Page 2 of Apple of My Eye

Chapter Two

Nick

I shake my head at my computer screen in disbelief.

‘This can’t be happening,’ I mutter under my breath.

I’m not quiet enough, because Isaac perks up from his seat across from me. ‘What is it?’ he asks, making no effort to hide his excitement.

Isaac is one of my closest friends, and apart from Julian the only reason I’ve survived business school, but for as long as I’ve known him, he’s had an uncanny ability to be able to tell when I’m not getting my way. It makes him shamelessly gleeful.

‘You get your way a lot,’ he likes to point out, whenever I comment on this unbecoming trait of his.

I defend myself, explaining that I work for my ‘luck’, that I don’t accept no for an answer, that out of the three of us I try the hardest, but my rebuttals always go in one ear and out the other.

‘So, it’s only fair that I get to relish in the very few instances where you do not,’ he always says.

Today is no exception.

‘Did the capstones come in?’ Isaac asks, leaning forward excitedly, running a hand through his mop of curly black hair. ‘That’s it, isn’t it. You have to go to the farm!’ He bursts out laughing before I even have the chance to respond, reading my expression accurately as the confirmation it is.

‘Congratulations!’ the email reads. ‘Your application to the Parker Family Farm Capstone Project has been accepted.’

‘Julian!’ Isaac manages to call out in between wheezes of laughter. ‘Nick actually got it.’ He hits the table with his palm, sending shockwaves through our coffees.

Julian slides into his chair next to mine. ‘No way,’ he says in a low voice, his eyes meeting mine. ‘You’re not serious.’

I grimace.

‘Damn. I don’t know if I would have gone through with it.’

‘Yes, you would have,’ I argue. ‘You can’t wimp out on a fantasy football bet—that renders the whole thing pointless.

We never would have let you back in the game,’ I say, referencing our annual league.

It’s full of my closest friends in the city, six of us from Stanford’s MBA program, the other three are old friends of ours.

We’ve made a pact to get together every year to do the draft, an excuse for a boys’ weekend, a way to make sure we stay in touch.

The bets are taken very seriously. This year, my punishment for losing has to do with our MBA Graduate Capstone—a two-month program in our fall semester where we apply our business knowledge to real life.

Julian shrugs. ‘I don’t know .?.?. spending the capstone period on a farm instead of in an office with unlimited snacks and an in-house barista doesn’t sound worth it.’

‘You have to do it,’ Isaac jumps in, having none of Julian’s attitude. ‘Brett had to pretend to be a fitness influencer for six months last year. He didn’t wimp out. This is only like two months. And it’s not like you’re missing class time, all of us will be at our capstones anyway.’

‘I know,’ I say, trying to seem unruffled but fighting a rising feeling of frustration.

Now that August is right around the corner, two months feels like a long time.

I ignore the tightness in my chest, shifting my expression into one of feigned disinterest instead.

‘You guys will spend all fall wasting away inside while I’m hanging out with hot country girls eating farm-to-table food from an actual farm, not a new-age restaurant with dim lighting. ’

‘You say that like that’s not exactly what you’ll be doing come November,’ Julian says, raising his eyebrows. He may seem quiet or reserved at first, but his bullshit detector doesn’t miss.

Isaac doesn’t look as convinced. He scratches his chin. ‘Maybe you will have fun,’ he says thoughtfully.

For the first time since I got the email, I feel my spirits start to lift. Take that! I think. You thought you screwed me over when I lost that bet, but really you did me a favor.

But then Isaac bursts out laughing. ‘Just kidding, man. I’ll stick to my fine dining with women who don’t have dirt under their fingernails.’

‘Says the guy who hasn’t been on a date in weeks,’ Julian says under his breath.

I feel pinpricks of disappointment in my chest, the same way I did when Christian McCaffrey got injured in week one after I locked him in as my first-round draft pick, but despite the sensation, I can’t help but laugh, quipping back to Julian, ‘Remember when Isaac got rejected from that application-only dating app?’

Isaac glares at me.

Julian snorts. ‘Maybe you two should trade places. His game will go further without us to compete with.’

‘I’m getting more coffee,’ Isaac grumbles.

Julian raises his eyebrows, both of us dissolving into laughter.

Hours later and I’m forced to laugh about my situation again, this time with my mother, who is doubled over, clutching the kitchen counter so hard I can see the whites of her knuckles.

‘Mamma,’ I say sternly, ‘it is not that funny.’

‘You boys are so dumb,’ she says, shaking her head. She fills a pot with water and puts it on the stove. The sound of the gas igniting and the hiss of the flame underneath the pot are so familiar that I feel my shoulders relax.

‘Chop this,’ she says, handing me a yellow onion, ‘while you tell me about it.’

I stand behind the cutting board, dicing the onion while we talk.

She putters about behind me, getting out ingredients for spaghetti.

I’m more at home in her small kitchen than I am anywhere else.

There’s barely room for both of us to move around, but we’ve been cooking together for so long that we know how to stay out of each other’s way.

Although, it’s mainly me staying out of her way.

One thing about my mamma—she can cook on a budget and in a small space and it will always be delicious.

‘It starts next week,’ I tell her, ‘and lasts through September.’

‘Two months is a long time,’ she muses. ‘You live with a host family?’

