Page 36 of Harvest Moon

“But, Alexis, you’ve been apart for five years.” She sat up and turned to face me, her eyes earnest. “You’ve told me time and again that he’s not the world’s most prolific communicator. Maybe he’s just out of practice. Maybe without any Alexis there to keep him talking, he just didn’t. And then he came back, and he had a hard time getting back to Ridge-and-Alexis and that effortless communication you had before.”

I bit my lip, my eyes stinging at the possibility. What if he was only here because I’d gone haring halfway across the state because I was offended that he was busy? What if the whole thing was my imagination, and I was just being a melodramatic kid?

Maybe Ridge did like me. Like... more than just “putting up with the kid who was always hanging around” liked me.

“Do you... do you really think maybe it’s supposed to be a date?” I asked. I didn’t love the note of pitiful hope in my voice, but what else could I feel?

What if Ridge actually did want me? What if it was a date?

“I think the people of Grovetown literally use apple picking as a euphemism for fucking, Alexis. Apple picking is a date.” She pulled herself off the bed, and as she stood, she grabbed a bright green shirt, tossing it at my face. “This one. It makes your eyes pop. Now come watch a movie with me so I don’t eat the whole bag of popcorn.”

“Alternately, you could throw it away and eat a whole bag of carrots,” I suggested, grabbing the green shirt and laying it over the back of a chair. I’d take care of the rest of the mess later. For now, I had to keep my cousin on the straight and narrow.

She turned and gave me a disgusted look. “Carrots? Seriously? I might as well gnaw on a stick.”

“Carrots are good,” I argued. “They’re sweet.”

“They’re vegetables.”

“So’s corn.”

“Then you should be totally fine with me eating it!”

I sighed and followed her into the kitchen. “Fine. Popcorn. But not that gross bag kind with, like, a whole oil slick of fake butter. We pop it ourselves, in a pan.”

She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language, and that was how I discovered that my cousin had never actually popped popcorn. The resulting mess was going to leave us finding popcorn in the kitchen for weeks to come, but it was totally worth it.

20

Ridge

Given the jobs I’d held down, the life I wanted, I didn’t have any fancy clothes. I also wasn’t sure why I was worrying about what I wore. Apple picking was an outdoor activity, and the perfect thing to wear was a pair of comfortable jeans, a flannel shirt to keep out the chill on the windy hill, and my brown zip-up coat with the red and black plaid inside. More flannel there—flannel and denim was all I had for fall, all I was made of, practically.

Well, that, and a pair of muddy boots.

It’d always been enough for Lex before. He hadn’t hung around, critiquing my poor fashion sense or anything. Didn’t know why I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to impress him now.

Probably because I wasn’t.

Before I left on Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Barbara stopped me by the door. That morning when I said I was making sandwiches for Alexis and me, she’d insisted on making them herself. It was sweet, and reminded me a little of my ma.

Wherever she was, whatever she and Pa were doing, I hoped she was happy. I could’ve called, but with all my hurt feelings, all that disappointment, I didn’t want to pick up the phone and get in an argument with Pa. And they’d never been in the habit of calling me—not since I’d left for school. Better to find my own footing and then give them a call when things had settled down.

Mrs. Barbara put a bag in my hand, complete with apple juice boxes with the bendy straws, little carrot sticks, and Goldfish crackers—the kind of lunch I used to take to school as a kid. Then she leaned up and kissed me on the cheek.

“You boys have a good time now,” she said.

Rolling into the residential part of town had me a little nervous. Back home, this was the kind of neighborhood where people had money. Grove House had a fancy fence and three whole stories.

The Wilson’s place wasn’t quite so big, but it was still plenty nice.

Birch and Claudia’s house was charming, the grass green, the bushes trimmed, everything freshly painted and cared for. How could I want to take Alexis away from all this and put him in a rustic cabin of my own making? Where the hell did I get off thinking just because I knew how to build a half-decent barn, I knew how to build a house for my mate?

I couldn’t build something so nice as all this—not without some kind of help. Maybe it’d be better to try and buy a place, though I didn’t think I’d have much luck getting a mortgage if I couldn’t get a business loan. Wasn’t like I had land to build on, anyway.

Shaking off all the weight of things I didn’t have to tempt in a mate I’d already messed things up with, I got out of the truck and wandered up the walkway to the front door to ring the bell.

A big, tall alpha with a full dark beard opened the door. He smiled at me and stuck out his hand. I hadn’t gotten a close look at Mr. Wilson at the pack meeting, but he was more imposing here, in person.

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