Page 2

I slide back an inch and find it. He lets out a breath through his teeth, low, and I feel it travel up through my fingertips and down my spine. I leave my hand there a moment longer than the exam requires. So does he.

"Ethan Harris," calls the woman in the pumpkin hat, in a voice that could stop a train. "Are you flirting with that girl?"

"Every chance I get, Dolores."

"Behave yourself!"

"I'm trying!"

"Try harder!"

I take my hand back and tuck it into my jacket pocket, where it goes on feeling warm. He holds out his own, wide and square with a nick across one knuckle. I shake it. He keeps hold a beat past polite, his thumb resting against the side of my wrist.

"Ethan," he says.

"Carolina."

"I like that one." He says it again, slowly, giving every syllable its turn. "You can't hurry through it."

"People usually try."

"People are missing out."

The line shuffles forward. He steps in behind me instead of ahead. When the boy at the counter asks what we'll have, Ethan says, "Two of the hot ones, Danny, and don't tell my mother,“ and Danny says, "She'll know," and Ethan says, "She always does."

He's got his wallet out before I've finished reaching for mine. When I turn to argue he just raises his eyebrows, so I take the cup he hands me and say nothing. This seems to please him.

The cup is scalding through the paper. I wrap both hands around it and he laughs. Then I go in for a sip and burn the whole front of my tongue.

"Oh, come on," I say, thickly.

"Blow on it."

"I know how cider works."

"Then why does it look like you don't?"

But he's watching my mouth when I do it. I purse my lips and blow across the surface. His smile fades into something more attentive. A small muscle moves in his jaw. When he lifts his own cup, a strip of purple glitter flashes at his wrist. A hair tie, the cheap kind, wound twice around the bone.

"That's new," I say.

He looks down at it. For half a second, he seems caught out, then the smile is back, rueful. "Long story. There's a lot of glitter in it."

"Should I be concerned about someone's hair tie?"

"Ask me what you actually want to ask."

I take a moment, because I'm already in too deep to be coy. "Is there somebody I'm about to be rude to?"

"No wife, no girlfriend, no one waiting up." His eyes don't leave mine. "If there were, I wouldn't be standing here."

I believe him. That's the strangest part, since he looks like the kind of man who says whatever he needs to say. But there's nothing practiced in how he says it.

I sip my cider, which tastes better now that it's cooled. We walk out of the tent together without either of us deciding to.

The sun has gone. The green is lit in rings of paper lanterns and strings of bulbs looped between the lampposts. Someone hauled in hay bales and stacked them three high around the pie tables. A banner hanging crooked across the bandstand says BLOOMFIELD HARVEST FESTIVAL. Under it a man in a scarecrow costume gives out flyers to people who are visibly trying to avoid him.

The night has gone blue and sharp at the edges. Kettle corn and chestnut smoke ride the wind. When it picks up, leaves skitter across the grass and catch against my boots.