Chapter 17 Maisey
MAISEY
“Ta-da!”
Dolly does a little shimmy, showing off the back of her T-shirt, arms outstretched like she’s Simone Biles balancing on the high beam. I smile, not only thrilled to see the idea come to life, but that they made it in time.
The basic heather-gray tee has The Booby Trap logo across the front, looking fairly unassuming from this angle.
Until you turn around. Across the back is a largemouth bass partially encircled by a rod and reel, with the tag line I like a big mouth on my rod printed alongside the curve of the fishing line.
The double entendre makes me giggle—again—same as it has every time I’ve looked at the design.
“It’s perfect!” I tell her, taking a big sip of my coffee. And then another.
We have a long day ahead of us, and it’s only just starting. At barely five thirty.
The second annual Reel Madness, a charity fishing event The Booby Trap is hosting to raise money for Hayes Cares, the charitable arm of Hayes Industries, is up and running, with Silver Lake’s parking lot already full of tents, trucks, boats, and people.
The volunteers finished up their safety meeting not long ago, and registration will officially open shortly— getting this show on the road for the more than one hundred and fifty teams that are registered.
As one of the EMTs on for the day, all I can do is hope that it’s a calm, uneventful day. At least for the humans. The fish are on their own.
“We’ve already sold six,” Bronwyn Ainsworth-Keller, Hayes’s Director of Marketing says, rounding the merch table. “We are absolutely going to sell out of the tees and the stickers and the koozies. I should have bought more stuff with that design on it.”
I laugh, excited that she’s excited. “I’ll make sure that Ewan stocks it in the store. I honestly don’t know how he and Milo didn’t come up with it themselves.”
“Because as smart-ass-y as all those boys are, they don’t think about using that skill for marketing. Actually, they just don’t think about marketing,” Bronwyn says.
Dolly and I look at each other, unable to argue that point.
Neither of our Hayes men put any kind of effort into marketing.
To be fair, Hux is over lumber and paper, so not an area that traditional marketing really applies to, but even if it did, zero thought would go into it.
Ewan, though, does nothing. I know this for a fact because I’ve asked.
Very specifically when I showed him the largemouth design and told him all about making shirts and stickers and how we could sell them.
He looked at me like I was an Oompa Loompa escaped from the chocolate factory, before asking, “People will buy stickers with my store name on it?”
That was the point I knew I needed to get Bronwyn fully involved.
“I’m working on hiring a social media manager who can focus on building an online presence and personality for Southern Brothers and The Booby Trap, so any other ideas like this you have up your sleeve, let me know. Unless you’re interested in the role?”
“Absolutely not,” I answer without thinking. “I’ll take an open wound to dance trends any day.”
Bronwyn laughs. “You can keep the blood and guts, but I’m with you on the dance trend part. Which is why I need someone who is good at all that stuff. I know a gal from my days at Coffman Witte who always had a pulse on hot trends, but if you guys know of anyone…”
She looks between Dolly and me, as if the two of us are going to be a wealth of knowledge in the area and have a ready-made list of names for her.
Truthfully, Dolly might, since she knows people in this town still.
Meanwhile, I’m over here wondering if it would be rude for me to Google Coffman Witte to figure out what that is.
“Here’s what I know. If I don’t make it back to the food tent, I run the risk of Huxley Hayes eating all the cinnamon rolls before the guests arrive,” Dolly says.
“Please don’t let that happen,” I say, my pulse jumping at the thought. “Ewan would lose his mind.”
“Have you seen him recently?” Bronwyn asks. “He was supposed to be bringing me a list of team names but then he disappeared.”
Sounds about right. He’s been running around like a chicken with his head cut off since the alarm went off this morning.
I swear he hasn’t stopped for a single second, barely slowing his truck long enough for me to get out, or for him to kiss me goodbye when he dropped me off at the fire station this morning.
Good thing I’ve practiced my tuck and roll.
I think I’ve seen him maybe twice—both times in passing—since Landon and I arrived in the ambulance.
“Not recently, but I’ll text him and let him know you need him,” I tell her, pulling out my phone.
My fingers fly across the screen, my text thread with Ewan on top of the list, tapping out a message for him to head to the merch tent whenever he gets a chance.
