Brooks
By the time Thursday arrives, Orchard Falls is in full swing getting ready for the start of the festival. It stops pretending to be a town and fully commits to becoming a postcard with traffic problems.
There are pumpkins stacked outside every storefront.
Cornstalks tied to lampposts. Banners strung over Main Street that snap in the cold wind with all the subtlety of a marching band.
Tourists pour in wearing brand-new boots that haven’t earned a single scuff, scarves so large they could double as emergency blankets, and expressions of reverent wonder at things the rest of us have been tripping over for weeks.
Hay bales, pumpkin spice lattes, cider donuts, and changing leaves.
Apparently, fall becomes more magical when you can purchase it in a gift shop. And Calder Cider is packed from the minute we open.
Jace is in the tasting room charming a group of retirees from Connecticut by claiming Scrumpy is our “head of quality control.” Evan is outside arguing with a vendor about our booth placement for the festival and fire codes.
I’m in the pressing room with my sleeves rolled up, checking the last batch of cider for our competition entry and trying not to think about Willa Hartley.
Which is impossible. I gave her the afternoon off since the festival begins tomorrow.
But she’s still everywhere. She's in the way I straighten a crooked label because I know she’d notice.
She’s in the way I taste the spiced reserve and wonder what she’d say about the clove being too assertive.
She’s in the way I’ve started catching myself describing cider as “a mood” less to customers and more to an imaginary Willa in my head, just to hear her call me pretentious.
She’s in the damn air. Yep, apples, cinnamon, cold wind… and Willa.
I’m fucked.
“Brooks,” Evan says from the doorway.
I glance up. “What?”
He’s holding his iPad, which means whatever he’s about to say will be organized and unpleasant. “We need two more cases of Hearthline moved to Main Street for the festival preview tonight.”
“I’ll take them.”
“You already said that about the dry reserve.”
“I’ll take both.”
His eyes narrow. “You’re volunteering to do in-town deliveries two days in a row?”
“I’m capable of carrying boxes.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
From behind him, Jace appears with a tray of empty tasting glasses and an expression that says he’s been waiting all morning to be annoying. “He’s going because Hartley’s booth is across from ours.”
I keep my face neutral. Mostly.
Evan looks at me.
I reach for another crate. “That placement was Marcy’s doing.”
“Sure,” Jace says. “And the raccoons aren’t unionizing.”
“They’re not,” I snap.
“Not yet.”
I load the crates before either of them can keep going, because movement is safer than standing still under the weight of my brothers’ knowing stares.
Main Street is worse than the tasting room.
The whole town is buzzing, every shop and sidewalk spilling over with color and noise.
The bakery has a line out the door. The bookstore window is filled with little paper leaves taped around stacks of autumn romances.
Kids chase each other between painted pumpkin displays while parents pretend not to be exhausted.
Somewhere near the gazebo, someone is testing a microphone that keeps squealing with feedback.
And there, across from the Calder booth, is Hartley & Sons. Their display looks like something out of a memory. Wooden crates overflowing with apples. Plaid blankets. Hand-lettered signs. Jars of caramel sauce catching the light. A tower of cider donuts dusted in cinnamon sugar.
And Willa, standing in the middle of it.
She has flour on one sleeve, a pencil tucked behind her ear, and a clipboard balanced against her hip like a weapon. She’s directing two teenage employees, answering a tourist’s question, and somehow adjusting a crooked pumpkin with her boot all at the same time.
Beautiful is too small a word for her like this.
Beautiful is something you notice.
Willa like this is something that happens to you.
She’s all motion and focus, soft hair slipping loose around her face, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes sharp as she scans the booth.
She belongs here so completely it makes my chest ache.
Not in a pretty way. In a bruised way. Like I’m looking at the center of someone else’s world and realizing I would do just about anything to be anywhere near it.
When she finally glances up, our eyes meet across the bustle of Main Street and everything else blurs around the edges.
Then she lifts one brow, looks pointedly at the crates in my arms, and mouths, Need help?
I should say no. But I find myself nodding as I mouth back: Obviously.
Her smile breaks and it doesn’t even seem like she attempts to stop herself.
Ten minutes later, she’s helping me stack bottles at the Calder booth like this is normal. Like Hartley & Sons isn’t twenty feet away. Like half the town isn’t pretending not to watch us.
“You’re putting the Hearthline too high,” she says.
