Page 15 of Vine (Island Love #3)
CHAPTER 14
CASPIAN
I miss you. I wish I knew what I’d done wrong. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps you just realised you didn’t need me after all. I wouldn’t blame you. You’re a catch, Max La Forge, you know that? :(
Doomscrolling, I’d been awake until beyond three a.m., my mind stuck on vibrate mode. We’d flown back to France late in the evening; same seats, same shitty little plane, same shitty ex-husband wedged into the cramped window seat next to me. Libby’s airy promises of making us household names turned into a tangible contract awaiting our signatures. In the airport lounge, Leigh celebrated with a glass of fizz; I’d stuck to aspirin and water, relieved to be back in the safe haven of the vineyard, soothed by its steady, unchanging rhythms.
All at sea, I tossed my options back and forth in my head, none appealing. Three more years of gurning for the cameras at the shoulder of my ex-husband versus the sheer cliff face of the unknown. The lonely uncertainty of unemployment and fretting about bills versus the certain loneliness of living in Leigh’s shadow and worsening mental health. If this endless stretch of waiting for vines to grow demonstrated nothing else, being surrounded by the wrong people was as isolating as having no one.
Yet briefly, I did have someone. Max La Forge. A giant of a man. A man who had coaxed me down from the ledge by reciting a factsheet about the breeding habits of Siberian fucking salmon. A man who wanted me, who walked me home and kissed me goodnight. And now was not answering my texts, not giving me a chance to at least thank him.
His cold withdrawal was a mystery I ought to push aside and forget. A handful (literally) of gratifying sexual releases did not a relationship make. Easy come, easy go. Perhaps he was that caring and considerate with all his lovers. If so, it was a useful trick.
The morning sky shaped up to be clear. Dressed in their new coats of forest green, the vine flowering period heralded the beginning of the formation of grapes. Tight clusters appeared on the tips of the shoots, like bright shiny buttons. Heart-warming signs that spring had truly sprung, yet filling me with no joy whatsoever.
Today started very much like yesterday. Then I began tending my row of vines and realised the gulls cawing overhead and the rhythmic snipping of our shears were the only sounds for half a mile.
“They had a huge row last night,” Emma murmured under her breath. “I nearly came and joined you in the gatehouse. Went on until two. Leigh ended up on the sofa.”
“Oh dear.” My snipping took on fresh vigour. It didn’t take much to guess what caused it.
“Leigh told Jonas about the breakfast show.”
Aah. He must have spent the last two days plucking up the courage. “Jonas was a smidge put out, was he?”
Emma’s lips curved into a smile. “Let’s just say the dent in the wall behind the headboard had a night’s respite. And, to give you a heads-up, he’s blaming you for persuading Leigh to do it without involving him.”
That figured. For all his masculine swagger, when it came down to it, Jonas was nothing more than a jealous little bitch. A spoiled kid in a playground, determined not to share his toys. One day, once he’d outgrown his usefulness, Leigh would tire of him, and a part of Jonas sensed it. The breakfast telly bid was bringing that day a little closer.
“Wait until he hears Leigh’s signing up for a stint in the jungle as well. And rumour has it that gay Italian bloke off Love Island is signing up for it too.”
Emma raised her eyebrows with a wry smile. “Oh wow. He’s very pretty. Single, too. Jonas will have kittens.”
We snipped for a few more minutes. When it was all over, I’d miss the vines. Not the ex-husband shit that came with them, obviously. But the serenity. With Max AWOL, they were the only things tethering me to him... and maybe to my sanity. Over the last few weeks, this quirky little vineyard, flourishing under my fingers, felt a damned sight more like home than that sterile executive apartment in Chelsea. As a city boy, this idea came as a surprise. Perhaps that was where I’d been going wrong all these years, assuming a university education and a striving middle-class background were the only routes to an aspirational and fulfilling lifestyle. Perhaps, at heart, I was destined for a simple rural life.
“Is the breakfast telly gig a done deal?” Emma queried.
I nodded. “All bar the shouting. I haven’t signed yet. There are a few minor details Libby wants to iron out. And… and, well, yeah.”
Just the teeny issue of my reluctance to commit.
“I thought you fancied exploring a radio show.”
“Yes. Um. Maybe.” I’d kept my answer suitably vague when Libby floated out the late-night radio gig.
She stopped snipping. “You didn’t pursue it, did you?”
