Page 16 of Kiss the Girl
A smile stretched over her face, the biggest one I’d seen yet. “I came home last year to help my parents. My dad was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and the doctor warned him that the treatments were going to wipe him out too much to run the store. Our part-timer is retired, and it was too much to ask him to do it.”
“So it was up to you?” I wondered what her family situation was like. Maybe she didn’t have siblings.
“Yeah. My mom is a real estate agent, and she earns more than the store does, so they couldn’t afford for her to give up her income to run the store instead. And my sister has a big deal career in New York, so she couldn’t do it either.”
I frowned. “It sounded like you had a big deal career too.”
“I did. I do,” she corrected herself. “Probably. But she had a YouTube cooking show that blew up, and now she has a cable show, and she can’t leave because of the taping schedule.”
“So you had to quit your job.”
She shrugged. “Yes and no. I could have said no, but…”
She didn’t have to finish this sentence. I could have left Paige to figure it out on her own too, claimed that being twenty-two with college graduation two months away exempted me from stepping in to help. “But you don’t say no to family,” I finished for her.
“That.” She sighed and grabbed some more Muddy Buddies, then her smile returned. “Anyway, they started my dad on a drug trial that’s having good results so far. He has another scan in three months, and if it’s still clear, he’s officially in remission and I’m out of Creekville.”
“That’s awesome about your dad.”
“Yeah. We’re pretty thrilled. My dad and I are, anyway. My mom’s a pessimist and she’s trying not to get too excited, but even she can’t help it, I don’t think. She might even get all the way excited if it meant I’d stay around here.”
“She misses you, huh?”
“She spends all her time when we’re not here trying to convince my sister and me to move back. Now that Tabitha has her show, my mom has backed off some, but with me, every other day she’s trying to convince me that running the hardware store with my dad would be the best thing ever.”
“Would it be so bad?”
She shrugged. “It would be great if I wanted to stay in Creekville. Or it would even be great if Creekville had a big aerospace company nearby where I could work. Then I’d be happy to stay. I like Creekville, but I have bigger goals than I can meet here.”
“I can respect that.”
“What about you? Small-town guy through and through?”
“I guess so. I was happy in Mineral until I wasn’t.”
Her eyebrow went up. “Sounds like a story.”
“Not one you’d get without way more liquor in me. But I do like small towns. I don’t mind bigger ones. I taught in Charlottesville for three years, and I liked that. I think my ideal place is something smaller than a suburb but close enough to a big city that I can still go in for the perks. Restaurants. New movies. Stuff like that.”
“Why leave Charlottesville?”
I gave her a wry smile. “Again, a long story. But I like teaching in Creekville, and it allows me to live by my sister and my niece, so it all worked out.”
“You probably have other family around too, right?”
I nodded. “Extended family. Cousins, aunts and uncles.” I braced for the next question and the inevitable awkwardness that always followed the answer.
“Your parents don’t live here?”
I shook my head. “They died a few years ago in a car accident.” People rarely knew what to say to that. It was always some version of “I’m sorry.” What else could they say, really? But I always wondered exactly what the apology was for. Then again, it wasn’t like I knew what they should say instead.
Grace frowned at me. “That sucks.”
Oh. That. That was the right response. I gave a short almost-laugh. “Yeah, it does. Thanks.”
She held up her wineglass for a toast. “To big cities and small towns.”
I clinked it with my beer bottle. “Cheers.” Inside, I felt anythingbutcheerful. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this attracted to someoneandthis comfortable in a conversation with them. And so explicitly friend-zoned.
