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Tim shrugs. “I don't know. She said something about college, so…”
“So you could've gotten an underage girl drunk? And then, what? Did you fuck her?”
“No way!” Tom objects. “We wouldn't do that, no. We know the rules.”
I look over at Tim for confirmation. “And you? Do you know the rules?”
He rolls his eyes dramatically. “Course I do. We didn't fuck her. We wouldn't actually, you know, fuck her…”
And then they glance at each other again, smirking. When they look back at me, they're both little startled, a little sheepish. I’m probably bright red or something. This is not cool.
“She's fucking gorgeous man,” Tom bawls. “She was just right there… just rubbing her thick, healthy thigh on my leg… just kind of… you know. She didn't mind. Really.”
I drop my head into my hands, trying to massage my forehead with my fingertips. The last thing I need now is these two chuckleheads acting like a couple of frat boys and getting the sheriff out here or something.
For the most part I’ve got them under control, but they’re still just young men, barely twenty-five, kids at heart. Good hearts, I'm sure. But being raised out here on the orchard has left us all a little secluded.
In high school, they had an impressive social life. Twin star quarterbacks. National Honor Society too, though you wouldn’t know it, by how often they act like idiots. But they were the whole package. In fact, everybody kind of thought that they were good to go to somewhere glamorous like New York, maybe Boston University. Then our parents passed away and the only way to keep the family business going was for everybody to pitch in.
Tim and Tom never complained, not even once. It was like the future was a red carpet rolled out in front of them, and they just rolled it back up and stuffed it away somewhere, never to be spoken of again.
But now, we've got a chance. Business is good. Our wine is really popular, not to mention our cider, and our apples at the farmstand in a month or so. We've all worked our asses off and if things keep going like this, we’ll all be set for life.
Just as long as they don't, for instance, get some underage woman drunk and gangbang her in front of her parents. Yeah. That would be bad.
“You guys better get to work,” I snap, downing the last my coffee and leaving the mug in the bottom of the sink.
“Where are you running off to? Thought you had to work today too?”
“You bet I do,” I growl, letting the screen door slam behind me. “First I gotta go clean up whatever kind of fucking mess you guys made.”
I set off across the side yard, checking the fruit out of habit as I make my way toward the old Geller house. We've had good rain this summer, deep and thorough, and the apples look like I don't think I've ever seen them. It's going to be a really good year, at least as far as the fruit is concerned.
Even though we are technically neighbors, the three houses in this little cul-de-sac are arranged like the spokes on a wheel. It's actually at least eight hundred yards between our houses from this angle. I have to circle around the pole barn and through the vegetable patch to get to the path we use to come up to the Geller's back porch.
We call it the Geller house, but it's actually still part of our estate. When my great great great grandfather came out here, a German immigrant who only knew about apricot farming, he found the land in unsuitable shape for stone fruit or grapes. But apples grow here, so he set to learning that. With a small family fortune from the old country, he bought up all this land, as far as the eye can see.
He had six sons and two daughters, and built four more houses. One small cabin was eventually lost to fire. Another is deep within the orchard, and basically unused but still in decent shape. The last two, which housed the two daughters’ families until about thirty years ago, are now our “neighbors.” After the daughters and their kids died off and moved away about thirty years ago, we started renting them out to people we weren’t related to. We paved the road and and made ourselves a tiny little subdivision out here in the middle of nowhere.
Even though strangers have been living here a long time, I still think of these as family property. I remember riding my bicycle through these dirt paths when I was just five or six. I graduated to a dirt bike when I was seven and used to just tear up the underbrush, zipping back and forth. When my last grand-aunt finally passed away, my parents informed me they were renting the house to strangers. I couldn't believe it. The Gellers moved in a short time later.
Family is everything to me. I'm not sure I ever got over that. It felt like betrayal.
As I step onto the back porch, I feel that familiar twinge, that reminder this is not my house anymore. There are strangers in here and I should be on my guard.
I force myself to knock on the side of the screen door, the door that really belongs to me.
The interior is dark and I realize I probably should have gone around to the front of the house and rung the doorbell like a civilized person. But as soon as I think it, the thought offends me. I'm not ringing the doorbell. Not now, not ever.
She appears out of the darkness like some kind of ghost. She just steps into the light cast by the sliding glass door, her hand shielding her eyes, her tiny rosebud mouth tense and puckered.
The sunlight bathes her in a soft glow, and I feel like I'm seeing something supernatural. There's a halo around her. It seems to come from her creamy white skin. Raising her arm has exposed about two inches flesh around her middle, and it's milky and smooth, velvety soft looking. Makes my jaw ache. Makes my mouth water.
After squinting at me suspiciously for a few seconds she steps forward, sliding the door open.
“Yes?” she asks in a hoarse whisper.
“I'm Stan? From next door?” I stammer, suddenly unsure what to say. She raises her hand slightly and I see when the sunlight falls there that her eyes are ice blue and watery in the bright light.
