He was essentially a stranger, and she didn’t want to give him any signals other than she needed his presence to convince the town that the curse was broken.
He noticed her watching him and pushed his sunglasses up on his head. “What?”
“Not bad for your first time. If you want to start from that end, we can meet in the middle. Once we get this bed weeded, we can replant the rose bushes.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Do it anyway,” she said with a sweet smile.
She turned away but not before she caught the edges of a slight grin on his face.
Conrad refused to admit that he was starting to enjoy himself with Indy. She was funny with her little asides and when she forgot herself, she sang little snippets of Taylor Swift songs under her breath—which she clearly didn’t know the words to because she sort of hummed half of the time.
It didn’t change the fact that he was still pissed off at her for forcing him to come back to Gilbert Corners, but in her shoes, he might have done the same. And he respected that. Grudgingly but still. He respected her.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and noticed he’d missed a call from Dash. He got up and started to walk away.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“I have to make a call. I’ll come back,” he said. He wasn’t used to explaining himself to anyone, and he didn’t particularly like it. He moved down away from the train station and the crowds of townspeople. Some of them seemed genuine curious about him. A few stopped him to congratulate him on the success of his show.
“Con?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Just checking to make sure you’re okay,” Dash said; there was a note in his voice that Conrad hadn’t heard in a long time. Something that he remembered from the teenage years before like had changed.
“Why?”
“Saw a picture on social media of you in Gilbert Corners. I’m pretty sure hell hasn’t frozen over—”
“Fuck off. You know she told everyone I was coming,” he said, but there was no heat in it. He was happy to hear Dash laughing. Something his cousin didn’t do very often.
“I do—you just normally don’t allow yourself to be manipulated like that.”
“Well between her comment and you donating the funds for the project, I couldn’tnotshow up.”
“I thought that might be the case, but that’s why I was vague about either of us showing up to help. So... Indy Belmont?”
“What about her?”
“You like her?”
“I hadn’t realized I’d dialed in to your talk radio show, Dr. Dash,” Conrad said.
“So that’s a yes.”
“I’m hanging up now and I’ll mention to Jeff that you can’t wait to come help next weekend.”
He hung up the phone and pocketed it. The accident had changed so much between him and his cousin, but until this moment, he hadn’t fully realized what it had taken from them. None of them had been the same after. Conrad had leaned into his anger as he always did and let that drive him away from Gilbert Corners and their grandfather, but also from Dash. Something he wasn’t going to allow to continue.
“Would you like an iced coffee?”
He turned to see Indy standing a polite distance from him holding one of two tumblers toward him. “Figured you might want something before we start planting.”
“Trying to butter me up?”
“Is it working?”