Page 9 of That Summer
“Yeah, that sums it up.”
“When I heard that you’d be staying with us for the summer, I pictured you to be a bad boy.”
It was my turn to throw my head back in laughter.
“You’re not?” Sarah asked.
My chuckling subsided quickly as I looked back toward her again and winked. “Only one way to find out.” I moved closer and started to descend my lips onto hers, but came up short when her finger silenced my mouth.
“I have a boyfriend.”
5
It never botheredme when a girl would tell me that she had a boyfriend. I never saw it as an obstacle.
Until now.
After Sarah told me she had a boyfriend, she got out of the hot tub. The bubbles were still going, so I knew that the situation had become awkward for her and made her leave
Girls liked my D and the way I used it to pound into them as they writhed beneath me with pleasure. Sarah didn’t know what she was missing—yet. I knew that I’d eventually win her over with my charm, and get what I wanted. So would she.
The rest of the weekend was a time for my parents and Deb to reconnect while I spent my last few days of freedom in the pool and fishing in the man-made lake. Sarah and I never talked about me trying to kiss her. In fact, she spent most of her time away from the farm. She said she was going to the mall in San Antonio and spending time with her friends, but I knew she was avoiding me.
Today was my first day of community service. Before my parents drove away this morning, my dad pulled me aside and told me to be on my best behavior and to not be a fuck up.“You’re essentially the man of the house, Blake. Take care of those two girls.”I didn’t get any time to reflect on what he said before Deb’s lead farmhand, Duke showed up. After Deb did her introductions, I followed Duke into the barn to start the day.
When I thought of a barn, I imagined hay and animals, but when we entered the red building, it was cold—so cold—and had stacks of crates that went all the way up to the roof. “Why is it so cold in here?” I asked, looking around. The temperature was a nice change from the early morning heat, but it made no sense.
“This here’s a cold apple storage.”
“A what?” I asked.
“We store the apples in here.”
“Okay, but why? Don’t you just pick them and process them before shipping them to stores or whatever?”
Duke walked to a crate and pulled it out as though it was a drawer. I stepped closer and saw that it had rows of apples sitting inside. “Most people are under the impression that’s what we do, but the apples in the stores can be as old as a year.”
My mouth dropped open. “A year?”
He took one out and sliced a piece off with his pocket knife. “Ever wonder why you can get apples year round, but apples are only harvested between August and September?”
“No,” I answered honestly. I didn’t know when apples were harvested.
Duke chuckled slightly and handed me the slice of apple. “Fair enough, but like I was saying, there are only two months out of the year where we pick slightly unripe apples. After we do so, we treat them with 1-Meth—”
I balked. “You put meth on them?”
He rolled his grey eyes as he sliced off a chunk of the apple and handed it to me. I took a bite of the crisp red apple as he spoke. “1-Methylcycolopropene is a plant growth regulator. It slows down the ripening of fruit—like these apples—and helps maintain the freshness.”
I was slowly putting two and two together. “So, you pick them and slow their growth so you can sell them year round?”
“Exactly.” Duke sliced more of the apple, taking a bite himself. “These stacks of crates have already been processed for Deb. Each week she takes a certain amount of apples and creates everything she sells in her store.”
I bobbed my head in understanding.
“For the next month, you’ll be in charge of doing that for her every Friday and come this Friday, I’ll show you what to do. It’s simple really. Deb will tell you how many crates she wants and all you need to do is scrub all of the apples to clean them and arrange them all nice for her. Then you pack the crates in her trunk.”
My hopes started to rise as I thought I’d have a free week to continue fishing and swimming and only work on Friday, but that was short-lived because Duke continued, “Until then, you’ll help me out in the field.”
