he drives. because he always drives. he drives the car his mother bought him for christmas, two years ago. i know the way that he drives as well as i know the roads behind my childhood home. the winding, long winded roads built for speed and sad songs that play on loop. the roads that i have spilled my heart to too many nights because they listen and learn the repetition of my shredded tires. the roads that memorized my first car crash, which stained their gravel with shrapnel and my stone parents’ hearts with disappointment. my father’s face low and my mother’s voice high. yes, roads that have known my patterns, my abrupt steering, my swift swirls, my cool down from a family fight.

but he drives now. he drives with caution and precision, for he does not have roads he loves the way i do. roads with memories, sentient and sentimental. he is unfamiliar with any new turns and curves and takes each tilt with suspicion, too carefully. he is scared he’ll hurt the car, that the car will hurt me and, therefore, that he will hurt me. he drives as gently as he speaks and knows me as well as he knows the roads: not very well at all.

we have a slight inkling towards a destination. we had a slight fight over a destination. we listened to each other talk over ourselves in circles, the same words repeated until they tasted bitter. he wants to go home to his parents for the weekend, drive up the one road in the world where he can exhale while he steers. they have apple trees there, he says, we can go apple picking there. i want to go somewhere new. somewhere neither of us have any familiarity with, somewhere we can learn together. they’ll have apple trees there, i say, we can go apple picking there.

yet, we packed the car with no resolution. as he steers and i stare out the window, i wonder where we are going. we sit in the stillest silence and let the radio tell us how to feel. music has always been indicative of my emotions, i feel them change with the tones and the emphasis of each instrument. when i have my roads and i have my music, i am drawn inward. i am identified as my own person, so i guess it doesn’t matter where we end up. wherever we arrive to, i will have myself.

i know he doesn’t hear music as i do. he is grounded by nothing but his caution, his apple picking. his fond memories of his infancy when fall was new and colors were bright for the first time. he changes with seasons as i change with music. it is during fall when he is the most complete. when he understands himself fully. when his caution is at its height. when our conflict peaks.

we’ll do both, he says and breaks our soft silence, reaching to turn the radio down. we’ll see my parents saturday and drive to wherever sunday morning. we’ll do that. okay?

erase my autonomy, okay, i say. i pause before adding, i hate your parents.

how? when they’ve been nothing but nice to—

he interrupts himself and stills the car with a breath. he has made up his mind and he is the one behind the wheel, so i accept his proposal with my own combative silence, but not before reaching to turn the music up once again. he’s frustrated now, even more so than earlier. he turns the sound down, i reach over and raise the volume. we fight this wordless battle all the way into the driveway where the road begins to become choppy, uneven. he slows even more as we roll down cautiously, careful of the bumps in the road and pieces of broken rock that scatter the landscape. he cannot hurt the car. the car must stay intact. we must stay in-tact.

he parks in the gravel. the spot where he always does. he walks up to his parents’ door. he knocks. he walks in. i sit in the car. i sit to protest. i sit and i wait and i wait and i wait. i wait and i do nothing, only count the lines in my palms and the grooves between my fingers. my mind doesn’t move, deadened at the driveway’s dead end. i wait three hours in his car. i wait until he becomes frustrated with my objective quietness and comes back out to usher me inside.

what are you doing? he hisses at me, opening the door to the driver’s seat.

i shrug and open my passenger seat door, my feet dropping into the gravel, scuffing my shoes.

do you honestly have to start something? you can’t always get your way, he says as we walk through the tall, windowed doors.

i can’t believe you brought her for the weekend, his mother says in lieu of hello.

not the whole weekend. we’re staying just one night. to go apple picking, he says.

his mother sighs and resigns herself to the solitude of any room i don’t exist in.

try, he says.

and i do. we drop our lightly packed bags in his old bedroom, still unchanged from his boyhood, a shrine to the outgrown youth that his mother still preserves. he joins her for a cup of coffee in her kitchen with the high, vaulted ceiling. his father walks me to the orchard, filled with trees taller than my imagination. he leaves quickly, likely because we don’t have much to say to each other after a comment on the weather. he doesn’t have much to say about his son, who was always closer to his mother, and what more could we have in common. i stay out, hours more, alone. he must’ve stayed inside with his mother. must’ve forgotten about the apple picking. that it means something to me.

