It had taken all of my logistical skills and sexual prowess to get Henri out of the restaurant for the weekend. That’s not to say we never did anything outside of work — quite the contrary. In the year we spent getting his new place up and running, my incredibly ambitious French boyfriend had been adamant about making time for day trips in Paris. In between filling the dining space with secondhand furniture and training staff, we were going to places like the Pére Lachaise cemetery to read romantic poetry near Oscar Wilde’s grave, or a kitschy hole-in-the-wall which made wine and small bite pairings so inventive that it soon became a weekly staple. We hustled all day and stayed up all night, entwining our limbs in bed and telling stories until our eyelids forced themselves to close.
It was the least he could do after I took an indefinite leave of absence at my job and moved my whole life to Paris. In addition to melding our lives even closer together, I was now splitting my time between the restaurant and a new side gig as a writer for a local food and wine trade. But still, for all the fun we were having amidst the hard labor, Henri refused to budge on working weekends. Fridays and Saturdays were the most chaotic time for the business, and positive reviews from critics and patrons alike meant he had even more to prove.
We needed to switch things up. So on the tail end of a rewarding, albeit punishing service, I locked up and sat Henri down in front of a table strewn with tapered candles and a Super Tuscan bottle — one of his favorites. I opened it and poured him a heavier glass than usual.
“Picture this: you, me, sipping something delicious at a remote bed and breakfast three hours away,” I said, scrolling on my phone to show him the place I booked, which sat near a river on the outskirts of an idyllic-looking village.
“I know you feel anxious because things are going well — and because of what happened to your first restaurant — but I promise you that nothing will get ruined if you’re out for a single weekend. You’ve trained your staff so they know exactly how to run the place in your absence,” I said, while crossing the distance between us and taking a seat on his lap. The light glinted off his dark locks in a way that still made my stomach clench. “And we can come back from our break just in time to make sure everything is perfect for our little reunion.”
This had been the hardest part of convincing Henri to take some time off. Now that the restaurant was becoming a neighborhood favorite, we thought it’d be an excellent idea to celebrate with our friends from last year’s grape picking at Antoine’s vineyard. Ruby and Pietro were an immediate yes. Even Julian, stubborn and dispassionate as he was, said he could make the trip with his now-wife if we’d put them up for a few nights.
“I’m not sure I feel great about coming back on Sunday, the day of our party. Who will make sure things run smoothly? And what exactly will we do while we’re gone?” Henri asked, as he swallowed the final dregs from his glass. I wiped the excess from his shiny lips and gave him a soft peck. Then I poured him another.
“I’ve already coordinated with Louis on everything that needs to be done. We will get all of the logistics sorted before we leave, and he will troubleshoot any issues we run into on Sunday.” Henri’s best friend and co-lead had been an integral part in getting the restaurant built out, and was intimately acquainted with his need to over manage every single detail.
“And as for what we’ll do? Absolutely nothing. Sleep in, see a sight or two. Or we can stay in bed all weekend, and you can find things to make me taste and describe. A favorite pastime of yours.” He took a deep breath through his nostrils and sighed, wrapping an arm tight around my waist. “I do like the sound of that.”
“I haven’t even told you the best part.”
“Which is?”
“Antoine called me the other day. He and Bea are planning to come to dinner with our grape-juice-turned-wine. The fruits of our labor are finally ready to drink.”
What was supposed to be a weekend full of relaxation and endless lovemaking in a picturesque village quickly turned into one of complete disorder and abstinence. Everything that could have gone wrong that weekend happened, so much so that it felt like the universe was balancing out our good fortune with a weekend of bad luck. Sure, it got off to a bad start when we realized I’d incorrectly booked the bed and breakfast for the following weekend. Henri, embracing the speech I gave him about things being handled just fine at home, had still been game to find a small hotel on the main road. We spent the rest of the day wandering in and out of local shops, taking in the gorgeous blue sky and its accompanying river that wound through the town, and trying at least one glass of wine at every bar we encountered.
