The Grape Escape

Story Sent in by Justin:

Amy was into drag racing, so I took her to a drag race for our first date. I had been to one once before, with my family, and I remembered it being fun. We both had a great time.

Afterward, on our way back to the parking lot, she asked me, "You want to make grape juice?"

Was that a euphemism? I asked, to clarify, "You mean, out of grapes?"

She squeezed my shoulder hard and said, "Follow me to the grocery store."

We had taken separate cars, and so I followed her to the local market. We parked and fast-walked inside. She was clearly very excited, and she led me to the grapes. She grabbed a bag, paid for it, and led me back out to the parking lot. Once there, she turned to me and said, "I used to spend time hand-crushing each grape, but that took forever. My brother gave me this idea."

She nested the bag of grapes inside of a plastic shopping bag, then set it right behind her front, driver-side tire. She entered her car, turned it on, and reversed it over the bag, squashing it. She jumped out of her car, squealed, scooped up the bag, shook it, squeezed it, and pulled the grape bag out of the plastic shopping bag. The plastic bag, then, contained juice from most of the flattened grapes.

She took a whiff of the juice, smiled, then spit into the juice-filled plastic bag, over and over. She held the bag out to me. "Spit," she said, "It'll taste better. Trust me. The saliva enzymes do something to the juice."

I asked, "We're going to drink it? After spitting in it?"

"You're not going to get hurt by a little bit of spit," she said, then spat in it a few more times. She asked, "You sure you don't want to spit in it? It'll taste even better, the more people you have spitting into it."

"No thanks."

"All right. But you're drinking some. You'll see."

She upended the bag into her mouth and poured some of the juice in. "Ahhh," she said, "Yummy." She handed the bag to me. I didn't take it. "Drink," she said.

I replied, "I'd rather not."

She said, "If you don't drink it, I'll splash you with it. I swear to God."

I took it, held it up to my mouth, then threw it clear across the parking lot, ran for my car, and drove away. Unsurprisingly, I didn't hear from her again.