30 First Dates (36 page)

"Say cheese," Sherri said, and the flash was momentarily blinding, like stepping out into the sun from a dark room. Erin wrinkled her nose.

"
You
are cheese," she said. "Here, give me that."

She grabbed the camera from Sherri's outstretched hand and started snapping shots of the warm, close space, where wood covered almost every surface and the sweet smell of grapes seemed to dwell inside the grains of the bar and now the pores of Erin's skin. She wished she could bottle the scent of wine country and take it home along with the wines themselves. Wildflowers, grapes, honey, citrus, bark, and rich, rusty earth—she now understood what everybody was talking about when they described the flavors and aromas of wine. It was the taste of the place itself that emerged from those fragrant bottles.

Now who's cheesy.
She smiled, nearly dropping the camera as she leaned around Sherri to take a shot of a cluster of framed photos that hung behind the three-sided bar. Marlene walked over and held out a hand.

"Want me to get one of you girls?" she asked.

"Sure." Erin smiled and started to hand it to her. Then she jerked it back and handed it instead to seersucker guy. "Do you mind taking a picture of us with her?" she asked, pointing at Marlene. She thought it would make a great blog shot.

"No problem," said the man, whose voice was deeper than his slight frame suggested. Erin and Sherri assumed a pose with elbows on the bar, Marlene's pleasantly smiling face framed between theirs.

"Thanks," Erin said as the main door opened. An elderly woman wearing bright pink pedal pushers and a visor, with a camera around her neck, came in, followed by about fifteen women and a few men in various versions of the same ensemble. Erin spied a tour bus beyond the opening and closing doors.

"Our cue to go," Sherri mumbled, nudging her with one elbow. Then, behind the tour group, three men entered, and the middle one wore a red T-shirt with the word
Stanford
stamped across the front in bold white letters.

"Not so fast," Erin slurred. "Cute college guys at"—she thought for a couple seconds—"two o'clock."

Sherri turned to look and then giggled.

Stanford-shirt guy held the door open for a couple of stragglers from the tour bus and then followed his friends to the corner of the bar closest to where Erin and Sherri were sitting. The East Coasters got ready to leave, and the man pulled out a black Visa card to pay for two bottles before they ducked out the doors.

"I'm getting my date," Erin said in a loud whisper, and Sherri giggled again.

"I claim the tall one," she said, twirling the stem of her empty glass on the glossy varnished top of the bar. She didn't look up, and Erin knew she was leaving her to do the dirty work.

Stanford-shirt was closest to her, so she scooted closer and asked, "It's not, like, spring break, is it?" It wasn't the greatest pickup line, but she
was
curious about why these guys were here on a random Tuesday afternoon.

Stanford-shirt turned to her, and his eyes swept down her body and back up to her face. "No," he said, seeming surprised that she'd approached him. "When I was in school, I'd either go home or do this volunteer thing called Alternative Spring Break," he said. "Very boring."

"So you've graduated?" she asked, reassessing her initial impression of his age. He was medium height, with wavy blond-brown hair and laughing green eyes. Something about the way he smiled reminded her of Ben.

"Yes," he said slowly, his eyes laughing at her. He turned slightly more toward her, away from his friends. "First time in wine country?"

Erin exaggerated her slurred speech. "How could'ya tell?"

"You look like you're about to chuck it all over the bar," he said, pretending to shrink back.

The guy closest to him leaned around him and extended his hand. "I'm Luke."

Erin shook it. "Erin. And this is my friend Sherri." She leaned back to expose Sherri, whose eyes were on the third guy who hadn't spoken to them yet. He was taller than either of the others and looked the least interested in their conversation. He beckoned to Marlene, who was busy serving the large group. As Erin watched, a man emerged from behind the bar and began setting glasses in front of the new patrons with a flourish.

Stanford-shirt guy put out his hand too, looking abashed. "Sorry. I'm Tom."

Erin smiled at him. "Where are you guys headed from here?" She'd come to California with a vague goal of finding a date to write about, but after the Utah Internet date disaster, she wanted to do it organically this time. Until Tom showed up, she hadn't spotted anything resembling an opportunity, and the trip was halfway over.

