Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

41. What are old folks into?

41

WHAT ARE OLD FOLKS INTO?

HAZEL

Labor Day dawned with the kind of swelter that made Pennsylvanians believe in hell. Being a new Pennsylvanian, I was a little surprised at the sauna-like conditions. By 9:00 a.m., the temperature was already in the low nineties and climbing. In the five minutes it took me to bike to the lake, I had sweated through my cute denim shorts and Summer Fest T-shirt.

I steered under the 5K’s starting-line banner, waving at the race volunteers, and pedaled into the park. Securing my bike to the newly installed metal rack, I covertly checked the dampness of my shorts and prayed for the miracle of crotchal ventilation.

Like a heat-seeking missile, my eyes skimmed over the community chaos and zeroed in on Cam. He was shirtless, tattoos on display, torso gleaming like he was made of marble as he muscled temporary fencing into place for the petting zoo under a copse of trees. He spotted me and gave me one of those confident-hot-guy, “remember last night when we were naked” grins.

I imagined my heroine arriving and—upon spying her hero in similar half-naked glory—hilariously riding into a hydration station table. It was funnier and slightly more charming than swamp crotch.

As I sauntered toward Cam, I took stock of the activity around me. Last-minute setup of our small but mighty Summer Fest was in full swing, and Story Lake had turned out for the occasion. Gator had a dozen freshly washed kayaks lined up on the beach, ready to be launched. The ice cream and French fry food stand folks were arranging electrical cables and portable fans for maximum breeze. Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez were tweaking their aging pontoon boat’s summer tiki-bar decor for lake tours.

Volunteers were constructing a stage on the pickleball courts for the band and DJ, both of whom were related to Darius. Garland was scampering around taking pictures like a one-man paparazzo. Even Emilie was there, looking disapproving while she loitered on the marina’s dock.

“Hi,” I said breathlessly when I got to Cam.

He looked up from where he was joining two pieces of fence. “Morning, beautiful.”

“You got up early today,” I noted. He’d crawled out of bed at the unholy hour of six, leaving with a kiss on my hair and a dirty promise or two about quality time later. By the time I’d gotten myself vertical, he was gone, leaving a covered bowl of already-cooked oatmeal on the counter with explosion-avoiding reheating instructions.

“Figured I’d get as much of this done before the sun broils us all,” he said, gesturing at the makeshift paddock and hay bales.

“It looks good. How many animals?—”

My question was cut off when he hooked his work-gloved hand in the waistband of my shorts and tugged me in for a fast, hard, hot kiss.

On cue, “Summer Lovin’” blasted from Darius’s little sister’s DJ speakers, and I once again felt like the heroine in my own story. I wouldn’t even have to rewrite anything about this perfect scene.

“Wow,” I managed.

“I can do better later,” he promised. “After some electrolytes and an hourlong shower.”

“Looking forward to it.” I gestured around us. “It’s really coming together, isn’t it?”

“Appears so.”

“I have a good feeling about today,” I said with a confidence I almost didn’t recognize.

“Good. Since you’re Miss Positivity, why don’t you wander over there and see what you can do about Tweedle Kid and Tweedle Doc.” Cam nodded in the direction of our boy mayor and Dr. Ace, who seemed to be embroiled in a heated—ha—discussion next to the bleachers. It appeared that most of the thirty-four entrants to Story Lake’s Sh*t Out of Luck 5K were eavesdropping.

“I’m on it.” I turned to walk away, but I stopped and gave Cam a lingering flirtatious look. “Just so you know. In my head, you’re moving in slow motion to a hard-rock guitar solo.”

His blatantly wicked grin nearly took me out at the knees. “Good.”

I rolled my eyes and once again turned to leave. He snagged me with a tug on my belt loop and pulled me back against his body. He leaned down, mouth moving against my ear. “Just so you know, Trouble. There’s only one thing hotter than the weather, and she’s standing right in front of me.”

My swoon was due to eighty percent Campbell charm and twenty percent humidity.

Deciding there was no way I could come up with a sexier parting line, I settled for pressing a kiss to his cheek and walking away with a little extra swing in my hips, hoping it would hold his attention before he could notice the crotchal sweat. I headed over to Darius and Ace, arriving just in time to catch part of their argument.

“I can’t in good conscience allow people to run a 5K in this heat,” Ace said. He was wearing a Summer Fest Staff shirt, cargo shorts, Birkenstocks, and compression socks pulled up to his knees. He had one of those personal fans slung around his neck and a wide-brimmed straw hat perched on his salt-and-pepper Afro.

