Page 58 of The Wrong Vintage
This happens when a relationship shifts from pleasant to dangerous.
When desire threatens to harden into attachment.
When control slips.
I stare up at the ceiling and confront the ugliest truth of all: a part of me still thinks I wasn’t supposed to fall for a woman like Alessia.
Plain. Quiet. Unadorned.
The thought disgusts me almost as soon as it forms.
That isn’t truth—that’s vanity.
That’s the shallow, curated version of myself I learned to perform because it was easier than examining what actually holds weight.
I know myself well enough to recognize the reflex for what it is, and I don’t indulge it.
Voices drift through the open window.
Alessia laughing, Lucia answering her, the low murmur of a crew beginning its day.
Somewhere nearby, metal clinks softly.
Tools.
Buckets.
Vineyard work.
She’s already out there.
A grin spreads across my face before I can stop it.
This is what she meant when she said her vines determine her geography. And suddenly, fiercely, I don’t want to pull her away from that.
I want to move closer to it…and her.
I throw the covers back and get dressed quickly.
I’m energized.
The day stretches ahead—emails, calls, decisions—but none of it feels urgent in the way it usually does.
I want to sit under the pergola with my laptop, excellent Wi-Fi, and strong coffee, and watch my wife move through the vines. I want to let the rhythm of the estate seep into my bones.
I want to work near her.
I want her.
I open the door and step into the morning, the air cool and alive, and for the first time since my wedding, I don’t feel like a man managing an arrangement. I am a husband starting his day with his wife.
I find her near the pergola, exactly where I imagined she’d be.
She’s standing beside Edam, both of them bent over a tablet laid flat on the table, the screen crowded with charts and maps.
Vineyard parcels broken down into color-coded blocks, numbers layered over contour lines. Edam gestures with two fingers, zooming in, then out.
“If we pick the lower slope first,” he says, “we risk losing freshness on the upper rows. The heat’s been lingering longer this year.”