"Not sure," Tom said. "Going somewhere to eat, I think. We're just bumming around. My buddy Marcus' folks have a place up in Glen Ellen, and he invited us down for the weekend." He gestured to the tall friend, who was swirling red wine in a glass with a bored look on his face.

"What about you?" he asked.

"Same thing," Erin said. "Food would be good right about now." She slurred the last two words, and Tom laughed.

"No doubt." He gave his friends a sideways glance and said, "Why don't you two come out with us?"

She smiled and edged forward to hide the thumbs-up signal she saw Sherri giving from the corner of her eye. "Sounds like a plan."

*  *  *

Erin laid back and fanned her hair out around her on the grass. She dug around in the lush green carpet with the base of her wine glass, settling it so it wouldn't spill. Her strappy sandals lay beside her, and on her other side was Tom.

She breathed in deep, working to commit the fragrant breeze to memory—the air smelled heavily floral, with strong whiffs of fresh cut grass. Above her, the sky was cloudless and black, interrupted only by the stirring branches of a willow tree that overhung the edges of the sloping lawn where she and Tom now lay, having escaped the rest of the crew who were still on the terrace by the main house. Marcus's "folks' place," it turned out, was a sprawling wine estate with a private residence, an enormous winemaking facility complete with a tasting room and cellars, and acres and acres of budding vines extending in tidy rows over the undulating terrain.

Erin could hear intermittent peals of laughter, mostly Sherri's, though it was muffled by the rustling of leaves in the vineyard and the chirping of insects or birds or bullfrogs, whatever they had out here. Erin closed her eyes and continued drinking in the sensory experience—she wanted to be able to call up this moment later in perfect detail.

"I'm toasted," Tom said, interrupting her private bliss. She'd almost forgotten he was there. Erin felt him watching her and turned her head toward him, opening one eye. He closed the few inches of distance between them with his left arm and interlaced two fingers with hers.

"Mmm," she answered him. "Me, too."

Several seconds of silence passed. He began to stroke the outer edge of her wrist with his thumb, making the moment seem more surreal. Erin wasn't entirely sure what she was doing here with this man she barely knew, and she wasn't entirely sure she cared.

Tom rolled slightly so he was looking down at her. "Tell me more about this blog of yours," he said. "What's left on your bucket list?"

Erin thought for a few seconds. She smiled, feeling a tiny ping of self-consciousness. "Eh, you know. Silly things. Finish watching all the Oscar movies. Skinny-dip. Skydive. Figure out what I'm doing with my life. Nothing too major."

"Nothing major," he repeated. "Yeah, I've got to figure out what I'm doing with my life too." He fell back onto the grass again. "Business analyst II in the second cube on the left sure ain't it."

"You're young," Erin said. "You've got time to figure it out."

He squeezed her hand. His fingers were warm and softer than she expected. "I'm only three years younger than you are."

She opened both eyes and looked at him more closely than she had all night—hard to do when she was almost seeing double. He was right. He
was
only three years younger than her, but those three years felt like a wide, deep chasm she'd already crossed, and he was on the other side, squinting ahead at the bridge. She thought back to how it felt to be twenty-six. She'd been carefree, like she had all the time in the world to become a grownup and make grown-up decisions. When had that changed?

It was funny, but she felt like somebody should have explained to her that growing up wasn't some gradual progression you came to slowly accept. It was more like one day you woke up and suddenly realized you weren't a kid anymore. The day before, life had stretched out in all its endless possibilities—you could go anywhere, be anything. The next, doors started closing left and right of the path.

"Fuck that," she muttered under her breath.

"Huh?"

"I feel like doing something stupid," Erin said. She propped herself clumsily on one elbow. "Wasn't there a pond or something down there by the cellars?"

"No, I don't think so." Tom looked confused for several seconds. And then, slowly, a grin began to spread across his face. "But there's that big fountain by the tasting room entrance." He stared at her for a beat. "I like the way you're thinking."