Saying our goodbyes to Bronwyn, I loop my arm through Dolly’s and head back toward the food tent. Jace Hayes’s voice carries through the early morning air, his safety first reminder to the volunteers hopefully not landing on deaf ears.
“Sooooooo…” Dolly prods, her single word drug out for multiple syllables. I look over at her, our arms still linked, and there is no mistaking the smirk on her face. She’s up to something.
“Soooo, what?”
“You finally got what you really wanted,” she says, her shit-eating grin growing. I start to respond—to make a smart-ass comment about how does she know—but she cuts me off. “It’s written all over you. If we thought you were glowing at that Sunday dinner, you’ve been radioactive this last week.”
Well, shit…
I feel the heat prick at my cheeks, despite the coolness still lingering in the morning air.
Nervous laughter builds in my chest, like I’m thirteen all over again, ready to burst because my crush nodded at me while walking to math class.
Only, this was better. Looking away, I try to think of something to say—a way to put this feeling into words—but Dolly simply giggles.
She gets it. I know she does.
“Just tell me this, worth waiting for?”
“There you are! Well, two out of the three…”
Aunt Hattie’s shrill exclamation stops us in our tracks, right in front of the food tent, a table filled with precisely lined-up cinnamon rolls behind her.
I blink hard, doing a double take, making sure it’s actually her.
Aunt Hattie, at a fishing tournament at o’dark-thirty in the morning.
I might as well be looking at the ghost of Christmas past for all the sense this is making right now.
“Aunt Hattie. Morning,” I greet, managing to get the words out.
Behind her, Hux mouths the word sorry, with a big shrug. Not that I have any idea what there is to be sorry about. Not like he was going to be able to stop her. She was going to find us, one way or the other.
“Good morning.” She purses her lips, the greeting somehow sour on her tongue.
“Would you like a cinnamon roll?” Dolly offers.
“What I would like, no, what I need, is your RSVPs for the birthday party. And Emily’s, wherever she is.”
Seriously? She needs that now? Can’t she see we’re a little busy at the moment? Wait, no, never mind. I’m not going to bring logic into this. I know better than that. That has no place here.
“I need to RSVP for the party?” Dolly asks, braver than I am.
Oh boy…
“I need a head count for the food.”
“I’m catering it!”
I look over at Hux, my eyes wide, hoping he can read my expression as the distress signal that it is.
In every ER I’ve worked in, the nurses have had a series of hand gestures to secretly communicate with one another—something that I desperately need in the moment.
However, there is no way crossing my fingers in a particular pattern is going to look like anything other than me trying to throw gang signs right about now.
Thankfully, though, Hux is on it. Swooping in, he drapes an arm around his wife, working on sweet-talking our aunt. Something that also makes him braver than I am.
It’s also my cue to exit.
Grabbing the bag of cinnamon rolls set aside for the first aid tent, I weave my way through the crowd back to the ambulance and first aid area.
I stop to look out over Silver Lake as I wait for a large, dually pickup to straighten itself out on the launch ramp.
The sun is starting to peek over the water, turning the sky from pitch black into muted grays and blues, and it won’t be long before we start to see pinks and reds.
I have no idea how many sunrises I’ve seen over this lake—hundreds, probably—but there is something about this one that hits me.
That makes me realize how much I’ve missed them.
The simplicity of the light moving over the water and all the stillness that goes with it.
Even with all the chaos churning around me with the tournament.
Or maybe it’s nothing more than a simple reminder that I’m exactly where I belong.
“Hey, I grabbed the cinnam—”
I stop, snapping my mouth shut, caught off guard by the sight greeting me as I approach the tent.
Sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance, the doors wide open, are Landon and Emily, huddling together, both of their heads bent over Landon’s phone.
They’re looking at something intensely, whispering almost conspiratorially.
Now that’s a sight.
Landon and Emily sittin’ in a tree…
I lean against the metal pole of the tent, my eyes glued to the two of them, the cuteness radiating off of them in waves. The pole shifts under my weight, moving the entire pop-up shelter, causing me to lose my balance and distract both Emily and Landon.
“That was graceful,” Em snickers.
“You okay?” Landon asks, feigning concern. At least one of them is willing to.
“Fine.” I straighten myself out, shrugging it off and pretending like it never happened.
No one saw that. Not my cousin, or my boss, or any one of the dozens of strangers who are hanging about. Nope.