The Next Best Thing

He was ready. He wanted to serve, figured he’d be good at it. He’d passed all his tests, and his recruiter thought he might make a good sniper, based on the psych profile and his innate skill with a gun. Whatever the case, chances were high that Levi would be on the fast track to Afghanistan.

So things like Faith and Jeremy’s relationship status tended not to matter, aside from the fact that his buddy was glum.

Ted and Elaine Lyon had hired him for the spring. They made Jeremy do the same thing, though they didn’t pay him; said he was heir to the land, even if he did spit in their eye and decide to become a doctor (this statement was usually followed with a slap on the back or a hug). This week, however, Jeremy and Elaine had gone to California to visit relatives, so Levi was on his own. “If you don’t mind working solo,” Ted said, “the merlot trellises need checking. You just tie up the vines so the grapes won’t fall off or touch the ground. You’ve done that before, right?”

“Yes, sir. Jeremy and I did that last week in the Rieslings,” Levi answered. It wasn’t exactly brain surgery.

“Great! Thanks, son.” The lady from the tasting room gave him a bag lunch and a big bottle of water, and Levi headed to the western edge of the vineyard, close to Blue Heron, where the land got pretty steep, not too far from the woods.

He worked from the top of the hill downward, one row at a time. The sun beat on his back, and he pulled off his T-shirt after fifteen minutes. It was hot for early May, and he was glad he wore shorts. Might hit the lake for a swim later on, no matter how cold the water was.

He’d been working a good hour and was already damp with sweat when he heard the rumble of a truck. It was John Holland’s red pickup, identifiable anywhere due to its age and general filth...always mud-splattered and crusty. It stopped, and an enormous Golden retriever bounded out, followed by Princess Super-Cute.

She wore cutoff shorts, a white sleeveless shirt, the tails tied under her br**sts, and a blue bandanna on her head. Levi felt a generic stir of lust. Nothing personal, Holland, he thought. He’d been stealing looks at her chest since he was fourteen.

The dog ran over to him, tail wagging, and barked once, then collapsed, rolling on his back. “Hey, buddy,” Levi said, rubbing the beast’s stomach.

Faith shaded her eyes and looked at him. “Hi,” she called tentatively. “What are you doing?”

“Tying up vines. You?”

She smiled. “Same thing.” She held up an apron, then tied it on. “My sister’s cracking the whip.” She paused. “I guess Smiley likes you.”

Smiley. Leave it to Faith Holland to have a dog named Smiley. Speaking of, the dog apparently had had enough of a scratch, because he leaped up and went romping through the vineyard rows, tail waving.

Faith, however, came to within two rows of where he was, and he braced himself for questions about Jeremy, or an explanation, or a discussion. Girls, he well knew, liked to talk about their feelings until they had nothing left to say, at which point they’d start repeating themselves.

Instead, she bent over and started doing exactly what he was. Except she was better at it. The apron held twist ties, and she didn’t have to check each shoot the way he did. She was kind of a pro, actually.

And when she bent over, there was that mighty rack on display. He didn’t have a lot of use for Faith Holland, but, man, that was a nice pair.

She glanced up. Busted. “I thought you were more of the princess type,” he said as explanation. “Run out of townies to do the grunt work?”

She just laughed. “If you’re a Holland, you’re a farmer,” she said. “If you’re a farmer, you work. You don’t just gaze out over the fields and sip wine.” She gave him a knowing look and twisted on another tie, her fingers fast and clever.

“Guess I was wrong.”

“Guess you were.”

She bent over again, and the lust felt much less generic. “So this is the property line, huh?” he asked.

“Yep. See that stone marker up there? That’s what divides Blue Heron from Lyon’s Den.” She secured three vines while she was talking, reminding him to drag his eyes off her br**sts and get back to work.

She moved steadily, bending, sometimes kneeling, holding a cluster of the dusky grapes in her hand from time to time, and somehow, out here in the field, everything she did looked unabashedly sexual. She was soft and round and sweaty now, her red hair in pigtails, basically any male’s fantasy of a farm girl.

Jeremy’s girlfriend, dude, his conscience chided.

Except they weren’t together anymore.

“So how you doing, Holland?” he asked, surprising himself.

She glanced over at him, then stood up, taking the bandanna off her head and wiping her face, then retying it. Yep. Everything she did looked like she was on a Penthouse photo shoot. Except for the clothes. If she’d take off the clothes, things would be perfect.

Damn.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

What did he ask? Oh, right. Jeremy. Maybe he’d finally come out of the closet. Or maybe she’d guessed.

“When do you leave for basic training?” Putting her hands on the small of her back, she stretched, her br**sts straining against her shirt.

“Uh, July twentieth.”

“Are you nervous?”

He started to say no and put forth some of the bravado expected. “A little,” he heard himself say. “I’ve never really been away before.”

“Me, neither.”

“You’re going to Virginia, right?”

“Virginia Tech. It seems like a great school, but now all I can think of is how far it is from here.” She gave him a funny little smile, half sad, half embarrassed.

