Page 15 of Harvest Moon

What? Oh! “Oh, no, um, Claudia fell asleep. Birch was just taking her in, then he said he’d come back and help with my trunk.” I motioned to the car, then the house, aimlessly. “I guess I didn’t know what to do while I waited. I’ve never even visited here before, so I’m a little lost.”

He smiled and waved me off. “Don’t worry about it. I was the same not too long ago.” He went up to the driver’s door of Birch’s car, opened it, leaned in, and pulled a lever that popped the trunk open like magic. The dog must have been the most well-behaved dog I’d ever seen. It just followed along after him, wagging its tail and looking quite entertained by our exchange. “Why don’t I help you get your trunk in?”

And that, at last, was something I could respond to. Something I could dig into, and not be so pitiful and aimless. “Sure,” I agreed, pushing the lid up and grabbing one handle of the trunk.

Colt took the other handle and lifted. His eyes went wide, and he let out a little “oof,” as we hefted it over the edge of the car. He didn’t drop it, but he looked up at me with one eyebrow lifted. “What do you have in here, rocks?”

My cheeks flamed as I was reminded. Because what had I packed? The fancy winter hiking boots one of my sponsors had sent me? Clothes and books and sensible things?

Oh, sure, there were clothes in there.

But all along the bottom was indeed a layer of rocks. Every single thing Ridge had ever handed me.

“Just, um, stuff,” I told Colt, but my voice was ridiculous and wavery.

He gave me a reassuring smile. “Well then, let’s get it into their guest room, huh? It’s always good to be surrounded by your stuff.”

I was so grateful for the easy acceptance that I didn’t question it. Yes. The guest room was perfect. Colt, in fact, was perfect.

8

Ridge

I’d barely had time to unpack since I’d gotten home from school, and that turned out to work in my favor. It wasn’t hard to get ready to move, and I’d pared all my belongings down to what I could fit in my truck bed when I’d moved back from North Carolina.

The apartment downtown was nice—above a quirky antique shop in a two-story brick building on Elm Street. It had lots of windows and plenty of light in the day, since the buildings on the southern side of the street weren’t quite as tall.

Patrick Rose turned out to be a perfectly acceptable roommate. He was clean, and he hadn’t kicked up a fuss when Banjo hissed at him that first night.

Stuffing a barn cat into a two-bedroom apartment downtown was bound to go pretty horrible. I couldn’t let him out—if I did, I was scared he’d never find his way back. Hell, given how things were going, it was all too easy to believe he wouldn’t want to. And then who else did I have left? So Banjo and I were suffering together in our new, comparatively urban habitat.

The second the sale was finalized, Ma and Pa had rented a Winnebago and taken off on a tour of the eastern seaboard, looking for a place to retire, all their stuff abandoned or put in storage. They seemed all too thrilled to let their old life go and move onto something better. I figured they’d settle south of here, somewhere warm where they could live cheap and see the ocean.

Alexis had been gone for about a week already, and I hadn’t worked up the courage to give him a call and see how he was settling in with Claudia and Birch. I doubted he wanted to hear from me, because for five whole years, I’d been gone. He had his whole life without me, and I couldn’t even blame him for it. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I certainly didn’t want him sitting around, sad, pining over a knucklehead like me.

Truth was, I wasn’t settling into apartment living much better than Banjo. I’d gotten a job at the feed and supply store at the edge of town, tending flowers in plastic pots in the covered area outside.

One nice thing—when I’d started working there, the mums were looking a little dry and droopy. I was able to perk them right up, and it felt nice to be able to fix one thing, no matter how small.

So there was no good reason for me to be in such a sour mood on Thursday night. I had to make dinner, so I was thinking I’d do some kind of pasta, a jar of sauce, maybe a little of the ground beef I’d bought on clearance earlier that week. That stuff, sealed up tight as it was, lasted a good long while, even if you got it when it was on discount.

I must’ve been banging pans around, because Pat came in from the back hall where his bedroom was. Arms crossed over his chest, he leaned in the kitchen’s door frame.

He was a guy of middling height, kind of soft with russet hair. In school, he’d been a prankster. Now, he worked at the antique store downtown and seemed to appreciate the air conditioning and the chance to stay out of the sun.

“Bad day at work?”

I looked up at him for a second, and he had a funny smirk on his face. Heat rushed into my cheeks, and I shrugged.

“Not really.” After all, the mums were saved, so what was there left to complain about?

I was crouching in front of the lower cabinets, shifting pans and looking for just the one I wanted. It was always at the bottom, out of the way, never where I needed it. Patrick cooked a lot more, and a lot better, than I did, and maybe there was some reason all his pans got the job done better, but I didn’t know it. My one old cast-iron thing suited me just fine.

Good god. With a heaving sigh, I sat back on my heels and shut the cabinet. I needed a second to get my head on straight so I didn’t go ruining his whole night with a bad attitude.

“Sorry, Pat. I’m all out of sorts. Nothing’s wrong, I’m just—” What? I didn’t know what to tell him, how to explain that buzz of annoyance flitting around in the back of my head. Pa would’ve said I’d made this bed myself, so I didn’t have a damn person to blame but me. It felt wrong to shove it off on Pat or anybody else.

“No problem,” he said without missing a beat. With his shoulder, he pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the kitchen, closer to me.

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