Page 22 of Hand Picked
I nodded. “And watched the game. The Habs lost.”
“In the end, we realized that there was no good reason for us not to be friends, so we… we declared our friendship. Didn’t we?” Webb gave me a significant look.
“Yes, indeed. That’s exactly how it happened. Precisely as I remember it,” I confirmed.
“Declared your friendship?” Jack repeated slowly. He cocked his head. “What, like, verbally? In the bar?”
“Er, no. More like…” I cleared my throat softly. “Musically. On the common.”
Webb huffed out a single breath of startled laughter, and his eyes regained a touch of the warmth they’d held the night before. “I only remember bits and pieces.”
“Same!” I grinned, relieved. “I was worried there was something worse, but if you don’t remember anything, then probably—”
I broke off as the diner door flew open and a group of chattering Hollowans—I guess we’re using this word now—crowded inside, led by none other than Mayor York himself.
“They’re over here, Ginny!” the mayor called excitedly, pointing at the back of the restaurant.
Pointing at…me.
“The fuck?” Webb seemed just as confused as I was and looked twice as scowly about it.
A thirty-something woman carrying an old-fashioned reporter microphone and a man with a video camera jostled through the crowd, and the mayor directed them to the area right in front of our table. He bumped a protesting Jack aside and took his spot.
“How’s this?” he asked the cameraman. “Do you have a good angle of the happy couple? What about me?” He ran a hand over his hair.
The cameraman gave him a thumbs-up.
“Looking great, Uncle Ernie!” the reporter assured him. She turned to Webb and me and whispered, “You two. Try to look a little more besotted, okay?”
Besotted?What?
But she’d already turned back and smiled broadly at the camera. “Good morning. This is Genevieve York-Muller reporting from the town of Little Pippin Hollow, with a heartwarming story of true love and the charming practice of handfasting—”
I looked to Drew and Marco. “Oh my gosh! Did you guys get handfasted? Congratulations!”
Marco shook his head resolutely. “Hell no. I’m not into kinky stuff.”
Webb poked the mayor in the back. “Mayor York, what’s this about?”
The mayor slapped his hand away.
“It’s fine, Uncle Ernie,” the reporter told the mayor. “We’ll cut the interruptions in editing.” She shook her hair back, fixed her smile in place once again, and continued in a hushed-excited voice, “Handfasting, which can be a form of commitment prior to marriage, much like a betrothal or an engagement—”
“Ohhhh,thatkind of handfasting,” Marco said.
“—may have fallen out of practice in modern times throughout much of the world, but in this pristine hamlet, the tradition is alive and well, thanks to a law that was written nearly three hundred years ago and a very special brass bugle that dates back to the Revolutionary War!”
The reporter made a slicing motion across her throat. “M’kay. That’s where we’ll shift to the B-roll. Your turn, Uncle Ernie. Go ahead.”
“Right, yes.” The mayor cleared his throat and gestured to a woman in the crowd. “Dora? Honey, where’s my scroll?”
The mayor’s wife hurried over, bearing a two-foot-wide scroll on a velvet pillow.
“I am proud to read the following proclamation, which was signed into our official town record just this very morning by me. Ernest York. Proud mayor of Little Pippin Hollow.”
The mayor picked up the scroll with great ceremony and let it unfurl all the way to the floor. He cleared his throat, gave the camera a brilliant toothpaste smile, and began reading. “Whereas Thomas Webb Sunday—”
“Oh, no.” Webb shook his head. “Fuckno. I want nothing to do with this shit, whatever it is.”
