Page 70 of The Fall Back Plan
“That’s a minimum. I’m asking if three old coots and Hazel can be a team.”
Oh! I smile. “Technically, yes, but I’ll need to check with my quizmaster. Y’all might have an unfair advantage due to your having lived through most of history.”
One of his buddies hoots, and Henry grins at me. “Too bad. We’ll be there Thursday. We’re going to win and treat ourselves to brunch at the fancy hotel where Don Douglas had his birthday.”
“Fifty-seven,” one of them snorts. Floyd, I think? “That’s not even a real birthday. Seventy-five. That’s a real birthday.”
“Hear, hear,” another of them says. He has a faint French accent. Must be Jean. “Old enough to have made lots of friends with a fair amount of them still alive to come by for the party.”
“I’d love to see you win,” I tell them. “Your odds are pretty good since I’m not sure we’ll have many other teams.”
One of them gets a cranky look on his face. “The Lady Librarians will be there, and they’re talking a big enough game that I’m looking forward to hushing them like they always do us in the library.”
Oh, Mrs. Herring. Having my back again.
“The showdown of the decade,” I say. “If you’re there on Thursday, you each get an applejack on me.”
They give me their solemn vows that nothing will keep them away now, and I head to the Mockingbird. When I walk in, the next surprise awaits me: every table has a small bright blue placard with the trivia night info and a QR code for people to scan and sign up.
I hand Ry his coffee. “You and Sophie have been busy. I saw the signs all over Maple.”
“That’s mostly Sophie. We’ve already had so many signups thanks to Lucas, and we haven’t been open for regular business since we posted them.”
“Lucas? What does he have to do with this?”
He taps his cell phone and hands it to me. “That’s the app Sophie is using. Look at the teams so far. Lucas saw a sign and called the bar this morning,” he explains as I read through the list. “Said he was signing up and challenging the firefighters. Said he was going to recruit other teams too.”
The Tin Stars, Captain: Lucas. Hot Shots, Captain: Jace. The Lady Librarians, Captain: Roberta. The Hazy Codgers, Captain: Henry. There are at least five more team names on the list. Sophie is requiring teams of four, and that’s almost forty people plus their friends coming in to drink and eat and spend money in the bar.
“This is awesome,” I say.
“Yeah, and Sophie might even be able to get some of the Appies players to compete. I guess the team owner is one of their customers.”
“Does Bonnie know?” She’d said she’d be happy to treat it as a soft launch for the happy hour menu, but I’m suddenly realizing we may have far more business than I bargained for.
“I’ll tell her when she gets in today. I bet she’ll be excited.”
I pull out a table and sit. It’s an inelegant thump. “I can’t believe all these signups.”
Ry smirks. “I can. That dude has the hots for you.”
That makes me blush, but it’s not like it’s news. Lucas told me himself. And he knows the attraction isn’t one-sided, even if I said I didn’t want to act on it.
The man has shown up for me again and again in a way that no one but Ry ever has. And Mrs. Herring. And Sophie. And Tina. And . . .
What if I’m wrong? In every possible way, Lucas is different from Phillip. He makes my pulse hammer harder than Phillip ever did, and I haven’t even kissed the man. Thought about it constantly, yes. But we haven’t shared anything more than a hug.
What if I took a risk on him? Lucas shows up for everyone in his life, over and over again. The town. His Pops. Brooklyn.
Me.
He knows everything about me, and instead of judging it, he understands because of his own messed up family. But he’s let it make him strong and good, not brittle. I’ve become brittle, afraid to bend in case I break.
But what am I protecting myself from? People who have no reason to have to care about me but do anyway? Sure, Sloane with her daddy issues tried to make me feel like a loser again, but so many other people have shown me that I belong.
I, Jolie McGraw, belong in Harvest Hollow.
I look around the bar at what we’re building. At what I’m now sure we’ll be able to continue building.
