Page 29 of Something About September

The early-evening air held the particular briskness of autumn at night: cool but not cold, as fresh and bracing as the first bite of a Honeycrisp apple. The air smelled of fallen leaves, distant woodsmoke. The scent of ripening apples was in the air, too. The sun was almost completely set now, painting the sky in watercolor streaks of pink, gold, and lavender.

Rebecca stood, taking in the valley at dusk, breathing in deep, trying to calm herself down.

Behind her, the screen door swung open. She turned. It was Cort, his eyes full of concern—and something else. “Becca, can we talk?”

Chapter 19

Cort stepped onto the porch. “I never understood why you didn’t go to the senior spring dance that year. I looked for you. That’s why I came out here. I wanted to ask you about it.”

Rebecca opened her mouth to continue the lie—but she didn’t want to lie to him about this. It had been more than a decade. And they were friends now.

“I was there,” she said quietly. “But then I left.”

“Why did you leave?” His voice was husky, his expression intense. He wasn’t going to let this go, and she knew it. “Why didn’t you come find me?”

She looked up at him. “Really, Cort? Do you really want to know?”

A flicker of something in his eyes now, a chink in his armor. She was determined he wasn’t going to be able to Cort Adams his way out of this one. Even after all this time, it somehow felt raw. Which was why she hadn’t wanted to bring it up. But he had.

“I was eighteen, and I thought I was in love with you, okay?” At this, she was sure he flinched. But it was too late to take it back. She pressed ahead. “You and Mel broke up for a bit, do you remember?”

“Of course I do,” he said, his voice rough. He looked like he was about to say more, but she kept talking.

“You brought up the dance when we were studying for our finals. I remember you asked me if I’d be there. You made it seem like…I don’t know, like you were asking me.” Now she closed her eyes. “It’s so stupid, I know. It’s my fault, I guess, for misunderstanding. No guy ever asked me to a dance in high school, so I guess I didn’t get it. But at the time, I believed what I believed. I went to the dance thinking you’d be waiting for me. Instead, I saw you. Dancing with Melanie.”

“You thought you were…” Cort trailed off, didn’t repeat the confession she had just made—and for that she was grateful. “I didn’t realize,” he said softly. His expression turned anguished. “God. I was such a shit.”

“It’s fine. I misunderstood things between us, that’s all. It was a long time ago. We didn’t know what we were doing.”

But still, Cort continued to look agonized. He raked a calloused hand through his hair, the picture of handsome and tortured, exactly as she remembered him. “I’ve always felt so damn guilty about it, Becca. About everything. About how much I wanted—”

“Please, don’t,” she interrupted him. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” he said. “It’s not like that.”

“We’re past this. It’s been years.”

“It has, but still, I never stopped thinking about it. About you. We got really close, and you meant something to me. But it all just ended so badly. I hated that. Through the years, I wished that we could have stayed close. I wanted you in my life. I do want you in my life.” To her surprise, his voice broke over the intensity of his words. She believed him, she had no choice—even if she didn’t know what these words being true changed about anything that had happened in the past. It still ached; it still burned.

Rebecca gave a wobbly laugh to try to lighten the mood and noticed her hand was shaking as she brushed a strand of hair from her face. “We are in each other’s life,” she said. “And we hit the reset button. Remember?”

He didn’t smile. “Right,” he said. “We did and we are. But still.”

“No, no ‘but stills.’ We’re fine. No hard feelings about this. No worrying about whether I was or was not at the spring dance, in our senior year, forever ago. No worrying about if you asked me, or didn’t ask me, or I made it all up in my head.”

He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t. He just nodded. “No hard feelings. No thinking about dances that happened a long time ago.” They stood still in the hush of twilight, the sky streaked in deep, dark watercolors before them. “So, speaking of dances, since you’re home, are you going to go to the Autumn Gala this year?”

She laughed. “I doubt it. I didn’t bring a dress.”

He nodded, bit his lip. “The thing is, Rebecca, I—”

But behind them, there was the sound of the farmhouse’s screen door opening again. “There you two are,” Marion said. “Dessert is being served, and Sabrina is doing some sort of flambé thing with the ice cream and maple liqueur. I think it had better not be missed, if only to have an extra pair of hands available when a fire extinguisher is called for.”

Inside, warm light and conversation wrapped around the group again and Rebecca tried to soak it in, to let it ease some of the tension she was feeling. The flambé was a success, and soon Marion was cutting generous slices of Sabrina’s signature apple pie—redolent with cinnamon, sweet with maple syrup, the merest hint of vanilla—while James topped each one with a scoop of now-brandy-infused homemade vanilla ice cream and Sabrina talked about how maybe the next thing the orchard needed was its own line of ice cream, to go with the pies in the market. Plates in hand, they all moved into the living room.

But Sabrina put down her plate and crossed to a blanket box in the corner of the living room. “Those old photo albums from when we were younger gave me an idea. Mom, Dad, don’t we have more photo albums in here? From when you were younger? Becca, what if we have some pictures of your mom in here?”

“I haven’t looked in there in ages,” Marion murmured, and stood to join her daughter. “You’re right, there are some in here.”