“You’ll do great. Everybody likes you.” Aw. Wasn’t he being super-sweet?

“Not everybody,” she said, twisting those little ties with amazing speed.

“No?”

“You don’t.”

Well, shit. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

She laughed. “It’s pretty obvious, Levi,” she said. “You think I’m spoiled and irritating and ditzy. Am I right?”

Right now, I think you’re edible. But  yeah, I think you should be able to tell the difference between a straight  guy and a g*y guy. “Pretty much.”

“Well, you’ve always been a snob.”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“You’re the one with the big house on the Hill.” He tied up a vine.

“Doesn’t make me a snob.” She flipped a braid over her shoulder.

“And I am?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “You never talked to me till this year, and even then, it’s only because of Jeremy. And even then, only when you have to.”

He didn’t answer, just tied up another vine. “So everyone has to adore you, is that it?”

“No. But we’ve known each other since third grade. We were both in that special reading club that Mrs. Spritz had, remember? And I invited you to our Halloween party.”

Oh, yeah. Pumpkin carving and apple bobbing and a haunted hay ride. That’d been a fun night, even if it had been weird, being in the famed Holland house. “Right.”

“But I wasn’t cool enough for you to talk to. And when my mother died, you were the only one in our class not to write me a note.”

He felt his face flush. “Quite a memory you got there, Holland,” he muttered, tying up a few more branches.

“Well, you always remember people who hurt your feelings.”

Oh, the poor little drama queen. “So you wanted to come to the trailer park and play?”

“One time,” she continued, “I sat next to you at lunch, not to be near you, just because it was the empty seat next to Colleen. And you got up and moved, like you couldn’t stand to sit near me.” She stood up and put her hands on her hips, and the lust stirred again, even as she was listing his sins. “So.” Her voice was calm with just a little edge to it. “Who’s the real snob here, Levi?”

Girls. Way too complicated. He missed Jess, who more or less used him for sex. At least she was direct. He bent over and tied up another dangling vine, lifting up the grapes carefully. “You’re not very smart in the ways of the world, are you, rich girl?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

He gave her a look. “I would.”

“Why?”

He remembered how she and her mother used to come down to West’s Trailer Park once in a while with a bag of clothes for Jessica. Lady Bountiful and her little angel, visiting the poor. Sometime around fifth grade or so, he’d found Jess hiding in the little cave of scrub bushes they used as a fort, waiting for the Hollands to leave. She’d been crying. Even then, he understood. Being poor was one thing; having the people on the Hill decide you were their charity case was another. Levi’s mom may have had to work two jobs, and money was always a worry, but they’d done okay. Scrappy, his mom liked to say.

But the Dunns had been truly poor. Food stamps and electricity turned off kind of poor. No way they could turn away a bag of nice clothes and coats. Small wonder Jess hated Faith.

His silence seemed to make Faith mad. She grabbed a vine with gusto, her movements sharp, rather than flowing now. “It’s funny that you think we’re rich. We’re not. We’re not even close.”

“I grew up in a trailer, Faith. Your idea of rich and mine are pretty different.”

“Which made it okay for you to hate me all these years.”

“I don’t hate you, for crying out loud.”

“No. You just ignored me and made me feel like a lump, and God forbid we should ever be friends.”

“You wanna be friends? Fine. We’re friends. Let’s play Barbies and go to the movies.”

She rolled her eyes and bent down to tie another vine. “I never understood why Jeremy thinks you walk on water. I think you’re a jackass.”

“Now, see? I want to be friends, and you’re calling me names.”

“Jackass.”

“Does this mean no tea party later on?”

She glared. He grinned.

And then she blushed, her cheeks growing pink, color staining her throat and chest. Her eyes fluttered down his bare torso. Then she jerked her gaze back to the vine and fumbled for a tie. Dropped it.

Well, well, well. Levi’s smile grew.

“You’re doing a crappy job,” she said, glancing back at his row. “You need to use more ties, or the grapes will be too heavy, and you’ll lose the fruit.”

“Is that right,” he murmured. Actually, his work had gotten spotty only since she’d arrived.

She came over to his row and demonstrated. “This one, see, it’s off the ground for now, but when the grapes mature, they’ll get too heavy. See?”

“Yep.” She smelled like grapes and vanilla and dirt and sunshine and sweat. The stir of lust became a throb.

“Tie it up higher,” she said, kneeling down to demonstrate. Faith Holland, on her knees in front of him. How could he not picture what he was picturing? “Just go back along what you’ve already done and make sure you got everything.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Her shirt brushed his ribs as she stood up and went back to her row.

Keep your eyes to yourself. And get going.  The Lyons are paying you. You can jerk off later.

The mental advice worked for an hour.

She was much faster and steadier than he was, he had to give her that. He looked at the sky, which was a perfect, endless blue, and decided it was time to eat.

“You want some lunch, rich girl?” he called. She was twenty yards or so ahead of him.