Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
GIOVANNI
On Sunday, I finish reading the parachute book, cover to cover.
I also talk to the writer from It’s Not Gossip magazine and answer all of her questions about my relationship with Bianca, feeling easier about it now that the platitudes don’t feel like lies.
Yes, she was the first girl I kissed.
No, I never forgot her. No one who’s ever met her has ever forgotten her.
Yes, I like Apple Ridge.
I’m happier here than I’ve been—for years—back home. Apple Ridge is a beautiful town, especially in the fall, and it’s always been special to my family.
She asks me what I’m doing next, and I hesitate, but I remember my conversation with Bianca and answer her honestly—“I’m on my way toward figuring that out, but I love making content and sharing stories about my family. I’d like to find a way to continue doing that.”
She concludes by asking whether I’ll be staying in Apple Ridge, and again, I admit that I’m uncertain. But I hold onto the pendant around my neck, the one Bianca clung to the night before, and answer from my heart.
“I’d like to spend more time here. That’s all I know right now.”
After the interview, Bianca and I spend the rest of the afternoon at the pumpkin patch. A couple of people I recognize from the fall festival come by just to say hello, including Mr. O’Connor, who reminds me about my social obligation and buys a “perfectly symmetrical” gourd.
The next day, Theo gets the pot kids to cover the pumpkin patch again so Bianca and I can accompany the nonnas on a mission to scope out another wagon at a small hobby farm half an hour away.
The Gallaghers are offering hayrides at the corn maze event next weekend, and the nonnas are dead set on finding a wagon before the apple pie bake-off so we can compete.
The plan is to rent animals or a tractor to haul it.
It’s a perfect fall day, with the trees giving us the “big show” with their shades of deep orange, red, and green as we cruise down the winding roads to our destination. I feel a blooming sensation in my chest that I recognize as joy.
That feeling only grows when we get to the farm, and Bianca distracts the nonnas by pointing out a display of still-vibrant zinnias so she can pull the farmer aside and beg him to let the nonnas haggle, promising that Bianca and I will pay him full price on the sly.
Of course, he agrees. He’s charmed by her, the way anyone with sense would be, and when we head home, it’s with the farm wagon hitched to the Range Rover. The farmer even equipped us with bales of hay for the back.
Because of the wagon, we have to drive excruciatingly slowly, much to the disdain of the half a dozen people who pass us, middle fingers outstretched, but I don’t mind. It feels like a victory lap.
When we get back to the farmhouse, Theo’s sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the creaky front porch, and he whoops when he sees we actually came home with a wagon.
“Who wants to go for the first ride?” I ask after we all get out so we can show off the wagon. “Will the ladies do the honors?”
“We still don’t have a donkey,” Bianca points out, fighting a smile. “Unless you’re offering.”
A grin steals across my face. “What do you know, I think I am. What do you say, Theo?” I ask, turning to him. “Want to pull our womenfolk around in the wagon?”
“Womenfolk?” Bianca repeats, laughing.
Her brother laughs too. “She’s gonna get you for that one. Is recruiting me for this mess revenge for giving you too much playtime with my trees when you first got here?”
“Absolutely.”
It’s a ridiculous idea, but I’m hopped up on the high of Bianca and on actually acquiring the ridiculous wagon, and the nonnas whisper conspiratorially to each other before agreeing.
Theo and I grab some flannel blankets from inside the house, as well as a couple of carafes of cider—one of them with whiskey from the fresh bottle I picked up—and we all pile into the Range Rover, Bianca tucked into the back between the nonnas.
We haul the wagon to the apple barn and then disconnect it and move the car out of the way.
The plan is simple: we’ll pull the wagon along the trail leading from the apple barn to a barn where the Murphys used to keep animals.
The goats used to live there, as well as a stubborn old horse Bianca’s grandfather used to own.
The Murphys are going to store the wagon there, just like they did the previous one that broke.
So it works out pretty perfectly to take a hayride out there now.
“All right, let’s do this,” I say, making a big show of stretching so I can get a laugh from Bianca.
“You’re young boys. This is no problem for you,” my grandmother says dismissively, making a waving gesture with her hand. “Let’s get moving so Rose and I can go home and watch our stories.”
Nonna Rose offers her the whiskey-spiked carafe of cider. “You didn’t take your alcohol-soaked raisins today, Fran. It always makes you cranky.”
