Forelsket

Fate. My grandmother always used to call it the lazy man’s faith. She would stand in the kitchen stirring her pitcher of tea and say to me, “Now Keelyn, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life it’s that fate only exists when peaches are growing.” I never understood what she meant, and by the half smile on her face as she’d hold out the wooden spoon for me to sip off of I think she knew that. “You’ll understand with time,” she’d reassure me.

She was right, of course, as all grandmothers are. She had owned a farm with her husband of thirty-five years; he tended to the fields while my grandmother took care of the orchard of peach trees. She’d use them to make all kinds of delightful concoctions from cobblers to teas that she’d sell at the market. The orchard was a huge part of their income on the farm, so during seasons of drought when the pickings were poor the farm suffered. It wasn’t until recently that I could connect the dots, but after the rollercoaster I’d been on for the last year the connections were clearer than crystal. Most people proclaim fate when they’re given riches, but as soon as they’re gone they curse the word. When peach harvests are good nobody tries to change it because it’s fate’s doing, but as soon as a bad season hits they scramble to make ends meet because all of a sudden they have control of their lives, not fate.

I had experienced this mentality first hand a few months ago when I had started college. As my perfectly stitched web started unraveling I did everything in my power to change what I otherwise would have been too lazy to.

It’s funny how we don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone I thought, looking out onto the horizon. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath as a gust of wind danced in my hair, hugging me with the warmth of summer air that was second only to his hugs. I opened my eyes again and looked back out at the mountain range in front of me. The Blue Ridge. I’ve never been quite sure what phenomena contributed to the brilliant hues that made up this landscape but somewhere between the cobalt and powder blues I could see his eyes. I exhaled.

It had been like this ever since he’d gone. Everything reminded me of him, and if it weren’t a blatant reminder my mind would twist it until it made some shallow connection between the two. My heart would always twinge and my mouth would dry out at the thought. I peered over the side of the cliff edge I was currently sat on and watched my legs swing back and forth. I’d only been up here once before, it was where he and I shared our first kiss and he promised to take me back up for a meteor shower but we never got around to it. It was a shame really; we had made so many plans, a bucket list of sorts, and never got to half of them. I felt so unfulfilled, so alone.

I would never admit that to anyone, but I was. I lost my best friend after the fight that night. I lost the person I loved after that argument and I’d never stop kicking myself over it. “Peaches definitely aren’t growing right now, grandma.”

There was a sudden crack of twigs behind me and thinking it was an animal I grabbed for my camera and turned. My breath hitched in my throat and it felt like I was trying to swallow a tennis ball as I watched it emerge. If my camera hadn’t had a strap around it I surely would have cracked it on the rock when I let it fall limp out of my fingers.

“I always preferred strawberries myself.”