Page 16 of Apple of My Eye

‘Well, you could just explain to me how to help you. And then the little productivity you lose by talking to me won’t matter.’

Eloise surveys her surroundings. She’s standing in the middle of a row of trees holding what looks to be a giant pair of scissors.

She sighs, her shoulders loosening down her back.

She’s strong, but sexy, her collarbones protruding ever so slightly from the collar of her shirt.

She wipes the sweat off of her brow with the back of her hand.

‘I guess it doesn’t seem like you’re going anywhere so I might as well put you to work.’ She hands me the giant scissors. ‘I also wouldn’t hate the company.’ Her lips quirk up into a half-smile.

I grab them. ‘Oof,’ I say, the weight pulling down on my forearm unexpectedly. ‘These are heavy.’

She raises her eyebrows at me in a challenge. ‘And?’

Grinning, I just follow her as she walks down the rut in between neatly ordered trees.

She comes to a stop in front of a small one, barely any small apples on the branches.

If I squint through the sparse smattering of leaves, I can barely see the Parkers’ house.

Cal is off somewhere nearby doing the same thing Eloise is doing.

Hacking trees with giant scissors, if appearances are any indication.

Eagerly, I follow her lead and start plucking tiny apples from the tree. She explains hand-thinning to me methodically.

‘First, you pluck off any clearly damaged or misshapen fruits,’ she instructs. ‘Next, we give each remaining apple room to grow.’ She steps back from the tree, surveying it. ‘You need to leave about four to five inches between each apple, and you only want one apple on each spur.’

‘Spur?’

‘This little woody guy.’ She grabs at a branch and shows me a thick stem. ‘They can only support one apple each.’

I stare at the tree with her. ‘Is this like some sort of messed-up Sudoku puzzle? How do you manage to make sure every apple has enough space while taking away the bad ones while making sure it’s only one apple to one stem.’

Eloise chuckles and the thought that I’ve just said something to make her laugh fills me with excited energy. She’s like a breath of fresh air. ‘It’ll get easier.’ She shrugs. ‘But yeah, hand-thinning sucks.’

As we work, my finishing one tree in the time it takes Eloise to do three, she tells me that hand-thinning happens around the second week of August every year. It’s her least favorite part of the harvest cycle because it is tedious and exhausting.

I completely understand why hand-thinning is exhausting.

In fact, I can’t imagine anything more exhausting.

I can’t take it anymore. I finally put down the scissors I’ve been holding.

My forearms are screaming at me. ‘What are these for?’ I ask, confused as to why we haven’t used them since I got here and yet it seems to be important to lug them around.

‘Pruning emergencies.’ Eloise shrugs.

‘So, no one has to be carrying them around?’ I watch Eloise’s face as she fights back a smile.

‘No one has to carry them around,’ she admits, ‘we usually leave them at the end of the row.’

I rub my shoulders. ‘Damnit, Eloise,’ I mutter. ‘And to think I was starting to like you!’

She laughs, bright and clear. ‘I’m sorry! It wasn’t very nice of me.’ A shadow of contrition passes over her face. ‘Consider it farm hazing. And you passed.’

‘I’m not believing anything you say anymore.’ I shake my head at her.

‘Fine by me,’ she says, ‘but things were just about to get interesting.’

I roll my eyes. When I look back at her, she’s spinning a small golden apple gently in her hands.

‘Even though sometimes I hate the work, I love the way the orchard looks when the first apples have just begun to appear. When I was little, I thought it was magic. Their colors are so mellow early in the season that I used to think they were tiny little orbs guiding fairies home.’

I pull out my notebook and frantically try to capture what she just said.

‘ That’s what you write down? That is the least useful thing I’ve said so far.’ She shakes her head. ‘Business people are so confusing.’

But despite the gentle teasing, Eloise is more helpful in two hours than Mr. Parker has been since I arrived.

She’s patient and clear when she explains things to me, like the never-ending cycle of weeding, mulching, pruning, and watering.

She walks me through the science of dirt, how regenerative agriculture can help build back up farms that have depleted the natural biodiversity of their soils.

She’s so excited to tell me about cover crops and contour farming that I can’t get a word in edgewise.

‘RA—’ she stops short ‘—regenerative agriculture,’ she corrects herself, ‘is what I want to start doing.’ She sighs, planting her hands on her hips and gazing out at the fields. I think I see a wrinkle of worry appear between her eyes, but she gets right back to work after a deep breath.

It’s not just her words that don’t stop, she also never stops for a break. I’ve sweat right through my shirt, my shoulders are aching from reaching for apples, my lower back is groaning at me for bending down so much, and my skin feels sticky from fruit.

‘LUNCH!’ Cal calls for Eloise loudly, his voice ringing out over the trees.

