject. Fair enough, subletting was nothing fun in the best of circumstances, but when you are not even in the country to deal with any mishaps… ugh. Big ugh.

“No. I’ll continue to pay my half. You’ll just.” He didn’t trail off so much as stopped talking. Coughed. Coughed again. Maybe he was coming down with something. I fervently hoped I wouldn’t get it too, but his tongue had been inside my mouth, so. We’d recover together, super romantically. I meant not romantically! Not!

“I’ll just,” I reassured him. With all that time to myself, and his piece of the rent still covered, I was so going to install a mini-studio in the living room. It wouldn’t bother a soul. Maybe Lizzie. But she didn’t live here, so her perfectionist ways didn’t count. I’d tape tarps to the flooring and walls. I wasn’t going to be rude and lose the deposit, I was just not going to be bothered with niceties like places for my friends to sit. Then, my life refocused, I’d forget about Marc, make a million (or thousand) dollars, and get my own apartment.

A studio of my own. The thought was blissful. With that thought, I could shove down my nervousness about my newly-discovered feelings. My entire body relaxed, I could feel it go. Better than wine, the thought of a studio. Art was everything. Guess I’ll survive, I thought to myself with a smirk, and went back to becoming an absolute expert in viticulture.





Thirteen





In retrospect, we both should have known that the idea of only a single bottle of wine was laughable. A mere fantasy.

It was also quite a coup that we were even allowed back into the Culinary Center after stumbling out last night, holding each other upright. But hey, if nothing else, we were paying customers, so.

“You guys again? I feel like maybe this isn’t the best idea,” said the wine guy, in lieu of a hello. He was apparently running the tasting event we’d decided to crash last minute. If I weren’t already with the only guy on earth I was interested in impressing, I might have been embarrassed by that.

“No way,” I told him indignantly. “It’s totally the best idea.”

“Yeah. Me and my screwmate are going to crush this,” Marc added, and my heart gave a little squeeze. Okay, a giant one.

“Screwmates? I love that comic!” the guy answered brightly. Whaaaaat. This was entirely unexpected. Marc opened his mouth, maybe to ask, or maybe not, but I wasn’t going to allow it no matter what.

“Hey, look! A snack buffet!” I pointed. “You wanna grab us a good selection? We gotta be less ridiculous tonight.” And with that I quickly steered Marc into the room and set him to work. Then I turned back to wine guy and let the nice girl attitude drop. My eyes narrowed. My jaw clenched. I grabbed his shirt collar.

I looked super badass, I could just tell. It was going to have to go into the comic, but first—

“You can’t tell him about the comic. Not a goddamn word, do you understand?” I hissed, holding onto his button-down for all I was worth.