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“Come here,” I called, staying seated so I had a better vantage point as Bex walked over. I grabbed my water bottle and carefully rinsed the chunks of apple out of her hair, running my fingers through the strands to detangle them as I went. It only took a few minutes, but it felt longer, Bex with her hair in my hands and her back pressed between my knees. Her shoulders loosened from their tense position, the first time I’d seen her so relaxed since we first met, and I continued running my fingers through her hair after all the chunks were gone, just to savor the moment.
Another car pulling into the lot finally broke the spell, Bex’s shoulders inching back up like armor as she stepped away from me.
Chapter10
Wren
I had never been a baker.Ingredients tended to be forgotten, measurements didn’t turn out right, time got away from me. If there were a sweet thumb for baking, mine would be sour. I would never admit to how many burnt and raw pancakes ended up in the trash can before I had enough to make a stack for Bex that first morning at my apartment.
This fact conveniently escaped me when I had filled a box full of dozens of apples just a couple hours ago. I got home, showered off the sticky apple juice, and changed into a pair of leggings in preparation to bake an apple pie. Only sometime between getting home and taking my shower, reality had trickled back in. Now, three dozen apples sat mocking me as I attempted to create a pie crust in the food processor.
I let out a frustrated growl as the crumbs continued to spin around uselessly within the food processor, never turning to dough no matter how long I ran the blade through it. I switched tasks, grabbing the abandoned, half-peeled apple that was missing more flesh than skin, jerking the apple peeler over it until the apple flew out of my hands and into the sink. My growl was louder this time, echoing my frustration through the apartment.
Bex emerged from the guest bedroom, raising an eyebrow at the scene in front of her. Without a word, she gripped me around the waist and maneuvered me onto a stool before taking my place in front of the food processor. She added a few tablespoons of water from the sink to the crust mixture, hitting the button a few quick times until a dough formed. She wrapped it in plastic wrap and set it in the fridge, grabbing the peeler and a new apple from the washed pile on the counter. She easily peeled the skin in a long strip, tossing it to the side and starting on another as I watched with rapt attention. I picked up the spiral of peel and started eating, reasoning any raw fruit I ate now would balance out all the pie I planned to eat later.
“Which ex taught you how to bake?” I forced the question out between nibbles on the apple skin, hating that the words burned as they came up my throat. Reminding myself of her various relationships with exciting, dangerous people felt like picking a scab - satisfying with a bite of pain that made it all the more addicting.
Bex let out a chuckle at my question, as if she could hear the jealousy in my voice, but didn’t crush me like she had the last time I referenced her past relationships.
“My dad, actually. What did you think we did with the apples we picked each year?”
“Take pictures with them and then promptly forget them in a corner until they rot?”
Bex laughed lightly, and I gaped, realizing this was the most laughter I’d heard escape her lips in all the time I’d known her. And to have it aimed in my direction, based on words I said rather than those of her sister, made it all the more memorable.
Too scared she’d take it back, I didn’t bother to admit that I hadn’t been joking. If Bex hadn’t been here to rescue the pie, rotting in the corner would have been the apples’ morbid future. Instead, I finished the last of my peel and grabbed another, starting to like the earthy taste of fresh-picked apples as Bex turned the oven on to preheat and began slicing the peeled apples.
Bex pulled the crust out of the fridge, cutting it in half and flattening it with a few quick turns of the rolling pin. She placed it into the pie tin I’d bought last week specifically for this moment. Spices and sugar were added to the bowl with the sliced apples and dumped into the crust, followed by a lattice and a crimped edge. By the time Bex finished brushing the crust with a whisked egg and some sugar, the oven had finished preheating. She picked up the pie, tilting it slightly in my direction so I could see the finished product before moving over to the oven.
“Beautiful,” I murmured under my breath, but Bex caught it, shaking her head as she pushed the pie into the oven.
“If you think this is impressive, just wait. Ames will have five different apple desserts next time we’re over at her place.”
