Page 19 of Drawn Together
“There’s a farmer's stand around the corner that grows a Golden Delicious and Autumn Glory hybrid.” He lifts the bag. “They sell out within an hour of setting up, so I had to go early today and wait.”
I nod, and my chest is slowing to a steady rhythm. “O-Okay.”
I guess I’m not completely done crying, because the word coming out of me is pathetic and kind of whiny.
Fletcher turns to face the same way as me and keeps walking. He glances over his shoulder and jerks his head in a gesture telling me to follow him. Maybe it’s the stupid apples or the disparity of getting to my apartment as soon as I can so I can properly cry it out, but I follow him regardless.
We pass a community garden tucked behind an iron gate, late-summer plums still clinging to vines, and herbs spilling over raised beds. The September sun casts a golden slant across the sidewalks as we silently walk side by side through Park Slope. Fletcher keeps shifting his giant bag of apples from one hand to the other. A breeze picks up and rustles the bag, and he checks in it, like maybe the wind has taken one of the twenty-five in there, and he must seek revenge. He wraps up the bag and cradles it to his chest with a stern, determined look on his face.
We round the street corner and keep going. I assume he is taking us back to both of our apartments. Despite the last fivemonths of walking to work, I still get lost on a regular basis, and none of this side of the neighborhood looks very familiar.
Like my thoughts are on a steady walking track, Cedric's words come curling back around to me and my sobs release themselves without my permission, again. How contradictory of my life—to be too much, yet somehow never enough.
The thought lets loose another broken sob, and someone leaving the record store beside us flares their nostrils at me.
“Stop crying,” Fletcher hisses.
“Gosh,” I cough out. “I’m trying.”
We walk around a couple making out against a light post.
“Do you want a Golden Glory?”
I look up at Fletcher, and the sun behind him makes me squint. “Like…a golden shower?”
“Uh, no. Not— Not that. It’s the apple hybrid.” He reaches down and pulls out a perfectly yellow apple. “The Autumn Glory and Golden Delicious hybrid. Golden Glory.”
“Oh.” I sniffle. “Okay.”
I bite into my apple, and it’s so juicy it spills out of my mouth and down my chin. Fireworks of flavors dance around my tongue—sweet and a touch of sour, and so very fall. It tastes like popping When Harry Met Sally into your DVD player and curling up with a too-hot bowl of your mom’s chicken and dumplings. It’s like lighting a new candle for the first time or cracking the spine of your favorite, yellow-paged historical romance.
It tastes so wonderfully like my childhood that I feel like crying all over again. I think I miss home. I think I miss me. I miss the steadiness of a friend and the support of a parent from one room over. I miss school buses driving along the street and the laughter of kids running at the beach. I miss the Maine air—salty and warm—and, I miss Sloane and her exceptional fashion taste.
I don’t think I realized just how much I missed it all, until I took a single bite of this apple.
And so, my crying perseveres.
“I read Twilight last night,” Fletcher mumbles into his bag.
That has me looking up. “You did?”
“I did.”
My nose scrunches. “And?”
“I…didn’t get it.”
“A shame.”
“It is.” He nods like, pity. “I didn’t get it but…I read the entire thing in one sitting.”
The thought of Fletcher pacing his apartment, holding a hard cover about sparkly vampires with a puzzled expression on his face has me temporarily smiling.
“I have a vague memory of doing that in seventh grade.”
“It was enchanting at best.”
“Enchanting.” I nod. “Numinous.”
