Page 97 of Fall is Brewing

I can't help smiling. "You had one hell of an arm."

She looks horrified. “I got grounded for two weeks after your family left.”

"You cried harder than I did,” I chuckle.

She laughs briefly, then silence settles once again in my bedroom. It’s softer this time as she traces the edge of the photograph with her thumb. “I still don’t get why you didn’t tell me we knew each other.”

"I wanted to tell you, but..." The words trail off before I can find a way to finish them that doesn't sound pathetic.

Willa waits, not jumping in to rescue me from the silence. She just stands there, the photograph still in her hands, looking at me with an expression that hurts worse than if she'd been angry.

"But what?" she asks quietly.

I drag a hand over the back of my neck. "I told myself I'd mention it after the blind taste test." A humorless laugh slips out of me, dry and hollow, scraping at my throat.

"But you didn't."

"No." The admission settles between us, thick and uncomfortable, and I can feel the heat of it creeping up the back of my neck.

I let out a slow breath, trying to steady the tightness in my chest. "You started looking at me like I was just Brooks. Not your competition. Not as the little boy whose nose you broke. Not through decades of history. I kind of liked that. That we were creating a new sort of history between us.” The confession hangs between us. "I liked getting to know the woman you'd become before either of us had to remember the kids we used to be."

She studies me for a long moment, and I can almost see the thoughts rearranging themselves behind her eyes. Like she's pulling every conversation we've had off a shelf and looking at it from a different angle. "The problem is every time we talked..." Her voice is quiet now. "You were keeping this secret from me.”

I nod.

"The pie judging."

I nod again.

"The apple tasting."

Another nod.

"When I came to work here..."

"Yeah."

She lets out a slow breath and looks away, shaking her head more to herself than to me. "I thought we were getting to know each other at the same pace."

The words hit somewhere just beneath my ribs.

"I thought that with every story you learned about me..." She presses the scrapbook closed with careful hands. "I was learning one about you, too."

"You were⁠—"

"No." She finally looks back at me. "I wasn't." There's no anger in her voice and somehow that hurts more. Her brow furrows. “Wait a minute… When I broke your nose, did you lose your ability to smell?”

I wince as I nod, knowing she’s putting the pieces together faster than I’m ready for.

She presses her lips together, nostrils flaring. “So in the tiebreaker when they made us plug our noses…” Her voice falters as realization creeps in. "You couldn't smell anyway. You had a major advantage."

“I didn’t know Marcy was going to do that as the tiebreaker,” I try to reason with her.

“But you didn't think to say anything, either,” she snaps.

"I didn't think⁠—"

“You didn’t think what? That it mattered?” she interrupts, using my own words from earlier against me. She crosses her arms. “What else have you determined I don’t need to know?” The question lands like a punch.