Erin jumped up, leaving her shoes in the grass and weaving a drunken path across the lawn, Tom following closely behind her. On their way around the building they passed over a corner of the stone terrace. Sherri was sitting next to Luke and talking to Marcus, Marcus's girlfriend Beverly, and a guy named Jake who'd met up with them after they'd left the restaurant—the restaurant where Erin had puked her guts out in the ladies' room and then spent the first half of dinner sitting on a bench outside under a tree, gulping fresh air and sipping water until the wooziness subsided enough for her to go back in. She hadn't had more than a glassful in the hours since, but she was still smashed.

"Where're you two kids headed?" Luke called out. Sherri had her head on his shoulder and didn't even look up. Neither Erin nor Tom answered him, but kept walking until they were out of reach of the outdoor lights and in the deep shadow cast by the imposing stone and stucco house. They didn't talk to each other, either, and Erin's heart pounded twice as fast as her steps.

Before she even reached the fountain, she'd untied the belt at her waist and unbuttoned her denim shirtdress. She slipped it off her shoulders and glanced back at Tom, whose clothes formed a trail barely visible in the light from the moon and the ring of small lights set into the stone wall of the fountain. He was stark naked but was covering himself with both hands. Erin put a hand to her mouth and unsuccessfully stifled a giggle.

"Wait for me," she said as her dress hit the pebbled drive. She turned her back to him, reaching around to pop open her bra with one hand. She slipped it off quickly and dropped it on top of her dress. Without thinking at all about what she was doing, she hooked her fingers into the sides of her panties and slid them down, shimmying out of them as she stepped toward the fountain's edge. A tall metal sculpture rose from a pedestal in the center, and a four or five foot-wide ring of water encircled it. A trickle of water fell into the fountain from the sculpture above—Erin looked up to see that it poured from a watering can suspended in the hands of a small child, breaking the relative silence of the night. She sat down on the fountain's concrete lip and swung her feet around and into the water.

"Shit! That's cold," she said, a shudder wracking her shoulders and traveling through her body. Tom was still hanging back, just outside the ring of illumination cast by the fountain lights. She sank down into the three feet of freezing water. "Are there ice cubes in this thing or what?" She paused, crossing her arms in front of her and rubbing them with both hands. "What the hell was I thinking?"

Tom chuckled, and the sound was so close it made her jump. Suddenly he was in the water beside her. "You were thinking you wanted to check another item off your list," he said, his voice low and trembling from the cold. "And I'm the lucky damn bastard who's doing it with you."

Erin laughed and turned her face toward his, her teeth starting to chatter. "Well, this'll sober you up," she deadpanned. Before she could say anything else, his mouth covered hers.

*  *  *

May 12: Date 27

Name:
Tim*

Age:
    26

Job:   
Corporate business analyst

List:   
Freeze my a** off on a warm night in Napa Valley (aka No. 25: Skinny-dip)**

Ah, readers. You'd think—or at least, I'd hoped—that over the course of this year-long experiment I might have wizened up a little. But no, I'm still perfectly capable of doing things that are incredibly, incredibly stupid.

While fulfilling one item on my Thirty by Thirty List (No. 14: Taste wines in Napa), I fulfilled another one. (I'd give you a drum roll, but you already saw it in the header.) Yes, yes, I skinny-dipped—and I'm damn glad that's over with, because I had no idea how or where I was going to pull it off.

I met Tim* while toasted in a tasting room, so from the start the night was like a fast train barreling off the end of a track. Tim's a great guy, super nice. He lives in Cali so the relationship was destined for the "fling" category from the get-go. My roommate and I had dinner with a group of Tim's friends—at least, so I've been told—and then we went to a winery owned by the family of one of the guys in the group.

Long story short, Tim and I slipped away from the others and wound up naked in the fountain out by the entrance to the vineyard.

Now, before you go reminding me about Rule No. 1 of this blog, hear me out. Yes, I was on my first date with this guy. And yes, I was naked. And yes, yeah, OK, fine. I was probably on track to breaking Rule 1 with said naked guy. I can only imagine how that might have turned out, but here's what actually happened: Tim had just started kissing me when out of nowhere bright headlights swung into the circle drive where this fountain is located (the winery was closed—it was well after hours). A man jumped out of the car and yelled, "What the hell is going on out here? I'm calling the cops!" He was actually dialing his phone when Martin*, the guy whose family owns the vineyard, ran up from behind the building, and yelled, "Stop, Dad, stop. They're with me."