But in the late afternoon, right as I’d managed to convince Henri into a little foreplay before dinner at the hotel, Louis called with an update. A new, part-time chef had created a small fire in our absence — a damning reminder of the building damage that forced Henri’s previous joint to go under. And then, in an especially bad stroke of luck, Bea messaged me in the evening to let us know Antoine had been hit hard by influenza and couldn’t make it to the party. Devastating news, made all the worse by the fact that there would be no special wine on Sunday.
“I know it’s not great, but I know everything else will go wonderfully!” she wrote. “And I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
On Saturday morning, Henri asked me how I felt about going back early. “Just so we can avoid any problem on Sunday,” he reasoned. The guilt tasted like bile in my throat. “That’s probably not a bad idea,” I said.
We were an hour into the drive back when the clicking started. A slight, but distinct clicking close to the engine that got louder and faster the longer we drove. I took a peek at Henri right as he switched from a single-handed drive to gripping the steering wheel with both hands.
“Merde,” Henri muttered under his breath. “I’m not sure what’s going on, but it doesn’t sound good. We’d better pull over.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” I said. What he thought we’d do once we stopped, I wasn’t sure. Despite priding myself on being an excellent navigator, the route I’d pulled up on my phone took us not to the highway as I’d intended, but a seemingly endless stretch of road decorated by massive trees and farmland. No highway, no civilization, and, of course, no phone signal.
“There’s a farm up there. See it?” He pointed to a brown dot in the distance. “We can stop and ask to use their phone. I can find the closest place to get the car looked at, and if we can’t get back on the road, I’ll call someone to pick us up.”
“You’re being very calm for someone who was having a near panic attack about Louis getting the correct garnishes for tomorrow’s dinner.”
Henri reached out to place a hand behind my neck and started rubbing slow, firm circles on my nape. It was something he did often on himself, a physical manifestation I’d learned early on as a sign of stress bordering on hostility.
“My darling, in this instance I have no other choice.”
I hadn’t spent too much time around rural French folk, but Alain and Mariam felt like the kind of couple I would conjure when they came to mind. The farm sat on a sloping hill, a sun-bleached but sturdy thing that had a wrap around porch and bright yellow rocking chairs out front. And for the middle-aged couple that sat inside, they were quite friendly. Mariam offered us tea and scones before she even got our names. They weren’t paranoid as isolated farm life tends to make some people, but they still knew how to weather any storm that came their way — like a couple of city dwellers who knew next to nothing about cars. Alain was something of an autodidactic mechanic, and it only took him a few minutes under the hood to diagnose what exactly was wrong with the truck.
“I have most of the tools we’ll need to fix it,” he said to Henri. “I’ve called the shop owner to ask him to leave the place open. The only problem is that it will take at least an hour one way and an hour to get back, plus time for install.”
“Yes, that will work,” Henri replied. He said this without a thank you, while continuing to glance and send messages on his phone. Were there more crises at the restaurant I wasn’t aware of?
Feeling both out of my depth and remorseful for this dumpster fire of a weekend, I made an attempt at lightheartedness. “Would you like me to come, Alain? I’m a notoriously lucky travel companion,” I joked weakly.
“I think you’ve done enough for today,” Henri snapped. It was like I’d been slapped. The air had somehow gone from the inside of the quaint, knicknack-adorned foyer in which we stood, and I could feel my cheeks warm as Alain and Mariam glanced at each other from across the room. We’d suddenly become the kind of couple people go home to gossip about with their partners in the comfort of their marital beds.
Like a pair of synchronized swimmers, the two veered us in opposite directions — Henri to the front porch, and me to the kitchen with Mariam. She had me sit at the table, where I stared at etchings on the wooden tabletop to keep from crying.
Soon after, she placed a bowl of apples in front of me with a knife to slice them. “Sometimes rudeness is a sign for you to leave, and sometimes it’s anxiety or fear. The tricky part is discerning between the two,” she said in a heavy French that was hard to understand. “When and how you come back together is what really matters.” She went back to her corner of the kitchen and said nothing else.
Henri came back into the home sometime later. His phone was nowhere in sight. He grabbed a knife and sat across from me, though it took some time before his eyes met mine.
“Do you remember those days along the vines, when we’d go back and forth sharing stories about our past lives?” he asked.
“Of course I do. In some ways, it’s the reason I’m here. That, and our night sessions in the back of your broken truck.”
