Diana and Indigo strong-armed me into joining them on the Autumn Apple planning committee. At first I felt like I was back at home—with everyone telling me what to do—but then I realized there’s a huge difference between my parents insisting I join the family business and my friends asking for my communication skills for social media and other marketing for the town festival.
And, after all, I do owe Indigo a solid for lending me all the furniture. I keep trying to give it back to her a bit at a time, but she pretends she can’t hear me when I offer. So I help her proofread the advertisements she puts in the tourist newsletters when she promotes the Inn.
The main issue in planning the Autumn Apple festival seems to be alcohol. Most everyone wants there to be some, but the people who don’t…really don’t want there to be alcohol. My outsider perspective is that this town seemed really relieved by Prohibition, and the residents opposed to alcohol sales have had family living in Oak Creek ever since.
I don’t think my parents would agree to live in a town where they couldn’t buy beer for football games. Where my brothers didn’t have easy access to a hockey bar. I snort, momentarily giddy that the town’s dry status might act as a barrier keeping my family out of my business for awhile.
Between lifting weights with Hunter, drafting up a funding proposal for Hunter, and Autumn Apple planning sessions with my friends, I haven’t had much time to miss my family…or respond to their phone calls.
The girls and I all meet after work at the Inn, where Indigo has a full house and spends our meeting baking scones. She keeps stopping between batches to draw maps directing her guests to Oak Creek’s various craft or antique shops.
Diana yanks the pocket door closed to keep people out of the kitchen and plunks a file on the counter, sending up a poof of flour while Indigo rolls out her next batch of baked goods.
“You see, Abigail,” Diana says, “Oak Creek is a dry town. The college campus is dry. But the Apple fest simply must include hard apple cider or the people will revolt.”
She points to a map of the town limits, a giant red line with angry hash marks drawn around the boundaries where nobody can sell alcohol. Some enterprising businesswoman built a bar directly across the street from the no-booze line, and I’ve spent a few nights with my friends drinking pints at the Nobler Experiment. “Tessy has a good thing going at her bar, and she will absolutely come at you with a shotgun if you try to sell hooch anywhere near her establishment. And the problem is that she is the county council woman in charge of festival permits.”
“So how are you going to sell hard cider?”
Indigo smiles so intently I wonder whether she’s heard us or just tasted one of her scones. She says, beaming, “Sara figured it all out! Didn’t you, babe? We aren’t going to SELL the cider. We’re going to donate the cider to people who buy apples.”
She dances around the kitchen table to kiss Sara on the forehead while Diana talks me through the logistics of what we need.
“The flyers and info for the festival will have to be very clear and very specific,” she says. “No donations for anyone under 21, etc., etc. Maybe we shouldn’t even sell apples to anyone under 21…how will we get that past Hastings?”
“The newspaper guy?”
“He’s dryer than an old raisin,” Diana says, snatching a warm scone from Indigo’s tray. “Fuck, this is amazing. Did you use my rosemary?” Indigo nods as Diana continues. “Hastings runs a smut rag paper of half truths, and yet, he’s the leading force for keeping this town dry! He somehow has clout with all the Acorns, even though he’s not retired like them, and Ed gets the votes he needs every single time this comes up for discussion.”
“Acorns?”
“They’re like…mafia is the wrong word. Let’s just focus on the newspaper ad for the cider booth and we can talk Acorns over hard liquor sometime.”
The next day, I’m too overwhelmed with work and Autumn Apple stuff to even think about lifting weights. I text Hunter from work that I’ll come over a bit later to show him what I’ve got so far on his proposal. He was showing me around his lab last week, all the different tissue samples he wants to study. He comes alive when he talks about science. Instead of the sharp edge and short sentences, he’s animated and excited. I can almost feel him vibrating when he talks about the potential that can come from understanding the aging process on human flesh. I’d probably be grossed out if he weren’t so excited about it all.
But Hunter is far from gross. He hasn’t tried to kiss me again, and every day that I’m sitting in a bag chair in his house, leaning close to him, I get so distracted thinking about his lips.
He makes me feel like helping him write a proposal will help to save the world, like my work with him and with the university really matters for society. I never thought about it that way before, that my ideas about communication can make a real difference for people. Hunter reminds me that my work here is important, not just for the people of this small town, but for all the students who come through the school and all the brilliant ideas they’ll think of while they’re studying here.
Of course, Hunter doesn’t phrase it that way. He uses phrases like “maximum impact” and “fundamental changes to research infrastructure,” but I know what he means. And I appreciate him reminding me.