I nod. The onions are diced. They hit the pan with a sizzle and the smell of olive oil wafts into the air.

I open a can of tomatoes, tear up some basil and butter some bread while I explain to my mother how the process works.

The host family applies, Stanford either accepts them into the program or rejects them.

The stipend is only granted to a small subset of applicants and the interview process can be grueling.

Whoever the Parkers are, they had to jump through a lot of hoops to get a student assigned to them—students are one of Stanford’s most valuable commodities, they don’t give them away easily.

Stanford sets me up with a place to stay and pays my way to get to my capstone. Some of the family business placements are international, and even though I was hoping that my application would get flat out rejected, I’m relieved that I was placed domestically, only a two-hour plane ride away.

‘And you’re sure this is what you should be doing?’ my mom asks, arching her eyebrows at me. She is always trying to make sure that I’m doing the absolute best that I can. She worked her whole life to give me the chance at success, and she will not let me squander it.

‘I’ll be just fine,’ I tell her. The sauce is ready by the time I’m finished explaining, and we sit down at the small kitchen table with heaping plates of spaghetti. ‘I already have my job lined up, remember?’

She smiles, muttering, ‘Nicky, Nicky,’ under her breath, the closest she gets to straight up saying she’s proud of me. ‘What about Anna?’ she asks.

I almost choke on my mouthful. ‘What about Anna?’ I reply once I’ve swallowed.

There it is again—arched eyebrows.

‘Nothing’s going on with Anna.’

‘She’s a cute girl. Successful too.’

‘You’ve met her once. And it wasn’t even on purpose.’

She sighs. ‘Nicky, I just don’t want you to focus so much on work you forget to focus on .?.?. you know .?.?. other things.’

‘I’m dating, Mamma. Not Anna, but I am dating,’ I lie.

Technically I did go on a date with Anna, but the connection we’d built in class didn’t exactly translate to a candlelit dinner.

I haven’t opened up Hinge in months. It’s depressing.

My last girlfriend, Mariah, was great. But she moved to New York when I started business school and it just didn’t work.

Not a lot of drama, no messy break-up, it was the wrong place and the wrong time.

Mamma hated that. She liked Mariah. ‘Such a nice girl. Ambitious too,’ she lamented when I told her we broke up, tsk-tsk-ing at me over lasagna.

She tsk-tsks at me again, but this time she seems satisfied, ready to believe that I am, in fact, dating, because she switches the topic to my aunt Martha, who’s coming over for dinner next week. It will be my last dinner before I head to Carnation, Washington.

Aunt Martha is my favorite aunt, a wise-ass and a know-it-all, but one with a heart of gold. She has a couple kids, and before I know it my mom is laying into Ronnie, my cousin, for getting fired from his job at a hardware store.

‘Can you believe it?’ she asks, exasperation exuding from her in waves. ‘The heartache he puts your poor aunt Martha through.’

‘I know, Mamma, but he’ll pull through,’ I tell her, not entirely convinced myself.

She grumbles, making the sign of the cross dramatically across her chest, her way of saying, Let go and let God .

I chuckle as I dry the last plate. My mom is nothing if not dramatic.

When I kiss her on the cheek and promise to be back next weekend at 7 p.m. for dinner, I feel a swell of affection for her in my chest. I can’t wait until I’m done with my MBA and making a real salary, wearing suits to work, really making her proud.

I will finally be able to take care of her.

Finally start to repay her for everything she’s done for me. Maybe I’ll even start dating again.

Anna is hovering near my desk when I arrive at class on Tuesday morning, her curtain of shiny black hair hanging in front of her face.

We’re both concentrating in marketing, we’re both graduating early (in January instead of May).

We have one class before we break for our capstone semester, our preparation and send-off class, one where our teacher will inevitably lecture us on how we are supposed to show up to our various projects, how we can make the university proud.

‘Julian told me you’re actually going to the farm ,’ she says, her voice dropping like she’s confiding in me that she heard I got Covid.

She leans towards me, her tiny diamond hoop earrings catching the light.

She smells like an expensive department store candle, sandalwood and vanilla.

I thought things would be awkward after our failed date, but Anna acted like nothing ever happened and we’ve remained friends.

‘Yep,’ I say. I slide into my seat. She stays put.

‘You guys do the dumbest things for fantasy football.’

‘Why does it matter? I have my job lined up after we graduate anyway.’

‘I guess—’ she shrugs her shoulders ‘—you could be actually learning something on the capstone though, building connections.’

I try not to grimace. As much as I want to be successful, I hate networking. I’m good with people, but as soon as I feel like I need something from them, the whole interaction feels off-putting. It’s one of the many things that make me feel like I’m not exactly cut out for a future in business.

‘I’ll leave the networking to you, Anna,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll have more than enough for the both of us,’ I say, referring to the project she’s taking with a huge social media company, where networking connections abound.

She shrugs. ‘I’ll at least be able to leverage the plan we made in this class.’ She makes her way to her seat just as our professor walks in the room.

‘Shit,’ I swear under my breath. The plan we made in this class . As in, the plan I was supposed to have made so I can submit it to my professor to sign off on before I head to Carnation. The plan I now have three days to do.

Comprehensive Marketing Plan for Failing Farm , I scribble across the top of my page.

Here goes nothing.