Offices and Orchards (A New Adult Sweet Romance)

Chapter 11

They sat in silence as Harvey sped down the highway. If September days were a competition between summer and autumn, summer was still winning. It was hot and sunny outside and Autumn had to admit that they were in a beautiful part of the world.
"So, seriously, where are we going?"
"It's about a half hour's drive out of town,"
""That doesn't really answer my question,"
"You'll see, not far to go now, I gave you a big hint earlier,"
"Apples?"
"Mmhmm.
Autumn put the window down and let her hand fly in the wind, feeling the air travel along it as Harvey drove them somewhere secret. Something to do with apples. She stole a glance at Harvey, who noticed and immediately smiled back at her. Autumn's cheeks turned pink and she whipped her eyes to the road ahead of them. She didn't want him to think she liked him, but he just looked so handsome driving the car. "Sorry, should I do up the window?"
"No, of course not. I love that you just did that." The pink on her face turned to fuschia.
Eventually Harvey turned off of the highway onto a small road surrounded by a mix of farmland and small woods. The road had started off paved, but Harvey slowed down when it turned to gravel. He slowed even more as they reached a T-junction and he took a right turn.
"McIntosh Road?" Autumn asked.
"We have orchards up here. You know I've said that I was busy in the summer," he gestured towards an orchard that had come into view as they rounded the top of the small hill, "any time I had that was not spent on work, I was up here, trying to resurrect a section of the orchard that has been long forgotten." They drove past rows of trees.
"You did all that?"
"Kind of," he continued, "the trees were already all there, so the work has mainly involved clearing the over-grown ground cover, and lots of honeysuckle. I cut out lots of dead wood that had accumulated too. And pruned back some of the maples and ashes. Look over there," he pointed, "those are actually pear trees. We didn't even know we had them! They were overgrown until recently, so now they have to concentrate their resources on getting sunlight, so we won't get much fruit this year, but hopefully next year will be better. There are a few fruits at the tops of the trees though if you can see them?"
Not only was Autumn enjoying her time with Harvey, but she realised that he was showing her into his life outside of work. And not only that but it was a huge important part of his life, Something he clearly loved. She had never heard him speak about something like this before.
"Look over this side, these two apple trees are mystery varieties! I suspect that they were planted and are not wild, but we can't tell yet," Harvey was so excited to be showing her all of this, he could not stop himself babbling. At least she seems to be listening. But be careful anyway dude. "See? They both have hollow trunks and I propped one up with a tire for support, the trunk was so old and fragile. I haven't had time to do disease or pest control, but some of the apples that have grown, and they seem good. It'll take a few more seasons until these trees will be fruitful." Slow down buddy. You're rambling again.. "Fruitful! Good one," she giggled at his pun.
"Unintended!"
Harvey parked the car and handed her a sweater from the back seat. "It gets a bit colder up here than in town, especially if there's wind." She pulled it over her shoulders: it smelt like lemony-fresh laundry detergent.
"Come try one!" He grabbed an apple from a nearby tree, pulled a knife from his pocket, and cut it open to check it was ok to eat. He then took a bite and chucked Autumn the other half. "I'm hoping to get some cider and preserves out of these guys eventually. So what do you think?"
"A bit sour," Autumn's face scrunched up.
"No, I mean the orchard."
"I have to admit McIntosh, it's pretty stunning." She too was pretty stunned by all that was going on with him, let alone the undeniable beauty of the place.
"Let's take a look around. There's a lot to see. And we'll do some picking too, to bring some apples back to town?" He was speaking quickly
"I'd love to!" She said, making eye contact with him.
Had he planned this? He couldn't have: they had only bumped into each other this morning. And that had been a coincidence. Happenstance. But something must have changed for him to invite her here: she had a feeling he did not bring too many people here. Just like something had changed for her too.
They hopped back into the car and Harvey did a U-turn, returning to the T-junction. "These orchards have been in my family for awhile. There's a farmhouse on the property and that's where my aunt, uncle, cousins sometimes stay, especially during harvest, but we all go there for holidays too. We have a man called Wayne who runs the property when no one is around, but many of the family members come into town to help with harvesting." Ok that's enough Harvey, you're going to scare her off! He shot another glance her way. She seemed to be a different person than to the one he knew from work. She had her hand out the window still, one leg was tucked up onto the seat, and she was leaning back into her chair with a little smile on her face. Her hair blew around her heart-shaped face in the wind. It was a stark contrast from the ruler straight posture and crinkled in concentration or frowning expression he was used to seeing. Who knew that stuck-up and uptight Autumn Barnett could be so relaxed and easy-going.
"When's harvest?"
"In a few weeks actually." He clamped his mouth shut before the words you should come popped out. Instead, he opted for more rambling.
"On the commercial property, there are some other houses and more permanent staff, some of whom work all year round. The family has a factory there, selling wholesale. Even Truffles uses our apples for their apple pies!"
"They do? Why didn't you order one for us this morning?"
"Well I don't usually tell anyone this stuff," he trailed off, "but I guess I'm just so happy to be done with orientation and up here that all my secrets are spilling out," he knew that wasn't it. He knew why. He liked this girl. More than he thought he would.
"Don't worry, your secrets are safe with me, McIntosh." She mimed zipping up her mouth and winked at him. What was this? This was flirting! You're flirting with him, Autumn! You're not that good at it, but you're still doing it.
"See up there? Those are our personal orchards, which is just a small section that we use ourselves, the one Wayne takes care of for us,"
They pulled up to an old, red barn and went inside. "So you're ok to do some picking?" His voice cracked a little, wavering under his nerves in asking the question, fearful she would've asked to be taken home at any second.
