I Baked an Apple Pie for My Lonely Cowboy Neighbor... Then He Asked, "Why Are You Still Single?"

She told herself she had too many apples. That was why she crossed the creek with a warm pie in her hands on a Tuesday morning in October. That was all it was. But Jesse Hollis took it carefully, with both hands — like it was something that mattered — and nothing between them was quite the same after that. A slow Colorado autumn of fence posts and coffee cups and lamplight, of questions asked too quietly to be anything but honest, and two people who had spent years being very good at not needing anyone slowly remembering what it felt like to stay.