2. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Patrick
If there was one thing that irked me most, it was being late. Especially today, running late for the big Russo family Labor Day weekend picnic. But I couldn’t just leave a meeting I’d planned.
Scratch that. Something else irked me more. A thing I’d sworn I’d never do again. Ever. And yet I had.
But hey, it was the weekend (community organizing happened at all hours, and particularly when folks were off work) and I was about to see my favorite people in the world. Including my favorite person.
I parked on the street and grabbed my pathetic store-bought container of coleslaw, heading toward the Russos’ house. The same house I’d spent countless hours inside of, outside of, and twice on top of (which none of our parents knew about to this day—playing on the roof wasn’t exactly a sanctioned childhood activity, even for a one-story ranch).
What could I say? When I joined up with the Russo brothers, it was like I became a different person. Louder. More daring. A dash rowdy. Same with their cousin Lucas. We were like a pack of mildly behaved wolves back then, tearing through backyards and ripping up the streets on our bikes .
And then there was Marcy.
No words summed up Marcy. Maybe perfect. But people were too critical when you called someone perfect. They picked apart the perfection in a desperate move to reveal flaws. Only Marcy didn’t have flaws. I’d go up against anyone who dared say there were.
Through the side gate to the backyard, children flew past with water guns, screeching and squealing. A dog happily barked as music floated over from an old stereo with an extension cord leading into the detached garage. An Adele song that was probably too slow and sentimental for this party.
The backyard burst into view. People everywhere. A canopy tent at the back of the yard protected the older generation from the late summer sun as they dished gossip over their paper plates of food. I could set up that tent in my sleep if I had to, I’d helped the guys so many times.
A whirlwind of dark curls came into view. A petite fury moving toward the house.
The Adele song had switched over to Rihanna’s Where Have You Been. My eyes connected with Marcy’s as the song drifted over.
Her shoulders eased as she spotted me. Everything else fell away. Just Marcy and a swirl of color that faded behind her.
She wore a red sundress. It hugged her curves and had thick shoulder straps leading to a neckline I couldn’t name. It looked retro or vintage, a style she went for when she dressed up. Lipstick that had probably once been red but paled as the party went on.
In a word, perfect.
She barreled toward me and grabbed my arm. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Well, hello there yourself.” This was not unusual, her abrupt greeting. Actually, I expected it. I even kind of liked it .
“I didn’t think it was possible, but this party actually got bigger this year. It’s like these people multiply. There’s always new kids—not even babies, but like fully functional kids—who even spawned them? And the out-of-the-woodwork folks who say they met my old Pop-pop in like, nineteen-seventy-something. I swear, they put a flier up at the old folks’ home. And they all want pie.”
“Can’t beat Nonna Russo’s peach pie.”
Despite her annoyance, I loved their big family and its extensions. After all, I was only an honorary Russo. I liked that they made room for the rest of us.
“It’s harder this year since Mamá basically dumped the planning on me.” She craned her neck. “I think my great aunt is coming out. Let’s move or we’ll get trapped.”
Pitching the coleslaw into a large platter lined with ice packs, I followed her. Marcy loved her family, even her nosy, elderly great aunts, and the nosy non-elderly aunts, but she was right—those ladies set traps you never saw coming. Mainly involving weddings and babies and talking about other people’s weddings and babies.
“And don’t get me started on my nonna—she is completely adding to the stress.” Marcy led us deeper into the yard. “She’s been harping on us grandkids to get married. I mean, she already got to experience her own children marrying and having babies, right?”
We stopped at the base of the oak tree near the back fence. The invisible shape of the long-gone treehouse appeared in my mind. We’d taken it down after her younger brother Robby finished high school. Then we burned the wood in a bonfire at his graduation party.
“I know I’m late. Sorry, you couldn’t find me.”
She huffed out a loud breath. “You don’t have to apologize. You’re a busy guy.” She looked up at me, finally seeming to settle as her breathing relaxed. “Really though, thanks for coming. I’m glad you’re here. I know you’re actually busy trying to change the world.”
Trying being the key word there. Failing, more like it. But I was more concerned how bothered Marcy appeared. Really bothered. “Are you sure that’s all that’s going on? What about the—” I glanced around. “ Bakery. ” I mouthed the words.