That made him snort. Finally, a sign of his usual humor coming back.“Tell me what you remember. And then, when we’re done cutting apples, we’ll go out to the fields and you can tell me more.” So I did.
Only a sliver of sun was left in the sky when Alain returned, too late to consider driving even if the truck was fixed that night. The last thing either of us wanted to do was drive in a desolate stretch of road in pitch black darkness. “It’s just a little piece, but it’ll ensure your battery doesn’t cut out while you’re driving,” Alain joked. “We will install it first thing tomorrow morning. Tonight, you will rest and get ready for the ride home.”
Despite the rest of the day’s activities, which involved traversing the fields and doing odd tasks for Mariam — like we did for Bea in the good old days — I had no interest in rest. After a simple dinner of quiche and salad, kindly made in our honor, I got into bed and waited for Henri. He walked in just in time to see me splay across the bed, wearing one of his favorite looks I wore to bed: a sheer, floor length nightgown I picked up from a vintage boutique on one of our day trips.
“To what do I owe this gorgeous sight?” he asked.
“I have a surprise for you. Or rather, Bea does.” Confusion, then something like boyish glee, spread across his face as I presented him with one of four wine bottles.
“Where did you get this? Did she drive to the middle of nowhere just to give us the wine?”
I shook my head. “When she told me she couldn’t make it, she offered to drive to our hotel and drop off the wine. She knows how hard you’ve been working to make the restaurant as good as it can be. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
Henri gently grabbed the neck of the bottle and studied the label’s flavor profile, as well as its inscription — something I wrote a year ago, back when I met people who would become lifelong friends and gave me the courage to be more of myself. When I was still terrified of what the future would hold for two people who were so ridiculously into each other that they were willing to make an intercontinental romance work. We made love in a bottle.
It’s special, now being able to see his face in a quiet moment like this one, instead of seeing it on a screen thousands of miles away. It reminded me of the time I told him I’d stay an extra day in Paris to help him select paint swatches and ended up staying for the following 364 days.
“How hard we’ve been working. I’m sorry for losing my temper like I did today. You were trying to lighten the mood, and I was being unkind. I don’t ever want to get that way with you again.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I mean it.” He put the bottle on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed, taking both of my hands in his.
“Before Alain drove into town, we sat on the porch and he told me about Mariam. They’ve been together for over two decades living on this farm. They’ve worked, they've raised four children, and Alain says they’re even more in love than they were in their twenties. You can see it in the way he looks at her, they treat each other. It’s the kind of relationship I’ve always wanted, especially given how things ended up with my parents.”
He took a deep breath in, looking away for a moment to compose himself. I suddenly became aware of my heart, which was beating hard and fast in my ears. Everything in my body screamed at me to reach out and hold him, but I sat back with a rapidly deteriorating restraint.
“But in order to do that, I need to remember what’s important. And I guess what I’m saying is, I remembered that you were my Mariam. The first and last person I want to see everyday, the person I want to build a life with. I will do my best to hand over some tasks to the staff and get my frustrations under control, but if I can’t have you and the restaurant, the latter is not worth doing.”
I couldn’t take it any longer. I grabbed the back of his neck and leaned in to kiss him hard on the mouth, hoping it gave him the kind of deep reassurance I didn’t have the skill to put into words. “Have some faith, will you? It’s absolutely worth doing,” I whispered. “And we’re going to do it together.”
With the weekend’s frustrations melted away, all that was left was a raw need to be as close as possible. We ripped away our clothing and grabbed each other furiously, without a care who heard our collision or where it landed us. But before either of us could go any further, I remembered my faculties and sat up. Grabbing the bottle from the nightstand, I gestured for Henri to open it.
“In the name of not forgetting what’s important… I think it’s high time for us to give this a try.”
Henri’s face cracked wide open. With an exaggerated flourish the bottle was open, and he stared back at me, bold in my nakedness, as I took the first sip.
“What’s this one taste like?” he asked. “And don’t forget your usual quip.” I took my time considering the flavors.
“Hmm… hazelnuts, and a hint of something tart. Silky. Like a love that’s special in the present, but will develop into something even more exceptional the longer you care for it.”
