Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138881 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 556(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
“I heard something, Corbin,” he says, jaw tight, tone sharp.
“What did you hear?” I ask, as nonchalantly as I can while dread swirls in me.
“I heard from my former first-grade teacher, who’s in the knitting club, who heard it from Zoe at the gym, who heard it from the barista at Rise and Grind, that you hooked up with my sister in the middle of the bakery.”
A laugh scrapes my throat because that is a serious game of small-town telephone. But still, the words hooked up hang heavily in the air.
I scramble for an excuse. Except, hold on. The mental gymnastics he just went through tell me he doesn’t actually know what we did in the kitchen, so he doesn’t know I’ve lied to him. Sure, he must know that I kissed his sister on opening night. But I did it in front of Ronnie, Tiffany, and Brittany.
I stay on the facts—just the facts.
“What did the barista see?” I ask, keeping my cool.
He huffs. “You guys were kissing. She saw it, and it was in front of that fucking flying asshat from Webflix.”
Must have been Joni who started this somehow. She probably lingered outside out of view. She probably saw that kiss.
Think fast. Think really fast. But then it hits me—I have to do what I do on the ice. Pivot and go with a new play. And that play just happens to be…the truth.
Or some of the truth.
“Dude,” I say in a conspiratorial tone. “Ronnie and his friends were coming at Mabel and saying stuff like, ‘Oh, you’re so sad about your ex talking shit about you on Webflix.’ So I claimed we were together. I wanted to shut down the idea that she opened the bakery because she was sad over Dax. I wanted to mess with them, change the narrative, as they say.”
Theo pauses, his eyes narrowed, but he’s clearly considering my take. “You did it to fuck with Ronnie?”
I see the spark in his eye, and I know where this is going. “Yes, your enemy.”
Sometimes I soothe him with monkey bread. Sometimes I soothe him by distracting him with his other enemies. “And Webflix, by extension, since Ronnie’s show is with them,” he adds, like he should be twirling a mustache in an old-timey movie.
I keep going, so he knows I’m on the good side. “I had to sell it, so I kissed her in front of them. They made it seem like she was desperate over Dax, and fuck that.”
“Fuck Dax,” Theo echoes. After a few seconds, he unleashes a huge sigh of relief. “You are a motherfucking genius. I knew it. You are the playmaker.”
I feel a little oily taking that compliment from him, even though I know this lie of omission is better than the truth. Since there won’t be a fifth time with Mabel.
“Exactly. And we want people to say good things about the bakery, so if this little charade helps, so be it.” Then, I tell him about the pickleball challenge, so he knows we’ll need to fake date for that.
“You’d better make sure she destroys them. If you have to fake-date your way through that, you need to do it.”
“I will,” I say, wishing I weren’t looking forward to spending time with Mabel on the court.
But I seriously am.
30
THE LAWN MEN
CORBIN
In my yard the next night, under Christmas lights that Charlotte and I hung twinkling from a maple tree, I toss a bag at the cornhole board, but miss badly, the bag skidding to the grass.
“Bummer. Can’t win everything,” Miller says, blowing on his nails and peacocking because he keeps winning game after game. He taps his chest. “I mean. I can. But you? Not so sure.”
I hand Miller the striped bag of mine from the ground. “Would you like this for your trophy case? A memento of when you came to my backyard and won a lawn game?”
He takes it, holds it up, and considers it. “As a matter of fact, I think I would.”
“You need something for your trophy case, Lockwood,” Tyler says from his spot a few feet away. He’s one of our friends from the Sea Dogs, our cross-town rivals, and he tries to hang out with us when he can. His kids are in the garage with Charlotte, watching a movie.
“This will be your first recognition of any kind, right?” Riggs asks. He’s on the deck, stretched out in an Adirondack chair.
“Right,” Miller deadpans. The dude has won multiple awards as a top goalie. “And I will display it proudly.”
“All right, let’s see who wins this round,” Tyler says, then goads Ivan and Lake into joining in the next game.
I join Riggs on the deck, pouring myself an iced tea from the pitcher. Don’t want to drink liquor since Charlotte is here with me tonight. I pick up the glass and then flop into the chair next to my teammate’s, glancing at the few remains of the spread that had covered the table earlier. We plowed through all the sandwiches and left no crumbs.