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed.
“I literally kept my voice out of the word.”
She swatted my arm. “My aunts can lip read.” She cast a look over her shoulder which shifted the curls softly at her shoulder. “Nothing new to report. Hudson showing me that scrubby old empty restaurant got me imagining all sorts of big ideas. My family will never go for it. It’s a lost cause. You haven’t told anybody, have you?”
I didn’t flinch. “Of course not. Did you check out the grant application I sent you?”
Working at a legal clinic opened my eyes to just how many grant funding opportunities existed, if you knew where to find them. As soon as Marcy had texted me about visiting the vacant storefront (separate from the group chat with her brothers and cousin—she and I had our own side chat), my mind ran wild. Sure, that strip mall had been a dead-end, but I could absolutely see Marcy pursuing a bakery on her own.
So I’d gotten to work looking for funding opportunities.
“Yeah.” Her tone came distracted and uncertain. “It’s a long shot. There are so many other people more deserving. I don’t know if I could take that money from them.”
“It’s a grant specifically for women-owned start-ups in suburban districts. It’s exactly a fit for you.”
She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “We’ll talk more later. Anyway, how’s the election campaign? Mr. Future Mayor.” She grinned and jabbed me in the arm. A flirty jab. No, a friendly jab .
“Yeah, uh...” How did I succinctly express the disaster that was my newly minted election campaign? Out of my depth? Clueless? Too much heart-on-my-sleeve and not enough grit? I could put on a front, but who was I kidding? Marcy would see right through it. “Not great. It’s not great.”
Even worse, I’d already had to do the unthinkable.
“What do you mean not great? Isn’t that old frog finally getting the boot from his way-too-long gig as a hokey small-town mayor?”
Leave it to Marcy to summarize the situation in the least politically savvy way. “Yeah, he’s leaving, but family dynasties are tough to challenge.”
“Because the frog’s mother’s uncle is now running for the job.”
“He’s the mayor’s nephew.” She knew that. I knew she knew that.
“Tell me again why you want to be mayor of a dinky town stuck in the middle of the Detroit suburbs? I mean, it’s not exactly…well, if I can put it delicately—”
“You? Delicate?” a loud voice interrupted, followed by a louder snort.
“Hey!” Marcy spun toward her brother Robby passing by. He carried a plate near the brink of collapse piled high with cookies and treats. “I can be delicate, you boar,” she shot back.
I smirked at Robby’s plate.
Guilt streaked his face. “What? It’s for the old folks.” When I didn’t respond, he pointed toward the tent. “Look at them. They’re waiting on their brownies. I do the delivery.”
“He’s going to eat half that plate himself,” Marcy said to me.
“Probably.”
She watched her brother walk off. “Anyway, you’re destined for bigger things. It’s not even a full town, it’s a village .”
She sneered, as if there weren’t over two-hundred-fifty existing villages in the great state of Michigan to this day .
“Actually, Birchwood Hills is classified as a city, just a small one. But calling it a town works.”
“Okay, truth,” she went on. “Your little village-slash-town-slash-city is super cute. It’s like Gilmore Girls, minus the gazebo in the town square and the people who all talk the same. I get the appeal, I mean it’s like, small-town America weirdly wedged within a sprawling metropolis.”
“That’s actually why I’m running late. Those townsfolk are, well, vocal. Words out about the mayor’s interest in that casino deal. Plus proposed retail that would take out undeveloped land and apartments, so they’re upset. He says it’s about bringing in jobs, but it’s actually back-end deals that benefit him. We need to support our existing commerce instead of putting them out of business with chain stores that don’t value investment in our community. I promised I would do everything in my power to stop it if I get elected.”
She scowled. “Ugh. The last thing anybody needs is more mega-stores that close in a few years and contribute to urban blight.”
My heart dead stopped. She just used the phrase urban blight. As if I could be any more into her. “I just wish the town believed in my actual ability to fix it.”
“They don’t believe you can? Why?”
This was hard to admit. “The painful truth? I’m young and inexperienced.”
“You’re an attorney. You live in their town. You single-handedly saved their community center from going under.”
“Not single-handedly. I organized the initiative. That wasn’t all me.”
