about.” She laughed. Deacon had ended up getting punished for that, although it had been Chandler and Loyal who actually deserved it, since they were the ones who stuck them in the barrels to begin with.
“Dad was so upset he didn’t wait to get the whole story but just dragged Deacon off by his ear.” Reid was laughing too. At this point in their lives, an extra punishment or two wasn’t as big a deal as it was back then.
“If I recall correctly though, Loyal and Chandler eventually got it, then they ended up having to do something for Deacon. Maybe take his work for a week.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they had to weed his share of the garden for a month. There was a lot of garden. Deacon made out okay.”
“Thankfully, it didn’t seem to affect him. I can’t even believe your dad believed it to begin with, since Deacon never did anything wrong.”
“He was pretty serious about his apple cider.”
“Whatever happened to your apple orchard? Shouldn’t you be picking apples right now?” Her voice held a note of surprise, like she’d just remembered about their apple orchard.
“There was a tornado a few years ago. It missed Cowboy Crossing but hit Trumbull and devastated the apple orchard. Dad replanted, but we’re not getting enough apples to do much of anything with. He couldn’t plant the trees until the next spring, and then he was researching a few new planting methods and decided to go with one that took a lot of time to plant but shouldn’t take too much maintenance.”
“Oh. That’s nice.”
They were both quiet for a few minutes, probably because they were remembering that their first kiss had been in the apple orchard.
Reid wasn’t big on remembering a lot of dates, and he’d forgotten their anniversary more than once, which Emerson claimed showed he didn’t care, but he thought all it showed was that he didn’t remember.
Thinking back, he supposed Emerson was probably right. If he cared, he would’ve remembered. He certainly didn’t forget his birthday. He didn’t forget Christmas, either.
She had cried and said that if it was important to him, he would have remembered. He thought she was nuts at the time.
Looking back, she’d been right.
Actually, he kind of wished he remembered the date of their first kiss. Now, it seemed like something worth celebrating.
“I remember a deep blue sky. The red apples against the green leaves. And we were having a lot of fun picking.” He said that soft and low and slow and didn’t give any explanation. But she knew exactly what he was talking about.
“September twenty-third.” That’s all she said.
He closed his eyes. Of course she remembered.
Why didn’t he?
If it’s important to her, shouldn’t it be important to you too?
Man, he’d thought he’d gotten that voice to shut itself up. Here it was bugging him again.
He didn’t want to think about guilt, or whether he’d been wrong, or what he could do to fix it. He’d far rather think about how nice that kiss was.
Actually, as he recalled, one kiss had become two, which had become more than he could count. Was he supposed to remember how many kisses there were?
Dumb question.
Just the important things. The things that were important to Emerson. Because she would remember the things that were important to him.
“I remember you tasted like apples.” It had been his first kiss. Hers too.
He supposed it’d been a few years by that point that he’d even thought the idea of tasting someone else’s mouth was a good idea.
Definitely that day he’d gone about it with more than enough eagerness to rival an entire litter of Golden Retriever puppies.
He snorted.
“What?” Emerson asked, her voice sounding sad.
“I was just thinking I probably wasn’t a very good kisser.”
Now it was her turn to snort.
“I remember thinking you were pretty good.” Her voice was still soft and sad. He wanted her to laugh. But he supposed that memory was bittersweet for her. Same for him. “You really surprised me, because I’d never thought of you like that before. And although I’d touched you hundreds of times, touching you that day was different.”
He looked down at the ground, even though he couldn’t see anything, and was tempted to squirm. Because he remembered her touching him, her fingernails on his back and the palm of her hand moving over his cheek, which was probably baby soft since he definitely hadn’t been shaving at that age.
She hadn’t cared. She’d touched him like she was feeling him for the