Darius’s outfit was more interesting. He wore a poop emoji mascot costume and appeared to be sweating profusely. His cross-country teammates were taking turns spraying him in the face with water bottles.

“Doc, I am a big fan of the Hippocratic oath. Huge. But we can’t just cancel the first event of Summer Fest. We’ve got legions of people who signed up to run and whose entry fees are going straight to the sewage treatment project.”

“Darius, it’s thirty-four people, and they paid twenty dollars apiece. If we let these folks chase you around town while you’re dressed like doody, you and half of them are going to end up with heat exhaustion, if not worse.”

“Can I be of assistance?” I offered.

“Ye-sh!” Darius sputtered as one of his friends unleashed a stream of water directly into his face.

“Hazel, talk some sense into the mayor,” Ace said. “It’s too hot for people to be out there running. They’ll be dropping like spotted lantern flies in the first mile.”

“This is Pennsylvania. It’s summer. People know what to expect. We have so many water stations set up that I’m worried I should have rented more portable toilets,” Darius said, waving his arms.

Zoey appeared at my elbow. “I need to know what the poop suit is all about.”

Darius preened. “I’m glad you asked, Zoey. All proceeds benefit our sewage treatment upgrade. And any runner who finishes before me gets a free pack of toilet paper from the general store. The good kind with the wave perforations,” he added.

A stream of water hit him in the back of the head and ricocheted onto me.

“I am so happy I asked,” Zoey announced.

“Are we running or what?” shouted an athletic-looking woman who was slathering herself with anti-chafing stick.

“Oh, boy. Okay. How about we leave the decision up to the runners?” I said. “But we put out the word on the Neighborly app requesting people to turn on their hoses or run fans curbside for the race?”

“Lang Johnson brought an extra tent along. I can get it set up as a cooling station. And I bet Rusty’s Fish Hook will donate pitchers of ice water. Maybe they have some spare fans we could use,” Zoey suggested.

Darius clapped his gloved hands, sending what I hoped was a fine spray of just water everywhere. “That is a great idea! You two are going to save the day.”

Ace looked defeated. “At least take off the poop suit, Darius. We can’t have our mayor hospitalized with heat stroke.”

But Darius was already shaking his head. “I hear you. I really do. But this race is bigger than me, bigger than a poop suit. It’s about saving our town. Besides”—he gripped Ace’s shoulder—“I’m not wearing anything under this costume.”

Zoey covered her laugh with a cough. “Darius, you’re the shit,” she said.

Our optimistic, poo-outfitted teenage mayor beamed at her like she’d just promposaled him. “Thanks, Zoey.”

“I have a good feeling about today,” I said again with slightly less confidence.

“This is a nightmare,” I groaned as I adjusted the oscillating fan to aim at half of the high school cross-country team.

“A literal hellscape,” Zoey agreed, dunking a hand towel into a pitcher of lukewarm water and slapping it to the back of a runner’s neck.

“Got another one for you,” Levi called as he backed his truck up to the cooling tent, which was so full of bodies it was probably ten degrees warmer than outside.

“We don’t have room for more,” I said, gesturing at the bedraggled mass of humanity slumped in borrowed lawn chairs.

Ace shot me a doctorial “I told you so” look and harrumphed as he moved past me to help Levi unload the newcomer from the bed of the truck.

A warm, firm hand gripped my shoulder. I swiped away damp bangs to find Cam standing next to me. He’d changed and now wore gym shorts with his sopping-wet Summer Fest shirt tucked into the waistband like it was a quarterback towel. “Hey, Laura just got here with Gatorade and a few bags of ice. I’m gonna help her unload.”

“Oh my God. Thank you! This is an absolute nightmare.”

“Look on the bright side,” he said. “It’s ten thirty and ninety-seven degrees. It can only get worse.”

“I don’t think you know how the bright side works,” I complained.

Cam disappeared and I moved out of the way just in time for Levi and Ace to carry a sopping-wet Darius into the tent. “Did I win?” he mumbled.

“If by winning you mean you were the last person to cross the finish line and my family has to give away our entire toilet paper inventory for free, then yes,” Levi told him.

“Good job, me,” Darius said weakly.

“We need to get him out of this ridiculous costume,” Ace interrupted.

Recalling what Darius said he was wearing underneath, I excused myself to go help with the Gatorade.

I was halfway to the parking lot with the cheerful beat of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” pounding in my head when Darius’s mother jogged up to me.

“I brought a fresh change of clothes for Darius and bad news.”