To my bafflement, Nonna Francesca doesn’t have any retort. She just shrugs and takes the carafe.
Well, I’ll be…
It truly is a day of miracles.
Theo sighs and stretches too. “You’re going up front, Mr. October,” he says, pointing. “I’ll push them from behind.”
It was my batshit idea, so I don’t object.
“Giddyup,” Bianca calls out, laughing as she leans forward to pat me on the back.
I smile over my shoulder at her. “At your service, boss.”
Turns out, moving a wagon is much harder than it seemed.
It’s the hills around here. Even though the farm is relatively flat compared to everywhere else in Apple Ridge, you’re always either going up or down, never traveling on flat land.
It takes probably half an hour to get the wagon from the apple barn to the empty barn—at least twice what the walk would take.
“Stop the wagon!” Bianca urges just before we reach the darkened interior of the barn.
“Aw, come on,” Theo says. “The barn’s right there.”
“Nope. You have to stop. Nurse’s orders. You have to come up here and watch this ridiculous sunset with us. It’s nonnegotiable.”
Enough said.
I drop the tongue of the wagon and climb into the interior. Theo does the same but a bit more reluctantly, probably since the girl of his dreams didn’t just ask him to.
“You’re covered in sweat,” Bianca says, nudging my arm as I get settled next to her on the straw. The nonnas are sitting across from us, and Theo takes a seat on the bale of hay at the back, right in front of where he’s been pushing the wagon for the last half hour.
Sitting on straw sounded romantic in theory, but it’s poking me through the fabric of my pants. Couldn’t care less, though, especially when Bianca shifts her flannel blanket to cover me too.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asks.
I peer at her face, at the messy, growing-out bangs she has tucked behind her ear, and her bun, and those lovely dark eyes of hers, which look like bottomless pools a man would be lucky to drown in, and I think:
Yes. Yes, you’re beautiful, and I wouldn’t mind looking at you forever.
I don’t want to grow old, but I don’t think I’d mind it so much with her. I wouldn’t mind seeing how her face changes with the seasons and years.
It’s a crazy thought, and yet…I don’t bury it or try to throw it away. I cling to it, feeling it out.
I don’t want to leave Bianca. Whatever my life becomes, moving forward, I want it to be intertwined with hers.
“It is beautiful,” I say, my voice low and husky.
“You haven’t even looked.”
She laughs, and I realize that of course she was talking about the sunset—the very reason she asked us to join them on the wagon.
I look up at the descending sun surrounded by layers of pink and orange and dusky blue, lowering toward the leaves’ big show and the softly curling slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“That’s pretty good too,” I admit.
I’m not surprised when Bianca knocks on my wall at night after everyone is in bed—and she mustn’t be surprised to find me waiting for her.
We sneak out through the window, even though the nonnas are most likely asleep.
We steal away and walk to the orchard, where we pick and share an apple before I make love to her on the fallen leaves.
The next morning I get another email from Janine, sent just past two in the morning.
Giovanni,
I know you love me. You can’t love a woman for that long and then just erase her from your mind.
I want to be with you, and I know you still want that with me. If I’m willing to give up my marriage, then giving up this woman is nothing.
I’ve got some great ideas for what you can do next. Please, please let me be a part of this.
Yours,
Janine
The bitter part of my heart wants to tell her to fuck off, but I know what it’s like to want something you’re not supposed to have. In her case, it’s the career of her ex-boyfriend. In mine, it’s the woman everyone thinks I’m in a serious relationship with.
So I rein myself in and respond,
Janine—
I hope you can find happiness with your HUSBAND.
I’m sorry if it’s hard to hear this, but I never felt for you what I feel for Bianca. It wasn’t right between us, and it’s only now that I’m realizing how wrong it was.
Take care of yourself,
Giovanni
Christopher’s article publishes later that day. There’s nothing unexpected, thank Christ, although he does include a funny description of the mayor as being “as eager as a golden retriever.”
I also get an email from the It’s Not Gossip reporter saying she’s looking into interviewing another couple of people back in Maine, but she’ll be in touch with a pub date later.
Ultimately, Bianca and I don’t make it to The Rotten Apple until Wednesday.
I drive us there after lunch, because I’d rather skip another meal in the cafeteria.
But I’ll be damned if I allow those old folks to eat an inedible dinner too.
If their days on earth are numbered, each meal should count—each bite should be a celebration.