"If you'll show me how," a mental picture of Harvey standing behind her with his arms around her, showing which apples to choose popped into her head, making her heart quicken a little. No! She forced it away.
"Choosing the right picking bag can make a big difference. You want to make sure the shoulder straps are comfortable. There are a few ways to latch the bottom of the bucket to the bucket itself so that all the apples don't tumble out," he expertly worked the mechanism to secure the bottom using two side ropes with knots that fit into a small hook-type thing on the side of the bucket.
"The reason for this is that the depth of the bucket is adjustable: when you put your apples in, you need them to hit the sides and each other as little as possible to prevent bruising,"
"Nothing worse than a bruised apple," Autumn offered.
"Amen! Now, would you like your own picking bucket today or should we share one?"
"You decide, I have no idea,"
"Ok then, let's start by sharing," he smiled. Autumn could tell that this was not a flirtatious comment, he was just so excited to be doing this, and genuinely wanted her to learn.
"We are going to do some color picking today, on the Galas. The thinning wasn't that successful, so you'll see there are lots of clumps,"
"In english please,"
"Come on, easier for me to just show you," he was running around like a little boy, with a big grin on his face. He was clearly in his element here.
They exited the red barn into the rows of trees. The Gala apples were beautifully plump, with a faint pale blush. "There's still a week or so before they're fully ripe and ready to pick. They'll be nearly neon by then since the blush brightens quite a lot in the last few days. As I said, the thinning didn't work out too well, so you can see clumps and like kind of columns of fruit jutting out from the tops of some of the trees. During thinning, basically you take some apples off to make sure the remaining ones all reach a substantial size. If there are too many apples on the tree, it spreads its resources around to all the fruit, so you can end up with a tree of golf ball-sized apples: not good if you are trying to sell it. Normally thinning is done earlier on the in the season, but we didn't get round to it this year. Here though, it doesn't matter so much. So what we are going to do now is a finesse type of picking, you just grab the ones kind of at the tops of the clumps or the columns and skim over the outer layer of apples all over the tree, to leave some room for the others to grow. Come on! Let's fill a bucket!"
Autumn and Harvey moved from tree to tree, doing some color picking. Autumn told him which apple she thought she should pick and he responded to let her know if she was right or not. Then he'd quickly finish the color picking on the tree. They picked a bucket's worth. When they had finished, Harvey beckoned to Autumn: "Come on, follow me, I wanna show you something." He gestured towards the end of the row and they made their way, right to the edge of the orchard. As they stepped away from the last tree of the row, Autumn saw what Harvey wanted to show her: the view. She could see for miles down into a rivervalley, mountains in the distance covered in a rainbow of trees, in other words: the first glimpse of Fall.
"It's colder up here than in town. the trees have already all turned,"
"It's beautiful," she said, taking it in. then giving Harvey a mischievous look, Autumn started running down the hill. "Follow me!" she shouted, dropping to the ground to roll down the grassy hill in the fallen leaves. "Come on," she called back to him, laughing like a child.
"Woohoo!" Harvey ran to catch up to her, dropping into a roll just behind her. Just as Autumn stopped rolling, just before a tree trunk, Harvey came hurtling after her, stopping himself by landing right on top of her. She looked up at him, finding that their smiling faces were just inches apart. They stayed there longer than what felt normal and Autumn shifted, looked away, breaking the silent moment between them.
"I haven't done that since I was a kid." Harvey said breathlessly, moving off of her. Autumn sat up and brushed herself off. "Me neither." She pulled out a few dried leaves from her hair. She was not sure what had come over her- something about the sun and fresh outdoor air.
"Wait," He reached behind her ear to pull out a leaf from her hair. "There," he licked eyes and smiled at her, making them share another intimate moment.
"Thanks," Autumn said, standing up, feeling a little shy about their closeness. "Shall we head back up?"
They climbed the hill and walked back to their bucket, sitting in the shade with their backs against one of the apple tree trunks. "This is only the second time I've been up here this season. It's just been so busy with orientation. I've really missed it."
"I get that,"
"Next week will probably be the last chance to pick the galas, then you do what's called stripping, which means you pull the smaller green marble sized apples off of the trees, did you see some while you were picking?" he did not even wait for her to reply, "there is no finesse involved in that kind of picking, and you have to just rip them off. The tree seems to want to hang on to them. Ideally, they land in your bucket, but it's not easy and people get angry quickly while stripping-" he looked over at her, "I am going on a bit about all this, aren't I?"
"It's nice. You seem different up here."
"Yeah, I feel different too. Always have,"
They sat in silence for a bit, Harvey thinking about how much he preferred being outdoors in the fresh, clean air of the orchard. Harvest Hills was nice and still small, but it was urban, and growing, filled with cars and cement everywhere. Autumn thought about why he had brought her here, but feeling surprisingly comfortable with him. Normally when she was with guys she liked, she was a bundle of nerves, not knowing what to say at all. It felt good to know that she was maybe starting to grow out of that. Harvey produced a water bottle from somewhere and they both took swigs on it.
"Thanks for bringing me here with you, I didn't expect this."
"You know what? Neither did I," They both felt the undertones of that statement- he was not just referring to the impromptu apple picking, but rather to the relationship building between them.
"Being up here, I can see why you love Fall so much," she said.
"Why don't you?"
"It's just that I love summer, and fall means the end to summer." Autumn wasn't ready to tell him the whole story, she didn't tell anyone that, it was too painful.
"That's pretty ironic, given your name."
"Tell me about it."
A moment later, he reached over and touched Autumn's fingers with his. Autumn was worried her hand might feel sweaty to him, so she turned it over, his fingers intertwining above hers on the back of her hand. But then the pair just sat together in silence, in the shade of an apple tree on a hot day, listening to the air rustle the leaves.