Page 60 of Fall is Brewing
He’s standing at the other end of the bar, arms crossed, sleeves still pushed up, sunlight catching along the planes of his face. There is something unfair about a man who looks like that in a room he built from nothing. Unwillingly, I think about my great grandmother and if this is how she felt the first time she stood in the tasting room she and my great grandfather built together, watching him like he belonged to it and it belonged to him. There’s something intoxicating about watching Brooks belong somewhere so completely.
“I don’t do things halfway,” I say to him.
His eyes slowly skim over my face as he says, “I know.” His certainty lands strangely. Like he has already decided something about me and is not asking permission to be right.
I should bristle. Instead, I take another sip of coffee, the cinnamon settling warm on my tongue.
Outside, a child shrieks with laughter as Scrumpy darts across the patio with what appears to be half a muffin in her paws. One of the baby raccoons tumbles after her, all feet and tail and bad decisions.
A laugh slips out before I can stop it.
“You’re smiling,” he says.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“It’s just gas. Like when a newborn smiles.”
He presses his lips together like he’s trying not to laugh. “That’s your defense?”
“Hey—it’s a medical condition.”
Brooks tears his eyes from me, chuckling silently while looking out the window where the baby raccoons are still tumbling after Scrumpy. “We should probably name them, you know.”
“The babies?”
“Well I’m not naming your gas. And they can’t just be ‘the babies’ forever,” he retorts. “I’m thinking...something classic. Bandit, Desperado, and Marauder?”
I roll my eyes. “They’re all so obvious.”
“Hm. Maybe something ironic. Princess?”
I stare at him. “You are not naming a raccoon Princess.”
“Why not? She has range.”
“You don’t even know which one is a she.”
“I have instincts.”
“Your instincts also thought Scrumpy was a boy…”
He grins. “You’re smiling again.”
“It’s still gas.”
He leans in, his breath soft and warm against my ear. “I think you’re enjoying yourself.”
The worst part is… he’s right. I am enjoying myself. Not because I don’t love my own orchard. Not because I forgot the competition or the fact that Brooks Calder is still the man standing between me and the ribbon that has mattered to my family for years.
Because his brothers are ridiculous.
Because his coffee is witchcraft.
Because his systems are smart, and his cider is better than I want it to be.
Because Brooks is watching me like he sees all the parts of me I usually keep too busy to notice.