“He’s under the tent. What’s the bad news?”

“We lost one of the buses.”

“One of the bus trip buses?”

She nodded. “Apparently there was a road closure and the detour took them to Dominion.”

I gasped. “Those bastards. They stole our bus.”

“Darius is going to be devastated.”

“We’ll figure out a way to make it work,” I lied. “Which bus did they get?” Please be the assisted living bus. Please be the assisted living bus.

“It was the family bus.”

Damn it. The family bus would have spent big entertaining the kids and feeding everyone. The assisted living bus was less likely to be a windfall.

“But the assisted living bus will be here in about an hour. They had more bathroom breaks.”

Crap. I considered what my heroine would do. Would she save the day with the perfect executable idea and end up celebrating with free drinks from Rusty’s Fish Hook for the rest of her life? Or was this the dark night of the soul, where she discovered it was all for naught and the town was doomed to disappear into the borders of the evil town next door? Also, why didn’t we use naught anymore?

“Okay. We can handle this. We’re Story Lake. We don’t back down from a challenge,” Darius announced between guzzles from his second grape Gatorade. The entire town council plus Levi, Gage, and Zoey were surrounding him on his lawn chair in the not-so-cooling tent.

“Sometimes we do,” Erleen whispered.

Darius squared his shoulders. “Well, not this time. Dominion is coming after us, and we’re not going to roll over without putting up a fight.”

“What do we do first?” Gage asked.

“Give up. Accept defeat,” Emilie said stubbornly.

“We need to hide all the evidence of this mess,” Ace said, gesturing around the tent at the dehydrated, prone bodies. “The elderly don’t need to be reminded of their mortality. They need to see more life, not less.”

“Why don’t we put everyone in the lake?” Zoey suggested.

Everyone turned to look at her.

“What?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It’ll cool everyone down, and we’ll tell the seniors that it’s good for achy muscles or something. Tell them it’s tradition.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Emilie scoffed.

“You say that a lot,” Erleen pointed out.

“Senior citizens do love quirky traditions,” I said, ignoring the wet blanket and speaking from a purely fictional standpoint.

“Medically speaking, cooling everyone down is a good idea,” Ace agreed.

The Bishop brothers looked at each other and shrugged. Levi heaved a police chiefy sigh. “Fine. We’ll load up everyone willing in the truck and drive them down to the beach.”

“What do the rest of us do?” Emilie demanded. “Pretend to be a bigger town with better amenities?”

Darius snapped his fingers. “Yes! Let’s do that! We need to turn Story Lake into an elderly wonderland. One that they’ll tell all their friends and family about.”

“I’m not going to be party to this idiocy,” Emilie announced.

No one stopped her when she stormed out of the tent.

“Quick. What are old folks into? I’m willing to traffic in stereotypes for the sake of brevity,” I said.

Everyone turned to look at Erleen. “Well, I’m always cold even when it’s hot,” she said.

“Eating dinner early,” Zoey suggested.

“Driving too fucking slow,” Cam added. “Present company excluded. You drive like a bat out of hell powered by nitrous.”

Erleen winked saucily at him.

Ace stroked his chin. “I’m a few years shy of the retirement club, but I love gardening.”

“Bingo! Hobbies that involve sitting. Being included. Young people willing to spend time with them and not minding the ‘back in my day’ stories,” Gage said.

I clapped my hands as the vision took hold. I wasn’t sure if I was plotting out a scene for a book or a scheme to save the town. But it was the only plan we had. “Yes! Okay. Bishops, you haul the bodies—er, runners—into the lake. Encourage them to look lively when the bus stops here. Erleen, you go charm the Fish Hook and Angelo’s into creating new early bird specials. Have them write them up really big and post them outside so they can be seen from a bus.”

“You can count on me,” she promised before spryly taking off for the Fish Hook.

I pointed to our rehydrated mayor. “Darius, I need you to talk to your sister and the band and have them adjust their playlists for the over-seventy-five crowd.”

“On it,” he said, hopping out of his chair like he was regenerated. His knees buckled briefly before he stood straight again.

“I’ll go with him and keep him from passing out or puking on anyone,” Laura volunteered.

“Perfect. When you’re done with that, can you go get the bingo cards? We can set it up here in the cooling tent once all the heat exhaustion victims are out.”

Laura grinned slyly. “You know, Cam is an excellent bingo caller.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Okay, people. Someone get me Garland—the person, not the tinsel—some poster board and markers, and as many walkie-talkies, teenagers, and pots of flowers as you can find. We’re going to save this town if it kills us.”