Page 38 of The Matchmaker
I force myself to meet his gaze, a little embarrassed that he’s witnessing what I try so hard to keep from everyone else. But he doesn’t look judgy, or concerned, or anything that would humiliate me further. He just looks. He looks at me.
The rain cloud above is a dark, swollen gray, dimming the world around us, but that only makes the glow from the temporary traffic lights all the more noticeable. One up the road switches to orange, and I get distracted by the way it falls across him, catching the sharp angle of his face. He obviously shaved for his date, the skin around his jaw smooth and showing off his full lips. I think I prefer the stubble.
And I almost tell him this, my brain so addled that any sense of social preservation has flown out the window. But then his eyes drop to my mouth, and I realize I couldn’t speak even if I tried. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to, and when he suddenly moves my way, I think he’s going to kiss me, and for one wild moment, I think I’m going to let him, but he just leans across to grab the handle instead, setting me free with a flick of his wrist.
“There’s a knack to it,” he says, his breath tickling my cheek. He sits back, waiting, and I take the hint, scrambling out before I do something stupid.
“Katie?”
“Yeah?” I turn around so fast my vision spins, not caring that my hood is down, not caring that I’m getting soaked. But Callum does. He stares at the sight of me, abandoning whatever he was going to say as he reaches into the back and grabs the umbrella.
“At least get a better coat,” he says, tossing it to me, and then he pulls the door closed with a thump and drives off into the rain.
CHAPTER NINE
Don’t get into cars with boys.
My grandmother told me that when I was sixteen, and I am telling it to myself now. Just don’t do it. Don’t ever do it. Even when it’s raining. Even when you trust them. Even when they look at you like they want to do so much more to you than simply drive you home.
Don’t get into cars with boys.
You know what you should do instead? You should work on your damn festival, Katie. You should put together the best festival anyone has ever seen. The kind of festival they write legends about. Or at the very least, lengthy blog posts. Or oral histories! Oral histories inVanity Fairabout the little festival that could. People love an underdog story. Andyouare an underdog story. You are David versus Goliath, you are Rocky Balboa, you are Reese freaking Witherspoon inLegally Blondeand you are going to—
“Would you slow down?” Nush yells behind me. “Some of us have short, if not perfectly proportioned legs.”
I whirl around, adjusting my backpack as Gemma and Nush catch up with me.
“I feel like you’re in a mood,” Nush says.
“I’m not in a mood.”
“You look like you’re in a mood.”
“I’llbe in a mood if we don’t get there before the rain starts.” Gemma takes a sip from her flask as she peers distrustfully at the clouds. The storm that swept through the area a few days ago hasn’t completely gone, and we’ve been having frequent showers ever since. I half hoped it would be enough to slow down the construction work, but those guys really mean it when they say they work in all-weather conditions. “This is the start of a horror movie,” Gemma adds now. “I just want you both to be aware of that.”
I turn on my heel, ignoring them. It’s been over two weeks since the village meeting and things are not going well. First, there’s the fact that no one wants to invest in my genius idea. No one wants to sponsor or fund or loan me a cent. And turns out you need a lot of cents to host something like this. You need cents for bunting and posters and lights. You need it for food and alcohol. For music and insurance and first aid kits and photo booths and, to be honest, all the things I don’t think they necessarily worried about back when they didn’t have social media or, like, gluten intolerances. But they’re all things we have to worry about now. Especially if we’re going to garner the kind of press attention we need to get. And we’re going to need a lot of press. We’re going to need—
“Katie!”
I slow my steps, turning again as the other two emerge around the bend, this time with Nush holding her side like she’s got a stitch.
“Remind me never to go hiking with you,” she huffs.
“We’re here anyway.” I gesture up at the big barn before us, nervous about how they both stare at it. Nush confused and Gemma resigned.
“Is this where you’re going to murder us?”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I say. “It doesn’t look that bad.”
“It looks pretty bad.”
“I forgot this was even here,” Nush says, and I grimace. The barn is one of many abandoned buildings around the village, and I’ll admit it doesn’t look like much. But once we cut back the grass on either side, it won’t be so bad.
I think.
Hidden just inside the forest, a few minutes away from the lake, it was the biggest place I could think of to hold something like this.
“I thought the whole point was to have everything at Kelly’s?” Gemma asks.
