Maybe this is where I’m supposed to be.
And maybe I was supposed to be here all along.
The timer on the stove beeps, and I pull the cookies out and tap the tray on the counter so they flatten and the tops crack—an old trick Giada taught me.
As soon as they’re cool enough to touch, I steal one and plate the others, leaving them on the kitchen island for Dad and Odette.
I could get used to the quiet life.
No more shoebox apartment. No more waiting tables. No more rushing from fruitless audition to fruitless audition. I can’t remember the last time I saw an actual sunset. Or the last time I managed to go a whole week without some random person on the subway flipping me off for accidentally making eye contact with them.
The city life isn’t as glamorous or exciting as teenage me thought it would be.
Some days I’d look out my apartment window and watch people heading to work in the morning in their power suits and Italian leather loafers, one by one, all in a row, like ants on a farm. Other days, I’d marvel at how a person could feel so lonely in a city with millions of other people.
I retire to my room, pull my laptop from my suitcase, and pull up the job listing in Northcutt.
Ten minutes later, I’ve submitted my resume.
Here’s to chance, here’s to going wherever the wind blows me as long as it’s not New York.
28
Wyatt
* * *
The sickeningly sweet scent of funnel cakes and cotton candy flood the air Friday night as Cash, McCoy, and I work our way through the festival crowd. I didn’t plan on coming to this thing, but McCoy begged and Cash gave me shit for being anti-social, so I gave in.
“I want to ride that one,” McCoy says, tugging on his daddy’s arm and pointing at some multi-colored contraption that goes upside down and every which way.
Cash shoots me a raised-brow look, and I chuckle, surrendering my hands in the air.
“That one’s all yours,” I say.
I don’t know what it’s like to have kids, but I imagine it’s a whole lot of doing things you don’t want to do because it puts a smile on their face.
Cash and McCoy head for the mile-long line, and I spot an empty picnic bench nearby to bide my time. I’m halfway there when a familiar laugh trails from a crowd of women a few yards away.
I haven’t seen nor heard from Blaire all week—and now she’s standing maybe ten feet away, laughing and chatting without a care in the world. Brushing her dark waves over her suntanned shoulder, she scans the grassy fairway … stopping when she notices me.
Maybe it was dumb luck.
Or maybe the weight of my stare was so heavy it pulled her out of her conversation.
Either way, she doesn’t look away and neither do I.
Getting up, I make my way over to say hi, given that walking away after locking eyes would be the ultimate dick move.
“Hey,” she says. Her lips are slicked in pink gloss and her hair has been curled. The floral skirt of her sundress blows in the light breeze.
“Hi.”
“You here with your mama tonight?”
“She’s working some donut stand,” I say. “She does it every year.”
“The one with the line halfway to the parking lot?” she asks.
“That’d be the one.”
“Did you come alone?” Her eyes sparkle under the glow of the full moon tonight, and she surveys the crowd.
“Cash and McCoy are around here somewhere.”
“Ah. I’m sorry I missed them.”
A week ago, she was in my bed, now we’re making stilted small talk like a couple of acquaintances with social obligations.
“I was going to grab a drink and head to the Whiskey Moon and make a wish,” she says. There’s a softness in her voice that wasn’t there last weekend. “You want to come with?”
Her invitation catches me off guard. We didn’t exactly leave off in a great place the last time we were together. Cash and McCoy are still at the end of their line. The thing has barely budged.
“Yeah,” I say. Oliver’s warning plays in the back of my head, but if he happens to be here and happens to see us together, I’ve no doubt his daughter will tell the truth—that we bumped into each other.
The bastard can rest assured I’m not up to anything.
“You never told me what you wished for that night,” she says as we get in line at a beer tent. “Whatever it was, did it come true?”
She orders two draft beers, and I pay.
“Nope,” I say. “It never did.”
Blaire hands me my beer and takes a sip from hers as we continue toward the famed marble sculpture.
“Neither did mine,” she says. “Ivy told me all of hers have come true. Every last one.”
“I call bullshit.”
“Are you saying Ivy lied?”