i reach into the highest branches and pull only the reddest apples down. i pick as many apples as i can hold in my tote bag. until it weights too heavily over my shoulder and i’m resigned to carrying it under my arms. i spend the day in his parents’ orchard, apple picking. i swallow my saturday away and shut my mouth and pick his parents’ apples. when i make it back inside, it’s past six and they have started eating dinner. without me. he can sense my irritation, but he doesn’t comment, except to say he’s impressed i picked so many apples. at least he’s proud to see my engagement with his preference. i think he expected a fit, a child’s tantrum, and that is why he is so impressed. so pleased.

for dessert, his mother wants to make a pie. an apple pie. he wants me to join her in the kitchen, he’s pleading in his eyes. i don’t want to go, but i do. i follow her into the kitchen and i don’t say a word. she doesn’t want my help, but she accepts it. she does it for him. i do it for him. i glance towards the dinner table every time she serves me a new correction, each time hoping he is looking back so he will see. we cut up apples side by side and she thinks of slicing my finger and i hers. when the apples are chopped and the dry and wet ingredients divided, she locks her lips to keep from any other snide comment from escaping.

we loathe each other in silence over the mixing of the butter, sugar, and eggs. he sits still at the dinner table, his father has retreated to the couch to stare at his phone at arm’s length. i can’t blame him for his silence in these moments, when i see how his father cannot stand him. when i see how his mother is all he has. but the sympathy shatters when she calls him to the kitchen and he hugs her tightly before moving to stand beside me, his arms awkwardly hanging at his side, as if embracing me is betraying her. his mother begins to set the table for dessert, laying the spoons down so loud they clang.

i think she’s going to poison me. like snow white, i say to him.

can you be more mature? just try, jesus, he says.

i am trying, i say, but i want to scream it. i want to scream it and smash his mother’s finest dishes.

he shakes his head and doesn’t take my hand walking back to the table. it doesn’t really seem like it, does it? he mutters, his voice lower than mine. i imagine he wants to scream it too.

we’re fed up with each other now. he wishes he hadn’t gotten his way now. he wishes we’d skipped his parents and just run somewhere else, somewhere far away, somewhere where apple picking isn’t a competition and where it doesn’t breed fear and terror. he wishes we were where i wished we were. he wishes i wasn’t here at all. he wishes i’d stayed in the car. as we lift and lower our spoons, his father and i are silent, intensely focused on the crumbling pie. i take each bite carefully, making a point to chew and swallow as slowly as i can. his mother laughs at his every mumbled, mouth full word. it is their table, their talk, their world. i feel out of orbit, my spoon tracing marks in the pie slice.

we leave early the next morning before his parents wake up. we slept in sexless silence, a space a mile wide between our heavy breathing bodies. he leaves his mother a sickly sweet note on the kitchen counter, handwritten. with love, your son. as the car spirals away from the rocky driveway, i stick my finger out the window. he doesn’t see. he just focuses on the street straight ahead of him. the street that glitters with gold and crimson leaves from the biggest trees in the neighborhood. he remembers when they were the biggest trees in the world. when his mother approved of everything he did. when apple picking was something to look forward to.

i pretend to fall asleep beside him to avoid the inevitable fight we’ve been on the breach of all weekend. we’re a ticking time bomb of tension. i let silence and the darkness of my eyelids overtake my fading sense of self. i wonder what it is that his mother hates so much about me. if it’s my hair, my clothes, my voice. her son’s love. i wonder why i care. i wonder if it’ll always be that way. i know he wonders the same things. i wonder if he’s talked to her about it. if he ever will. we both know it’s because of her he hasn’t bought a ring. it’s because of her that he still says we’re living apart. it’s because of her that apple picking is bitter to us both now.

