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Stephanie shakes her head. “Not what I mean, and you know it. And look, I’m overstepping, I get that. We just met. But I’ve been where you are, I nearly missed out on the best thing in my life because I was too busy building mental checklists on all the reasons that Ethan and I wouldn’t work. The thought that I could have missed out on what we have . . .”
Stephanie surprises me, reaching for my hand and giving it a squeeze. “I would be super pissed at myself if I didn’t at least plant the seed that your life might not go exactly the direction you imagined—and that’s okay.”
“I don’t imagine anything,” I argue. “That’s sort of the problem. I don’t make plans and don’t have some grand vision. He does.”
“Damn,” she mutters. “I’ve clunked it up. Okay, forget everything I’ve said.”
She pulls me in for a quick hug, and I hug her back, even as I fight back an unfounded surge of annoyance, because she and I both know.
I won’t forget what she’s said. In fact, it’s going to bug me the entire way home.
“Everything okay?” Thomas asks curiously, as he approaches and Stephanie runs off to where Ethan already has the car running.
“Sure. Yeah.”
Thomas sees right through the lie and steps closer, concerned. “You want to talk about it? Remember,” he adds, when I start to shake my head. “We’re friends through the weekend, and the weekend isn’t over yet. Friends tell each other crap.”
I smile, but I’m not quite able to meet his eyes. Not until he gently touches his thumb to my chin, tilting my face upwards. His gray eyes are warm. Understanding. Immediately I feel some of my tension leave.
Damn it. When did this happen?
When did the one person I want to talk about become the exact same person I want to talk to?
“Mac?” His voice is gentle, and hearing my name jars loose a sudden desire to get in touch with the real me. The Mac who thrives on impulse and spontaneity and living in the moment, no matter how rash.
“You know that apple orchard in Connecticut?” I say. “The one you added to the ‘side trip’ itinerary?” I ask.
He blinks. “Sure. Yeah. I believe you described it as super lame?”
I press my lips together to hide my smile. “Yup. That one. Let’s go there.”
He looks at me for a moment, his expression lighting ever so briefly with something I can’t name, and even though it’s just an apple orchard, an hour out of our lives at most, I can’t escape the feeling that my even asking was pivotal, and a step in the very opposite direction I intended to go.
The fact that I’m holding my breath for his answer confirms I’m very, very much in the danger zone, and should reverse immediately.
Then Thomas nods. Smiles. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s do it.”
For the life of me, I can’t figure out if it’s the answer I wanted, or if we’re about to muck everything up terribly.
If the decision to stop at the apple orchard had been a mistake, it’s one I’ll have to deal with later, because right now? I’m pretty content to bask in the afterglow of a perfect afternoon.
The hour at the apple orchard had turned into three, though I’m not entirely sure how. One minute, I’d been planning on just snapping a few more photos of Vermont’s autumn goodness and trying their “world-famous” apple cider and then getting back on the road. The next, I’d been grabbing a basket and accepting Thomas’s challenge to see who could pick the most apples in an hour.
I’m still a tiny bit furious about losing—stupid short arms!—but I’d been mostly mollified by the aforementioned apple cider, which earns every bit of its world-famous label, especially when enjoyed out of a campfire mug, while sitting on a bale of hay and enumerating all the ways in which Thomas must have cheated at apple picking.
The ride home had been similarly pleasant. In fact, conversation flows so well, even if it’s smattered with good-natured bickering about the best movie of all time (he goes with the cliché Citizen Kane, I’m an original Ghostbusters kind of gal), that when we get back to the city, I’m both surprised and . . . disappointed?
Thomas parks the car at the curb outside my apartment. It’s raining, the downpour loud and relentless on the windshield as I unclick my seatbelt.
“Well,” I say, winding my blue streak around my finger. “I don’t think that’s the way either of us envisioned this weekend. But we survived.”
“We did. I’m sorry you couldn’t spend it with Kris and his crotch V.”
I laugh. It seems so long ago, both that first awkward conversation in the bar the night we met, as well as the time when a crotch V seemed important to me.
