Page 85 of Fall is Brewing

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.