When I’d agreed to spend Sunday afternoon with Tucker at the Pickin’, it was safe to say I hadn’t understood what I was getting myself into on many levels.
For one thing, even though Tucker had said the Pickin’ was way different from the Lickin’, I hadn’t really believed it until I’d pulled my Mustang into the bumpy, grass-covered field out by the road and found out I’d have to take a hayride to get to the official entry area at the back of the orchard. When I’d crowded into the back of the horse-drawn wagon with a dozen children and six frazzled but friendly parents, including Gracie Johnson Mawbry, Brooks’s sister, I should’ve kinda read the writing on the wall… but I hadn’t.
I’d met Tucker at the entry table as we’d planned, since Rainbows over Tennessee was sponsoring the day’s events, and he’d greeted me with an enthusiastic hug and an awkward half kiss that landed somewhere between my cheek and my lips. He’d also introduced me to the three middle-aged women at the table, all of whom had winked at me and told Tucker to, “Enjoy your sweet self, Tucker, honey, but remember to keep it G-rated for the young ones,” which should’ve been a huge red flag… but I’d ignored it.
Then Tucker had grabbed a big backpack from behind the table and draped an arm over my shoulders as we walked away. I’d stiffened a little at the feeling of his arm around me but tried to hide it by asking where they’d set up the area with the vendor stalls. I needed some fried fair food and, please baby Jesus, some moonshine, to help get me over this first awkward part of the date.
“There’s no alcohol here today.” Tucker looked bewildered. “The cider tasting was last night in town, and the cocktail things are next Saturday. Oh, shoot. Did you not know that? Both Sundays at the Pickin’ are more like family fun days.” His face had fallen into a nearly comical frown. “Which means I should have invited you for last night, shouldn’t I? I was just thinking I’d be manning the table earlier today and maybe it’d be fun to have a picnic and talk, but… Damn it. This is going to be the most awkward, boring first date in history, isn’t it? God, I suck at this.”
“Nonsense,” I’d assured him. “Low-key is fine with me.”
Except… Tucker had kinda been right. It had been awkward, just the two of us walking among a sea of little families. Or maybe it was just that I’d felt awkward, like I’d forgotten something… or someone.
Possibly two someones.
I’d spotted a monarch fluttering among the grasses, and I’d wanted to point it out to Marigold. I’d seen a cloud that looked kind of like the splotch of carrot gunk on Diesel’s ceiling, but there was no one to laugh about it with. Dozens of kids laughing, but none of them were mine.
Still, I’d tried to make the best of things. It was a gorgeous September day in Tennessee—which was to say, it was maybe three degrees cooler than it had been in July—bees were buzzing through the grass, and there was a beautiful, apple-scented breeze blowing through the trees. Tucker and I had gotten ourselves sodas and some crepes smeared with local apple blossom honey and sat down on Tucker’s blanket in the shade-dappled orchard to talk. As it turned out, we had a ton in common.
He’d gone to UT like I did, though he was a few years ahead of me, and we’d even lived in the same residence hall our freshman years, so we’d compared notes for a bit. He’d helped his brother restore a Mustang—a Shelby—which was awesome, and we’d talked about that too. We’d even talked about how neither of us liked sweet tea very much, but both of us pretended to, because while some hidebound traditions were made to be broken, some would continue until the end of the world, amen. All in all, we could not have had more in common if we’d been cut from the same cloth and stitched together like one of Aunt Marnie’s quilt patterns.
And yet…
Here I was, walking away from Tucker, and it didn’t occur to me to look over my shoulder to see if he was watching, or to smile goodbye the way I did every time I left Diesel’s place. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask Tucker to come along to the refreshment booth so we could keep talking either. I didn’t want to hold his hand, let alone push him up against a tree and kiss him. It wasn’t his head I kept searching for above the crowd or his face I kept hoping to see. And though he seemed determined to push through it, I was pretty sure Tucker felt the same about me. While Diesel made my stomach swoop and dive like a roller coaster every time he twitched, Tucker made me feel nothing at all, except sort of vaguely wrong whenever he tried to touch me.