Page 18 of Where It All Began
“What. Was. That?” Phoebe breathed.
“Rainbow Gilbenthal and Gordon Berkowicz. They’re an item.”
Phoebe grinned. “You’re an old soul, John.”
He winced. “It’s because I said ‘an item’ isn’t it?”
“That and about a thousand other things.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I think I kinda like it,” she confessed. “Except the part where you think that because I’m a woman I can’t do shit jobs.”
“It’s hard to think aboutyouas a farm hand. Not women in general. You specifically.”
“I’m not sure if that’s better or worse,” she admitted.
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He settled her in an aisle seat in the theater that had retained its art deco glory. Two seats over, a girl with a chaotic headful of tight black curls grinned at them.
“Stay here and behave, please,” John said quietly.
“Aren’t you sitting here?” Phoebe asked. She’d hoped that sitting quietly next to him at the little town meeting would give her some time to think. He’d dumped an awful lot on her in a short period of time. From an apology to his admission of attraction, their entire relationship may have just shifted. And Phoebe wanted to know what that meant.
John shook his head, looking a little green around the gills.
“He’s gotta participate,” the girl with the curls said, tilting her bag of popcorn toward the stage. “Good luck up there, Pierce.”
John looked like he was going to toss his ice cream, and Phoebe leaned away just in case.
“I’ll meet you after,” he said and trudged toward the stairs on the side of the stage like a man facing his death sentence. Phoebe watched him cross the stage and take a seat between two more residents. He pulled a piece of yellow legal paper out of his back pocket and began studying it.
“Elvira Eustace,” the woman said, leaning across the empty seat and offering her non-butter-covered hand for a shake.
“Phoebe Allen.”
“Oh, you must be John’s grad student.” Elvira offered the popcorn to Phoebe.
Phoebe dug out a handful of greasy goodness. “I am but not the one he was expecting.”
“Mmm, I heard Mrs. Nordemann pulled a fast one on him.”
“Yeah, what exactly happened with that? She was my second cousin’s college roommate, and when I was looking for a farm to spend the summer on, my aunt said that John and Blue Moon would love to have me.”
Elvira chuckled. “Jillian abhors loneliness. She’s been happily married since she was nineteen and thinks everyone else should be, too. She figured John out there all by his lonesome on those two hundred acres needed some company.”
“Some female company?”
Elvira nodded sagely. “Yep. And she knew he wouldn’t ‘go gentle into that good night.’”
“So, she pulled a fast one on him.”
“There’s a lot of fast ones pulled around here. It’s part of our charm,” Elvira insisted.
“Can you give me a crash course in Blue Moon?” Phoebe begged.
“First, you shouldn’t have left a seat between us. Blue Moon is all about acceptance and snooping in other people’s business, and that means giving up all rights to your personal space.”
