Page 16 of Where It All Began
Phoebe looked at him quietly and then slipped off her stool. She walked down the aisle away from him.
“Phoebe.” He followed her between the metal racks and bins of vinyl and cassettes. He wasn’t going to give up until this was settled. He’d been an ass before, and now he was fucking up his apology. If he could just write it out, deliver it that way, she’d at least understand.
She plucked a tape out of a bin and slapped it against his chest. “Consider it stage one of educating John.”
Culture ClubKissing to Be Clever.
“If I promise to listen to this and answer fifty percent of your incessant questions, can we start over?”
She gave him a smile that had his blood stirring. “I’d like that.”
Chapter Eight
They walked along Main Street, John carrying the bag with his new cassette and Phoebe enjoying the colorful cacophony of storefronts. He sprung for ice cream for dinner at a kitschy little shop called Karma Kustard, and Phoebe considered John fully forgiven.
She’d decided “when in Rome” and went for the Technicolor rainbow cone. John had—predictably—stuck with plain old vanilla.
He seemed to be amused by her reaction to the entire town.
“I just can’t believe this place is real.” She shook her head, scanning the Frisbee tournament happening in the park across the street.
“What’s so unreal about it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Everything. You’ve lived here your whole life, so you don’t even see the fleet of VW vans or the tie-dye twins named Daisy and Dharma who say ‘groovy’ and ‘far out’.”
“That’s just surface weird. We’re pretty normal underneath it all.”
“Oh, really? Didn’t one of your normal townsfolk con you into believing I was a man?”
“That probably happens everywhere.”
She snorted. “When’s the last time you left the county? There’s a whole wide world of people who mind their own business out there.”
John remained silent, content to focus on his ice cream cone.
“Why did she do it, anyway?” Phoebe asked. “What did this Mrs. Normandon—”
“Nordemann,” he corrected.
“Nordemann. What did she hope to get out of this? It seems odd for a stranger to be so invested in helping me finish my thesis.”
He hemmed and hawed his way to a half-ass answer. “Who knows the workings of the female mind?”
“Me. I do.” She drilled her finger into his shoulder. “I know the workings of the female mind. And I know there must have been some kind of reason for her to foist a female grad student on you.”
He cleared his throat and took a breath. “Well, then. I expect she wants me to marry you and live happily ever after.”
Phoebe’s ice cream cone fell out of her hand and splatted on the sidewalk in a puddle of rainbow. “Marry you? She never even met me! I could have been some college coed psychopath! She wouldn’t even know if we were compatible. You can’t just force two people together and expect them toget married!I thought this town was trapped in the ’60s not the 1860s.”
“Next you’re going to tell me that’s something that only happens in Blue Moon.” John handed her a fistful of napkins
“Yes! Itis.” She stooped to scoop up her sidewalk dessert with a napkin and deposited it in the trashcan. She frowned at him until he offered her his cone. She took a lick, noting the sharpening in his eyes.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
He shrugged, unconcerned. “What can I do?”
“You can’t make me marry you.”