“I told her she could forward a voice test I’d done previously for something else. But I’m not convinced I need to spend any more time alone with my inner thoughts. Especially at four a.m.”
“Ah.” Emma nodded.
Little rose bushes sprouted at the ends of each row of vines. Wrongly, I’d presumed they only served to look pretty. But Emma called them canaries—a simple early disease-warning system to attract aphids and black rot before the vines did. Max had told me another tale. In the days when draft horses worked the vineyards, the thorns encouraged the animals to turn properly and not cut the corners, trampling the last vine. I liked both stories.
As we reached the end of each strip, Emma inspected the roses with a critical eye. “Why are you agreeing to the breakfast show?” She examined the underside of a leaf. "You’re young. You could rent out your flat. You have a language degree. You could travel or make a new life here in France until you decide what you want to do.”
I broke into a cold sweat. Those sounded like horribly big decisions for someone for whom, on some mornings, stepping into another day felt heroic. “For the same reasons you’re hesitant about going to Australia, perhaps? A fear of the unknown?”
The difference being my known was scary too, whereas Emma’s was fine.
“I’ve made up my mind,” she said, moving onto another rose bush. “I’m going. If I don't, I’ll always wonder how it might have been. No fear, no limits, no regrets, right?”
She said the last part in a drawling, voice-over tone, and I laughed, despite a sinking feeling. How the hell would I cope without her? “Someone needs to torch that desk calendar.”
“No way!” She laughed. “It’s my lifestyle guru.”
“I’m really pleased for you,” I managed. I was, despite knowing how much I’d miss her. “And for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing. If it goes tits up with Stella, then you’ve always got something to fall back on. I bet working for an Aussie wine producer would be great for your CV.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s the conclusion I reached as well. But you should be thinking the same thing, too, Caspian. You can do more than follow Leigh around.”
“Hardly.” I laughed mirthlessly. “I have zero transferrable skills, except for pruning a vine without cutting myself.”
Satisfied the rose wasn’t harbouring anything nasty, Emma straightened. “Do you know something, Casp? Before doing this series with you both, I watched all the old episodes of Gay Adventures. Don’t get me wrong. Leigh flexes his biceps and hogs the screen time. And he has the patter and the snarky asides and all that crap. But you’re the main pull. You served a seven-tiered cake in a Michelin-starred restaurant, and the chef de cuisine said it was as good as his patissier’s . And you fitted an entire hot water system in a three-storey listed mansion in Notting Hill. I didn’t see Leigh on his belly scrabbling around a U-bend. And let’s not forget you came fifth in a bloody Formula 3 race! Fifth! After just five months of training, racing against blokes who’ve been doing it for years! You’re talented, Casp. If you just had a bit of belief in yourself, you could turn your hand to anything!”
“Is there much call for cake-baking plumbers who can drive a sports car home afterwards really, really fast?”
She laughed. “Sounds like most heterosexual women’s ideal man, to be honest. And now you’re halfway to cultivating a vineyard on your own, too. You’ve inhaled all those books I lent you. You ask the right questions. If you had the balls, you could rent this one, or one of a similar size when the series finishes, and make a go of it. Without any help from Leigh. I’d always be on the end of a phone line to give you a few pointers. And there are plenty of courses you can sign up for.”
My forearms and meds were secrets hidden from Emma. I mean, she knew I had serious anxiety issues. How could she not? But I’d led her to believe they were temporary and stemmed from my breakup with Leigh, not brittle veins running through my core. So I listened and nodded, letting her build a pipe dream for the kind of man I’d like to be. Someone who stood on his own two feet instead of crawling behind someone else. A man in control of his own mind, not a slave to it. Someone other people desired as a husband, a lover, and a friend. Someone whose only use for a razor blade was to groom his five-o'clock shadow.
Having banged on his front door several times already this evening, to no avail, I discovered Max was home after all. I peered through one of the little hexagonal windows at the rear of the property and found my face separated from his by nothing more than the thin pane of glass. “Can we talk?” I mouthed through the glass, raising my voice.
“Can’t hear you,” he answered at his normal volume. I added windows to my list of thinly constructed French building materials.
“I said, can we talk?”
“No. Too many air raid sirens. Bye.”
Air raid sirens? What the hell?
“Max? I… you are going to have to explain that one for me?”
I scratched my head, feeling vaguely idiotic conversing through a closed window when a perfectly functioning front door waited on the other side of the house.
“Relationship red flags,” he repeated. “Air raid sirens. You have them.”