She tapped at her closed lips as she considered what I said.
She had no idea what that small gesture did to me .
It made me think things. About us. Things I swore I would leave behind. Things—feelings—from back in high school, from college, from last week. We were friends. Good friends. Close friends.
Maybe even best friends. If friendship could exist between two opposite sexes who also were interested in the opposite sex. Marcy swore it to be true. I wanted to believe.
That group chat that was just us? I loved that chat. Every time she wrote to just me, I treasured the words. She’d told me about her bakery dream when she didn’t trust her family with that dream. That meant something.
But it sure was hard to convince myself we were meant only as friends when she tapped those berry red lips. Soft lips I could press my own into and—
Marcy swatted me again. “Patrick James Strauss. What is up with you?”
No, not the full name. Anything but the full name.
My resistance weakened. The dress, the lips, and how she’d said I was destined for more. For you. What if I’m destined for you?
Nope. Nothing good came of those thoughts. We were destined for this—friends and no more. Because that’s what worked. It had worked for us since we were kids. I was practically a Russo myself at this point.
Except I wasn’t. A fact I never strayed too far from. I was in the Russo clan, but not of them. I had my own family apart from them who were honestly quite proud of themselves, even if I wasn’t always.
“I’m just…disappointed in myself,” I finally let out. “I did the thing I said I would never do.”
She gasped. “You set up a finsta to follow trashy celebrity gossip?”
“No.” I was going to have to ask. “What’s a—”
“Fake Insta,” she filled in. “A second, secret Instagram account. I don’t know if the kids say that anymore.” Her nose scrunched. Cute and sexy today? I was a goner. “No matter. You should feel empowered to follow trashy celebrity accounts on your real profile.”
I wished that was my issue. “I asked my parents for help.”
She blew out a long breath. “Yikes.”
“Yeah, yikes.” I’d sworn when I put my name in for this election, I’d run entirely on my own. Running for mayor was my thing, on my terms, and not an attempt to impress my family or to use their name or clout.
And I’d already failed. At this morning’s sparsely-attended community event, a middle-aged woman with two bored kids in tow asked what I’d do to preserve their small community. I’d rushed to tell her, in what I believed to be an impassioned call to action, and she’d waved me off.
Literally, she’d flapped her hand in the air, rolling her eyes. “You’re a sweet kid, but you’re not facing reality. Besides, what do you know about raising a family? You’re twenty-five. As green as they come.”
I was twenty-eight and…yeah, pretty green when it came to politics.
Marcy did a pout thing with her mouth, which meant she was thinking and not trying to be cute. Not trying, but still cute. “They can’t just have that frog family run the town forever. They need a fresh face and vision.”
My thoughts exactly. “You should probably stop calling them frogs though. Their last name is Ribben.”
“ Ribbit .” She made a croaking frog sound.
“Rib- ben .”
“ Ribbit ,” she repeated the same cartoonish noise, stone-faced.
She broke me and I laughed. “Watch it. You’ll be around them some time and it will slip.”
“I’m sure they’ve been called worse. It’s a family of politicians.” She made a gagging gesture .
“What’s it like being friends with a would-be politician? Am I tainting the air around you?”
“Not you, you’re different.” Her voice grew lighter. “You’re one of the good ones.” She squeezed my arm, the part covered by my polo shirt sleeve. Her hand relaxed and trailed down to my elbow, hitting skin. A thrill rushed through me at her touch.
I moved back, cleared my throat. “Thanks. So my folks, naturally, jumped at the chance to…help. I’ve got a meeting set about the campaign. My mom hired a consultant.”
“Oh. Well, that sounds promising.” Marcy smiled brightly. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Look, your parents love you.”
“Sure. It’s how they show that love that’s the problem.” An issue for tomorrow. Right now, I was here with Marcy, which was what mattered. And my friends were here, her brothers and cousin, and her friends in from out of town, all of whom I’d totally ignored in search of Marcy. “You know what? I’m starved.”
Her eyes lit up. “I saved two of my cinnamon rolls for you. Eat those first and then move on to Uncle Tito’s brisket.”
I relaxed. “Sounds amazing.”
Almost as amazing as her touching me a minute ago, but I’d keep that to myself.