Page 38 of Harvest Moon

But no. Even on the off chance this was supposed to be a date, that was rushing him. He’d never said as much, but I’d known Ridge since we were actual children. I knew he didn’t think about sex the way other people did. I’d never seen him running his eyes lasciviously over the bodies of the beautiful girls and handsome boys back in school. Never seen him flirt with anyone, or get an inconvenient hard on.

Maybe that was it. Maybe Ridge was asexual or aromantic and just didn’t want anyone like that, and there I’d been pressuring him toward a romantic relationship all those years.

“You all right, Lex?” he asked, voice soft, as he strapped himself into the driver’s seat. He looked... well hell, he looked nervous.

So I shot him my most reassuring smile. “I am. It’s just been a long time since we did anything like this. Not, um, not apple picking”—my cheeks went hot, remembering Claudia saying apple picking was a euphemism for fucking in Grovetown—“just, like, you know. Going out together. To do something. Together.”

He bit his lip and glanced away, eyes landing on a bag in the middle seat, and then his cheeks went pink. “Hope you don’t mind Barbara made us lunch. It was awful sweet of her, and I didn’t figure you’d mind the carrots.” He jolted, his head snapping up to look me in the eye. “They’re still your favorite, right?”

“They still are,” I agreed. I mean, seriously, who didn’t like carrots? Crunchy, sweet, and good raw or cooked. How many foods were that versatile?

It did make me feel a little self-involved, though. I hadn’t even considered bringing lunch for us, and he brought this sweet little packed lunch. It was so well thought out and considerate. So Ridge. I mean, yeah, he’d said he would make sandwiches, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have spent a minute thinking about it.

“Anything you need to take back to the farm from the grove?” I asked, trying desperately not to make it weird and awkward. “I mean, you know, like Claudia wants pie.”

He shook his head, then paused and considered. “I suppose it might not be a bad idea to take a pie back. As a thank you to the Hills for all they’ve done to welcome me.” As always when he was driving, Ridge kept his eyes straight ahead, focused on the road. For just a second, though, he glanced down at—at what? It was strange, to see him so distracted.

“I’m glad they have,” I offered, and that was true. I wanted Ridge to be successful in whatever was important to him. I just wanted to know why this was important to him. Why he wasn’t at home, planting those crops on land he sort of owned?

Before I managed to pull up the confidence to ask any questions at all, we had pulled into the grove parking lot. It was pretty busy, being a weekend during their prime season, but I knew from “the Grovetown view” that the grove itself was absolutely enormous. I didn’t doubt we’d manage to find enough apples to fill any basket we wanted.

Ridge rushed off to the barn and grabbed a basket, then looked at me with a smile. “So, where do you want to start?”

I picked a random direction and pointed, and we set off through rows of trees, the varieties marked on wooden signs along the main path. The lunch bags from Mrs. Hill tucked into the basket.

We walked until I couldn’t see any of the other apple-pickers, and something about it got my heart pumping double time. No, I don’t mean just the exercise of the hike.

It was more than that. It was the way Ridge kept glancing around, and when he laid eyes on another person, he kept walking.

“How’s Claudia doing?” he asked after a while.

I shrugged. “She’s not bad, honestly. If you don’t worry about how much she’s working and how tired she is all the time. She seems to be eating more since I arrived, so maybe it’s going to be fine.”

“Since you arrived?” So this was my problem. Was he just making conversation? Was he serious? Did he actually want to chat about Claudia’s eating habits, or was he just being nice?

Dammit, it had never been this hard with Ridge before. I always assumed that if he brought something up, he cared about the answer. So I determinedly decided that I would stick with that. If he wanted to know about Claudia’s eating, I’d tell him.

“She’s got pretty terrible eating habits. She’s got a sweet tooth bigger than, say, the people in Grovetown have a taste for apples.” One corner of his lips turned up—a sign of high amusement from Ridge. “But I’ve been trying to get rid of the worst of it. All those prebaked prewrapped snack cakes with all the preservatives and stuff went straight in the trash. She’s still sneaking it on the side when she goes to work, but eating more vegetables seems to have helped her appetite.”

His smile went wide and genuine, and it made me melt a little. “Saving her from herself, Lex? Like she’s a kid you’ve gotta bribe into eating her broccoli.”

On my next step, I pushed down more heavily than I intended, and it sounded like I was stamping my foot. “Broccoli is good, dammit.”

“I like it,” he agreed, as he finally slowed to a stop, turning in a circle and looking all around us before setting the basket down. “This tree looks good.”

There were three trees he could be talking about, but he was right. They all looked good.

“Well then,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “Guess we’d better get to it, huh?”

His soft smile made my heart flutter. The words that came next were even better. “There’s no rush. We got all afternoon.”

22

Ridge

The weather that afternoon was perfect. The sun was still high up in the sky by the time we found our picking spot, and it fell warm on my shoulders and the top of my head.

Alexis looked damn beautiful in the sunshine, the light bouncing off skin that tanned easily, always a smooth golden color like his pa’s. His father came all the way from Greece. Claud’s family too, I thought. Her dad was Lex’s uncle, and they’d crossed the Atlantic together.

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