Page 7 of Keeping it Casual
“Have you had enough of whipping these guys?” I ask.
She nods, giving me a wide grin. “Yeah.”
I glance over at Dustin and Lachie. “You guys okay to call it quits?”
“At this point, it’s an act of mercy from you,” Dustin says.
“Okay, you can go to the playground,” I say to Lucy. “Just stay away from the edge of the pond.”
Lucy skips off, still looking fresh and energetic. Dustin, Lachie, and I stare after her, all of us puffing hard.
“Do you realize you’re raising the Energizer Bunny?” Dustin asks.
“It has been noted by a few people before,” I say.
Lachie goes over to pick up the sweaters we used to mark the goals, leaving Dustin and me alone.
“So, I’ve had three more people ask me if I’ve met you yet,” he says in an undertone.
I can’t help laughing. “Who?”
Dustin ticks them off on his hand. “Freda from the bakery, Lachie’s science teacher when I went to meet with her, and the courier who delivered a parcel to my door this morning.”
“The courier would be Ada,” I say. “She’s my mum’s best friend, so she’ll definitely have been offered some kind of an incentive scheme by my mother.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Your mother offers monetary rewards for people to find you a date?”
I nod. “Take the most over-involved mother you can imagine, double it, and you’ve got my mother. Luckily my parents are away in Europe for six months. Otherwise, my mother would have probably turned up on your doorstep the day you moved in and physically dragged you to meet me.”
Dustin sighs deeply, running his hands through his hair. “So, do you have any solutions for how I can stop the whole town from acting like amateur pimps for you?”
I laugh even more at that.
He gives me an amused grin, which then fades. “Seriously, I’m looking for solutions. I’m pretty sure they’ll only humor me for so long, and then they’ll start to demand to know why I haven’t taken their advice.”
He does look slightly worried about the townsfolk of Mineral Creek coming after him with flaming torches and pitchforks.
I imagine being in his shoes, attempting to integrate into a new community. It’s hard to relate because, besides going away for university, I’ve always lived in Mineral Creek. There’s a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child, and itdefinitely feels like most of the adults in Mineral Creek played a role in my life when I was growing up.
Hence their over-investment in my love life.
I bite my lip, thinking. “I think we need to go out on a date together. Somewhere very public, so everyone sees us.”
His dark eyebrows knit together. “Won’t that just encourage them?”
“No, because on our date, we’ll just sit there in uncomfortable silence. The whole town will see we’re not compatible, and they’ll give up their campaign to set us up.”
Dustin still looks slightly skeptical of my brilliant plan. “I guess it could work…” he says.
“It will definitely work. My plans never fail,” I say confidently.
Chapter 4
Dustin
Iprepare for my date with Jeremy by ironing my nicest shirt, trying to ignore the butterflies flapping in my stomach.
Why the hell am I so nervous?
