I'd put on my ultimate guilty pleasure:Sister Wendy's Story of Painting. I'd been half-afraid he'd laugh but he just watched, completely earnest, as the tiny, buck-toothed nun in the old-school habit waxed poetic about the passion of Caravaggio. I find her voice impossibly soothing, and as I'd leaned my head on his shoulder, his arm around me, pizza crust in hand, I’d thought:This. This is the best night I’ve had in ages.It wasn't just the sex, which had been slow and emotional and everything I didn't know I needed. It was theafter. The easy intimacy. The laughter. The feeling of being completely, totally safe. And now, seeing the genuine, unadulterated relief on his face, it solidifies everything. My heart does a stupid little flip-flop. I like him. I really,reallylike him.
A slow, brilliant smile breaks across his face, chasing away the last shadows of worry. “Well,” he says, his voice suddenly lighter. “This is the best news in the history of news. This requires a celebration.”
I laugh, a watery, hiccupping sound. “A celebration? Zachary, it's barely nine a.m. I look like I've been crying for a week.”
“Celebrations are not bound by time,” he declares, leaning in to kiss my snotty nose. I wrinkle it, but I don't pull away. “And you look beautiful. We are doing whatever you want today. Anything. You name it, it's yours. Sky's the limit."
I sit on the floor with my back against the wall and he follows suit, sitting cross-legged next to me. “Anything?”
“Anything,” he confirms, lacing our fingers together. “You want to fly to Paris for breakfast? We'll be a little late, but I'm game if you are.”
I laugh again, the sound clearer this time, the relief making me feel light-headed, almost giddy. What do I want? I want to be normal. I want to be outside, in the sunshine. I want to feelaliveand healthy and not like a patient.
“I want to go apple picking,” I say.
He blinks, his smile faltering for just a second. “Apple picking?”
“Yes,” I say, a real, genuine smile bubbling up from my chest. “I've always wanted to. You know, the whole cheesy autumn bucket list thing. The flannel shirts, the crisp air, the little red wagon... all of it. I've just... I've never actually gotten to go.”
His smile widens, slow and warm. It reaches his eyes, crinkling the corners. “Apple picking,” he repeats, as if tasting the words. “That I can definitely do. And I know the perfect place.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says, leaning in. His lips are warm, and the kiss is slow and sweet and tastes like a brand new, wide-open future. “It's owned by my best friend from college. They've got the best cider donuts in the state, guaranteed. And it's only about a forty-five-minute drive from here.”
“It's perfect,” I whisper against his mouth.
“Absolutely perfect,” he agrees.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Zachary
My hands grip the steering wheel tighter than necessary as Maya and I drive toward Tim’s family apple orchard. I can feel my pulse in my jaw, a steady, anxiousthump-thump-thump. I take a left turn, the road changing from smooth suburban asphalt to a patched, uneven country lane.
“Wow, it's beautiful out here,” Maya says from the passenger seat, her voice full of genuine appreciation.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice tighter than I intend. “It really is.”
And it is. The trees are a riot of gold and crimson, the sky a sharp, cloudless blue. It’s a perfect autumn day. Which is, unfortunately, part of the problem.
I pull into the gravel entrance and immediately see a wall of cars. The main parking lot is a sea of minivans and SUVs. A guy in an orange vest waves me toward the overflow lot, a bumpy grass field.
“Whoa, it's packed,” Maya says, her eyes wide.
“Yeah. It's... a popular spot. Beautiful fall weekend and all.”
My heart is hammering. It's not the crowds. I can handle crowds. It'sTim. It's introducing Maya to Tim. To mypeople. I haven't brought anyone here since Whitney.
The memory hits me as I pull the car into a lumpy spot between a jeep and a pickup truck. It’s so vivid it’s like a film playing on the windshield. A different autumn, three years ago. Whitney, my ex from California, in the passenger seat. She hadn't said a word about the scenery. She'd been on her phone the entire drive, making loud, dramatic sighs every time the signal dropped.
Tim’s family does this huge, annual “applesauce weekend.” It's an all-hands-on-deck chaotic, wonderful mess of peeling, coring, and canning fueled by cider and laughter. I'd been so excited to share it with her. Whitney had lasted about twenty minutes. She'd claimed shehadto be reachable for her clients—she was a high-end real estate agent in LA—and the second she found out Tim's office in the main building had the farm's only reliable Wi-Fi booster, she vanished.
She spent almost the entire weekend holed up in there, emerging only for meals, her Bluetooth earpiece firmly in place. The few times we did drag her out—once to the pumpkin patch, once for a hayride—she'd spent the whole time anxiously checking her phone, abandoning the activity completely if shethoughtshe heard it ring.
At the end of the weekend, as I was packing our bags, Tim pulled me aside. He'd looked at me with that quiet, piercing gaze of his and asked, “Does she make you happy, man? Truly?”
“Yeah, of course,” I'd insisted, my defensiveness immediate. “She's just... dedicated. Her work is important.”
