Page 30 of Cozy Girl Fall
The weekend after the fateful dinner party was full of Halloween Orchard Fest prep.
Penny sat at the kitchen table with her dad, her legs up and crossed in the chair and her sweatshirt’s hood up over her head to shield her eyes from the sunlight spilling into the room.
It was possible she’d overindulged on wine on Friday after everyone had left and it was just her and Ethan.
Thankfully, the ache in her eyes seemed to be the worst of the side effects and she worked slowly and methodically, looping colorful paper strips together to make the garlands they would be hanging in the trees for the festival.
Her dad was moving a little quicker but had the added task of making patterns on the paper with felt-tip pens and glitter.
She didn’t envy him. The glitter got everywhere .
Her stomach grumbled and she sighed, looking up hopefully to where her mom was puttering about in the kitchen.
Three pies sat on the cooling racks, the fragrant steam filling the room with the scent of apples, cinnamon, and honey.
There had been one year that her mom hadn’t won the apple pie competition they hosted during Orchard Fest, but she’d never let it go.
Each year, she recreated her signature winning pie, and experimented with at least two other flavors.
The upside? There would be a constant supply of pies in the house in the run up to the festival as her mom tried to perfect her recipes.
The downside? There was no choice whether or not to partake in pie-tasting, though generally Penny didn’t mind too much. Because, pie .
“Is it cool yet?” she whined and Angie chuckled.
“Fine, fine. Heathen.” She cut a slice of each pie and placed them on one plate each before setting them down between Penny and her dad. “Wait! You need a fork, and I need to add the cinnamon sugar sprinkle on top.”
Penny restrained herself just barely, eyes fixed on the golden deliciousness in front of her. “Love you,” she muttered and Angie snorted.
“I don’t know if you’re talking to me or the pie.”
“Hm?” Penny pulled her gaze away and licked her lips. “Oh. Um, both.”
Philip chuckled but pushed his paper chains to one side in favor of focusing on the pies.
“OK.” Angie clapped her hands together. “This one first.” She pushed one plate forward ahead of the rest and pulled out her own fork.
Philip went first, spearing the tip of the slice, Penny went next, choosing a piece with optimal crust to filling ratio, and Angie popped her forkful into her mouth without too much preamble.
It felt nice, a little nostalgic, to be doing this with her parents.
She’d taste-tested recipes before with her colleagues at the restaurant in the city, helping them with notes of flavor and texture.
At least, she had done in the early days.
In the past year or so, there hadn’t been much time at all for experimenting with flavors and improving their craft.
Penny’s mouth filled with saliva. The pie was still warm, the apple was tart but pleasantly off-set by the cinnamon sugar crust. “So good,” she mumbled and Angie glared.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Penny.”
She stuck her tongue out to show she’d swallowed before repeating her analysis. “So good, Mom. Do we have any ice cream?” She loved the combination of hot and cold and how the ice cream would melt into the pie’s filling.
“Yes, I think so. Try the other two first and then we can talk about ice cream.”
Dutifully, they moved to the second plate and Penny nodded as the flavors hit her tongue. This pie was much more nutty, the filling more smooth and solid compared to the apple chunks of the first pie. “What is that, apple and pecan?”
Angie smiled, pleased. “Right in one. What do you think?”
“That’s my favorite so far,” Philip mumbled, sneaking a second forkful under Angie’s disapproving eye. “What? It’s tasty.”
“Third pie,” Angie demanded and handed them each a glass of water to cleanse their palates first. “What do you think?”
Penny chewed consideringly. The texture was really good, less solid than the pecan and more sticky, the cinnamon sugar crust carried through reminding Penny of a pumpkin spice latte. She frowned. What was in this pie? She couldn’t pin it down. “It’s really good, what is it?”
“Guess,” Mom said with a smirk.
Penny hummed. “Well, I can definitely taste the apple and cinnamon, and I want to say pumpkin?” Angie nodded in confirmation and Penny took another, smaller taste of the pie. “There’s something else in there but I can’t pin it down.”
Philip swallowed and raised his hand like they were in class and Angie looked amused as she nodded at him. “Honey.”
