I stayed awake longer, staring at the ceiling. Eventually, I drifted off too.
The alarmat five AM jolted us both awake. Saffron stirred and groaned in protest, then she stilled.
She rolled to face me. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi, yourself.”
“You stayed.”
“Told you I would.”
She kissed me, soft and slow, but when she leaned away, I saw the question in her eyes—did last night change things between us?
I kissed her back, deeper this time. Yeah, everything had changed. For the better.
“We need to pick today,” she said against my mouth.
“I know.”
“So we should?—”
I tightened my arms around her. “Five more minutes.”
She settled into me with a sigh. “Five more minutes.”
They stretched into ten, then fifteen. Neither of us wanted to move.
She got up first. “I really do need to shower. The crew will be waiting.”
“Go ahead. I’ll make coffee.”
“You don’t know where anything is.”
“I have mad skills as a hunter and gatherer, sweetheart, which means I can sniff out coffee anywhere.”
She rolled her eyes, smiled, and climbed out of bed. I watched her walk to the bathroom, appreciating every curve and line of her body that I now knew intimately.
She paused in the doorway and looked back at me. “You could join me.”
“If I do that, we’ll never make it to the vineyard.”
Her laugh echoed off the bathroom tiles as she disappeared inside. A minute later, I heard the water start.
I forced myself out of bed, put on my jeans, and headed downstairs. The coffeemaker sat on the counter next to the sink. I found grounds in the freezer and filters in the same cabinet as the cups.
While the coffee brewed, I looked around. There was mail stacked on the table and a calendar on the wall that had harvest dates marked in red, but I noticed the ink was smudged inplaces, like she’d erased and rewritten dates multiple times. There was a photo on the refrigerator of Saffron and Felicity, probably from five years ago, both of them laughing at something outside the frame.
The kitchen window looked out over the Zinfandel vines we’d harvested yesterday, now stripped of fruit.
When the coffeemaker beeped, I poured two mugs and carried them upstairs.
She was just coming out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, hair damp and smelling like citrus and honey. She took the mug I offered and sipped, then smiled.
“Perfect. Thank you.”
She set it down, then kissed me. “Your turn to shower. I’ll get dressed and check the weather.”
I kissed her forehead and went into the bathroom. The small space still smelled like her—not just her shampoo, but something else, something that was purely Saffron. I showered quickly, knowing daylight was fast approaching, then dressed in yesterday’s clothes.
