But something wasn’t right. First of all, the ground she used to leverage herself up was soft and warm. And the air seemed to feel a little cooler on her skin. She felt a little…

She looked down and gasped.

She was naked!

And that soft warm ground beside her was Tyler!

His eyes were open, and he was smiling. “Good morning.”

Everything came back to her, every humiliating, cathartic, erotic thing he’d done to her. But then she realized she was sitting there naked, staring at him like an idiot. She slapped an arm over her bare breasts and looked around for her nightgown. Tyler was lying on it. She tugged on it and he sat up.

She pulled the gown over her head, relishing the brief time she could hide her face behind the fabric. Oh, God. Where was her underwear? She saw them by her feet and snatched them up. “Don’t say anything,” she said as she stood. “You promised me you would forget everything. Don’t say a word about this.”

He rubbed at his eyes sleepily, still smiling. “Okay.”

She stared at him again. He had dirt and thyme in his hair. He still had on his shorts, but his chest was bare. He had red splotches all over his skin, burn marks from her, and yet he didn’t seem to mind. Not then, not now. How could he do that, all that last night, for no pleasure on his part, just for her?

She turned and started walking down the pathway, but stopped when he said, “You’re welcome.”

For some reason, that made her feel better. He was being an asshole. He expected her to thank him. She turned around. “Excuse me?”

He pointed to the ground beside him. “You wrote it, here.”

Curious, she walked back to him and looked. There on the ground were the words Thank You, raised in the dirt, as if written from underneath.

She let out a growl of frustration and picked up one of the apples. She threw it as hard as she could at the tree.

“I didn’t write that,” she said, and stormed away. Fat raindrops began to fall as she ran out of the garden. By the time she’d reached the house, the sky had opened up and it was pouring.

Fred drove home in the rain that evening, thinking about James. He was always alone when he let himself think of him, afraid that someone might see him and know what he was doing.