Page 44 of Fall is Brewing

I huff out a breath, frustrated. “That’s not exactly helpful.”

“It’s not supposed to be helpful,” he replies calmly. “It’s supposed to be true.”

I look back down at my coffee, watching the steam curl up and disappear into the air.

“I knew it,” I say, quieter now. “The texture, the sweetness. It didn’t sit like Gala. I could feel it. And I still—” I cut myself off, pressing my lips together.

Erased it.

Second-guessed it.

Handed the win over to Brooks on a silver platter.

Grandpa leans back slightly in his chair, studying me like I’m one of his trees and he’s trying to figure out what’s gone wrong in the growth pattern. “Knowing something and trusting it aren’t the same thing,” he says. “And you were lacking a pretty important sense there.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “So was Brooks. And he got it right.”

“You’ve always known your apples,” Grandpa continues. “Since you were little. Couldn’t keep you out of the rows. You’d bite into one and tell me exactly what it needed—more sun, more water, more time.” His mouth twitches faintly. “Half the time you were right.”

“Half the time?” I shoot back with a snort.

He shrugs. “Other half you were just being bossy. You weren’t necessarily wrong… but that also don’t always make ya right.”

I almost smile.

“But you never hesitated back then,” he adds. “Didn’t look around to see if someone else was going to agree with you first. You just told me like it was. Or how you thought it was.”

I stare out the window again, the orchard slowly coming into focus as the light strengthens. “That was different.”

“Was it?”

“Yes,” I say, more firmly now. “It wasn’t—” I gesture vaguely. “Public. It didn’t matter in the same way.”

Grandpa hums softly, unconvinced.

“Funny thing about pressure,” he says. “It don’t change what you know. Just changes whether you trust yourself enough to stand by it.”

The words settle uncomfortably into me, heavy and unyielding. I take another sip of coffee, letting the bitterness ground me.

“He didn’t celebrate, you know,” Grandpa says after a moment.

I glance at him. “What?”

“That Calder boy,” he says, like it’s an afterthought. “At the firehouse. He didn’t look like someone who was celebrating or even someone who thought he beat you.”

Something in my chest tightens. I look away too quickly. “He won.”

“That’s not what I said.”

I snort. “Are you arguing he didn’t win?”

Grandpa lifts a shoulder, unconcerned. “All I’m saying is, I’ve seen a lot of people win a lot of things in my life. They usually look happier about it.”

I don’t like where this is going. I don’t like that part of me already noticed the same thing about Brooks. “I don’t care how he felt about it,” I say.

Grandpa’s eyes flick back to me, amused now. “Didn’t say you did.”

I press my lips together. It’s such a Grandpa response.