I take a step back and glance at the display, considering her words before answering. “It’s eye level.”
“For giants, maybe.”
“What are you talking about? I’m average height.”
“For a redwood.” She sends me a smirk. “Women make up roughly 49-55% of cider drinkers,” she adds. “And most women I know aren’t over six feet tall.”
I move the bottles down one shelf and lift a brow in her direction. She nods. “Better.”
“I live to serve.”
“No, you live to pretend you don’t need advice while taking it.”
I glance at her. “Are you always this bossy?”
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to. Besides, are you always this receptive?”
“Only when the advice is good.”
Her eyes flick to mine, warm with triumph. “So you admit it was good.”
I lean closer under the pretense of arranging the bottles between us. “I admit nothing.”
But when my shoulder brushes hers, neither of us moves.
That’s how the whole week has gone… not one giant moment. A hundred small ones.
Willa pulls some extra twine from a bag strapped to her waist. “Your signage looks like it was secured by a man who doesn’t believe in wind,” she says and doesn’t wait for me to agree before she’s securing the sign.
An hour later, I’m back at her booth under the pretense of returning a borrowed knife she never actually lent me. She thanks me without looking up, hands moving fast as she bags apples, and I linger just long enough to be in the way before retreating.
By midafternoon, she’s across the street again, fixing another one of our crooked signs with a muttered critique about “men and symmetry,” then disappearing before I can say anything worth keeping her for.
I find excuses to walk past Hartley’s.
She finds excuses to criticize Calder’s booth.
We orbit each other in passing moments—half conversations, unfinished glances, hands brushing and then gone again—like the day keeps interrupting something neither of us has figured out how to hold onto.
And still, just as I cross back to Hartley’s side, a woman with a camera slung around her neck pops up in front of us like she’s been waiting all day for this exact moment.
“Hold on—don’t move,” she says, already lifting the camera.
“You two look perfect together. Festival feature.” Willa and I both freeze, then glance at each other, equally caught off guard.
“We’re not—” she starts, at the same time I say, “We’re just—” We stop, awkward and half-laughing, neither of us finishing the sentence.
The photographer grins like she’s just proven a point. “Exactly. Stay like that.”
Willa shifts closer without quite meaning to, her shoulder brushing mine again, and I feel her hesitate before letting it stay.
I don’t move away. The camera clicks. For a second, we’re both smiling—real, unguarded, a little breathless—and then it’s over, and we step apart like we’ve just remembered we’re supposed to.
That photo seems to have sobered both of us. We each stay at our respective booths for the remaining time until the sun starts to dip below the horizon, painting the park in an ombre of orange and yellow and red.
The festival preview has Main Street packed shoulder to shoulder, music drifting from the gazebo, fairy lights glowing in shop windows, the air thick with woodsmoke and fried dough and cider. Calder’s booth is doing well. Hartley’s is doing better. I should care more about that.
Instead, I’m watching Willa battle a string of lights tangled around her arm.
She’s standing behind the Hartley booth, half-hidden by apple crates, muttering to herself in a way that should not be as charming as it is. A lock of hair falls into her face. She blows it away. It falls back. She glares at it like it has betrayed her personally.
I cross the street before I’ve made the decision to move.
“Need help?”
She looks up. “No.”
She tugs at the lights again and they tighten around her wrist. I wait until she finally exhales. “Maybe.”
I step behind the booth, close enough to take the tangled strand from her hands. Our fingers brush, and the noise of the festival seems to soften around us.
“You know,” I say, working the knot loose, “for someone so competent, you end up trapped in a lot of things.”
“Trapped in a lot of things?” she repeats, seemingly offended. If she had a free hand, I bet it would be clasped to her hip, toe tapping at the fallen leaves beneath her feet.
“Yep. Ladders. Rainstorms. My sweatshirt. Now Christmas lights.”
“Autumn lights,” she corrects.
“Of course.”
“We are seasonally accurate here in Orchard Falls.”
“My mistake.”
She’s quiet for a second while I unwind the cord from her sleeve. The lights blink against her sweater, tiny gold reflections catching in her green eyes.
“You’re doing well,” she says. “At your booth.”
“Yeah. Yours is doing better.”
She shrugs. “It was dumb of Marcy to put us right across from each other.”
“Oh, I don’t know. When your line gets too long, people come over to mine,” I add with a smile and wink.
“As long as you don’t mind my sloppy seconds.”