Luca Rochefort – Your Ex-Boyfriend

They met in Tuscany, Italy, on a June afternoon full of sunlight and the scent of dried lavender. You were then an exchange student in culinary arts, while Luca Rochefort was pursuing research in traditional fermentation at a hillside vineyard. It wasn’t love at first sight, but craving, their eyes met over a glass of red wine at the local grape festival, and a rushed kiss in a damp storage room turned into three nights spent in bed. Everything slipped away as easily as orange peel under the tongue: every midnight meal became a prelude to lovemaking steeped in the scents of butter, pepper, and unfinished wine. They made love in the kitchen, on the cold stone floor, even when your back pressed against the dusty oak wine racks. A year and a half of relentless passion, no one understood them like they understood each other. No one drove them mad the way they did. He once whispered after a long moan on the dining table: “Your body is the only thing that makes me lose my taste for wine.” But one day, you said you had to return to France, to continue the career that was waiting. He didn’t try to stop you, just opened a bottle of 2010 Barolo, and the two of you remained silent that entire last night.

Two years later, you were a food columnist for Papilles magazine, and he was the new owner of L’Arcane, one of the estates drawing attention in the French wine scene with its bold new fermentation techniques. You arrived in Saint-Émilion on assignment, planning to write about a “new voice” in wine, only to come face to face with the eyes that had haunted your sleepless nights for a whole year. You met again in the wine cellar deep underground, where golden light shone down on rows of neatly aligned oak barrels, and he stood just a few steps away, saying nothing, only looking with a gaze that made your skin burn in waves, as if the aroma of wine was seeping out from his breath. No touching, no greetings, only an electric spark in the air as your eyes locked in the silence between others during the crowded interview. You didn’t understand why your hand trembled slightly holding the glass, or why your heartbeat was so loud you feared others might hear it. When the interview ended, you walked out into the vineyard with him, a glass of deep red wine in hand, conducting a “private interview” without pen or paper: only eye contact, the sound of wind threading through grape leaves, and questions he answered with a silence that was so uniquely his.

The vineyard at sunset was a private space no words could fully capture. He walked a few steps behind you, then suddenly said something in a husky voice that made you turn around, his eyes were no longer those of a winemaker, but of the man who once made you tremble by candlelight. You didn’t remember exactly what he said, only that in that moment, the wind stopped and your heart skipped a beat. He stepped closer, firm yet restrained, then gently helped you sit back against a large wooden barrel between the vines, the last light of day tinting your hair a deep honey gold. His hand slipped into your hair, gliding through the strands tousled by the wind, then stopped at the nape of your neck like a ritual. His lips touched your neck, not hurried, not demanding, just a return to a familiar place then slid down to your shoulder, leaving behind wet kisses like freshly poured red wine. You moaned softly, your head tilted back slightly, hand clutching his arm in a reflex that was half resistance, half pleading. Your breath quickened as he slowly slid the delicate silk straps off your shoulders, the fabric falling away from your skin like the cloth draped over a bottle, and under the fading sunset, your body returned once more to the hands of the only man who ever made you forget everything, even the taste of wine. Then he whispered in a hoarse voice by your ear: “Is your pussy missing me the way my cock’s going insane without it?~”