Honey and Cider

The tasting tent at the Millhouse Inn was packed by eleven. I was working the tasting, taking notes I'd never read again, when I saw him.

Dominic.

Across the tent, at the display table, bent over a bolt of fabric with a needle in his hand. He was repairing the draping on some vendor's booth, quick little stitches, hands sure as anything. Thirty-six years old and still the most graceful man I'd ever watched hold a needle.

My stomach did something stupid.

We'd been broken up six months. Two years together before that, ever since I met him at a food fair in Lyon when I was thirty-one. He was a tailor. I was a sommelier. Everybody thought it was a joke pairing until they saw us actually function.

I did not walk over. I circled. Professional. I tasted a pear cider I already knew and a quince cider I didn't, and then somehow my feet were at the pressing station, which was right next to his table.

"Krista."

"Dom." My voice came out okay. Small miracle. "What are you doing here?"

"Repairing their banner. The seam ripped this morning and nobody here owns a needle." He looked up at me and smiled, a little crooked. "What are you doing here?"

"Ciders. Conference. I ran the sommelier side of the pairing dinner last night." I held up my tasting glass like proof. "You?"

"Client meeting in Tours." He put down the needle. "My train back got canceled last night, so I'm here an extra day. Stayed at the hotel across the street."

"You're staying at the hotel?" I pointed at the business hotel, the one with the lobby that always smelled like apples and damp wool. Bad sentence. Whatever.

"Yes, the Saint-Aubin. Why?"

And that's when it hit me. I checked the time on my phone. 4:47. My train home left at 4:15.

"Oh no," I said.

"What?"

"I missed my train. The last train. I missed the last train, Dom." I stared at the schedule app like it would apologize. It did not apologize. "I was talking to that producer about fermented perry and I just. Forgot."

He laughed. Not mean. Just laughed, the way he used to when I'd get so into a conversation I'd lose track of the earth spinning.

"There's another one in the morning," he said. "Early one. Seven-ish."

"Seven-ish is brutal."

"You could take it."

"I could take it. I could also sleep in a barn." I looked at the exposed beams overhead, half seriously. "This is a barn, technically."

"You could get a room," he said, "but the whole conference is booked. I heard a woman complaining about it at checkout."

I had not heard that. I had not checked. I was too busy panicking.

He hesitated. Then he said it.

"I have a spare bed. The room has two beds. You're welcome to one, if you don't mind."

"You're offering me your hotel room."

"I'm offering you the spare bed in my hotel room. There's a difference and the difference matters." He picked the needle back up, put it down again. "Only if you want. No pressure. I can help you find a cab to somewhere with a vacancy, but honestly, everything within twenty kilometers will be full tonight. Cider people travel in packs."

I thought about it for maybe four seconds. Six months of no contact, and my first instinct was still yes. That told me something.

"Yes. Thank you. I want the bed!" I tried to make it sound brisk and businesslike. It did not sound brisk or businesslike. It sounded like a woman agreeing to spend a night with her ex, which, fair.

"Good," he said. "Let me finish this seam and we'll go."

The street organ in the courtyard started up while we walked across the road to the hotel. That wheezing, cheerful, slightly off-key sound. Dominic hummed along without noticing he was doing it. He always did that. Two years and I still knew all his habits.

His room was on the third floor. Small, clean, two beds like promised, his suitcase open on the luggage rack, mine nowhere because mine was at the conference office. Fine. I'd survived worse logistics.

"You take the window bed," he said. "Better light in the morning."

"Dom, they're the same bed."

"They're not. That one faces east." He was already folding my coat over a chair. Small acts of service. That was always his language. Never big speeches, just a coat hung up and a bed chosen for its light.

He sat on the edge of his suitcase and dug around in it. Came out with a small glass jar, dark amber inside, a little fabric cap tied with string.

"What's that?"

"Honey. Chestnut honey, from a client near Angers. He wants me to line a presentation box for it, wanted a sample so I could see the color against different woods." He turned the jar in his hands. "I've been carrying it around for two days."

"Can I taste it? For professional reasons. I'm a sommelier, this counts as work."

He laughed again and unscrewed the lid. He held it out. "Go on then. For professional reasons."

I dipped my finger in. Thick honey, deep brown, smelled like toasted nuts and something almost smoky. I put my finger in my mouth and licked it clean while I watched him.

He watched me back. The room got quieter somehow, though the organ was still going outside.

"Well?" he asked. "Professional opinion?"

"It's incredible. Dark, bitter edge, long finish. Your client is a genius." I dipped my finger in again, because I could. "You should keep working with him."

"I probably will."

There was a pause. Not a bad pause. One of those pauses with weight to it.

"Krista," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Slice of apple. I brought one from the tasting. Come here a second." He picked up a covered plate from the conference welcome basket on the desk, fished out a slice of apple, and held it over the jar. He tilted. Honey ran down the apple in a slow ribbon and pooled at his fingers.

He held it out to me.

I took a bite off the apple right out of his hand. His thumb brushed my lower lip on the way back, catching a thread of honey. He did not pull it away fast.

"Good?" he asked. His voice had changed. Lower.

"Good," I said. "Very good. You did that on purpose."

"Did what?"

"The thumb thing."

"Oh!" He looked at his own thumb like it had betrayed him. "Habit. Sorry."