Eight Hundred Grapes (67)

Ben sent Maddie back to Michelle and took my hand, walked us to the edge of the tent, the vineyard side, the moon and stars shooting out over the vineyard, shining over the vines.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“I had a little talk with Michelle.”

He looked at me anxiously. “I knew her coming was a bad idea.”

“I’m just trying to understand if your visit to London was about our future there or your future there.”

“Our future.” He held my face in his hands. “Everything is about our future.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me about Surrey?”

“Surrey?” Ben looked at me, realizing what I now knew. “Georgia, come on.”

“It was more than Maddie, wasn’t it? You were trying to see if you could be a family. If you could be with her.”

Ben shook his head. “Of course not. It was always about Maddie.”

“What happened to no more secrets, Ben?”

“Nothing. Michelle tries to paint things in a light that she wants to see them in,” he said. “I told you Michelle is complicated.”

“Is she complicated or is she a liar?”

He pulled back, as if deciding how honest with me he needed to be. He picked his drink up, stalling.

“Look, when she came back, I had a moment, sure. I had a moment of thinking about this woman who broke me who was now the mother of my kid. Any man would have had the same moment of hesitation.”

I looked away from him, my heart dropping. “You didn’t tell me, though.”

“How would it have been helpful to tell you that? To tell you I was having a moment? Do you share with me every guy that crosses your mind?”

I was too struck by what he said to fight back. How could I fight back? He was right—any man would consider the most beautiful woman in the world, if she wanted him, if she was the mother of his child.

“I know Michelle is throwing you, and throwing out your idea of our plan together. But don’t let her.”

He leaned in and put his face up to my ear, whispering.

“The important thing is what I decided. I decided to stay with you. It was the easiest decision I ever made.”

I nodded and wrapped my arms around him, trying to trust his words. Still, something felt off in his explanation. It didn’t feel like the whole story. The whole story was that Michelle had left Ben. Now she wanted him back. That seemed to be the story.

And here was the problem—it wasn’t about Ben messing with our master plan—with my idea of what our ordered and lovely life was going to look like. It wasn’t about knowing I was going to have to navigate Michelle.

It was about the fact that when Ben said it was the easiest decision he ever made, staying with me, he shielded his eyes. He shielded his eyes and, even if he wasn’t saying it out loud, I knew he only wanted that to be true.



I told Ben I needed a minute alone and walked to the bar, pouring myself sparkling wine, downing a glass. The bartender stared at my speed, not saying anything, but wanting to say something. I gave him a look, daring him.

I took the bottle itself and moved away from the bar. I moved toward the corner, where I could watch Finn on his side of the party, Bobby on his. My mother looked back and forth between them as she stood there with Henry; Henry, who looked uncomfortable—not because he was there—I had learned enough about Henry to know there probably wasn’t any room in the world he felt uncomfortable in. No, he was uncomfortable because he saw how agitated my mother was and he thought he was causing it. He was uncomfortable because he cared.

I poured more sparkling wine into my glass when Lee came up to me in the corner, like she belonged there too. “The bartender says you took the last of the good stuff. Care to hand some of it over?”

She took my glass out of my hands, making it her own. “You okay?” she said.

I nodded.

She took a long sip, my heart racing. “You don’t seem it,” she said. She looked at me, debating whether she knew me well enough to say it. She turned away, apparently deciding against it. Then, thinking again, she turned back.

“You shouldn’t feel badly about it,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She motioned toward Michelle, back with her daughter and Ben. “It would be hard for anyone if Michelle Carter was their husband’s ex,” she said. “Even Michelle Carter.”

Then she handed the glass back over. I smiled. “Thanks.”

“You should feel badly about pretending not to know me when you met me yesterday. If you want to feel badly about something, feel badly about that. Why did you do that?”

“What?”

She took the bottle of champagne out of my hand, poured some more into our shared glass, taking another sip herself. “You heard me.”

She shrugged, but she looked at me like she was playing way past that. I wasn’t incredibly uncomfortable that Lee, computer genius, spoon and glass sharer, was a step ahead.

“Did Jacob tell you that I’m taking a job in Seattle?”

That stopped me. “You did? When?”

She nodded. “I just attended Foo Camp, which—do you know it from growing up here? Anyway, I was offered a job in Seattle at a start-up that deals with online privacy. I’ll make software for them. Really cutting-edge stuff.”