It’s nice hanging out with people who are so driven. I guess my dad was driven to create a business. My brothers all seemed just…content to join him.
I want more. Everyone in my life seemed to be floating along until I came to Oak Creek. Now I see what “more” could really look like. Rose is away in eastern Europe somewhere having dinner with foreign alumni from the college, asking them to make donations to the endowment to go toward financial aide for students. She’s determined to come back with $50 million in pledges. Just from this one dinner!
And Hunter—he literally wants to go past the moon. Talk about motivated. I try not to let myself get too excited about his promise to rescue my novel from my laptop, but just thinking about everyone I’ve come to know here gets me so excited to work on it again. What if I can really finish it someday? What if, like Hunter, my ideas can move people?
My head is still in the clouds later when I wander into Hunter’s townhouse. I freeze in my tracks when I notice that he has a real chair at his desk, next to his ergonomic Star Trek chair. “Woah,” I say. “You bought furniture?”
Hunter looks up from his monitor and glances at the chair. “Oh.” The new addition is a dark red wooden captains chair. “Yes. I’m told it’s high quality craftsmanship.”
“I can see that,” I say. “But what made you double the amount of furniture in your house?”
He shrugs. “It seemed prudent to get you someplace to sit. You should be comfortable while we sit together.” He looks at me in that intense way of his, without blinking.
“You bought it just for me?”
He seems to consider this. “You inspired me to purchase it, but I will also invite my family to sit in it if they decide to visit.”
It’s hard to explain how much it means to me that this specific man did something kind, with me in mind. I can tell it means a lot that he thought of me this way. I sink into the chair, running my hands up and down the smooth arms. “I love it.”
I lean over to pat his arm and shiver at the now-familiar electric spark as our skin connects. He doesn’t break our gaze, and stares at me with liquid brown eyes. His face is so unreadable. He says, “I have your data.”
I blink. “What?”
“Your data. My colleague was able to pull your data from your hard drive.”
My heart stops beating for a few minutes and I just stare, open-mouthed. I hadn’t really wanted to fully hope that would be possible. I held onto a tiny sliver of maybe, but was steeling myself that my work was gone forever, along with my life in Ohio.
I almost don’t know what to make of this news. In the few seconds between heartbeats, my thoughts zoom through possibilities. I can go sit in the coffee shop and work on my novel. My novel. “You have it?”
Hunter leans to the side and lifts up a sleek, silver laptop. He hands it to me. “What’s this?” I see him grit his teeth as if he’s trying to decide what to say. “I mean, I know it’s a laptop, Hunter. Is it yours?”
“I bought it for you,” he says. He licks his lower lip and I focus on the way it moves above the dark stubble growing in. He must have forgotten to shave today, which means he was really distracted. Upon realizing that I know his habits so well, I gasp. I can’t do this. I’m not ready for any kind of relationship. I can’t be memorizing a man’s grooming habits.
“Hunter, I can’t accept this.”
“The expense is insignificant for me,” he says. “Well, provided my divorce settlement goes as well as Sara predicts.”
I snort out a brief laugh. “Did you just make a joke?”
He rubs a palm across his chin, thinking. “I suppose I did,” he says.
“Hunter, this laptop…it’s too much.”
“I could have lied and said it was a refurbishment from the college, but I felt it was important to be truthful,” he says.
“Thank you, Hunter. It’s just that…things are…I can’t get romantically involved with anyone right now.”
Another long pause from him. I remind myself that Hunter takes longer than many people to respond, especially if the conversation is about emotions and feelings. I try not to rush him as I wait for him to say something.
Eventually, after an agonizingly long ten seconds, he says, “I can’t identify whether I have romantic feelings for you, Abigail. But I am certainly fond of you. And I feel invested in helping you feel happy. I have observed that writing makes you happy.”
“You’ve observed that?”
He nods. “I can see your pulse quicken—the side of your neck ticks when you’re writing. And the rise and fall of your chest slows as you think about a sentence, and then I’ve seen you smile as you type the sentence.”
“You noticed all that?”
“Yes.” He leans back a bit in his chair, seeming more at ease now. Now it’s my turn to pause before I answer him, but he doesn’t seem outwardly bothered by a silent gap in our conversation.
I’ve never met anyone like Hunter before. He’s very self-aware, and always totally honest. There’s no filter here, and it’s refreshing to know exactly where I stand with someone, even if it’s agonizing to know that he’s been studying me intently to determine whether I’m happy. “I feel a little overwhelmed,” I tell him.
I see him swallow. “Have I made a social error again?”
“No, Hunter. I’m just not used to people seeing me.”