“Even when the memory doesn’t belong to those who can’t remember, since they were not present at the time.”
“Even though,” he agreed again. “However, I will not allow any man to step over a line that will kill my heart.”
“It’s worrying me.”
He stared at me so long, so hard, I almost looked away. But I held my ground and held his stare. It wasn’t penetrating but searching. Finally, he stood to his full height and lifted me from the chair, then took the seat and set me on his lap. He rested his chin on my shoulder, and I rested my head against his.
“It is your right to worry as a woman, as my wife, about my soul and the things you will consider not worth the permanent mark it will make. However.” He turned my face so we were eye to eye. “All love stories end tragically, do they not, since we must all say farewell to life in the end?”
He was making sense, but it was sense I refused to accept. I tried to turn my face away from his, but he refused to allow it.
“The real tragedy, I have learned, my wife, is not the goodbye—it is not having a goodbye tragic enough to endure the ages. Death was something dark in my thoughts—a cold void. Now, death represents peace to me. Because I have all I have ever craved and hungered for in my arms. The most magical aspect is that each day, I crave you more. You fulfill all my desires. Yet I still crave. Will always crave. I do not wish to leave you,vita mia, but I know my life will never have an end because of the love you are showing me. Teaching me. I will follow wherever you go, and since you came to me from heaven, are in the clouds with me now…” He shrugged, as if to say,there is no end for us.
I went to respond, but he shook his head, standing up and setting me on my feet. “No more talk of ends.” He ran his rough fingertips along the cross dangling between my breasts. “Today is a day of new beginnings, ah?” He smiled at me, and it completely transformed his face.
He became even more handsome, which was devastating to my heart. It kept falling for him over and over, the love inside of it swelling and taking flight, like an air balloon over the winery at sunrise.
He took the vintage bottle of wine from the table, taking my hand in his free one, and began to lead me toward the door. “I will get drunk off my love. Before I even knew you existed, you were inside of me, flowing through my veins, inside of my blood as if you were oxygen, keeping me warm when all I felt was a coldvoid inside of my heart. You, Amora,have always kept me alive. And you always will.”
With that, we stepped out into our illuminated world, and my only hope was that heaven was this exact place with my husband.
It was hard to focus on the celebration when the conversation with my husband was still fresh in my mind, not to mention the fact that Francesco and his family had the nerve to show their faces at our home, even if Rocco had invited them. Having them attend seemed to please him to no end.
They were a constant reminder: a situation that had nothing to do with us might cause a war.
Wouldcause a war.
I didn’t need Scarlett to confirm it. I felt it in my gut.
I didn’t know how all this would connect with Luca and Maggie Beautiful, either, but I felt that too.
Eventually, though, I was able to push it to the back of my mind as more guests arrived, and the celebration officially began.
I’d asked Rocco and his brothers to set up long wooden tables underneath the bulb lights I’d asked Rocco to hang for me a few nights back. The women and I cooked enough food to feed over a hundred guests, and the most decorative breads, spreads, and cheeses were spread out in artful displays. My inspiration came from the colors of the land and all it had to offer. Grapes were the main theme, along with figs, oranges, apples, pears, goat cheese, and chestnuts.
For all the women, we’d made crowns of grape leaves for them to wear, and when it was time for the stomping of thegrapes, Rocco washed my feet, then scooped me up and set me inside a barrel made for fifty and told me to dance. The barrel had the name of my wine burnt onto the exterior.Aunt Lola, Margherita, Scarlett, Carmen, Juliette, and Mia all had barrels of their own with their names done in the same technique. Rocco had made wines in honor of them too.
As the music began to play, I lifted my dress a little and began to dance. At first, it was an odd feeling. Beneath my feet, the grapes were squishing and becoming liquid. I could feel the pulp between my toes.
My husband was clapping along to the music, watching me stomp the grapes with a passion in his eyes that moved me. And in that moment, I understood Scarlett Rose Fausti like never before. How when she danced, it was her husband’s eyes that moved her, like my fingers moved in tempo to the beat of our love story as the words formed on paper.
Being playful, I lifted my dress a little, then a little higher, until I reached my thighs. Juice ran down them in racing purple lines. The music became a little faster, not as teasing. I held onto the sides of the barrel, dancing and circling around. My eyes found Maggie Beautiful on a turn. She was singing a song in Italian, laughing with the rest of us as the stomping of the grapes turned into almost rain.
The song picked up tempo, even faster, and we followed its rhythm.
My husband’s clapping was exactly in time to the music and me, and I started spinning, juice flying in all directions, highlighted by the illuminating sun.
My husband removed his shirt, leaving only his white T-shirt underneath. The suspenders he wore hugged his wide shoulders, and, surprising me, he removed his socks and boots and hopped over the side of the barrel with ease.
He came after me with a hunter’s smile on his face.
I took off around the barrel, laughing so hard, I could barely catch my breath as Rocco chased me. I darted across the barrel, and Rocco moved in tandem. If I went left, he went left. If I went right, so did he. He was always a step quicker than me, though. Even when I feinted to throw him off, he was unfazed. When I bent down slowly to grab a handful of crushed grapes, his eyes danced with mischief, probably a reflection of mine.
On a turn right, he easily slipped his hand around my waist and lifted me off my feet. I went airborne for a second before he set me down, still with a tight grip around my waist. My crown made of grape leaves tilted on my head, about to fall off, and with one deft movement, my husband saved it.
“Not my queen’s crown,” he said in his trademark deep voice with a bit of rasp.
I grinned, easily turning in his arms, and when I did, I set the handful of crushed grapes over his head, rubbing it in for good measure.
