Page 141 of Story of My Life
“What are your thoughts, Hazel?” Ace asked.
“Yeah, what would one of your towns do in this situation?” Erleen asked.
All eyes turned to me. Emilie made a noise that sounded like strangulation.
“Oh, um. Well, I don’t know. I–I’ll have to think about it,” I said, awkwardly floundering. Not only did I have no idea what I was talking about when it came to funding a town budget, I also didn’t really do the words-out-of-the-mouth thing. I was much better at the words-on-the-page thing.
“Of course, of course,” Darius said. “This was just to get the conversation started because I would really love it if we had some viable options to present at the next official meeting. I’m one thousand percent confident that we’ll find a solution.”
The poor optimistic kid sounded like he really meant it. Old Hazel with her happyish marriage and her best-selling rom-comseries would have believed it too. But now I knew that happily ever afters didn’t really happen off the page.
Every time I started to forget that, life reared up and smacked me in the face with a fish…or a potential bankruptcy. I’d come here hoping to get laid tonight. Now all I could think about was losing my new hometown to a poop problem.
32
GOOD IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD
CAMPBELL
You don’t needto give Hazel a ride home,” I told the boy wonder mayor as the unofficial council meeting broke up.
Ahead of us, Emilie muttered under her breath about time-outs and the First Amendment.
“Have you ever considered a Reiki cleanse or a good personal sageing?” Erleen asked her as they headed into the parking lot.
“I don’t?” Darius asked over the nighttime cacophony of tree frogs and crickets.
“He doesn’t?” Hazel said, still looking shell-shocked from the “shitty” news. Ha.
“Got those tile samples for you to take a look at.” I hooked my thumb in the direction of my truck.
She frowned, obviously not recognizing a ploy to get her alone.
“Yeah, for everywhere but the bedroom,” I said pointedly.
Her eyebrows winged up as the realization dawned. “Oh,thosetiles. Yes, I would very much like to look at your tiles.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Then I’m just going to skedaddle home and get to that chemistry homework. Looking forward to your solutions at thenext council meeting,” Darius said, pointing finger guns in our direction.
“Bye, Darius,” Hazel called after him before turning to look at me. “Tile samples?” she teased.
I didn’t want to think about problems or solutions or excuses. I wanted to forget about all the figurative and literal shit and just feel good for a change.
“Would you rather go home with Boy Wonder?” I asked.
“No, I would not.”
I reached for her wrist.
“But I feel kind of bad skipping off to have sex—if that’s whattile samplesis a euphemism for—when the town is on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“First of all, I’m not skipping anywhere. Second, life’s uncertain. Have sex first.”
“An interesting life philosophy. I bet you can’t skip.”
“I bet I can do other more interesting things.”