Penny groaned. Honey, of course. “Clever.” She glanced at her dad and found a smug look on his face. “How did you know?”
“I saw her put it in the mix.”
She snickered. “I think that’s cheating.”
Philip shook his head. “No, no. I’m just using all my resources.”
Angie giggled. “I’ll allow it. So, which is your favorite?”
“The first one,” they answered in unison and Angie frowned, because that was her original signature recipe.
“Pie three is a close second for me though,” Penny tried, and her mom sighed.
“I need new taste testers,” Angie muttered. “Get Ethan and Tasha to stop in this week for pie, OK? I need impartial judges.”
“OK,” she agreed. “But I’ll warn you that Ethan might not be unbiased. He wants you to like him, so he’s likely to kiss your ass.”
Philip guffawed, his heavy breath blowing glitter everywhere and earning him a glare from his wife. “He knows we love him.”
“Unless he hates my pie,” Angie said, winking as she pushed away from the table to grab a brush for the glitter. “Then I’m afraid he’ll be banned from the house.”
“Understandable,” Penny said and smiled, reaching over to take one of their hands into hers and squeezing gently. “Thank you for yesterday. Having you there with me helped.”
“Of course, pumpkin,” her dad said gently as her mom pressed a kiss to the top of Penny’s head. “Keith was being an ass.”
“Philip,” Angie said, swatting at his arm before she sighed. “But your father is right. I’m not sure what got into Keith. He’s normally not so …”
“Dickish?” Penny supplied and her mom frowned but nodded. “I can’t blame him for being hesitant after the way I left things before.”
“Well, you just let us know if he gives you any more trouble,” Philip said, the stern look on his face melting away as he peered behind Angie to try to glimpse the rest of the pies. “Now, what does a fellow have to do to get some more pie around here?”
One thing Penny hadn’t missed about being in a new relationship was the early-days anxiety.
She’d seen Ethan sparingly over the past week, what with him being busy working for a client and Penny in the throes of setting up the Halloween Orchard Fest. If you’d told her a few weeks ago that she’d miss seeing Ethan around the orchard, she would have laughed and resumed climbing the closest tree to hide.
But now he wasn’t there and the harvest was largely complete, she missed seeing him between the rows of trees.
But it had been almost two weeks since the night of the bonfire.
Two weeks since she’d done anything more than kiss Ethan in the stolen moments they’d found after work or as they crossed paths around the orchard.
And while she knew that sex wasn’t everything, it bothered her regardless.
It made her wonder whether their second first-time hadn’t lived up to what Ethan had imagined, or if it had been much better for her than him.
It was a good thing she hadn’t harbored any hopes of ‘getting it out of their system’ by sleeping together.
Now that she’d tasted Ethan again, she wanted more.
Shelby was kind of a dick, but Penny had to admit that she understood why Shelby couldn’t just let Ethan go, even if it was annoying as all hell.
But at least their temporary separation would be over in a matter of moments. Ethan’s client work had finished yesterday and the Halloween Orchard Fest was ready and waiting for the town to enjoy that day. Ethan had agreed to meet her there and Tasha was coming too.
Angie was buzzing around with directions and finishing touches for the decorations that had been set out.
Fairy lights and paper chains had been strung in the trees, illuminating the way through the orchard to the different stations like a maze, and several tables had been set up running along the side of the shop for the apple pie competitors to leave their pastries.
The scene was everything she remembered it being and more.
She shivered lightly under her sweater and decided a warm drink was needed.
She hadn’t wanted to ruin her outfit with a bulky coat; she’d opted for a short black skirt and thick black tights with hearts on them in pink print and a matching deep-pink oversized sweater.
Her only concessions to the cold were her purple fluffy scarf, matching gloves and temporary heating pads in her boots.
She headed along the tree-path to the east until she found the table with warm apple wine and took a tentative sip, surprised to find it was actually good.
The sign declared that the drinks had been made with apples from this very orchard, likely part of last year’s harvest so that the wine had time to mature.
It was still early, with mostly just parents and their young kids visiting the orchard for the time being, but more people would be arriving soon.
The later it got the more magical the fairy lights looked in the trees and the deeper the glow of the pumpkins set along the main path through the orchard, until the ground looked golden.