Eight Hundred Grapes (19)

As we walked over to join them, the bride gave Finn a flirtatious smile, newly married and checking out Finn, striking a pose for him.

“Hello there,” she said.

Finn nodded. “Hello.”

Then she motioned toward Bobby. “He’s getting married tomorrow,” she said, her wild red hair flying.

“We know,” Finn said.

Bobby leaned in to her, a little too close.

“The thing is,” Bobby said, “I’m a little young to be getting married. You know? I love Margaret. I really love her. But maybe that’s part of it. You look a little older. You probably are more sure.”

The bride looked at Bobby, irritated. “Did you just call me old?”

“Older, not old.”

The bride looked like she was going to cry, which was when the groom came over. He was also redheaded, and large. He smelled like a brewery. “What’s wrong?” he said.

She pointed at Bobby and Finn. “They called me old.”

Finn put up his hands in surrender. “No, we didn’t.”

“Are you calling Catherine a liar?” the groom said.

“Who’s Catherine?” Bobby said.

Bobby put out his hand, which the groom slapped away. A group surrounded us, the happy couple and the Ford siblings, who had upset them.

“Easy,” Finn said. “Let’s take it easy here.”

He put his arms out, trying to keep the group from closing in.

Bobby moved closer to Catherine as though she couldn’t hear him, as though that were the problem. “I said you looked older, not old. Can we move on to whether I should get married tomorrow?”

This was when the groom threw a punch at Bobby’s face.

Finn jumped in to protect Bobby, and pushed the groom onto the ground. He wasn’t trying to fight him, just trying to get him away from Bobby.

“Get him out of here!” Finn yelled. He was thinking only of Bobby and his upcoming marriage. Protecting both.

As I ran with Bobby into the woods, the cops showed up, sirens blasting.

Bobby stopped where he was. “I have to go back for him,” Bobby panted.

And he wanted to, he really did.

He started to race back toward the fight, toward the cops. But, even from the woods, we could see it was too late.

Finn was on top of a rich, redheaded groom—and the cop who was pulling him off was not there to save him.



I kept going over the night before Bobby’s wedding—as if it held the secret to how I should feel, seven days before mine.

I was getting nowhere fast—lying on my childhood bed, staring at a photograph of Culture Club taped on the ceiling above. It had been there since I was a teenager, placed at my eye level, so Boy George would be the one to say good night.

It felt like he was taunting me with all the answers I didn’t seem to have—when my phone rang.

I looked down at the caller ID, a happy Ben staring back. I wanted to pick up and tell Ben what Finn had just told me—I wanted Ben to be my person again, the one I told everything to. Ben always said the thing that revealed to me what I should do. Ben said that was giving him too much credit. It never seemed to me that it was giving him enough.

“Hey,” he said when I picked up the phone. He paused, not sure what to do now that he had me there. “Thanks for picking up.”

I kept my eyes on the ceiling, on George’s face. I wasn’t going to make this easier. Maybe I was done making it harder, but that was different.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Staring at Boy George.”

He laughed. “That bad of a day?”

“You have no idea.”

He cleared his throat, asking me a question that encouraged me to answer him.

“You want to tell me?” he said.

“Yes.”

“You going to?”

I shook my head as though he could see that. “How would you describe Bobby and Margaret? Would you describe them as happy?”

“Yes, I would.” He paused.

“What?”

“I would describe him as happier than her,” he said. “She seems a little lost.”

That broke my heart for Bobby, for the reasons why Ben was correct, for the reasons it didn’t matter.

“And my parents?”

“That is more even. That is blessed,” he said. “I mean, next to you and Boy George, I’d say they are the happiest couple I know.”

I laughed for the first time that day, some of my anger melting. Ben felt like Ben again, the two of us talking gently in a dark room, the world safer and more lovely for it.

“You still need to take that poster down. It’s creepy. Milli Vanilli creepy.”

“That’s not a battle you’re going to win, Ben.”

Except that it was. I would have to remove everything from this room before this house was sold. The house. The vineyard. My childhood.

“So I oversaw the move today,” Ben said. “Everything is on its way to London.”

His accent crept up on me and warmed me to him.

“I guess you heard that . . .”

“I did,” I said. “Thomas called looking for you.”

“He mentioned something about that,” he said.