Morgan glanced at the quart of fresh strawberries she’d picked up from a farm stand, then back at Emilia’s face. The air between them hummed with unresolved tension.

Do I kiss her? Emilia chewed on her lip. They needed to talk, soon, about whatever this was, but until then—

“Come in.” Morgan interrupted her panicking thoughts and took the fruit from Emilia’s hands, then tugged her lightly into the doorway. Emilia let the berries go without protest, hypnotized by the way Morgan’s plain T-shirt clung to her body. Morgan’s smile widened.

“I probably should have picked up some whipped cream or shortcake—”

Morgan kissed her. Hunger blazed between them. She didn’t realize she had pressed Morgan up against the doorframe, Morgan’s strawberry-free hand on her ass, until Stevie cleared her throat.

They broke apart. Stevie took a bite out of the strawberry she’d stolen from the unattended container.

“Uh . . . Hi, Stevie.”

“Don’t let me interrupt.”

Morgan blushed a deep scarlet and pushed past a grinning Stevie into the house. Emilia and Nell followed.

“Beer?” Stevie offered her a cold bottle, which she accepted. Morgan, she noted, had not tasted like alcohol.

“I’m on call,” Morgan said, correctly interpreting Emilia’s look. “Come help us choose a movie for later? We need a tiebreaker.”

Stevie explained Dogpocalypse as they scrolled through Stevie’s extensive movie collection. The tradition had started a few years ago, before they all lived together, and had carried over. All of their dogs except Marvin—who Stevie said was too dumb to understand the threat—were petrified of fireworks. This made it impossible to enjoy the Fourth or to go out, and so they’d decided to spend the holiday watching apocalyptic movies and comforting their freaked-out animals.

“And the movie has to be apocalyptic?” she asked.

“Naturally.”

“Too bad there are so few of them,” she said as Stevie continued to scroll through a seemingly endless collection of the genre.

“I know. Hollywood really hates the subject.”

“Is that actually a movie about zombie sheep?”

“Don’t ask,” Morgan warned.

They settled on a B horror flick about colossal tidal waves destined to take out coastal cities, complete with monsters in the water.

“We’ll watch it later when the fireworks start and we have to go inside with the dogs. Have you seen the orchard yet?”

The three of them strolled through the twisted trunks and settled in the shade of a particularly gnarly apple tree to wait for Lillian and Angie. Emilia nursed her beer while Stevie and Morgan drank soda, listening to the drone of the bees in the apple blossoms. Morgan’s arm lightly encircled her waist, but they took it no further. Their dogs lay in panting heaps in the hot sunshine.

“It’s beautiful out here,” she said.

“Wait till the fall—”

Emilia couldn’t tell if she’d imagined the ripple of stillness that passed through Morgan as she cut herself off.

“How are the apples?” She hoped the words would rescue them both from the unspoken question of what the changing season would bring.