“I… I… um… sorry, I… I thought we were…” Relationship ? Fuck, had I missed something? Relationship was a huge word. “I mean, I know we kissed and stuff, and maybe you don’t want to do that with me anymore. And that’s…well… that’s fine. But I thought we were friends. Not in a… a relationship.”
“That’s right. We’re not. So you can go.”
He ducked from the window and disappeared out of sight. Cursing, I marched to the front door and hammered on it again. Hopefully, the door was built from rice paper too. “Can we just talk about it, Max? So I can… understand? Is it my medication problem? Is that it? Because, you know, I think you were right. I need to see a different doctor, or a psychologist or…”
“No! Just… go home. Go on. Back to your husband.”
“While that sounds awfully appealing, Max, I don’t have a husband.”
“I said go!”
Rubbing a hand over my chin, I looked up and down the row of sturdy beech trees separating his property from the road. And then back to the door. “Shit, Max. Is that what this is about? You thought I was married?”
“You are married. The internet says you are. Everywhere. éti translated it for me. Caspian Watts married to Leigh Pumkin. Caspian Pumkin-Watts. That’s you.”
With a groan, I flopped back against the wall. Caspian Pumkin-Watts. It sounded ridiculous in his thick French accent. To be honest, it sounded bloody stupid in an English one too. Only I could be persuaded to hyphenate my perfectly ordinary surname with a misspelt vegetable. “Oh Christ. That’s not me. Well, it is, but… look at these hands, Max.” I wiggled my thin grubby fingers through the little diamond of glass at the top of the front door. “See a ring anywhere?”
That wasn’t going to catch him out. “Lots of married men never wear one. My dad didn’t.”
“Well, I did. A huge fucking platinum one, bought at Tiffany’s in Manhattan nine years ago. And it’s sitting at the bottom of a drawer in a heavily mortgaged shoebox in Chelsea. It’s been there for eighteen months, Max. Since my now ex-husband decided marriage to me wasn’t enough.”
And, when all was said and done, who could blame him?
“Why have you mortgaged a shoebox with drawers in it.”
“So I have somewhere to keep a wedding ring I no longer wear. I ought to sell it. Honestly, Max, my marriage is old news.”
“The internet doesn’t say that, Caspian Pumkin-Watts. éti’s never wrong. I was looking for a relationship with a single man. I’m not a side piece. I studied the Perfect Peach rules, not the side piece rules.”
Perfect what ? Side-piece rules? A noise escaped my throat, perilously close to a sob. Laugh or cry, I wasn’t sure which way to land. But at least he was still talking. “Um… are there side… um… side piece rules?”
“Yes. éti told me about them. And rule number one is that you will only ever be number two. I’m no one’s number two, Caspian Pumkin-Watts.”
“No, you’re not, Max. You’re way too special for that.” Tears trickled down my cheeks. My last shred of dignity gone, I rested my forehead against the unbudging door. I was a whisker away from begging. “You can tell your friend éti that there have been some… updates in my personal life I’ve kept quiet about.”
I wiped my sleeve across my face, no doubt leaving a streak of dirt and uncaring. Noir snuffled around the doorframe from inside. Even a cuddle with the dog would be something. “Max,” I tried, “how about you let me in so we can talk? If not now, how about tomorrow?”
“No. And I’m going away for the weekend.”
“That’s nice.” Perhaps if we struck up a conversation, he might let me in. “Anywhere good?”
“Paris. For the soccer. Paris St-Germain’s last game of the season against Lyon. With éti and my brother. Seats in the VIP box.”
Wow, I bet those tickets didn’t come cheap. “Very nice.”
“Yes. We go every year. Same seats. To the Champions League final every year, too. So I’m also busy next weekend.”
Huh. I frowned. This was starting to sound like a tall tale that was getting a little out of hand. “And the World Cup final? You going to that in a couple of years too?”
He grunted. “Probably. Depends on the farm cover.”
Ah well, whatever. The message was coming through loud and clear. We didn’t need to hammer it out any longer. On a deep exhale, I stepped away from the doorframe, likely to never again see the treasures hidden away on the other side. This peculiar, kind man included. “Okay, well, I’ll…er… I’ll see you around, okay? Although I’ll keep out of your way. And thank you. For being so nice to me about the… the cutting. It’s… it’s been really rubbish here for me these last few months, for lots of reasons. But you’ve made it bearable. So, you know, thank you for that.”