Page 54 of Roommate
She blinks. “Oh, screw her, then. She can keep her five bucks.”
I shrug like it doesn’t matter to me. But it absolutely does.
“Can’t believe I bitched at you in front of your mom.” Zara grabs a towel and dries off a cookie sheet. “I’m sorry. I was stressed out.”
“I’m pretty sure I had it coming.” I still just want to crawl under a rock and hide. Sleeping in when it’s my job to open the kitchen? What a dick move.
And I don’t think Zara would be half so understanding if she knew the whole story of where I woke up this morning. Kieran is like family to her, and I took advantage of him.
“You need a break,” Zara says. “That’s the other thing I came back here to tell you.”
“No, I’m fine,” I insist, even as my stomach gurgles. “You’d better get back out there. I’m baking the rolls next. They’ll be out of the oven in thirty minutes.”
“Okay,” she says with a sigh. “Back to the trenches. It’s strangely busy today, with everyone asking for your wares. Those biscuits were dynamite, by the way. If that’s your go-to emergency recipe, we’ll all be okay.”
I gave her a weak smile and get back to work.
* * *
Lunch is a single misshapen roll with butter. Today’s only blessing is that Kieran isn’t on the schedule. We could have used the help, but I’m not ready to look him in the eye yet. Not after last night.
When the day is finally done, I get my things together and prepare to leave. My heart almost fails when I see that I have a text from Audrey. I’m expecting it to say: What did you do last night?
But it doesn’t. There’s an address, followed by: See you whenever you can get here.
Oh boy. I’d forgotten about Audrey’s invitation to the Shipley farm. Tonight, the family is doing some kind of late-season push to press apples into cider.
“There will be food and a bonfire! And you can taste the cider,” Audrey had said.
Last night, with some tequila in my bloodstream, going to the Shipleys’ place had seemed like a fine idea.
It no longer does. And yet I know I have to go anyway. Besides, free food.
I am so easily bought.
Kieran
My father grew up at Shipley Farms, pruning the apple trees and milking the cows. There’s a picturesque apple orchard, with the trees lined up in rows like soldiers, and Jersey cows in the distant meadow. On fall weekends, crowds of people pick apples and take selfies beside the scarecrows.
Now the apple trees are stripped bare, but there’s still plenty of work to do. Once in a while—when my cousin Griff needs some extra pairs of hands—he’ll throw a bonfire party and invite all of us to eat dinner and make cider.
I’ve hefted bushel after bushel of apples into the water bath. First the apples are washed and then they climb a mechanical ladder into a machine that grinds them up into mush, cores and all.
This apple slurry is squirted through a hose into the baffles of the apple press. Then a hydraulic machine squishes the press, forcing cider to run out into a tank. When the pressing is done, all that’s left are caked sheets of apple cellulose, which are surprisingly dry. The cellulose is fed to animals or composted.
When my grandparents ran the place, they only dabbled in cider. They had two sons—my dad and Griffin’s father, my uncle August. It was August who learned to make hard cider, and it was Griffin who figured out how to make it profitable.
So here we are, squeezing apples into gold on a chilly night in November. My belly is full of Aunt Ruth’s pulled pork, and I’ve got another hour of work in me at least. The cider house smells like a cross between the inside of an apple pie and a wine cellar. This is the nicest place in the world.
My cousin May arrives with another bushel in the wheelbarrow. “Griff? Is this the kind you wanted next?”
Griffin stops what he’s doing and eyes the apples she’s brought in. They have ugly skin the color of a paper bag. Cider apples can be really funny-looking. “Yep. Thanks. Keep ’em coming.”
I take the bushel from May and pour it into the water bath.
“How’s your father?” May asks me, putting a hand on my arm.
“The same,” I say, handing the empty container back to her. “Back surgery looks like hell.”
