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When he was small, Jimmy’s mom used to take him apple picking.
She liked apples- all kinds, but especially evercrisp. She used to call him her little evercrisp apple.
Each week, on Sunday, they’d go early in the morning to the nearby orchard. They’d pick apples until noon, when they’d go home and make something. They made pie and crisp and cobbler and cake and a thousand other things. The leftover apples would go into his school snack, carefully sliced by his own tiny hands.
As the youngest of three, Jimmy didn’t have a lot of things for himself growing up. It was all hand-me-downs and borrowed things, his siblings’ always taking first.
Apples were the one thing that Jimmy had to himself. Those sun warmed memories of their mom were for him and him alone.
Pearl and Grian used to sleep all of Sunday morning; in the afternoon, their dad would take them to the arcade. They’d come home, giggling, with dozens of arcade prizes. At bedtime, Jimmy would find a small pile of prizes on his bed that they’d won for him, and he’d find them all places on his shelf. He remembered that their dad liked shooting games the best, from the few times he’d gone with them.
Despite everything, Jimmy still loved apples.
“Here, Pearl!” Jimmy tossed two ripe apples down to his older sister, and she caught them in her basket.
He had climbed up into the tree to get to the apples, like he’d done with his mom when he was little. He felt a familiar ache in his chest start to bloom, until it was interrupted by his brother’s laughter.
Grian was in the tree with him, a few branches higher. He’d been on the ground with Pearl, but he’d climbed up to join Jimmy after a while, and his basket sat mostly empty at the trunk of the tree. He threw another apple at his twin sister, laughing as she nearly fell over trying to catch it.
“That’s it.” Pearl set her basket down and swung up into the tree. Grian yelped and climbed higher, trying to get away from her.
Jimmy rolled his eyes fondly. He jumped down the ground, picking up the two apple baskets.
For the next little while, they ran around the orchard, laughing and talking and just… being. For the first time in a long time, Jimmy felt almost like a kid again.
A little into the afternoon, he dragged his siblings back home to bake. He’d decided on apple crisp; if only because he knew it was their favorite.
Grian and Pearl moved around the kitchen, asking him what he was doing- they’d both watched him bake a thousand times before, and weren’t awful bakers themselves, so they were definitely just trying to annoy him. After Grian got in his way for the nth time, he shooed them out to go play video games or something.
He’d made apple crisp a thousand times before. His motions were practiced and sure, his hands knowing what to do before even he did. In the next room, he could hear his siblings playing what sounded like Pico Park.
Later, they would eat his apple crisp and tell him it was the best thing they’d ever tasted like they hadn’t tasted it a thousand times before. They’d go to that one arcade that was open late, and Pearl and Grian would crush him at every game they played, and he’d still end up with a thousand new prizes on his shelf. They’d drag their friends out to lazer tag or a nerf arena, and Jimmy would pack all three of them apples, carefully sliced with his calloused hands.
Now, he made his apple crisp and listened to his siblings in the other room.