“Bingo, buddy. And this is not the time or place for him to find out.” Marc caught my eye from across the room and gave a little wave. I dropped Brandon’s shirt and pretended to be dusting him off. From what, I have no idea, but Marc went back to his business, so I guess it works as well in real life as it typically does in the movies.
“So it’s real, then? You guys are roommates? And you’re doing it? What’s going to happen next? And where did you get those Sexy Ninja suits? My wife would die for a set of those. We read the episodes together the second you post.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I grimaced, peeking back as Marc headed our way. “But, um, you really like it?”
“Hey! Are you okay?” he asked, handing me a plate filled with crackers, cheese, and little topped bread-looking things.
“Yup,” I said. “Just chitchatting with Brandon about the evening. Apologizing for last night and all that.” My eyes narrowed at the poor guy again. I hoped against hope he’d remain a fan after my whack-job behavior. However, that took a backseat to my desperate need to silence him. Speaking of whack jobs… No, killing him would be messy. Plus, it wouldn’t play well when I put it in the comic.
“Oh, yeah, man, we are definitely sorry about that. And we have learned our lesson. Tonight, Madison and Marc shall be upstanding citizens, and excellent wine tasters. Can you show me where the restroom is?” He handed me his plate and Brandon’s face underwent a series of emotional responses before finally settling on a polite smile. I eye-checked him once more for good measure as he walked away, and then found our table.
The bread-thingies were excellent, and I polished them off in quick order. A shadow fell across me plate, and I looked up only to be dazzled by my Hot Professor roommate all over again. It was so very unfair how good he looked. Then again, from the way his eyes were lingering on me, I did too. Thank Odin, because I’d watched three online makeup tutorials trying to nail this subtle glow.
“I thought I had some crostinis,” he said. So that’s what they were. My eyes darted around, unable to meet his.
“They’d gone off. I got rid of yours,” I told him. And at the next opportunity, I planned to get rid of the entire platter. Into my face. Madison and Crostini, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
“Oh, thank you,” he said, smiling at me and carefully smearing a little cheese on a cracker. I could almost have felt guilty, if the delicious flavors weren’t still in my mouth keeping that from happening. Luckily, Brandon cleared his throat and started addressing the class at that moment. To be honest, I ignored everything he said in favor of watching Marc make serious listening faces and occasionally jot things down on the tasting cards we’d found on the table.
When the lady who was assisting came along to pour our first glasses, I didn’t even know what variety we were working with. Luckily, I figured it out the same way I passed algebra—I peeked at someone else’s paper.
Marc had, naturally, written it at the top, underlined. I cast my mind back to this afternoon to recall everything I now knew about Napa Valley cabernets. Terroir, lots of terroir. I wrote that down on my own card. I felt very good about this tasting already. Following the lead of everyone else, I swirled and sniffed. Was that—was that the dryness resulting from an abundance of nitrogen in the soil I could scent?
I took a slurpy sip, introducing air to the wine in my mouth as the book had suggested. Definitely some dryness.
“This wine is very light for a cabernet,” Marc remarked.
“Oh yes. Dry, even,” I said.
“Do you also taste the mocha?” he asked. Two such sophisticates had surely never been in this class before. Mocha was exactly what I was tasting, now that he said it. It was on the tip of my tongue, literally. We both wrote it on our cards.
“Is everyone ready?” Brandon asked from the front of the room. “The cab you just sampled should have been fairly light for the varietal, and contained hints of mocha on the finish.”
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Yes, I had been feeling good about our studies, but to actually get the exact verbage as the freaking wine guy? Unbelievable. I was grinning so hard I knew my cheeks would hurt the next day. It would have been a great time for a high five, but I was still trying to play it cool in front of Brandon. Marc wasn’t, apparently, because his hand went up for one right away. I smacked it with mine, relishing the brief contact of our palms.
I cleansed my palate with a cheese-y cracker, wishing it was a crostini, and eagerly awaited the next glass. After a long and droning speech by Brandon that I ignored as thoroughly as the last, and for the same reasons, a glass of white came around.
Again utilizing my sneaky method to determine that we were about to sip a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, I flipped through my mental files. Sheep. Hobbits. Wine. Surely I had picked up more than that. Wasn’t there some volcanic shit in the dirt? Fairly certain, I added that to the card. But classily, with asterisks instead of the last three letters.
“Lalalalalala,” Marc was rolling the wine around on his tongue. “Melons.”
I imitated him. Right on again. Melalalalon, all right.
“Marc,” I said. “Those books were a legitimately good idea. I take back all the things I said before.”
“Books are sexy,” he said, and toasted me. In his hands, they goddamn were. Now, if only I could get him to borrow a copy of my first Transmetropolitan graphic novel, my fancy lacy undies would actually explode. Maybe I’d just casually leave it on the coffee table and see if it piqued his interest.
“Do you like cats?” I asked, running my finger around the rim of the glass.
“Um. I guess? We have a few mousers on the farm. They aren’t terribly friendly, though. More wild than not.” He seemed confused, but I appreciated his willingness to roll with my careening train of thought. “Do you?”
“No.” Cats were little fuckers who sat on your notebook while you were in the middle of sketching and stepped on the keyboard while you were in the middle of uploading. I did not cats even a little bit, and as far as I was concerned, not dealing with Scarlet’s fluffy nightmare was the best thing to come out of our roommate-breakup.
“Not like a watermelon, though,” Marc sipped again and said, seamlessly moving us back to our mission.
“No, definitely not,” I agreed. “Honeydew. Or cantaloupe. A gentler melon. Volcanic shit.”
Brandon hopped back on the mic, and lo and behold, cantaloupe was also his take on the wine we’d just had. We were on fire. We were crushing wine tasting. We were about to get our glasses picked up, so we swiftly drained them.