* * *
“Told you,”Bex whispered in my ear as we stood in a loose circle around Ames and Alex’s kitchen island a few days later. Ames had a spread laid out, - apple turnovers, a galette, a pie, apple muffins, more apple cider margaritas with freshly juiced apple cider - covering half of the counter space.
But the kitchen was primarily dominated by the five giant pumpkins that took up the entirety of the long kitchen island in the middle of the room. I was suddenly glad for the Apple Incident, which saved us from having to help lug the pumpkins back to Alex’s car this past weekend. I wasn’t sure I could lift my pumpkin and move it from the island to the patio if my life depended on it, much less across the football-field length of the gravel parking lot at the orchard.
I huffed a quiet laugh as Ames passed out knives to those of us who were less committed to the pumpkin-carving endeavor. Namely, Bex, myself, and Alex. Ames had been the one to plan most of our fall activities, kind enough to share the family traditions she and Bex had celebrated alone for years. But while I shared her enthusiasm for apple picking, pumpkin carving didn’t get me quite as excited.
Ames, of course, sat prepared with a dozen carving tools that would likely turn her pumpkin into art so beautiful it would make me cry when it rotted away in a few weeks. Surprisingly, Dev took pumpkin carving just as seriously. He had brought a few knives that had probably spent more time in bodies than a kitchen drawer, but that all looked wickedly sharp. He probably could’ve done an infomercial with them, cutting potatoes mid-air and slicing through tomatoes without losing any seeds. There were a few pieces of paper he’d printed sitting next to him, to “provide inspiration.”
“My family never did this shit when I was younger. All my white friends would be carving pumpkins, and we’d be buying fireworks for Diwali,” he had told me the day before, stopping by the shop to check in between appointments for the Cillian job. “Which was just as cool,” he amended reluctantly, “but I still think doing both would’ve been best. So carving pumpkins is going to fulfill some childhood shit for me.”
I could relate, my immigrant parents failing to understand any of the classic American Halloween customs, the decorations treated as a waste of time and money. But unlike Dev, I never held any long-standing desire to hack into a gourd.
So after the knives were passed out and everyone started sawing into the tops of their pumpkins, I stared in horror rather than starting my own. I looked down, frowning at my silk top, which I had carefully chosen in the burnt umber color so I matched the leaves falling from the trees outside. The material would be ruined by whatever guts came spilling out of the pumpkin in front of me, and I doubted I’d be able to get through the carving without incident.
My eyes flicked over to Bex, already halfway through carving the stem out of the pumpkin, and heaved a silent sigh. I refused to give her the pleasure of admitting I was worried about my outfit. But before I could step closer to the counter, Bex shrugged off the flannel she had on over her t-shirt, easing it up my arms and onto my shoulders before I could blink. It ended up on me backwards, acting like a smock, and I stood there in shock for a moment. Bex went back to her pumpkin without a word, but I caught Alex’s eyes on us as she turned around. Knowing that he saw the interaction had me self-conscious for reasons I didn’t want to identify, so I threw myself at my pumpkin, knife held aloft.
But since I had no idea what to do, I decided to cheat off my neighbors. Refusing to look at Bex - knowing if I did I’d think too much into her gesture - I glanced to my other side at Dev, his knife slicing through the thick flesh of the pumpkin with ease. It probably helped that he brought his own knife instead of using one of Ames’s butcher knives, and I frowned as I watched his muscles bunch beneath his shirt, silently lamenting my refusal to do any of the upper body exercise he’d tried to force on me since we met. I was much more of a stretching and cardio kind of girl.
I stood on my tiptoes, using my body weight to force the knife through the skin of the pumpkin, my other hand bracing the fruit as I tried to curve my cut into a circle. I realized the error in balancing on my toes while wielding a sharp instrument shortly afterward.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, dropping the knife on the counter as I watched the cut bloom with blood. The sting came a moment later, forcing a hiss through my teeth. Dev was already in motion, hopping onto the island to get a paper towel on the opposite side. I reached over to grab it from him but Bex had already taken it, eyes angry as they roved over my body, trying to find the injury.
“What happened?”
