“Good gravy, that’s phenomenal,” she said with eyes closed and her golden-brown lashes fanned out against her still-flushed skin. He had to agree. “We are going to work on questions right after lunch, you know.” Ellie pulled out the top half of her notebook from her bag and tapped it before sliding it back in.
“Yep,” he said. “We totally are.”
And so it began. Ellie and Cris were not only fed but treated to stories about the vineyard and the family. Luisa, Piero, and their son, Marco, had been running the winery since Piero’s parents passed away. Over the years, they’d expanded to produce cheeses, honey, vegetables, olive oil, and even salumi. All three of them, plus the collection of employees,chimed in throughout the meal to encourage them to sip one wine with a bite of salty prosciutto, another with a tangy caper berry, bringing out the flavors in the wine, the food, the day. Cris had edged a bottle of sparkling water closer to them and kept refilling their glasses, but even rehydration and the stomach-lining benefits of thinly sliced pork fat were losing the battle against six kinds of Chiaro di Luna’s wines.
At a certain point, Ellie had stopped shooting impatient glances his way and released the furrow in her brow. Her cheeks were pink, but under the cool shade of the pergola, it couldn’t be from the heat anymore. That was about the time when Marco decided to introduce them to the house-made pear cordial, and Cris made the executive decision to forget about driving for the next several hours. He wasn’t feeling overly loopy, just unwilling to risk getting pulled over and trying to explain to the localcarabinieriwhy he and his passenger smelled like the six cases of wine in the back of the car.
“So, you are the ones getting married?” Luisa asked with a smile from the other end of the table.
“No,amore,it’s his grandfather. Simone from Chiavari. You remember. Water polo,” said Piero.
“Ah! How lovely! And who is the beautiful bride?” Luisa asked.
“My grandmother,” said Ellie.
“Oh! That is really something! Wait, will that make you cousins? Or…” Luisa trailed off as she turned to Piero.
“No!” Cris and Ellie said in unison, then glanced at each other.
“It would make us step-something-or-other, but in this case, it really makes us nothing.” Ellie smiled.
“Well, not nothing,” Cris said, turning to her.
“Kind of nothing,” she said, the smile now tightening her neck muscles. “Nothing legal.”
“But we could be,” said Cris.
“But we’re not,” she insisted.
“Well kids, why don’t you visit the gardens for a bit? There are plenty of places to relax and enjoy. When you’re ready, we’ll load up the car.” Piero stood, collecting some of the empty dishes, and strolled toward the house.
“Great, we’ve succeeded in awkwarding people right off their own table.” Cris poured more water into his glass.
“We’re not awkward,” Ellie said, her face crumpling. “Oh no, we are, aren’t we?”
“It’s an awkward topic in most modern cultures, I think.” He laughed. “You’re not supposed to be thinking certain things about someone who’s practically your family.” Apparently, that pear cordial did exactly what it was supposed to do and let his subconscious slip right off its leash.
“But we’re not family,” she said, clearly getting flustered. “And what things?”
There was no way to manage this discussion with an audience. Plus, he was pretty sure that if he kept sitting there his mouth would only improve its proficiency in letting loose every embarrassing thought he’d had in the last decade. Cris looked over to the garden, where there were several comfortable nooks he could envision them sobering up in. At the moment, his feet were going numb and Ellie’s forehead looked like a Twizzler. They needed to get away from the table, ASAP.
“Do you want to go check out the garden?” he asked.
They wandered along the green grass flanked by beds of marigolds, pansies, and purple alliums. The cool breeze swept through Ellie’s hairand ruffled the hem on her sundress. She thought about looking at Cris’s watch again but couldn’t remember how many hours it took to metabolize as many glasses of wine as they had drunk and didn’t bother.
“You know I am only teasing, right?” he said. “About being awkward.”
“Oh. Yes. Maybe. I’m not worried about that. I am worried about one hundred other things, so that can be one hundred and one. Can we sit?” Ellie asked. She didn’t wait for an answer and surrendered herself into a rocking chair. It moved. She flinched and stood back up again.
“Come over here,” Cris said, pointing to a hammock behind a eucalyptus tree.
Ellie stopped and put her hand up in protest. “No swaying. I will do anything but sway.”
“We won’t sway, I promise. We’ll just sit. Just come over here.” Cris sat on the edge of the wide canvas that was braced by wooden stays on each end. “See?” He gestured toward his long, muscular leg planted on the ground. He extended his hand toward her. “I got you.”
Ellie approached with a crinkled face. She scanned the situation, tucked the fabric of her dress between her legs, and sat, leaning back next to him as the canvas folded behind them. If the hammock moved one inch in either direction she was going to end up tumbling out of it. She kept the toes of her right foot on the ground, just in case.
“You don’t trust me enough to handle hammock navigation?”
