“Fine.” I shot him a challenging look. “But we are not actually picking apples. I draw the line.”
He pursed his lips. “You don’t want to try my apple pie?”
Shit. “I do. I very much do.”
Evan and Elizabeth climbed into the backseat of Basil’s car, both looking significantly less glum than before. I followed suit, claiming the passenger seat and the role of secondary character in my friend’s romantic adventure.
When we arrived in the parking lot of the apple orchard, a breeze threw my hair across my face and raised goose bumps. It felt great to stretch my legs and forget about all the crap I normally dealt with at my two jobs: steaming milk, takingorders, negotiating with my graphic design clients, scratching to stay afloat.
Bas and I gave Evan and Elizabeth some space to talk and approached the overlook, Charlottesville spread out below, the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond. Home. The trees had recently lost their color, and leaves fell like rain all over the already blanketed ground.
“Stunning,” I said.
“Yes,” Bas said into my ear, and a shiver wound its way to the base of my spine.
We headed up to the market. Evan and Bas stood in line for the doughnuts and coffee while Elizabeth stared at a pumpkin display.
She smiled up at the sky, closing her eyes as the sun bathed her face. “My dad would’ve called this aquintessential fall football Saturday.”
I could almost hear his baritone voice as she imitated him.
“My dad would’ve called this a good excuse to get drunk.”
Elizabeth shoved my shoulder with hers. She knew it was gallows humor. “Thanks for coming up here. It puts way less pressure on us.”
I elbowed her. “So you’re going to fix him?”
“He has a therapist for that. I’m gonna stick around and see where this goes.”
“Did he at least grovel?”
“It wasn’t really that he’d been jealous of any guys I might have dated. Turns out he was jealous of you. Of the experiences we have, the fun we have. I promised him we’d make our own list if he wanted.”
My own ugly jealousy ticked my lips into a frown. Was I losing my best friend to a guy?
“That’s kind of sweet, actually.”
“I thought you’d like that.” She leaned in to me. “You knowwhat he added to our list?”
“Murder Chelsea?”
She laughed. “No. He doesn’t want to murder you. That’s the kind of thingyouput.”
“Does he want to quietly get me out of the way? Have me disappeared?”
“No. He putGo on a hayride.”
I rolled my eyes. “At an apple orchard where you can do that very thing? He’s not above cheating, huh?”
The guys arrived bearing food and drink, and we gorged ourselves on sugar and caffeine in relative silence at a picnic table, taking in the incredible view.
Bas said, apropos of nothing, “My uncle lives in a place named Panorama in Greece. NotthePanorama. It’s a suburb of Voula.”
I shot him a quizzical look, trying to parse a pun out of that. “Huh?”
He stretched out his hand at the distant mountain range, at the city below, and his meaning clicked. “Panorama. It’s a Greek word.”
Elizabeth screwed up her mouth. “I wonder which came first: the town or the word. Does it have views like this?”