‘Thank God. I’m starving.’ She stands up, wiping her hands on the front of her jeans. She wipes her forehead with the bottom of her shirt and I catch a glimpse of the smooth skin of her belly. I can see her abs. Damn.

‘What?’ she asks, self-consciously pulling her shirt back down across her stomach. But her gaze lingers on my face for a second longer than it has to, and I swear she can feel it too, the magnetic energy pulling us closer to each other.

‘Nothing.’

She gives me a suspicious look. ‘I still don’t understand why you need all this information. Not to mention, you’re kind of helping out the wrong farm.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Look, I am not obligated to give the Parkers anything but the plan, which you already know. You think that what is going to save the Parkers is an extra farmhand? What’s going to really help them is marketing. Plus, Mr. P. wasn’t exactly loving my questions.’

‘So what is this grand marketing plan of yours? We could certainly use an improvement on that front.’

‘TikTok.’

She bursts out laughing, startling a nearby swallow from a tree, before she claps her hand over her mouth. ‘You’re serious?’

I nod, meeting her gaze. People underestimate social media all the time. ‘Yep. All I need to do is capitalize on the buying local trends and capture momentum.’

‘Mhmm,’ Eloise says, but there’s a glint in her eye. I can’t tell whether she’s happy or upset. I felt like that a lot with her today, like I really want to know what she’s thinking, but I have absolutely no idea.

‘It’ll work,’ I say with as much confidence as I can muster. ‘I just need some content to start posting. You’ll see.’

‘You know nature isn’t like social media. You can’t hack the algorithm here.’ She spreads one arm out in a wide, sweeping gesture. ‘It’s wild.’

‘You can manifest good outcomes with optimism,’ I counter.

Her lips press together in a tight line. ‘I think the struggling farmers out here would beg to differ.’ She pauses, gesturing towards her house. ‘I should probably go grab lunch, do you—?’

‘I’ll eat at the Parkers’,’ I cut in, not wanting to overstep.

‘Thanks for letting me tag along this morning.’ I step back to let her pass and as I do I step on a line of sprinklers, tripping over it and dislodging it in the process.

Water erupts from the broken sprinkler line, spraying everywhere.

Eloise shrieks and I scream too, both of us lunging for, and missing, the sprinkler head.

The pressure of the water casts the hose around chaotically, soaking Eloise and I every couple of seconds as it thrashes around.

By the time she’s able to grab it, we’re both dripping wet, dust streaking in rivulets down our faces.

I glance up at Eloise, panting, worried she’ll be angry.

She seems to care so much about keeping things at the farm in line.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I pant out. When she looks up and sees my wide-eyed gaze, she frowns.

Then, before I can even clock it, she’s whipped out the hose and is pointing it at me, completely soaking me head to toe, and cackling manically as she does it.

I shriek like a little kid as the water blasts through my hair and I lunge at her, our arms entangling as we each try to gain control of the hose.

Suddenly our faces are so close I can see droplets clinging to her eyelashes.

I wipe a drop of water off her cheek, my thumb stroking her constellation of freckles.

We both still. Her face is upturned towards me, and I feel her hips give into mine.

I tilt my face towards her, my gaze lingering on her Cupid’s bow, her perfect, upturned lips.

‘LOU!’ I hear Cal’s yell cut across the fields. ‘Your mom’s making fried green tomatoes! You better hurry or I’ll eat them all!’

We break apart, breathing heavy, and Eloise lets the hose drop to her side, not meeting my gaze. ‘I guess I better get this reattached,’ she says, bending down and reconnecting the hose.

I feel like I’ve lost her, without her looking at me it’s like the sun’s been hidden behind clouds. ‘Hey, how do you feel about me coming by tomorrow? I promise I won’t mess up the sprinklers system again.’

Eloise looks up at me with a glint in her eye. She smiles softly. ‘I guess that’d be OK,’ she says. ‘Our water fight was hands down the best part of my morning .?.?.’ She pauses. ‘But before you go thinking you got a gold star, remember it was either our water fight or hand-thinning.’

And with that, she heads towards her house, leaving me staring at her retreating figure.

Even with the sun beating down on her shoulders, she carries herself with her head held high, shoulders square.

She fits in perfectly with her surroundings, the heat of the bright blue sky contrasting with her black shirt.

Her blonde hair gleaming in the sun. I like late summer here, the way the lush green seems to dry out just a bit, everything parched in the sun, suspended in a state of waiting for fall to really kick in, for the promise of cooler weather and longer nights.

The Parkers keep saying fall is just around the corner, but it’s so hot today I can’t see how they’ll be right.

Like magic, I’ve forgotten all about my back pain and my sore shoulders. I’m filled with so much energy it’s like I haven’t worked at all. Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.