the jerk of his wheels over unfamiliar terrain pretends to wake me up. he hates to be lost, to not know where to turn next. he has no sense of improvisation and i can see it on his face. he is nervous now, nauseous even. he loves his memorized roads as much as i love mine, but he fears the unknown ones as much as i crave to discover them. i see our differences light up as the rocks gather around the tires, kicking their treading, and i join him in his nervousness.

i’m lost. i don’t know where to go, he says, finally.

me too, i say. but i’m quiet this time.

do we—

call it quits?

he stops the car in the middle of the empty road. the empty road leading up to an apple orchard. it feels fated. the one we’ve been seeking. the one that was supposed to answer all my questions. the one that we were destined to discover. the one with the big, big trees that stand sturdy under the blue, blue sky. the one with the leaves dancing like tiny ballerinas across the mossy under groves.

he stares ahead in silence. then begins to drive up closer to the trees. he thinks this will fix it. he thinks if we pick some apples, like i demanded, we will be okay. he thinks he may have heard me wrong. he thinks a lot of things while my thoughts move empty through my head like driftwood.

we step out of his car into the chilly air and we start to pick some apples. i don’t pick them with the fervor i had earlier. his mother isn’t here, he’s defenseless and i’m unsupervised. i pick them with stillness and silence. we stand a few feet apart, but it feels like miles. i count the seconds as i pull the branches down and memorize the moments as i pick each fruit. i start to think about him when he was

you.

i see us spinning in your kitchen, wine drunk. your hands on my waist, holding me, but not gripping. your laugh echoing around the walls, my voice melting into yours. our breaths making music to dance to, our glasses clinking until spilling.

i see us the first time we held hands. your thumb finding my palm first, then your fingers slipping in between mine. standing in a swarm of warm feeling, lighting my hand up until it’s aglow.

i see us the first time you drove us around the smallest town in the world. my town. with my parent’s house around the block. my mom hugging you and my dad grabbing your hand. your laughs moving around our kitchen, smaller than the one at yours.

i see us apple picking.

i see us in the corner of another perspective’s eye. i see you lifting me up to the highest branches and holding me close to you so i don’t fall. i see you avoiding your mother’s comments. i see you choosing my weekend instead of yours. i see you wanting me and longing for me. i see you. but you have left me, you’ve turned into

him.

apple picking. the car engine continues to run as we stand side by side, but with enough distance to distinguish him from you. he looks over his shoulder.

we shouldn’t have left the car going, come on, he says. he goes to reach for my hand, but catches himself. i think about starting a fight, about his mother, his driving, his fears.

i’m not ready to go yet, i say. i pause, then say, we did your weekend.

i see him tense. the heat in his skin picking holes at his holding cool. he moves his mouth, a searing comment on his tongue, then shuts it. just like his mother does. he picks his last apple and throws it to the ground aggressively, the tension he’s been holding in finally releasing itself into the toss. i watch the apple hit the grass and start to roll far, far away. i begin to run towards it, ignoring the frigid wind and the sound of what used to be your voice calling me back. i chase the apple through the orchard, running until i’m hot and i’m sweating.

when i catch up, it’s muddy. it’s been through the dirt and the grass and the leaves and i don’t care. i kneel to pick it up, cleaning the exterior on my clothes until it’s bright and shiny and burgundy again. i smile and smile and smile at the apple. it tastes nothing like the ones at his parents’ house, bitter and drenched in unmet expectations. it tastes like fresh, sweet air and the color of the setting sun. i live in the silence and chew on the apple until i reach the core.

i see his headlights flashing brightly. i watch them for a while. i think about him for awhile. if i should walk back, if i should wait for him to walk over. if he will wait three hours in the car. if he will say he’s sorry. if he will miss me. so many little ifs. so many what ifs. eventually, his headlights head out and i realize he understands me—finally. his radio sounds bittersweet and my absence reminds him of who he was before i was present.

but i don’t think about him. no. I go apple picking.

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Meg White is a writer based in California. She holds a BA in English from UC Davis. “i go apple picking” is her first published story.